Thursday 19 November 2009, 12:55 PM
Ion-toting Eee 1201N to hit UK in January
Asus has confirmed its long-rumoured Eee PC 1201N, the first in the company's line of netbooks to use Nvidia's Ion graphics platform.
The 1201N will also be one of the first netbooks to include Intel's new dual-core Atom 330, which should boost the processing power of small, cheap subnotebooks.
An Asus spokesman told ZDNet UK on Thursday that an official UK announcement regarding the 1201N would be made within the next day or so, while the exact release date, specification and pricing is worked out.
However, the spokesman said, the netbook would definitely launch in "early to mid January". Although the precise UK spec is yet to be finalised, the spokesman said, confirmed features include a 12-inch screen, HDMI output and 2GB of RAM.
Ion is a platform that combines Intel's Atom processor with Nvidia's graphics processor, so as to make it possible to run high-definition graphical content smoothly on low-powered systems.
Thursday 19 November 2009, 8:20 AM
WorkSnug for iPhone now available
A little while ago I blogged about an iPhone application called WorkSnug.
It is a free tool that finds public Wi-Fi locations in London and uses augmented reality to display them on screen. It’ll show you how to get to them too, thanks to a connection to Google Maps.
Well, it has just been approved by Apple and is available to download.
That’s it, really. Just wanted to update you.
Wednesday 18 November 2009, 1:31 PM
Toshiba TG01 running Windows Mobile 6.5
When we first saw the TG01 from Toshiba we were both delighted and displeased. There was a lot to like, but Toshiba’s cranky front end to its operating system Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional was, in our view, strangely misconstrued.
The TG01 has made a reappearance running Windows Mobile 6.5 and the news is better. The front end, which reminded us of nothing more than a slot machine, is gone, at least nominally. Right out of the box there is, on our Orange-badged device, a simpler main screen comprising a scrolling menu of key features: pictures, music, clock, phone, voicemail, text, email and favourites. Tap that last one and a horizontally scrolling menu pops up that you can populate with apps you're likely to want to use often.
It still isn’t ideal, though. As noted in our review of the TG01the first time round, the device is hampered by a touchscreen that needs firm pressure rather than a gentle caress. To be fair, if you are naturally heavy-handed or have not experienced the best capacitive touchscreens, you’ll probably not notice this. But it is an issue.
And you can call up the slot-machine-style interface if you want it.
What did appeal last time round, and still does now, is the sleek design and huge screen. At 130mm by 70mm by 9.9mm and 129g the TG01 feels more like a media player than a phone, and its 4.1in. 800-by-480-pixel display is bright and sharp. Toshiba makes the most of it, but even here everything isn’t rosy: the TV Player link pointed to an Orange web page that's currently under development.
As for the remaining specifications, there’s the very capable Snapdragon processor, running at 1GHz, as the headline feature.
The remaining specifications include HSDPA (7.2Mbps/2Mbps), quad-band GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM and a microSD card slot complete with an 8MB card in our review sample. It's just a shame in such large hardware that Toshiba could not have engineered the microSD card slot so that it is accessible without removing the battery.
Sadly the headset connector is microUSB at the handset end, although there is a 3.5mm adapter just past the microphone so you can use your favourite headphones if you wish.
The hardware details seem unchanged from the original TG01. It appears to be just the updated OS that is new. Full details are at Toshiba’s web site, although when we visited it the device was still being listed as running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
Sandra Vogel
Wednesday 18 November 2009, 12:53 PM
Nokia could drop Symbian for Maemo on N-series
Nokia could drop Symbian for the Maemo Linux operating system on its flagship N-series handsets by 2012, according to Maemo marketing staff.
A report published on Wednesday on The Really Mobile Project quotes Maemo staff from an event last night in London. The 'meet-up' was organised to celebrate the N900 smartphone, which runs Maemo and is likely to launch in the UK within weeks.
According to the report, Nokia does not intend to phase out Symbian completely. The company is a prime backer of the Symbian Foundation, an industry group that is in the process of open-sourcing the venerable operating system.
This may suggest that Symbian will be relegated to Nokia's enterprise-focused E-series range, with Maemo powering the Finnish manufacturer's consumer-oriented handsets.
ZDNet UK has asked Nokia for confirmation of its plans for the N-series, but had received none at the time of writing.
Tuesday 17 November 2009, 3:27 PM
Windows Marketplace available on 6.1 and 6.0 devices, but needs more apps
It has taken a little while, but Microsoft has finally released its Marketplace for Windows 6.1 and 6.0 devices.
This means that owners of those devices have access to over the air application download, bringing them into line with Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets.
The range of applications is still woefully small, though. When announcing Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 Microsoft seemed rather proud to be able to offer over 800 applications – more than three times the number available at launch.
Microsoft might be new to the over the air apps game, but it is by no means new to the smartphone applications sector, and having just 800 apps in its marketplace is woeful.
On 4 November Apple announced that its App Store was hosting 100,000 applications and that more than two billion downloads had been made onto devices. Statistics at Androlib.com suggest as many as 16,000 applications are available for Android based devices (nearly two thirds of them free).
We all know that more is not necessarily better. Just because there are thousands more apps on other platforms, does not mean that all those apps are good, let alone great. But there are enough good and great ones to make the app stores key drivers for the device.
If Microsoft is really interested in pushing Windows Mobile at the consumer sector as well as the business user it needs to buck its ideas up on the apps front. There are thousands of Windows Mobile compatible apps out there, they just aren’t all in the Marketplace yet. Microsoft needs to make getting them there a priority.
Meanwhile, if you want the Marketplace on your Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.0 device visit http://mp.windowsphone.com from your device or go to http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace from your PC.
Tuesday 17 November 2009, 2:42 PM
Watchdog reveals illegal sale of phone users' data
The Information Commissioner's Office is preparing a prosecution file against a mobile operator's employees who allegedly sold on thousands of customers' details to a competitor.
The Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said in a statement on Tuesday that his office was highlighting the case in order to argue for custodial sentences for those who sell on personal data without permission.
According to the statement, ICO investigators have been working with the unspecified mobile operator, who suggested that "employees allegedly sold details relating to customers' mobile phone contracts, including their contract expiry dates".
This information was allegedly sold to the company's competitors, whose agents then used the details to cold-call those customers whose contracts were about to expire, offering them alternative contracts.
"The ICO has investigated and it appears that the information has been sold on to several brokers and that substantial amounts of money have changed hands," the statement read. "The ICO has obtained several search warrants and attended a number of premises, and is now preparing a prosecution file."
Graham said he wanted to "close down the entire unlawful industry in personal data", but would only be able to do so if the perpetrators faced prison sentences rather than fines.
"The existing paltry fines for Section 55 offences are simply not enough to deter people from engaging in this lucrative criminal activity," Graham said. "The threat of jail, not fines, will prove a stronger deterrent."
Graham added that a custodial sentence would also give a perpetrator a criminal record and "open up the possibility of extradition in appropriate cases".
The government is currently consulting on a new £500,000 maximum fine for organisations that breach the Data Protection Act — the current maximum fine is just £5,000 — while upcoming European telecoms laws make it mandatory for organisations to report data breaches to the relevant regulators.
UPDATE: It's T-Mobile who got hold of the ICO. A statement reads:
T-Mobile takes the protection of customer information seriously. When it became apparent that contract renewal information was being passed on to third parties without our knowledge, we alerted the Information Commissioner's Office.
Working together, we identified the source of the breach which led to the ICO conducting an extensive investigation which we believe we will lead to a prosecution. While it is deeply regrettable that customer information has been misappropriated in this way, we have proactively supported the ICO to help stamp out what is a problem for the whole industry.
We had been asked before today to keep all information on this case strictly confidential so as to avoid prejudice to the investigation and prosecution. We were therefore surprised at the way in which these statements were made to the BBC today.
ZDNet UK tried to get a comment out of the ICO as to why it publicised the case, but they refused.
Monday 16 November 2009, 5:59 PM
This Crap Site
How utterly stupid - I am ranked #40 in the top 100 - as a member of this site.....
I mean HOW utterly stupid.... I have done sweet FA, I have only rejoined this site after a 3 or 4 year absence.....
And I have only posted about 3 comments so far - and if that is what it takes to become so highly ranked; it really is pathetic.
Monday 16 November 2009, 3:45 PM
Microsoft Security Update: November Patch Tuesday
Apologies for this late update to our core Patch Tuesday update. Here is a summary of the update ....
The November Patch Tuesday update from Microsoft follows the largest patch and security update in Microsoft’s history. This month there are six updates to Office, Active Directory and Microsoft’s Office application suite.
These six updates have a low impact, bar one patch to Excel which may cause compatibility issues for some applications. The main cause for concern here is that Excel is a primary if not essential element to many environments. For example most banking, trading floor and insurance platforms. Therefore any change must be tested rigorously.
Whilst there are few applications in our sample that are affected, the ChangeBASE AOK team recommends that the Excel update (MS09-067) requires particular attention in any environments where there is a significant dependency on this,
We have included a brief snap-shot of some of the results from our AOK Software that demonstrates some of the potential impacts on Microsoft Office deployments with the following picture.
Testing Summary
MS09-063 : : Marginal impact and negligible testing profile
MS09-064 : : Marginal impact and negligible testing profile
MS09-065 : : Marginal impact and negligible testing profile
MS09-066 : : Marginal impact and negligible testing profile
MS09-067 : : Moderate impact and negligible testing profile
MS09-068 : : Marginal impact and negligible testing profile
The full posting of these results can be found on;
http://www.changebase.com/News/NewsPage.aspx?page=20091110-01_PatchTuesday.xml&style=~/Style/PatchTuesday.xsl
Thursday 12 November 2009, 8:51 AM
Mobile apps to get pushy, have presence on BlackBerry
Most of the time, computers sit there waiting for you to ask them to do something. Phones tell you when they have something you care about. Most smartphones are more like a computer when it comes to anything apart from phone calls and text messages. You don’t necessarily want an alert for every email and RSS article and tweet you get, but in general smartphone apps don’t take much advantage of the fact that not only is your smartphone connected, it’s always connected.
Nearly all smartphones have push email now; so far only iPhone and BlackBerry support push for apps in the same way. One of the announcements at RIM’s BlackBerry developer conference this week was that push would be free for developers to use, which should lead to a plethora (in the literal sense) of applications pushing information and alerts at you as developers and users find out what works.
The advertising and payment interfaces mean we’ll see free apps paid for by advertising or by selling you subscriptions to extra levels and features as well as apps you can buy by putting the cost on your mobile phone bill. In both cases what RIM offers developers that other smartphones don’t is not just the programming interface for showing adverts and accepting payments; RIM has gone out and done the hard work of negotiating with carriers and ad networks and signing all the paperwork. The payment terms haven’t been announced, so it’s not clear what RIM’s cut will be but every developer we spoke to talked about the payment and ad APIs as the best thing since sliced bread because it gives them a revenue stream and a global scope they could never achieve on their own, and they like the fact that the ad system comes with analytics (provided by Omniture, the recent acquisition by RIM’s new best friends at Adobe).
That might be easier for RIM than for any other manufacturer, because the carriers like RIM. Not only do BlackBerry subscriptions bring the carriers a steady extra revenue stream, but RIM understands that mobile bandwidth isn’t unlimited; 3G on the BlackBerry doesn’t just use less power in terms of the battery, it’s very economical on bandwidth because the server pushes information rather than the device polling until it gets an answer, because of the compression it uses and the way the connection is set up and torn down, which RIM can do because it controls both ends of the connection (from the BIS or BES). There aren’t many handset companies who remind developers in a keynote speech that the carrier network is a scarce resource and it’s really important that applications be architected to protect those networks from excessive traffic (which senior VP Alan Brenner said on Monday).
That close relationship will get RIM more advantages in future. Chatting with vice president Tyler Lessard, who describes his job as managing RIM’s global developer relations and partner program, we asked about what RIM had learned over the years. Although he talked about passing on RIM’s experience writing apps and creating user interfaces, he also emphasised what the carriers have to offer; have the same conversation with other smartphone OS vendors and the phrase ‘big dumb pipe’ would be hanging in the air. “There is an incredible amount of value carriers bring to the community,” Lessard said; “ not just the network infrastructure and the bandwidth but the billing infrastructure and the customer relationships. They have they’ve spent many years understanding who their customers are, what their interests are and they can leverage that for good of the developers.”
Networks, he pointed out, are starting to offer their own APIs. But you have to be a developer the size of RIM to be happy supporting dozens of different APIs to offer the same feature on every network; that’s why location didn’t take off on phones a decade ago - well, that and the fact that the carriers wanted to charge for every location enquiry… As with ads and charging for your app on the phone bill, RIM can abstract all those APIs into one of its own. “We're working with carriers to understand what are the consistent things we able to offer from a network level,” said Lessard. The next big thing? Presence. As carriers introduce services that let you tell if I have my phone on, or if I'm in a call, RIM can build an API that lets developers do presence as simply as they can now to location.
The other really big thing RIM is doing, which developers will spend tomorrow discussing (with various levels of heat) is allowing third party services to be shared between apps. At the moment, if Shazam or Nobex wants to use the 7Digital music store in their app, they negotiate a deal and do the integration. In the future, third-party services like 7Digital or Vlingo’s voice recognition or Big Tin Can’s customised notification could be something any app could use the same way they can now plug into the BlackBerry calendar application. Next year RIM will introduce a third-party marketplace where developers can just plug into each other’s services. Like everything else RIM announced this week, it’s a really different direction from what the other smartphone systems are offering. James Shannon, the CTO of DevelopIQ (the company behind 7Digital) told us that they chose to build their store on BlackBerry only “because BlackBerry offered us the most compelling APIs and the best platform to take music to the next level”. It’s going to be interesting to see if the new options make other developers agree with him.
-Mary
Wednesday 11 November 2009, 8:50 AM
Mobile business social network tools coming on BlackBerry
The APIs that RIM is opening up for the BlackBerry platform leapfrog what’s available on other mobile platforms, with free push updates, unified advertising and payment options and not just the standard ‘where you are’ geolocation but the innovative ‘when will you get where you’re going’ option. The other thing RIM is doing to attract developers is offering deep integration with the standard BlackBerry apps like the inbox, the calendar and BlackBerry Maps and two of the first apps to take advantage of that will both offer social network tools appealing to BlackBerry’s core business users – Xobni and LinkedIn.
I had a chance to take a closer look at the apps after they were demoed in the keynote at the BlackBerry Developer Conference this week. Both have been in development for some time, both have been much requested by users – and the new integration options and new development tools are key for getting them to market.
The LinkedIn BlackBerry app will be available at the end of the year. Like the existing iPhone LinkedIn app it lets you browse your contacts or search for profiles of people you could connect to by keyword, which is apparently a third of all activity on the LinkedIn site; but it’s the first mobile app with the ‘People you may know’ feature from LinkedIn site which suggests possible connections for you to make with an eerie degree of accuracy.
It also puts invitations to connect with other users into the BlackBerry Message inbox alongside email and text messages, with the number of unread LinkedIn messages showing on the BlackBerry home screen alongside the number of unread emails.
That’s convenient but it’s not that different from getting invitations sent to you as normal email apart from the fact that accepting them opens the LinkedIn app rather than the usual LinkedIn Web site, which is both quicker and more efficient to work with.
Much more useful is the integration with the Calendar and Contacts apps. When you have a meeting invitation, you’ll be able to look up the other attendees on LinkedIn by clicking on their email addresses and opening their profiles. LinkedIn vice president Adam Nash told me it’s common for people to check each other out on LinkedIn before a business meeting and this makes it even more convenient. In the future he’s hoping to bring the ‘In common’ results from LinkedIn search, showing the connections and groups you share with people, to the BlackBerry app; “it’s all about how do you start that conversation?” he said. The more you know about someone before you meet them and who you know in common, the easier it is to deal with them and putting those tools right into your calendar and address book makes it easier to remember to use them; that’s a really good match to the typical business BlackBerry user.
Xobni is also about staying in touch with people. Like the existing Xobni Outlook plugin in, the BlackBerry app (due as an alpha in December and shipping early next year, initially for the Bold, Curve and Tour handsets) will search through your email to find the people you’re in contact with. Unless you’re very diligent, most of them aren’t in your address book, so you have to look for a recent message from someone before you can mail them again (or remember where you put the business card). And just adding everyone you’re in touch with to your address book leaves you with a lot of names to scroll through – the Simon I email the most isn’t the email address that comes up first when I type Simon into my BlackBerry (or my Windows Mobile phone).
Install the Xobni app and you can choose to pick contacts from Xobni rather than the BlackBerry contacts list by scrolling up with the BlackBerry trackball or trackpad. Xobni remembers everyone who has emailed you, or been cc’d on a message or even been mentioned in a message – and the store is very compressed, Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte told me, so thousands of contacts can be stored in very little space, not just the usual last 30 days of mail. You can search by name, domain name or keyword and the list you get is ordered not alphabetically but by ‘Xobni Rank’ – how recently or frequently you’ve exchanged messages with them.
Xobni extracts phone and fax numbers as well as names and email addresses, and connects to Facebook and LinkedIn for any extra contact information it can get, including a photo - and it integrates with the BlackBerry apps so you can also phone or text a Xobni contact.
Bonforte claims Xobni uses information like the email address, time stamp and headers, and maybe even your calendar, to detect which country ambiguous phone numbers should be allocated to. If the number doesn’t look quite right, you can see the original message that Xobni derived the number from to check.
If you’re emailing about arranging a meeting, Xobni can attach a list of the next few times when you’re free; another excellent use of BlackBerry integration. Bonforte is also planning calendar integration similar to LinkedIn, to give you information about who you’re meeting with, but based on email exchanges you’ve had with people connected to them.
As with LinkedIn, Xobni is an excellent match to the BlackBerry demographic; in fact the reason the company is working on a BlackBerry app is that it found half of its users have BlackBerrys, and the expectation is that they’ll be ready to pay for these features.
The LinkedIn app will make it easier to use the connections you already know you have and to make more. Xobni will take over the work of managing the contact information for the people you’re already communicating with. It’s been a useful tool on the PC, but you can do what it does by hand; on a BlackBerry, with only 30 days of email, when you've already decided that it’s urgent enough to need to contact someone, having their details magically appear out of your old email could be phenomenally useful. If they work as promised, these will be exactly the kind of app RIM is hoping for to make the BlackBerry stand out against all the other smartphones promising to bring your social network together.
Mary Branscombe
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