Monthly Archives: September 2010

Deal of the Day: IM+ Talk

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Shaun

IM+ Talk is today’s deal of the day and is on sale for $14.98 (normally $29.95)- a big saving.

IM+ Talk is a mobile application that enables voice and text communication from BlackBerry handheld with other Skype users and provides cost-effective calling to landlines and mobiles all over the world. No huge data traffic for calls! Now with free VoIP calls in wifi zones!

IM+ Talk works worldwide in any 3G/GSM/CDMA network and is not dependent on WiFi zones.

Enjoy high quality of voice communication – clear sound, no extra delays even for long-distance calls!

Skype Credit tariffs to landlines and mobiles are different and in most cases calling to mobile is much more expensive than calling to landlines. You can enter several landline numbers (they can be the phone numbers of a friend you came to visit, or even a phone number of a local restaurant) in the Call Back field in IM+ Talk and the call will be forwarded to the number you indicate.

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Nokia’s rating cut, expectations are low…

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

Pierre Ferragu from Bernstein Research has cut his projected rating for Nokia from a target price of $10.67 all the way down to $6.67, citing Android as one of the main reasons for this. I struggle with this part of his analysis though- “This 2010 rebound is driven partly by a normalization of channel inventories, and partly by an uptick in the replacement market,” he writes. “These two drivers should tail off next year, leaving the market with about 5% volume growth and virtually no value growth – or if any all captured by premium brand players. In 2010, Nokia is posting only stable devices sales, despite a positive currency context. In a sluggish market, we would expect Nokia to post flattish shipments and negative sales growth in 2011, driving a much lower earnings power than what the recent stock price implies and than what consensus expects today.”


From Barron’s- “Over the summer, we have seen an acceleration of the structural headwinds Nokia will suffer in the medium term, and the timing of the recent changes in the management team indicates a likely difficult internal situation as well,” he writes in a research note. “Nokia therefore starts the Christmas season and 2011 on the wrong foot; and most worryingly, we see growth expectations for next year as unreasonable. We believe the handset market as a whole will barely grow in value, leaving Nokia with a decline in top-line.”

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Kindle for the Web (beta)

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

Amazon is continuing its path to eBook domination with a new version of Kindle for the Web. This may seem like a strange option to those of you with smartphones and eBook readers, but it is a clever way to introduce potential new customers to the idea. I tried the embed feature without success, but it does work on a smartphone (just).

  • Simply click the “Read first chapter FREE” button on selected Amazon book overview pages and a new browser window will open containing the book sample.
  • To buy the full Kindle edition of the book from the sample screen, click the “Get Kindle Edition” button. You may then choose to download the book to your Kindle or other Kindle reading application.
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QOTD: Stock headphones?

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

Do you use the headphones that came with your smartphone? I do with the iPhone 4, but haven’t with my BlackBerry, Nokia or Android devices. The Nokia ones in particular have historically been very poor; £400 phones + 40p headphones…

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eBooks: Amazon and Apple, not Sony

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

The eBook market has exploded in the past year and more and more people are starting to enjoy the eReading experience. Some of us have been eReading for years, but we were very much in the minority, and the likes of eReader and fictionwise had a good thing going for a while there. Amazon then released the Kindle which was a surprise success and one that got millions of people to start to thinking about electronic reading. The Kindle sold by the bucket load and was an instant hit- it showed that there was a market there ready and waiting to read eBooks and so others joined in.

eBooks started to appear on iOS and many iPhone users now read them daily, me included, and then the iPad took it a stage further by adding a larger screen. iBooks is seen by some as the best in the business and so the battle lines have been laid down between Amazon and Apple. The new Kindle is an awesome piece of kit and one that offers a much better eReading experience than the iPad; longer battery life, near perfect text and a read anywhere screen makes it the best eReader we have seen so far. It is as good as it gets at this time.

eBooks are now here to stay and the Amazon and Apple are dominating the market with large selections of eBooks and some good pricing. Well, I must say that Amazon tends to offer better pricing in my experience and a larger selection of eBooks. It has also done well to cover itself by jumping on the iPhone / iPad bandwagon alongside its Kindle offering so it is well placed to continue its success in this area.

What about Sony?

Well, like so many other areas of the digital world Sony has failed again. Its eBook readers are well designed and have that typical Sony sleek outer casing, but they are slow when turning pages and do not represent the best value for money. Even worse, the average price of eBooks for the Sony Reader is crazily high and rarely competes with the Amazon pricing or (shock horror) the Apple iBooks pricing. Sony has got almost every aspect of the eBook market wrong which compares badly to Amazon who has got it almost all right so far.

There is a market for eBooks that will reach out to users who will not consider smartphones or tablet devices for many years and I believe that Amazon is by far the leader in this area, and could well remain so for many years to come.

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COTD: Mobile TV

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

Today’s comment of the day comes from Andrew regarding Mobile TV, or rather the lack of it- “It won’t take off because the TV generation (genX-ers and early genY-ers) don’t think of watching TV as an activity outside of the home.  The latter genY-ers and genZ-ers will be to busy with social networking – texting, etc. to be bothered watching TV. Fail.”

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Nokia’s New Chief Faces Culture of Complacency

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

Most of us know that Nokia should be in a better place than the one it is currently inhabiting and a new article at NYT features quotes from former employees which sheds some light on the problem.


“There were plenty of years to make Symbian better,” said Mr. Nyman, who was at Nokia from 1983 to 2009, and took early retirement. “We could have rewritten the whole code several times over. We had the resources and the people. But we didn’t do it.”

“It was management by committee,” Mr. Risku said, comparing the company’s design approval processes to a “Soviet-style” bureaucracy. Ideas fell victim to fighting among managers with competing agendas, he said, or were rejected as too costly, risky or insignificant for a global market leader. Mr. Risku said he had left in frustration at its culture; he now designs environmentally sound buildings.

“We demonstrated it within Nokia and said this is what we needed,” said Mr. Hakkarainen, who worked at Nokia from 1999 through 2007. “We tried to convince middle and upper management. But there was no way.”

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PictureTimeStamp for BlackBerry

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

There are very few apps available on the BlackBerry platform that let you mess about with photos, but PictureTimeStamp offers a lot of features for only $2.99.

Picture TimeStamp will automatically print the current datetime or custom text and optionally a logo graphic to the picture taken with the camera application. You can also manually select a picture to time stamp from the Media or Files applications.

The stamped picture can be stored in a separate folder or in the original folder. You can choose different datetime format, text font, text color, text size and position to print the datetime or text.

Logo can be any size and can be positioned basically anyway on the screen.

Picture TimeStamp can only save picture in JPG format and the maximum size is 1024 x 768. If the picture is too large it will be resized.

You have an option to delete the original picture or keep it.

You also have an option to control the JPG quality when saving.

Picture TimeStamp is a perfect tool to protect your original work and it also helps you keep all your photos organized.

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Deal of the Day: BerryBuzz

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

Today’s deal of the day is BerryBuzz which is on sale for $2.98 (normally $5.95).

The essential alert tool for every BlackBerry.

* Tired of getting only red flashes from your device LED? Assign custom LED colors to ABOUT ANYTHING on your device. From e-mail, SMS, calls and many 3rd party apps to e-mails, SMS and calls from SPECIFIC CONTACTS.

* Tired of being alerted only once? Set a repeating audible reminder to about anything you can set a custom LED for.

* Plus it adds the option to have vibrate while ringing for many notifications and incoming calls.

NOTE: You will find BerryBuzz as a new item in your BlackBerry® options. A battery pull after installation may be necessary.

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Pencil illusion for iPhone: sweet

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Shaun

With so many photography apps available for the iPhone it can be difficult to find the good ones amongst a selection that are largely similar. Pencil illusion is one such good one that is currently free- it converts any photo you take into a pencil, chalk or embossed photo and does so in real-time i.e. you get to see it as it will be converted while you take the photo. So far it has proved to work extremely well for me and is a novel app that deserves attention.

“Pencil illusion” is a camera application that lets you process photos in real-time, previewing and taking amazing pictures with pencil, chalk and emboss filters.

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BlackBerry PlayBook announced

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Shaun

RIM has just announced the BlackBerry PlayBook which features the BlackBerry Tablet OS powered by QNX. Multi-tasking is included alongside support for Adobe Flash, a dual core processor, real-time video conferencing, BlackBerry specific features (email etc.?) and reported excellent gaming and video capability. Very, very interesting…

The video below demonstrates the PlayBook in more detail and I have to say that it does look very good. It seems as though RIM has kept the core BlackBerry capability (good for business) and added lots more including a webOS like multi-tasking interface. The bad news is that it won’t be available until early 2011 which makes this a lot of information to give away with the release date so far off- 4 months is a long time on tablet planet. I wonder if these extras will find their way to BlackBerry smartphones? That would make a huge difference to RIMs future fortunes.

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Average length of mobile ownership increases, or decreases…

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Shaun

A new study by J.D. Power and Associates has concluded that we are holding on to our mobile phones for longer than ever before. The study concludes that people are keeping mobile phones for an average of 20.5 months compared to 17.3 months in 1999. It’s an easy conclusion to make and one that could be put down to the financial downturn, but if you look at it another way the length of ownership has increased in comparison to the average length of mobile contract.

In 1999 the average contract length was 12 months so 17.3 months is almost 150% of the contract length. Now, the average contract length is 18-24 months (mostly 24) so today’s figure is a much lower percentage compared to the average contract length.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif., Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ — The average reported length of time customers keep their traditional wireless cell phone has increased by 17 percent from 2009, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 U.S. Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study-Volume 2 and the 2010 U.S. Wireless Traditional Mobile Phone Satisfaction Study(SM)-Volume 2 released today.

The study finds that customers are keeping their traditional mobile devices for an average of 20.5 months, which marks the longest period of time since the study’s inception in 1999, when the average was 17.3 months. The current level of ownership tenure does differ by manufacturer brand, with the highest reported ownership tenure at an average of 27.8 months, and the lowest at 17.5 months.

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Nokia 6303i: £64.95 this week only

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Shaun

Carphone Warehouse is currently offering the Nokia 6303i on Orange for only £64.95 + £10 top-up. This is an exceptional price for a phone that is £150 on other networks and this just happens to be one of the best standard mobile phones, if not the best, in the world.

In my experience with Carphone Warehouse, the phones are often unlocked and you will get the same phone no matter which network you are buying it on. So, if you think the deal is too good to miss, get to your local store and double check the network locking situation. They are likely to tell you that the network provider has the right to bar the phone at any time, but I’m not sure how Orange could bar a phone that has a Vodafone SIM in it…

A mobile with style, Nokia’s new 6303i is all stainless steel curves and bright colour accents.

This sleek little handset has been ergonomically designed to sit comfortably in your palm; hence the curved keypad and slender body.

With a brand new user-interface that’s even easier to understand; 6303i is a brilliant first mobile phone.

Whether you prefer to stay in touch via email, IM, MMS or SMS, it’s all easier with the 6303i. You can choose to chat via GoogleTalk™ or Windows Live™, and Hotmail™, Gmail™ and Yahoo Mail™ are all supported; so you can check your email on your mobile phone.

Surfing the internet is easy, as there’s a GPRS/EDGE internet connection and a choice of user-friendly web browsers; including the brilliant Opera Mini. The 6303i can also be used as an internet modem for laptops or netbooks.

If you enjoy listening to music and watching video clips on your handset then you’ll want to enhance the 6303i with a memory card. It’s compatible with microSD cards up to 8GB; so you could even transfer your music collection across to your mobile from a computer via the USB cable provided! You can plug in a standard pair of headphones via the 3.5mm audio jack, or connect a wireless Bluetooth headset to listen tangle free.

Use your mobile to stay entertained on the move. This stylish handset will keep you entertained – there’s an integrated music player to handle your tunes, a stereo FM radio, and eight pre-installed games. The enhanced battery life gives you up to 30 hours of music playback; more than enough to get you through even the longest day!

Want to share your tunes with friends? There’s a built in loudspeaker to get the party started!

You can discover and download new music online from the Nokia Music Store.

The 6303i has a 3.2 Megapixel, full focus camera with LED flash and 4x digital zoom. There’s also a dedicated video recorder for capturing fun clips to share with friends.

When you’re doing snapping pictures you can organise your images via Ovi Share; tag and comment on them, make a slideshow, and then upload your favourites for friends to view online.

This glossy slider phone may be small, but it’s packed with all the essential mobile features you could need to stay connected and entertained. Plus, it’s really stylish and streamlined; ideal if you want  to stand out for all the right reasons.

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TK-421 iPhone Case with Flip-Out Keyboard

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Shaun

The TK-421 iPhone Case looks like a dream for some and brings with it the kind of data entry those who hate touch screens need. However, the keys look a little rubbery to me and I can’t help feeling that it may be somewhat top heavy. Time will tell though- estimated release date is 23rd November.

We taunt our monkeys Brett & Julie for sticking with Blackberry, but we have to agree, the physical keyboard is pretty handy to have. Even though our iPhone enthusiasts are used to typing on glass with no tactile feedback, nothing beats having real old skool style buttons to mash your thumbs on. Now you can have the best of both worlds with the TK-421 iPhone case with flip-out keyboard. This case has a handy built in keyboard that rotates out when needed. Use it for e-mails, texting, apps. It’s almost like your iPhone gained an extra super power!

There are two models of the TK-421 case, one for the iPhone 3GS and the other for iPhone 4. Yes. We know that the iPhone 3G is the same form factor as the 3GS but unfortunately Apple decided that the 3G was just too slow to add Bluetooth™ keyboard support into the OS… go figure.

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Driving fatalities caused by mobile use and texting soared 28 percent in 2008

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Shaun

The American Journal of Public Health has published some scary statistics about driving while using a mobile phone and because of this the Governors Highway Safety Association may consider a total ban on mobile use while driving. I get it, I really do, but the distinction of using a mobile phone via a hands-free seems no different to me than talking with a passenger or eating an apple.

The study by the American Journal of Public Health, released Thursday, found that distracted driving fatalities caused by cell phone use and texting soared 28 percent, from 4,572 in 2005 to 5,870 in 2008. The same report showed that texting has caused more than 16,000 deaths in car crashes from 2001 to 2007.

“It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know that cell phone use and driving is dangerous and that lives have been lost due to this practice,” said Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman with the safety association.

California is one of eight states that ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving and among the 30 that prohibit texting.

The report analyzed data from the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, which recorded all fatalities on public roads in the United States from 1999 to 2008.

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