Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Tuesday 28 August 2007, 2:35 PM
Clash of the TyTNs
I'm very fond of my T-Mobile Vario II pocket PC smartphone thingy, which is also known (branded, whatever) as the HTC TyTN. Well, I think I know what my next handset might be - the TyTN II, available now.
It's pretty much the same as the original TyTN, though, bar the newly-integrated GPS and the fact that its screen tilts upwards (useful if you rest your phone on a table to type, but I sure don't). In other words, evolution not revolution, but it does look like a worthwhile purchase if you're looking to enter the wonderful (albeit buggy) world of Windows Mobile.
Thursday 23 August 2007, 3:24 PM
Mobile sales up in Western Europe
We all know that mobile sales are going up globally, but this growth is predominantly in the developing world, where - if they were ever installed in the first place - wired infrastructures have a worrying tendency to be ripped out of the ground and sold for scrap*.
However, Q2 '07 stats just in from Gartner show an 11 percent year-on-year growth in the sale of mobile phones in Western Europe. "With rumours that the iPhone might launch in Europe as early as September, we expect more excitement in this market in the second half of the year," said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices research at Gartner.
So much for sales flattening out in Europe then. I wonder what's spurring the growth. After all, in the UK there are already two mobile subscriptions for every fixed-line subscription. I guess we all just have a burning need to have multiple handsets.
* Last year the Western Cape in South Africa - where I'm from - sold £5.5m worth of copper to China, making the metal one of the region's top exports. Not bad work, seeing as the closest copper mine is 560km away from Cape Town.
Tuesday 21 August 2007, 4:02 PM
BT Tradespace ties in with PayPal
BT has announced that businesses using its Tradespace service will now be able to add PayPal functionality to their websites there.
Just to reiterate, Tradespace offers small businesses templates for establishing an online presence. About 15,000 businesses have already signed up. The templates result in fairly identikit pages, but if the idea of Tradespace is to replicate a sort of market street online (with social networking included) then PayPal should make a decent fit.
So, are any of you good folks some of the 15,000 Tradespace users? BT tells me that people have made good use of the service since it launched in April, but we are of course keen to hear some first-hand opinions and thoughts...
Tuesday 21 August 2007, 3:12 PM
Skype outage - manna for some
Tech journalism is a great place to be if you enjoy naked displays of corporate opportunism. Take the recent two-day outage at Skype, a company that is terribly selfish in being by far and away the most successful consumer VoIP service. Since then we've been inundated by offers of comments etc, including this from Roman Scharf, the amusingly-named head of rival VoIP firm Jajah:
"As soon as Skype went down, we started to see our numbers climb. Thousands of users searched for alternative ways to contact friends and family and Jajah was ready to serve up endless free and low cost calls. Being long-time Skype fans, we are happy that they are up and running again. At the same time, we are glad we were able to provide back-up for consumers that needed a quick alternative during their outage. We find when someone tries out Jajah, they tend to stay with it because of the call quality and other advantages over traditional VoIP providers."
In other words, we're glad you're back, but we're also glad you went away 'cos a few people finally gave us a look-in. Bless!
PS - How would Jajah fit into the Skype-CIA-interception theory?
Wednesday 1 August 2007, 11:52 AM
Vista updates on the way?
It seems that the next Patch Tuesday will bring some major-ish updates to Vista (unofficial versions of which are available here). Just don't call them a "service pack" — Microsoft is getting vaguer and vaguer on the SP1 issue.
All we know for now is that "a beta will be made available sometime this year", which is a far cry from SP1 coming out this year in its entirety. We're not the only ones who thought that would be the case — Intel itself was under the same impression, as was Dell. They, like us, must be thrilled.
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