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Your advert here!!! Technical Editors:
Last modified: | Mobile Insight Vol: 8 Issue 316 May 8th 2006ROK signs 2.5G TV deal in Chinawww.rokent.com Hack removes ROKR iTunes limitPurely in the name of investigative journalism, Mobile Insight followed up on a posting on the Motomoders.net site. It claimed to have found a way of raising the number of iTunes tracks stored on a Motorola handset from 100 to 1,000. And it definitely works. Apple isn't going to be pleased about this. Indeed the relevant files have already been removed from the file sharing sites named in the posting after complaints. Anyway, the hack revolves around using a little software tool called the Motorola Midlets Manager. Anyway, the instructions were translated from an original Russian posting. The Mobile Insight was also initially fooled by the fact that the authors use RAR for compression instead of ZIP. So you'll need a RAR file reader as well. To prove we hacked it successfully, we went to the 'About' menu on the handset and saw there was now a maximum of 1,000 iTunes tracks available. Of course, you'll have to wait for a 10 GB TransFlash card to arrive to reach that kind of storage.
The full Inquirer story ... INQ hack hacks iTunes Palm to go Linux says AbaxiaAside from a few Palm Treos, the Palm OS is dying as a credible alternative to Windows Mobile and Symbian. However, Cedric Mangaud, CEO with French software house, Abaxia, reckons it will be resurrected as a version of Linux. Abaxia was, of course, founded by ex-Palm employees and Mangaud believes we will see the classic Palm GUI sitting on top of a Linux based smartphone by next year [2007]. According to IDC, Palm OS-based devices accounted for 31 per cent of the US market for converged devices in 2005 but only 4 per cent worldwide. What's really hurting it as a development environment is a lack of high speed data devices supporting the Palm OS on US networks such as Verizon. Mangaud's comments are backed up by the fact that Palmsource is a founding member of the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum in 2005. [See What is LiPS?]. This is an attempt to promote the development and deployment of applications and services on Linux phones through standardisation. Linux based smartphones are particularly popular in Asia and in China especially. The LiPS Forum hopes that by creating industry standards more Linux based smartphones will be produced. PalmSource itself was acquired by Japanese browser supplier, Access, back in 2005 but has yet to introduce a new version of the Palm OS. Abaxia's interest in the Palm OS stems from its Mobile Portal offering. This is, in fact, software for customising the GUI of smartphones and already runs on handsets offered by France Telecom/Orange and Nokia. A rival to the likes of Trigenix and Opera, Mangaud claims Mobile Portal will soon be offered for handsets employing a RTOS (Real-Time Operating System) as well as smartphones based on Symbian, Windows and Linux.The full Inquirer story ...Palm OS isn't dead, it's just going Linux www.abaxia.com RIM counter-sues VistoRIM has filed against its latest opponent, Visto, not in the US District court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, which seems to favour patent lawyers. Instead, RIM has moved to have the case heard in Dallas. RIM's defence is simple. It believes that Visto's patents are invalid. Meanwhile, just to ensure that SMEs and pro-sumers hook up to Blackberries and not Windows Mobile or Palm based devices, RIM is reputedly giving away software worth approximately $3,000, according to Canada's National Post. The publication also reports rumours that RIM is planning a far more consumer-centric device that will offer a built-in camera plus the ability to play back MP3-style audio files. Having paid out around $612.5 million to NTP only months ago, RIM obviously is no mood to hand over more dosh to a company in which the infamous NTP has a major stake - Visto.The full Inquirer story ...RIM responds vigourouly to Visto lawsuit Ezurio launches Bluetooth for embeddedAimed mainly at manufacturers who want to embed a Bluetooth capability inside a device, Ezurio has launched a new USB adapter. It supports the latest version of Bluetooth, 2.0, as well as Enhanced Data Rate (EDR). The new High Speed USB adaptor has been designed to be recognised and work automatically with existing protocol stacks without the need for additional software. It's compatible with embedded platforms such as Microsoft XP, Microsoft CE and Linux. Incidentally, there's nothing stopping you from plugging one of these adapters into your laptop or desktop PC. But for embedded designs the device boasts an operating temperature range of -40°C to +85°C. Although in an open space this USB adapter has a range in excess of 300 metres, its power consumption of only 30mA is typically one tenth of the power consumption of more consumer oriented Bluetooth products, Ezurio claims. Given its support for the Enhanced Data Rate that provides real data throughputs up to 2.1 Mbit/s, it can be utilised for streaming high quality (stereo) sound. The gang behind Ezurio is, of course, the remnants of the former TDK Systems. Ezurio described the price of the units as "competitive". The full Inquirer story ... http://ww.theinq.com/?article=31489 Why don't phones work on the Tube now?What is taking Transport for London so long? Back in June 2005, this organisation announced that mobile phones should work on London's Underground system (known as The Tube) by 2008. They obviously haven't been to Paris because the French are able to use their mobile phones not only in Metro stations but in the tunnels already. At the time of the announcement, Richard Parry, the strategy and service development director for London Underground, was quoted as saying, “We have received an excellent initial response from the market, who have demonstrated considerable interest in providing both mobile phone services and other exciting technologies for our London Underground customers.” Yet the technology isn't due to start trials until this year [2006] with the contract to be awarded 'possibly' by Q3-Q4 2007 and become operational by Q3 2008. Is this delay caused by the fact that London's Underground has 270 stations? Mobile Insight doesn't think so since many outlying stations are, in fact, on the surface. At this rate, by the time London Underground is able to support mobile phones, instead of using GSM (2G), most people will have upgraded to W-CDMA (3G). And covering an area for 3G is very different from covering it for GSM. The full Inquirer story ... Why don't mobile phones work on the Tube now? MTLD clarifies .mobi issuesmTLD, the body behind the new .mobi domain name has clarified some of the key issues surrounding its introduction. However, the whole .mobi concept was attacked by Anil Malhotra, vp for marketing and alliances with Bango. He pointed out that there are now more browsers loaded onto mobile phones than there are browsers on PCs. So why was it necessary to pick out the mobile sector as 'different' from the rest of the Net? Malhotra also argued that most senior Web sites designers were already building their sites to automatically detect if they are being accessed by mobile phones and respond accordingly. "And what are they [mTLD] going to do about handsets connected to services like T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk? Those handsets have HTML browsers anyway," Malhotra claimed. The whole .mobi environment is due to take off in a few weeks' time (May 22nd2006). That will be followed by 'Trademark Sunrise' from June 12th. So is it worth trademarking your site to get in early? Mobile Insight asked UK trademark specialists, Alexander Ramage Associates, how much it might cost a Web site to register its own trademark. One of the partners, Eric Ramage, responded, "It might cost between £250 and £300 for us to conduct a register search and advise on whether a new name infringes prior rights." "And to get a basic application on file to register a trade mark in the UK costs £350 plus VAT. If there are no problems it costs another £150.00 to get it registered, and will take about 8 months. I don't know if it would serve to get a .mobi domain accepted, though." The good news is that any site which mTLD feels doesn't meet the requirements will gets three warnings before it gets 'suspended' after 60 days. According to mTLD's Neil Edwards, no-one will actually lose their .mobi domain as a result of non-compliance. Ronan Cremin, also with mTLD, pointed out that there are only three mandatory rules which .mobi sites need to adhere to and that 'testing' which simply be carried out by machine crawlers. Edwards added that mTLD hoped to announce shortly the relevant tools for building .mobi sites would become available. He didn't indicate how much they will cost. WAP was held back by a lack of affordable tools, of course. Edwards also claimed that consumers won't necessarily have to key in the actual characters - .mobi - when visiting a site. That's because browsers from Access, Nokia and Openwave will automatically default to assuming that the user wants the .mobi domain, not the .com site. There's no indication of how soon such browsers will be loaded onto mobile handsets. The full Inquirer story ... MTLD clarrifies .mobi doubts SnippetsIn Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)This week Mixipix Mixipix has launched a new WAP site designed to let youngsters send silly cartoons using their mobile handsets and paying
for the service from their phones, too.
The USP here is that the cartoons are animated. Plus they can be saved as
wallpapers, screensavers or caller ID pictures. The only gripe Mobile Insight had was that the signing up process didn't seem to work as intended. But sending the text 'Mix nnn' to 80010 cured that.
Mixipix has tried very hard to make the process as easy as poss. You can send the text 'Go mixipix'
to 83055. The
company claims it will correctly identify the receiving handset so that the
cartoon will take advantage of that particular model's display capabilities. The
payment – currently 75 pence a time – is handled by Bango. |
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