June 26th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | 
6 Comments
Vodafone HTC Magic running on a SIM Zero contract on 3
As my obsession with mobile continues – the new frontier – I’ve made the decision to take out a second mobile phone contract. But with a twist. I don’t plan to make (or receive) a single call on handset number two. Instead, it will be used for data only (Web browsing, third-party Internet-connected apps and email). Continue reading »
June 24th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile, Net TV | 1 Comment
We’ve known for a long time that Nokia wants to be seen as much as a services company as a handset maker, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising to learn that the company is exploring different ways to deliver online video to mobile phones.
According to a report in New Media Age, Nokia is particularly interested in “kick-starting” the consumption of long-form content on mobiles by utilizing a podcast style delivery method whereby users subscribe to various video feeds, presumably enabling content to be downloaded to the device “over-the-air” rather than being “side-loaded”.
While the service is said to be in trial mode only with about 600 users, 100 of which are Nokia employees, content partners already reportedly include BBC Worldwide, ITV, Sky and Paramount.
June 24th, 2009 | Posted in Net TV | No Comments
Major League Baseball on Boxee
Forget the ongoing spat with Hulu, PC-to-TV media player Boxee has announced an official partnership with MLB.com.
Subscribers to the MLB.TV Premium can now use Boxee to pipe content from the service, which includes “live and on-demand in HD (where available)”, to their TVs or simply enjoy Boxee’s ‘ten foot’ and remote control-friendly UI on their PC. On that note, MLB.TV Premium offers DVR functionality to pause and rewind a live game.
Going forward, Boxee hopes this is the first of such partnerships, as live sport is bound to be seen as a major driver of uptake for Internet TV solutions such as Boxee.
MLB.com represents a big step for boxee as we hope this is the first of many different live sports offerings we can bring to you. We hope other sports follow MLB.com’s lead of giving fans a choice of how they enjoy watching their favorite teams…. [Boxee blog]
The company also announced that a version of Boxee, albeit in Alpha, is now available for Windows along with existing versions for Mac OSX and Linux.
June 24th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
I knew it would happen, I’m just surprised it’s taken so long: Google’s Android has been given a major UI overhaul by a third-party handset maker.
At a press conference in London this morning, HTC unveiled it latest Android-based phone – dubbed “Hero” – but unlike the G1 and HTC Magic before it, the new handset has been given a major UI overhaul that the company is calling HTC Sense. Continue reading »
June 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
This one feels like a bit of a re-announcement but over time could well amount to more. Chip maker Intel and handset maker Nokia held a joint press call today to tell the world about a new “long term relationship” to share R&D and key technologies to develop a new mobile platform or range of devices that “go beyond today’s smartphones, notebooks and netbooks”.
Oh and said devices will be powered by future Intel processors, of course.
Which, as The Register points out, sounds a lot like the Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) Intel has been to touting for years, and very similar to Nokia’s own – albeit non-Intel based – N810 Internet tablet (see my review). Continue reading »
June 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | No Comments
It seems that Adobe is well on track to deliver a version of Flash 10 for smartphones, with the first beta release due this October. Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Naraye said as much during the company’s latest earnings call, as well as revealing that “multiple partners have already received early versions of this release…”.
Naraye then goes on to name names, citing Android, Nokia’s Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm’s WebOS as among the first smartphones to “support web browsing with the newsest Flash player.” Continue reading »
June 22nd, 2009 | Posted in ZNF | 1 Comment
A periodic roundup of relevant news from our friends at Zatz Not Funny…
Jailbreaking the iPhone 3.0 OS
Dave Zatz: In pre-announcing the iPhone 3.0 OS and providing preview software builds, Apple intended to give developers a leg up in producing/updating apps. Fortunately, it also gave the unsanctioned “iPhone Dev Team” enough time to get some of their jailbreak and unlocking apps ready fairly close to the official launch. Continue reading »
June 22nd, 2009 | Posted in last100 weekly wrapup | No Comments
Here’s a summary of the last week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email.
More hands-on impressions of the Nokia N97 [full review]
There is of course a world of difference between living with a phone for any meaningful length of time and having a quick play at a press event or trade show. And after 3 days of ‘real world’ use, I’ll offer up the first mea culpa: the keyboard isn’t nearly as good as I’d first reported. Read on for a more in-depth review of the Nokia N97… Continue reading »
June 16th, 2009 | Posted in Audio, Net TV, Other | No Comments
Forget the UK government’s Digital Britain report (out today), which will propose a solution to the “file sharing problem”, or Virgin Media and UMG’s carrot-and-stick solution. Notorious BitTorrent tracker Pirate Bay thinks it has the answer: a new service that will offer file swappers their own encrypted virtual private network that will keep any “ilegal” activities away from the prying eyes of the content industry and their trigger happy legal teams.
Dubbed IPREDator after Sweden’s copyright law IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive), the VPN service is currently in limited beta with 3,000 testers and another 180,000 on the waiting list. The service costs 5 euros per-month.
June 16th, 2009 | Posted in Net TV | No Comments
CISCO-owned Pure Digital, makers of point and shoot camcorders such as the Flip Mino HD, have launched their own video sharing site dubbed “FlipShare.com”. One of the biggest selling points of the Flip range of camcorders is the software that they come bundled with (installable from the camera itself), which enables basic editing and upload to YouTube and other third-party video sites. So why launch a competing site of their own? Two words: Privacy and convenience. Continue reading »