Signing Up for a Free US or UK Number
If you’d rather not own a mobile phone, you can at least get your WiFi-enabled laptop or PDA its own telephone number so you can receive calls from anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. It basically involves signing up for a free redirection service that routes calls made to an ordinary telephone number to your VoIP client. Some details at the J Spot.
- Sign up for an account with FWD.
- Download and install an FWD-compatible client.
- Sign up for a free DID number from IPKall (US) and/or CallUK.
The catch is, you have to be online (and have to have a headset or a laptop with a mic ready) to receive calls. However, you can activate the free FWD voicemail to pick up when a call is unanswered or when you are offline. Messages will then be sent to your email as .MP3 files.
If you’re running an offshore business that caters to US or UK clients, this might come in handy. You can even route these calls to your office PABX so you can receive calls as if you had your own US number.
You can probably even get free (or at least cheap) incoming phone calls this way, if your mobile phone supports internal VoIP clients connected either via GPRS, 3G or WiFi.
Phone Contacts: Are they Safe?
One of the things that annoys me about the cell phone that I have is that it did not come with a data cable. I trust the cell phone with all types of important information, but I don’t have any method of backing that information up, and that really bothers me.
Sometimes to the point of recording the information by hand onto my computer once I am back home.
With the world moving towards cell phones that are almost miniature computers, especially when we look at smart phone technology, I wonder what type of market is going to grow from securing such data.
Have you ever lost all of your information on your phone? Do you store important contact information on your cell phone? Do you backup your cell phone? Let me know.
LG Chocolate Phone LG-KG800 Review
Pocket-lint reviews the LG-KG800, better known as the LG Chocolate phone, and they seem to love its style and ease of use.
The front as we’ve said hides a mirage of buttons that all you to navigate around the phone, make calls and influence people. In use and the interface is incredibly light to touch, but once you’ve got the hang of it easy to master (think iPod click wheel). Slide the slider back and luckily LG has opted to keep things simple and straightforward and it was surprising and pleasing to see that the number keypad hasn’t been messed with, that feeling soon ends however when you see the numbers appear on the screen is a plethora of colours as if someone has been let loose with a tube of Smarties.
In the end they give the LG-KG800 a seven out of ten, though users so far have given it a five and a half out of ten. While it is not the LG Chocolate phone, I’d say that the Motorola L7 is just as nice, though maybe not as fasionable or trendy, its features are pretty slick.
Ericsson Gets Deal to Exapnd Chinese Mobile Network
When dealing with the Chinese market, most American and European companies would be criticized for succumbing to the whims of this strict regime. Even Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! weren’t spared from this. But the general response to such criticisms is that it’s better to open up the market, such that some information flow and exchange would occur–this is better than having nothing at all.
BusinessWeek has a brief report.
Wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson on Monday announced deals worth more than US$550 million to expand mobile networks in 17 Chinese regions.
Ericsson said the contracts were signed with China Mobile during the first half of 2006, and includes providing the country’s major cell-phone operator with GSM network equipment and technical support. The expanded networks will support more than 200 million subscribers, Ericsson said.
Ericsson, which is in the top leagues in wireless equipment manufacturing and sales, has been dealing with China Mobile since 1987, and this deal would further strengthen their position as a top equipment provider. And arguably, helping improve on the Chinese telecommunications infrastructure would be helpful to the country’s citizens, in general, as this would help in communications and information exchange.
Usability in SMS Sending Interfaces
Jayvee writes over at Cellphone9 that he’s now thinking of choosing phones based on how the SMS editor handles error messages.
No. I want to resend the message. I swear, choosing a phone based on failure messages is actually something I’m considering now. Sony Ericsson phones send an error message asking if you would like to save the message in a draft folder to be sent later. But network behavior dictates that a failed message could mean that the network was down. So no, I don’t want to save the message in a draft. I want to resend it.
Maybe mobile phone software manufacturers should take into account a priority list of options that a guy with a phone would instinctively want to choose in only one button press.
I agree with Jayvee that this is one big factor to consider, especially with the growing popularity of SMS. I do know of some mobiles that do not even display any error message even if your message wasn’t properly sent (due to network congestion, weak signal or even account problems). Some phones would automatically save your message back in the drafts list. Some would have an error messange linger for a few seconds before reverting back to the message editing interface.
The point is that cellphone manufacturers should consider usability in the way they display these error messages, and possibly take into account user preferences. Should an error message be displayed until a user presses a key to close it? Should a user be asked if the phone should attempt to re-send the message or just save it in the drafts folder for the meantime?
I’ve had my share of miscommunications due to un-sent or mis-sent SMS messages only to learn later on that my phone was unable to properly send. I sometimes have this habit of just stuffing my phone back inside my pocket when I click that “send” key without waiting if the message had actually been sent already. Lately, I’ve been relying on audible alerts from my SmartPhone–I’ve set the “error” and “sent” alerts to be different so I can resend in the event of errors. Sadly, my phone still doesn’t have an intuitive interface for re-sending messages that were unsuccessfully transmitted. I’d have to manually go to the “sent folder” re-edit the message and send again. Not so smart for a SmartPhone, eh?
Mobile Outage in New York
If you’re seeing yourself banging your cellphone on your head in frustration because it just won’t dang work, it’s probably because you’re in New York and you’re using Sprint. Apparently, some damage to underground network equipment have caused outages in some parts of Queens, NY.
Sprint Nextel Corp. said an outage of its cellphone service in parts of the New York borough of Queens on Thursday was caused by water damage to network equipment due to a burst pipe.
The outage came amid intensified airport security after British police said they had foiled a plot to blow up several aircraft flying between Britain and the United States. Two major New York airports — JFK and LaGuardia — are in Queens.
The service interruption, reported earlier by the New York City police, was caused by damage to equipment in Verizon Communications Inc.’s wired network, Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott said.
Sprint and Verizon (which runs the wired network that carries the data from cellular towers) have confirmed that the outage is due to waterlogging and not because of terrorist acts.
Nokia to Enter the Music Business
Realizing that mobile and music are a good match–at least in the present–Nokia has announced plans to acquire music distributor Loudeye.
Nokia said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy U.S.-based digital music distributor Loudeye for $60 million as the world’s largest handset maker aims for a bigger slice of a potentially lucrative market.
…
Handset makers see digital music as one of the key drivers for selling more expensive new phones.“Music is now the number one service for selling advanced mobile phones–it has been cameras, and in the future it might be television–but in 2006 music has become the service phone makers have been concentrating on,” said FIM Securities analyst Erik Sucksdorff.
Music and mobile phones are hitting the sweet spot in today’s consumer market. while other technologies are on the horizon–such as mobile television and perhaps even videoconferencing–Nokia is apparently learning from today’s iPod generation. It even has the right to claim the “largest manufacturer of digital music players” title.
Loudeye aggregates rights and content from major labels and hundreds of independent labels and currently offers licensed catalog and complete media for over 1.6 million tracks.
…
Nokia said it had sold more than 15 million music-enabled phones in April to June, making it the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players, and it aims to sell more than 80 million music devices this year.
Does this pose a challenge to the iPod+iTunes dominance? Perhaps not today, but having a convenient way to purchase music for use on mobile phones sure is a good marketing move for the number one mobile manufacturer.
Here’s the press release from loudeye.com.
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