Sprint: Phones and Accessories

"Samsung SPH-I500 $599.99" [Via gizmodo.net "Palm OS 5, a 65,000 color screen, 32MB of RAM, a built-in digital camera, and connects to GSM for voice and GPRS for data. " I've been reading about Opera not getting enough RAM off the Nokia 3650. And the list of apps available for the P800 doesn't get my dick hard. So maybe it was lucky that I held off on buying a P800. Anyway, I'm too busy to get involved in this sector at the moment.

How to make money with your blog!

"

"Sign up for the course, and you will also receive GoldBlogger News, my exclusive newsletter. Most of the information just can't be found anywhere else. It pertains specifically to blogging. I pick through tons of hidden posts, stories and news feeds looking for the hidden gems that will will put money in your pocket."

Blogging has certainly hit the mainstream, then. I see Blogs to Riches dot com: "Want to learn how to make money with your weblog?" And chat-for-a-living.com: "You can make money blogging! If you can chat then you can blog!" That's an ebook to buy.

And from business-blog.com a link to the ClickZ promo stuff for their upcoming business blogging conference. They quote:

"B-blogs can offer organizations a platform where information, data, and opinion can be shared and traded among employees, customers, partners, and prospects in a way previously impossible: a two-way, open exchange. Companies can (and should) encourage self-publishing from all corners of the organization. Employees who want to post information should no longer have to go through the corporate site's marketing gatekeepers to post. Suddenly, the best thinkers in a company will have a digital voice they can manage and control themselves."

It's not a good article, she's not an authority on blogging, and hasn't researched well. For instance she says weblogs.com list 1,300 blogs, when it lists that an hour. And the links she supplied include Seth Godwin's book promotion blog - yeuch. Also, the Drudge Report is a blog?

The quote given above is just dreamy clue train stuff: "people of earth... A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarterÑand getting smarter faster than most companies."

The clue train was written fully four years ago. I thought then, that it would take companies forever the 'get it.' Four years isn't long enough for the tea lady to be blogging about what she hears by the water fountain. Truth will out? Not yet, says the fat CEO. Blogs cut to the chase PDQ.

Further from the ClickZ article:

"Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation." Sort of true. If they're interesting, and are corporate letter interesting? Not the ones I've seen. Just the usual cleaned up bollocks.

"You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services." You mean customers can answer back? That's pretty worring.

"Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts." Their price will go up, or they'll be pinched by another company. Do we have any experts? Do we have any thoughts?

Some companies will be able to walk the walk. Most would shit bricks at the thought.

Mobile messaging revenues carry on climbing

"Mobile messaging revenues will double by 2007 to $69bn, according to Analysys forecasts.

Network operators love SMS, because it's very, very profitable. At typical prices, one minute of voice telephony generates less than $1 per Mbyte of network resource consumed," says Mark Heath, co-author of the Analysys report. "This compares with over $1000 per Mbyte for an SMS message." "

They should do SMS cheaper. It's outrageous.

What a bunch of geeks we are [at blogTalk]

"We're all emailing David so that we can have a list of all the blogs for BlogTalk in one place, he'll blog that, then we'll all link to his blog and then blog some more, after a bit more blogging, a break....and then, most likely more blogging." More pix here.

"

Steal These Buttons

" or make your own button. Remember the Netscape buttons?

RSS feed javascript parser and displayer

"This is a service for including customized versions of RSS feeds in web pages. Enter the URL of your RSS feed..."

NewsGator: Search for Feeds

A place to get rss xml feeds. And links to other sources.

Simple Chinese (GB2312) in Manila

"I'm too exited to keep this to myself. It has to be tested further, with other browsers and on other platforms, and with people that can write Chinese, but since this could be useful to other double byte languages, here a way to create a story in Simplified Chinese (GB2312) in a Manila site."

Even more interesting. Spose that means Welsh, too, is possible ";->"

Flights 4 Less - Cheap Flights Worldwide from the UK

"£387.71 London (LHR) ==> Milan (MXP) ==> Tokyo Narita (NRT)"

It would take 24 hours to get there, and nearly 9 to get back.

I'm not a big flyer, me.

Interesting URL though...

http://www.travelselect.com/
cgi-bin
newconcept
main.cgi
state_id=200305212200105355286562311956289048164520973-7
state=flights_avail_display
from1=LON
to1=tokyo
day1=24
day2=27
month1=7
month2=7
class1=Y
time1=0001
time2=0001
fl_type=R
adults=1
num_legs=1
airlines=NONE
subagency=F4L
currency=GBP
referer=http://www.cheap-flight-deals.co.uk/cheap-flight-deals.php
country=UK&&

1imc: first moblogging conference in Japan July 2003

"Moblogging is a blanket term that covers a variety of related practices. At its simplest, moblogging (from "mobile web logging") is merely the use of a phone or other mobile device to publish content to the World Wide Web, whether that content be text, images, media files, or some combination of the above.

One step more elaborate is when this content is location-specific - that is, when it relates to the specific physical place where it was created and published. This permits any particular set of real-world coordinated to be "tagged" with relevant information, from instant restaurant reviews to ski-slope hazard warnings to contextual jokes."

Tagging mobile blogging with blogs in space. I blogged it in January last year, 2002. Japan's going to go nuts over this. How much's a flight to Japan? What am I doing in July? Hmmm.

BlogTalk Conference 26th May

Lilia Efimova's presentation (more a results of a survey) was the only thing that caught my eye. Some of the points of interest to me:

Motivation to start a weblog

Experimentation, curiosity and encouragement from other bloggers
Improving personal information/knowledge management
Community-oriented: publishing/pushing ideas, need for a feedback, interest in communication and sharing

Blogging values discovered after starting

Gaining exposure and credibility in the field
Improving knowledge and skills
Serendipity, feedback and dialogue contributing to idea evaluation and development
Networking and relation building, finding friends
Conversations and knowledge sharing
Easy/cheap/fast way to promote/push ideas

Bloggers: what others need to start a weblog

Personal drive, understanding why a weblog is needed and something to say are more important than technology

Would be bloggers: what they need to start a weblog

Time
Technology
Help
Understanding why a weblog is needed, fitting weblogging in existing practice

Camera-phone reaches a megapixel

Damn, Japan get all the fun. I guess we're two years behind them, so I'll have to wait.

T-Mobile exits as curse of MS smartphone strikes again

"In what begins to look like what Lady Bracknell would call carelessness, Microsoft mislaid another smartphone customer today. T-Mobile International, which along with AT&T was one of Microsoft's two best shots at winning volume for its phone platform, confessed today that it wouldn't be launching its version this summer after all."

I don't think MicroSoft will win the phone wars. Me thinks Symbian will rule. Watch you don't misspell Sybian.

Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It

" Mr. Bruner's experience is typical of many who have waded into the thrilling and sometimes perilous world of blogging."

Exciting times. The same was true of newsgroups (Usenet) you do need to be careful who you write about, and how you name people. If you want to be truly stupid, or have a need to talk behind other peoples' backs then you'd be discrete. These people are truly stupid or need to 'out' whatever.

Blogging in blue chips

"This reporter (Tiernan Ray of the ecommercetimes.com) didn't do his homework when he wrote an article on weblogs in business.  He profiles companies with consumer tools (that don't even participate in the business market) and doesn't even bother to talk to a company (UserLand) that has sold weblog publishing systems to thousands of organizations (and companies such as DuPont, Daimler-Chrysler, Nokia, Motorola, Intel, and many others).  There is a way to integrate blogging tools into the enterprise, and UserLand knows how to do it.  Although, to give him credit, he was on the right track with RSS."

moblogging.org - Mobile blogging resources

"This site is my attempt to gather together all the resources and information regarding moblogging in one place, for all 7 of you out there who are interested."

He misses Dr Davies's first moblogging on St David's Day 1 March 2001.

Still busy

Too busy to post stuff. Need to get the bulk of this project cracked by the end of the week.

A Web Site Ready-Made for the Phone-In Diarist

"Unlike Blogger, which offers free and paid options, TypePad will be for paid subscribers only. The basic level of service will cost about $7 a month. Higher levels will offer features like photo-album management."

Anil says it'll be cheaper than $84 a year. Phone blogging seems to be a big thing.

Orange wants bigger data segment

"ahead of the launch of new services customer use of mobile email, photo messaging and news and information services has been slow to pick up.

Orange UK noted that 80 percent of its customers used only 10 percent of their phone's capabilities."

I guess, what Orange wants, everybody wants.

Orange bets on data boom

"UK mobile phone operator Orange is spending £10m on a push to persuade its customers to use their phones for e-mail and data.

The company will change its tariffs to include a £4-a-month charge for unlimited sending of picture messages, and put training staff in its 248 UK stores"

Sony Ericsson P800

"Incredibly feature-laden; great messaging support; standards-compliant; good battery life; powerful" I can get the phone free with 1,000 minutes and £40 for the first three months on O2 then I can swap to a lower tarrif. This sounds perfect for me. And it's Symbian 7.0, the only phone currently, it seems, that does Opera.

blogcount

"How many blogs and bloggers? How big the blogosphere?"

Busier than Jack McBusy, winner of last year's Mr Busy Contest

Working for the UK Government. Two Frontier installations, one for the external website and one for the intranet to clean and oil, scrape off all the rust underneath and generally make better than new.

If anybody asks, I'm really busy. Better check the weather for the little spare time I've available.

Web Hosting News: DigitalWork Donates 5,000 Personal Web Sites to U.S. Military Families

"

• Share photos with family members and friends
  
• Communicate via a two-way Web journal (known as a weblog or "blog")


• Instantly publish content for the user's Home page and additional pages


• Use Web-based email with junk mail filtering and an address book


• Coordinate events with an online calendar


• View Web site visitation statistics


• Restrict access to only authorized users on a page-by-page basis

"

Good adv ploy. Normally, $17.95 month or $179.50 per year.

Apps: CSSEdit, QuicKeys X2, GraphPro... [The Macintosh News Network]

Jan Van Boghout's CSSEdit 1.0 is designed to edit CSS stylesheets, offering live inline previewing of styles and a unique grouping system as well as CSS grabbing from other sites, favorites for often-used styles and font sets, and other features. It is $15. [542KB]

Looks nice, if it catered for the work-arounds, bugs and idiosyncrasies of browsers.

Opera now for Nokia smartphones

"Wednesday 30th April 2003, 11:29 GMT

Owners of the only two Series 60-based smartphones on the market - the Nokia 7650 and 3650 - now have yet another browser to surf the full Internet with.

At the Symbian Exposium in London, UK, Opera Software yesterday launched yet another version of its browser for a Symbian OS based platform. Having already introduced versions for Nokia's Series 80 and the UIQ platform, the Norway-based company announced the immediate availability of its browser for devices based on Nokia's Series 60 platform"

Now, that's more like it.

Nokia Developer Network

"Besides the Nokia 9210i Communicator, Nokia has launched three other phones supporting XHTML. Those are the Nokia 6590 and Nokia 3590 for GSM 850/1900 networks and the Nokia 3585 for CDMA2000 1X networks in the US market. The Nokia 3585 has an operator choice of XHTML browser. The Nokia 6590 and Nokia 3590 have a dual-mode browser, which natively supports both WML1.x and XHTML Mobile Profile & WAP CSS. The XHTML Mobile Profile is a strict subset of XHTML 1.1, which includes all of XHTML Basic plus some additional elements and features from full XHTML 1.1. Therefore, all XHTML Mobile Profile documents are also valid XHTML 1.1 documents."

It's not clear what browser they're talking about, suspect it is Opera. Sounds like these two 6590 and 3590 are what I'm after. [Later... Nope, they've black and white screens, this article's from April 2002. So it's not Opera, but good history/background about the XHTML.]

Opera Small-Screen Rendering: How do we do it?

"Content reformatting - Instead of presenting table content in columns and rows, tables are reformatted into a one-dimensional structure that better fits smaller screens. Opera can selectively scale down large images or remove those that are superfluous, as well as some other tricks that make the pages fit small screens. And as a result, the user has no need for a horizontal scrollbar. Zooming - Additionally, Opera can zoom pages in and out, and this is a powerful way to get the overview of a complex Web page, while also being able to magnify certain parts of the page. Visually impaired users can zoom out on a page to achieve legible font sizes for reading. By reversing the operation, Opera can show a Web page written for desktop on a small screen." Hmmm. The tables thing is a bit worrying. Zooming sounds wonderful.

"

Opera on the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D on Linux

"render complex (X)HTML, JavaScript pages and execute Applets by means of additional plug-ins. (X)HTML, JavaScript and the possibility of running Java Applets were essential requirements as they are the primary tools used to access services, enterprise databases and legacy systems. "

Running on Linux... Getting more interesting. There's a review of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D. But it ain't a phone.

Opera offers the full Internet to smartphones based on Series 60 Platform

" Oslo, Norway - April 29, 2003 - At the Symbian Exposium in London, UK, Opera Software ASA today announced that users of the Series 60 based smartphones, such as Nokia 3650, now can download the Opera for Symbian OS mobile browser with Small-Screen Rendering (SSR) to their phones"

Oooooo! Now this is getting interesting!

The Nokia Observation Camera now available

"Once mounted and connected to a power source, the Nokia Observation Camera is ready to provide information. The Nokia Observation Camera can be set to send images automatically to an MMS-enabled mobile phone or e-mail address at pre-determined intervals, when motion is detected or when an SMS command is sent directly to the device."

Not what I'm after, but interesting, none-the-less.

Thinking of a new phone

" Features that I'm mostly interested in are: email, digital camera, built in modem? Speaker phone, HTML browsing, Pocket PC, MP3 player.
"Synchronise with your PC's email, diary, contacts, tasks and notebook with Microsoft Outlook¨. And, of course, you can access your Orange email accounts too."
I've had major problems with Orange's website, trying to set up email, that doesn't sound good. Sounds like I'd have to have an Orange email address.
"Windows Media Player which lets you listen to your favourite tunes on MP3"

Talk Plan	Line Rental	Free minutes	Peak per min	Cross Network Calls
Orange 400	£50.00	400	10p	35p
OVP T-Mobile Everyone 300	£42.50	300	?	?
Plan	Line Rental	Inclusive Megabytes	Cost per Mb used
GPRS 0.5Mb	£4 per month	0.5	£8.00
GPRS 5Mb	£15 per month	5 MB	£3.50

Bad Points:
Keypad small and a bit clumsy to use,
Supplied case covers all phone,
Quality of pictures via camera not great - Nokia 7650 fairs better,
USB Connection slow,
Poor ringtones,
Ringtones not very loud,
Battery goes down quick, even when not making calls,
Backlight comes on when any key is pressed when the phone keypad is locked - since it could stay on for 10/15 seconds, this will drain much needed battery time.

I am considering exchanging mine for the Nokia 7650. Whilst the Nokia is larger, heavier and more expensive, it does have a better build quality and the software/menuing is not prone to the problems the SPV exhibits.

Another review: I was installing all kind of software on my phone in the beginning due to which the phone slowed down or sometime crashed. After all it's a PC. Now I added 512 MB SD Card and have everything in there. Problem resolved. The new upgrade has improved the battery life, the antenna and the value of the product drastically.

A reply to a review: You can customise the homescreen however you want, it's just not that easy, and you need basically to be a XML programmer. However, check out www.modaco.com, and lot's of nice people have put together some quite brilliant homescreens.

A review about the 7650: Go to http://www.findmidis.com and download the latest chart midi song files and upload them onto the 7650 for free! (http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com) and there is quite a range of apps to choose from. You can even get spy software (Digia ImageSpy 7650/3650) that has motion detection (the camera can be set to monitor its neighbourhood and raise an alarm/ send picture when motion is detected).

A pro review: Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE), which supports HTML 3.2, cHTML, MSXML, JScript, WAP 1.2.1 and WTLS. With it, you can browse just about any web site out there, which is a major advantage over browsers in other smartphone offerings which for the most part offer browsing only WAP or XHTML content. As time has passed, quite a number of sites adapted for PIE on the Pocket PC platform have cropped up, and the majority of these sites will work on the SPV.

I'm going to look at the Symbian on Nokia, see what it can do. I need a webbrowser on a phone, and so far the only game is Microsoft [damn].

Dáirio na internet: 300 mil brasileiros já tem um

"Diário na internet: 300 mil brasileiros já tem um "

300,000. That's the number of weblogs that the Portuguese-language local version of Blogger has in Brazil, which is operated through the local portal Globo.com. In a story in Estadao.com, website of a major newspaper in Sao Paulo, product manager Renata Brasil explains that the weblog segment has been growing at a 10%-monthly rate since August 2002. There are Brazilian weblog competitors at portals IG and Terra. [Via poynter.org]

300,000 Spanish blogs? Which would be the tip of the iceberg.

XML Weather Server

Adam asked for a script to read the XML from a weather organisation in the US which supplies XML feeds for just about everywhere in the world. I've added some bits to the script to show the forecast, download it from here. Now, it's at the foot of my front page template, like so...

<% workspace.weather2rss.getWeather("Telford", "VUtYWDAzMDU%3D", true) %>

Dead handy having the weather on your own site. Cheers Marcus for the initial script.

David's *at it* with his mobile blogging

WAP RSS now on radio.weblogs.com. Those fine fellows at Userland have tweaked the community server to allow the upstreaming of WAP WML files. Thanks Lawrence! This is good news for WAP fans who also use Radio Userland and the Userland community server (radio.weblogs.com).

As a consequence of this change my educational technology WAP RSS feeds are now where they belong, on my weblog:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001161/wap/index.wml

I just need a couple of tweaks of my WAP RSS tool then I'll release it to anyone who wants it. If anyone has any particular feature requests then now's the time to speak up. I'll hope to release the first public version Tuesday evening. [David Davies' Weblog]

Faking it, The Standard's front page

""The Memory Hole website alleges the Standard intended to deceive readers by inflating the size of the crowd. Wrong. It also claims we put together two different still-frames. Wrong again ... the Standard stands by its use of this page one picture." "

Then they should say in some small print down the side. "Photo digitally enhanced."

America's Broadband Dream Is Alive in Korea

Spending on broadband and other high-technology gear helped lead a transformation of the economy, pushing the overall information technology sector to about 13 percent of economic activity and making South Korea much less dependent on heavy industry.

Once a novelty, home shopping now makes up 8.7 percent of all retail sales, a rate that is expected nearly to double by 2005.

In 2001, SBSi, the interactive division of the Seoul Broadcasting System, started charging 500 South Korean won (about 40 cents) a show to watch soap operas and other streaming video programs. The service has attracted 1.8 million registered users; 4,000 more sign up every day.

57% Korea, 50% Canada, 22% US and we're right down the bottom with UK 11% BBi into homes. Plus, their average connection is 2meg and the pro's 32meg.

The digital nirvana we're all thinking about is some way off.

Doctored Photo from London Evening Standard

"Doctored Photo from the London Evening Standard" "On 9 April 2003, the front page of the London Evening Standard (circulation: 400,000) contained a blurry image supposedly showing a throng of Iraqis in Baghdad celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein. What we are really looking at is an incredibly ham-fisted attempt at photo manipulation." And they say blogs, aren't the truth.

WAP is back in blogging land

WAP RSS Browser. I've been on the road a lot recently and have relied heavily upon my mobile phone for sending and receiving email as well as m-blog posting. During moments of boredom on trains I even poked around my phone's WAP features. It occurred to me that WAP might be an ideal way of keeping up to date with my subscribed-to RSS feeds. So I created a WAP RSS viewer.

What it actually does is to use Radio's aggregator data from all my subscribed-to favourite RSS feeds and convert that to a set of WAP files. I can then browse these files with my WAP phone. This is really handy because I can now keep up to date when I'm away from my copy of Radio or NetNewsWire (I duplicate my NNW feeds in Radio for just this purpose).

Here are a couple of screen shots. Apologies for the poor quality but I just placed my phone on a scanner.

I've created this as a Radio tool so anyone can use it with their weblog. However, there's one gotcha. WAP WML files won't upstream to UserLand's Radio Community Server so if you have your weblog hosted by radio.weblogs.com I'm afraid you can't use this tool, yet. I've asked nicely if UserLand would allow WML files to upstream so who knows.

If anyone uses their own RCS or an RCS that allows the upstreaming of WML files then let me know and I'll send you a copy of the tool.

In the meantime, you're welcome to read my RSS feeds via WAP. I upstream them here: http://medweb2.bham.ac.uk/testarea/wap/index.wml

So just point your WAP browser to that URL. Some older WAP browsers have a maximum file size limit so some feeds with a lot of entries might not be viewable. Most modern phones shouldn't have a problem. The feeds update every hour when my copy of Radio performs its aggregator scan.

Happy WAP-ing!

Ye gods!

Bank's response 'down to weblog', says customer

""Eventually I got annoyed with the lack of real response and went onto Abbey's website and contacted them this way," said Mr Cox. "However, when I emailed them I didn't put anything in my mail except a link to my blog. They responded satisfactorily within days. I am pretty certain I wouldn't have got anywhere with my complaint if it had not been so public."

Publicity! Even though 5 people read his blog?

FrontierMonitor for OS X

" FrontierMonitor is a Perl daemon installed on a OS X machine hosting a Frontier or/and Radio servers. FrontierMonitor will try to launch the Frontier/Radio servers if they are down and will send you a warning by email while loging the event in a log file."

That'll be handy.