The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Archive for May, 2007
No one wants an iPhone, apparently
May 4th
Link: Markitecture - The Apple iPhone
Just seen some interesting survey results courtesy of marketing consultants Markitecture. In a survey in the US of 1,300 consumers, only 6% of those said they’d purchase an iPhone in the next year. In fact, two-thirds went even further and said there was zero chance they’d purchase the product.
Despite 77% of respondents being familiar with the product, and 41% having a good impression of the product based on what they’d seen or heard, quite a large proportion of those surveyed were just not interested. Why? strangely enough cost was the biggest reason, with carrier issues and/or contracts coming in a close second.
So, assuming it was only available in the UK on one particular network, lets say Vodafone, and even with subsidy it was a good £400-£500 to purchase on an 18 month contract, would you still give your left (or right) arm, all your worldly possessions, and possibly remortgage the cat to own what’s been touted as the biggest thing to hit mobile in years?
Skype cut SMS charges in half
May 3rd
Link: Skype
I use Skype. I know lots of people who use Skype. I quite like it personally, but I’ve never really used it for SMS. So I was actually quite interested when this offer popped into my inbox.
Here’s the deal. Until May 8th, you can get 50% of texts sent to Austria, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand and the USA. So if you’re in the UK, instead of paying 6.2p to text your mates in Ireland, it’s now 3.1p. Belgium has gone from 6.5p down to 3.25p, and so on and so forth.
It’s a great idea, but where’s the UK in that list of countries? The current rate is 5.6p, which ain’t bad – but 2.8p would be even better. Yes ok I know that’s 0.2p below the ‘official’ interworking charges that the UK operators levy on each other for termination of text, but I know for a fact that if you have a large enough amount of traffic there’s some very good deals that can be done direct with the networks – therefore avoiding any interworking/termination costs.
Russell Shaw over at ZDNet has written a brief blog entry about his thoughts on why Skype are making this offer. Only time will tell what their master plan is..
Pensioner wins 2nd prize in text love poem comp
May 3rd
Granny in love wins prize for phone text poetry | Reuters
Eileen Bridge, 68, a grandmother, from Accrington, Lancashire, won 350 pounds ($697) in the “txt laureate” competition, after she took second place with an ode to her husband of six months.
The entry read: “O hart tht sorz, My luv adorz, He mAks me liv, He mAks me giv, Myslf 2 him, As my luv porz.”
Bless. So do you want to know what wonderful prose won the first prize? It’s this, courtesy of 23 year old London-based law student Ben Ziman-Bright.
Not even the wet rustle of rain can dampen today. Your text buoys me above oil-rainbow puddles like a paper boat, so that even soaked to the skin, I am grinning.
I prefer Eileen’s to be honest. Pure class 
Virgin Mobile customers are the most satisfied
May 3rd
Link: Virgin Mobile Tops UK Customer Care Report
Virgin ranks highest in customer satisfaction for its mobile telephone service in both the pre-pay and contract service sectors, according to a J.D. Power report. The study, now in its 10th year, measures the customer satisfaction of pre-pay and contract customers with the UK’s leading mobile network providers
Congratulations to the guys and gals at Virgin Mobile, but how did the other UK operators do? Well, O2 came in a close second in the prepay market, with Tesco Mobile just behind them in third place. Meanwhile in the world of contract phones, Virgin were 1st, O2 second and T-Mobile third.
There’s also some interesting stats on mobile phone usage patterns in the report, so worth a read.
Three, Google and cheap data in Ireland
May 2nd
Link: Unlimited Google searches for free on your 3 mobile
Three customers in Ireland can now get unlimited Google search access after the network brokered a deal with the popular search engine. The offering is available for both pay as you go and contract customers, and adds to the existing search offerings from Yahoo! and messenging with Windows Live Messenger.
Also interested to note that Three are also offering a rather good deal on data rates. Although it’s not as great value as T-Mobile UK’s entry level Web’N'Walk ‘unlimited’ (subject to their 1Gb ‘fair use’ policy) offering at £7.50 (equivalent to about €11), it’s still quite cheap at €5.99 per month for 100Mb of data.
Blackberry squashed in Europe too?
May 2nd
Link: RIM’s outage spreads to Europe and mid-East
Poor old RIM, when it rains it pours. After a ‘non critical’ upgrade a couple of weeks back that left millions of Crackberry users in North America without email service for a few days, the same thing seems to have happened in Europe and the Middle East, according to IT tech news site The Inquirer.
An INQ reader working in a small City bank claims his five users have been without service since Friday 27th April. Complaining to his local service provider, O2, he was told that RIM had performed a ‘cosmetic’ upgrade to its system over the weekend. The outage appears to be affecting only those who connect directly to their own Microsoft Exchange server and not those who employ RIM’s own BES server solution.
The INQ has seen an email from RIM confirming that the ‘high severity outage’ has indeed taken place. Although the email says the problem is confined to Europe, the reader’s sister company in Dubai has also been affected.
Oopsy. Another good reason (no pun intended!) to dump your Crackberry and use Good Mobile Messaging instead?
Keeping tabs on Windows Mobile users
May 2nd
Link: Mobile Spy ups mobile snooping powers | The Register
Retina-X Studios have released an interesting application for Windows Mobile devices, allowing you to eavesdrop on texts and calls made by the handset user.
Mobile Spy, a new application from Retina-X Studios, monitors calls and text messages and reports them back to a central server. When installed on a Windows Mobile device, Mobile Spy allows parents to keep watch on their child’s phone, or enables employers to enforce an acceptable use policy on their staff – though the legality of doing so will depend where in the world you are.
Not quite sure I’d like an employer snooping on my texts and calls – then again with so many companies now actively monitoring Internet usage it’s only a matter of time before Big Brother starts sniffing through your mobile usage.
I haven’t got a Windows Mobile handy to test it on, so if anyone fancies giving it a go let me know! Their site is here.
Channel 4 could axe Big Brother SMS voting
May 1st
According to Digital Spy, UK broadcaster Channel 4 is reviewing the SMS voting process in popular reality show Big Brother, following a number of recent scandals and problems involving TV shows and premium SMS.The eighth series of the show begins later this month, and although no announcement has been made as yet, rumours are also abound that premium rate phone line voting may also be axed in an attempt to win back viewer trust after recent problems with other shows on the channel, such as Richard & Judy.
Orange offer overdraft facility
May 1st
Link: Orange becomes more like bank: launches overdraft facility | The Register
Just when you thought the world of mobile billing and tariffs couldn’t get any weirder, Orange have come up with a new cunning plan to make mo.. I mean help their customers.
Mobile phone customers signing up to Orange’s new Speakeasy pre-pay tariff can get themselves £2.50 worth of overdraft facility to keep them connected when their credit runs out, though they’ll have to pay £1 to sign up for it.
The overdraft facility, branded “Reserve Tank”, is part of the new tariff which also includes three “Magic Numbers” that are only charged at 15p an hour, and a flat 15p a minute rate for calling anyone else.
How long it’ll be before they start charging £30 for a letter and £20 for disallowing a call is anyones guess
Orange launches mobile ‘Play-Off’ competition
May 1st
Link: News | Orange launches mobile ‘Play-Off’ competition – NMA
Just caught this on New Media Age:
Visitors to Orange World are invited to upload their own 10-15 second videos via MMS or the Orange website. They are then entered into one-on-one competition with a rival in several categories including face-off, dance-off and weird-off. The entrant with the highest number of votes progresses to the next round with several competitions running concurrently.
Interesting concept. If you’re an Orange 3G customer, you can give it a whirl at http://orange.play-off.com/
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