Mobium

Seagate - Mass Storage Device

2007-02-01T05:49:00.000-08:00

At last, somebody realized the importance of detachable storage device for the mobiles as well. Putting plenty of storage area in the mobile devices is a disadvantage:

Your device will grow in size
You need to search for your USB transfer wire all the time to transfer the data to your PC.

Having a detachable storage area for mobiles is a way to go forward. And Seagate is working on building the technology behind that. It is called as Digital Audio Video Experience (DAVE), which lets you store data like 10-20GB in this unit. This wireless storage devices can be used for Cellphones or any devices which used WiFi / BlueTooth technology.

Seagate says that this new device will be of the size of the credit card with 1/2 inch thick, and your phone can contact it within 30 foot. Wow. It can be used for 10 hours continuous and standby is 14 days. The 10GB Device is the first to be released to the market for a price tag of $150.

via Wired

Samsung SPH-B5800 - TPEG Cellular phone

2006-12-23T07:23:00.000-08:00

Samsung introduced a new cell phone which supports TPEG (Transport Protocol Experts Group) to get live traffic information. You can keep in touch with the traffic which is renewed every 5 minutes. Not just for traffic, it can also be used for transmission of information regarding local tours and information.

Features:

260k colors
2MB Camera
MP3 player
T-DMB module
It weighs 95.6g
All other accessories like dictionary, books, photos etc)

Sprint's Motorola Q - Awesome look

2006-11-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

Some good looking pictures were released in Engadget on Sprint's Motorola Q. Take a look at it yourself. Its not the standard regular phone with keys in it. You will get a full ergonomic QUERTY keyboard and thumbwheel. The keys were placed like a regular keyboard to help you with typing faster.

You can use your Motorola Q as a modem. All you have to do is, connect your mobile to the PC using a USB cable (sold separately), to get the dialup going. Weighing around 4.1 oz, and a built-in camera of 1.3 megapixels, I am sure the phone will make considerable impact in the Q community.

Specifications:

Dimensions: 2.5" x 4.6" x 0.45"

Wireless Bluetooth technology v1.2

65k vivid color display

64 MB RAM

via Engadget

Mobile Marketing: Why push technology don't work

2006-11-17T14:46:00.000-08:00

Mobile Marketing has been around for quite some time. With all the hype and promises, I would say that it hasn't really impacted the way, we expect it to be. There are various reasons and the primary being that of Push Technology.

Now, what is Push Technology? If you are pushing content to the other end without them requesting for it, then it is push technology. There are actually quite good uses to this technology. People who would want to have recurring messages to be received, it is a real boon.

You could push in SMS messages to the person to market whatever you want. But this doesn't have good call to action and here are the reasons:

Pushing messages involves money. If you want to send message to fewer set of people, it doesn't matter. But as you grow the numbers, you really need to watch it. Because if your domain base who are interested in the offer, there is a severe blow to the entire campaign. It is effective for Impulse buying, but not suited to most of the situations.
Opt-in permission: Unless otherwise your consumers have opted to avail the messages, what you are doing is really spam. It is no different than the email spam. Its really annoying to get all those spam messages if you are not interested in it.
Impact: Unless otherwise you could make a huge impact in a shorter period of time like the TV does, with big audience, it has a long way to go. You really can't have an impact just with text. People have been used to form and textures and colors. And only visual media can give that kind of experience. That's why MMS is getting popular.

Mobile Web 2.0: The factors to consider

2006-11-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of hype on Mobile 2.0 buzz word.

Sharing: Like Web 2.0, the user generated content rules in Mobile 2.0 as well. There is plenty of apps being built and shared within the community.
Multilingual: With the emergence of mobiles in different parts of the world, language should be an important consideration. Multilingual mobile phone access should be the priority.
Its necessary to consider the disruptive power of the Ajax and also the mobile widgets.
LBS: Location based services. With the emergence of Mobile 2.0, LBS should be a key ingredient to capture the bigger share of the market.
Mobile Search: This is highly debatable. To search or not to search. With mobiles being tiny, users prefer to use menu based access for faster retrieval of data than searching. Hopefully, things should be better with Mobile 2.0.

Tocmag: Web 2.0 like sharing magazines for your mobile phone

2006-11-12T03:26:00.000-08:00

Are you ready to max out the bandwidth of your mobile phone? If you are, check out this cool Tocmag, a magazine that you could download to your mobile phone.

The magazine has pages that is filled with text, videos & photos. All you need to have is a Java based phone and colour screen. This is like a Web 2.0 thing; free to download and you could freely build the magazines on the web.

The Tocmag that you have created can be kept as Private or Public, helping you keep up with your privacy options. If you did choose to make your magazine as public, then you can share it with your tocmag audience. There are fine controlled privacy options like you could share among your friends but not with the general public.

SymTorrent: Opensource software from Symella

2006-11-12T01:34:00.000-08:00

SymTorrent is the first Bit Torrent open source application for S60; released by Symella which is applicable for S60v3. This torrent has been in the development since the beginning of 2006. You can find the information here.

Having a bitTorrent in the mobile phone is a new one. To start with, the data transfer charges will be expensive. And the more you load into your application, the more space it occupies. Handling space constraints might be a problem.

The simpler solution is always using the PC, but If you really want to use this torrent, the best thing to do is to go for unlimited plan.

This application has been tested in Nokia N80 and also in Nokia N91 smartphones. There are still some bugs though. You can track them by going to their forum or contact them directly.

MGTalk: Open Source Jabber Client

2006-11-12T01:01:00.000-08:00

MGTalk is an open source Jabber client. You can run this client for any j2me midp 2.0 platform which supports it. And another good news is that it supports Google Talk as well.

It has plenty of features:

The layout is pretty good
Use it with SSL connections
Add, remove and rename items (Roster management)
Sound alert for new message notification
Chat history
Gmail new mail notification

The best part with this java client is that you can load it in Eclipse and play around.

Check it out.

Mobile 2.0: Where is it heading?

2006-11-11T15:11:00.000-08:00

Read Daniel's post today on What is Mobile 2.0. With ever growing popularization of Web 2.0 term in the Industry, it has its impact across all other ones as well.

But to become a true mobile 2.0, what are the requirements? There are some great points captured by Daniel and here are the ones which I liked:

SMS -> Instant messenger (like mobile blogging)
MMS -> Media sharing
Operator chooses -> Users can choose
Java Games -> Blogging, Photo Sharing
WAP Push -> RSS readers
Location -> Google maps

I mean, its such a vibrant media and there are plenty of scope for creativity; we cannot let the buzz to ruin the party. Hope things proceeds in the right direction for it.

Future of the mobiles

2006-11-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

Mobile Industry is really growing at a fast rate and their usage is catching up virally. Cool gadgets are created to attract the young population. Its growth can be attributed to countries like Japan, South Korea and most South East Asian countries.

With this explosive growth, the direction through which its going to go is to be carefully watched.

Mobile will be growing like the web.
Plenty of mobile web applications will be created and customized for user's needs.
The Mobile web browser will have enhanced features and there will be cross integration between different browsers.
AJAX will be the next attraction for the mobile Industry. Companies like Nokia, Minimo & Opera are already using it but its far from being great user experience.
Usability study shows that Mobiles are not greatly designed for better user experience.
Widgets will be the prime attraction with companies like Nokia and Minimo already created widget apps.
Creative user generated contents and mashups will rule the future.

What is MEMS

2006-11-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

MEMS stands for Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems. The devices that can be produced out of this technology are like robots but only smaller, I mean micro smaller. This is an unprecedented technology when successfully implemented will revolutionize the way we interact with the system.

Along with producing the Electronic Integrated Circuit ( IC ) chips, the micro mechanical elements like Actuators, sensors etc can be etched to give it both brain and also mechanical system to do action. Using MEMS Technology, you can make these tiny robots jump, push, rotate, position, align, pump, any thing you want. Since it is a micro device with a brain, it can almost penetrate any space and can be remotely controlled tactfully.

Its a revolutionary technological device which will be able to deduce thermal, chemical, optical, magnetic and biological agents. And can be used effectively in times of war. But of course, it can very well be abused as well.

What is TPEG

2006-11-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

TPEG stands for Transport Protocol Experts Group. This is an independant standard which is mainly created for the transmission of Information using a standard called TTI (Traffic and Travel Info).

TPEG can act independantly. That means, it is not biased to any kind of systems or protocols. Its more of an interface between devices. It is architectured independant of any specific devices. Since it is independant, it can be used for any kind of situations and different kinds of transport like Bus, boats, trains, planes etc. There is no need to use any location code numbers which pertains to the information from the road, sea networks etc.

TPEG group is within European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which is based in Geneva.

Samsung SCH-V900

2006-10-31T06:40:00.000-08:00

Samsung has come up with a nice looking model 'SCH-V900' during the KES 2006. Its a cool camera with 2M pix, 2.3inch display and it supports GPS. It has a lot of nice features like VOD/MOD/MP3 Player, blueetooth, file viewer, microSD memory card etc. Very good looking.

Read