The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Mobile Services
Do journos at the Daily Mail read SMS Text News?
Jun 17th
Link: Text messaging could soon be the new way to call 999 | the Daily Mail
Here’s an interesting one. About five days ago, I blogged about the UK Government considering an emergency 999 SMS service.
Yesterday afternoon, I found this article on the Daily Mail website. I wasn’t reading the site by chance, honest – nor did I see it in the paper version. However, it’s interesting that we featured it last week, and on a slow news day the Mail pick up on it.
It’s worth reading the article just to see their take on it. Hilarious in parts..
Plus SMS desperate for more investment
Jun 15th
Link: Struggling Plus SMS looks for capital – Business – The Timaru Herald
The Plus SMS saga rumbles on…
Struggling text messaging company Plus SMS is looking for more capital and faces what its auditor says is fundamental uncertainty over whether it is a going concern after reporting an $11.89 million loss for the full year.
The company said in a brief statement to NZX yesterday that the deficit for the year to March was “disappointing but expected”.
It compared with a loss of $4.49 million in 2006. The company’s shares fell 1 cent to 12c yesterday.
We’ve featured a few stories on the woes of Plus SMS in the past. They’ve come so close to going down the pan before, but seem to keep going. Maybe these reports are the final nail in the coffin?
Making Skype calls from a Blackberry
Jun 14th
SMS Text News reader Jeremy dropped me a note earlier, with a link to this blog entry. Using a piece of software called Skype IM+, it’s now possible to make Skype calls from a Blackberry. But there’s a twist. It’s not VOIP, it’s a callback service.
The app itself seemed like other IM programs I’ve tried for the Blackberry. Very easy to create chats. See the chats in progress. Get a notification vibration/beep when new chats arrive. You first naturally give it your Skype username and password and it (slowly) loads in your contact list and shows the presence of all of your contacts. After that, it’s rather like a Skype client. You can scroll through your contact list, open up chats, initiate calls, etc.
The calls are interesting. I was initially expecting it to be a true VoIP client and initiate the call via Skype over the data connection from the Blackberry. I wondered how well this would work given the generally limited quality/speed of the data connection. It turns out that it doesn’t work that way. The data connection is used by the IM app to initiate the call, but the actual voice connection occurs over your phone’s regular mobile connection.
IMHO the best mobile app with Skype integration at the moment is Fring. Of course getting it working on a Crackberry is a totally different matter…
Get bank balances on your mobile with Geezeo
Jun 14th
Alas US-only at the moment, but worth a blog post all the same. Geezeo is an application that makes it easy for anyone check their balances and available credit from their mobile phone. Once you’ve registered for the free service, you just text ‘geezeo update’ to 41411 – and a few seconds later you’ll get a text with updated balances of the accounts you’ve registered.
The service works with almost 6000 financial institutions, and is part of a much larger financial manager product that’s soon to be released. The biggest concern with something like this is security – and having your sensitive financial information floating around the ether. Geezeo have written a useful explanation of how the service works, and how they make sure your personal information is not misused or exposed.
Here in the UK finance company Egg have something sort of similar – ableit web-only - called Egg Money Manager. This too allows you to aggregate your credit card, bank account, loan account, etc information in one place. Maybe Geezeo should talk to Egg and sort out something similar for the UK?
MusicStation launch unlimited mobile music service
Jun 14th
Link: MusicStation…the future of mobile music!
Omnifone have today launched a brand new all-you-can-eat mobile music service, called MusicStation. In an attempt to steal some of the thunder from iTunes and the forthcoming iPhone, MusicStation allows mobile phone users to gain unlimited access to full music tracks on industry-standard mobiles for a small weekly fee.
They’ve got a stackload of licensing deals too, including Universal Music Group, SONY BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music International and many major independent labels such as Beggars Group, Vital:PIAS Digital and leading global mobile distributor VidZone Digital Media. This’ll mean that you’re not just limited to a handful of artists, or only have access to unsigned bands. We’re talking major artists here, and songs you’ve definitely heard of.
Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone, said: “MusicStation’s launch today heralds the beginning of the next generation of mobile music. Hundreds of millions of mobile phone subscribers worldwide will soon gain the ultimate music freedom – the ability to download and play unlimited amounts of music, wherever they are, through a fantastic easy-to-use digital music experience, which works on almost any phone. Consumers will have the ability to legally access, download and enjoy an unlimited amount of music, from an international and localised music catalogue, supported by the whole music industry, all for a small weekly fee. MusicStation users can download music, wherever they are, at any time and with no charge for data.”
The first network to offer Omnifone services to their customers is Sweden’s Telenor, with handsets pre-installed with MusicStation hitting stores in the country today. As well as Sweden, Omnifone confirms it has now entered into partnerships with 30 mobile operators with networks in the following territories: Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.
mobiK offer free SMS to Australians
Jun 14th
Link: Computerworld – New mobile entrant serves up free SMS
“Your mobile phone should be free. You shouldn’t have to pay”. That’s the quote from Damian Thompson, CEO of mobiK, who’ve just launched their service providing free SMS in Australia.
Once you’ve registered, you can either send texts from your PC, or via a downloadable applet that resides on your mobile. And it’s free. So how do they make the cash?
mobiK is currently supported by ad ‘tags’ at the end of each message you send. Although the service seems to work in most of the world, it relies on the recipient of your message being in a region that has sponsors. For instance, it seems you can sign up and send free texts from the UK, but the messages will only get delivered if your recipient is in Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.
There’s also an incentive/affilate scheme – called ‘K’ – whereby you can accrue ‘K’ points by getting your friends to join. Not sure how many ‘K’ points it’d take, but you can apparently swap them in for a new mobile handset.
Since their launch in October last year they claim to have 400,000 users at the moment, mainly in Asia. I’ll be watching this one with interest.
German search engine launches mobile client
Jun 13th
Link: SourceWire | Press Releases – suchen.de launches Mobile Search
Leading German local search engine suchen.de have hooked up with IT2Media and mobile People to roll out a new mobile search service. The interesting thing about this one is there’s a downloadable client for your phone, so no need to fiddle around with a web browser.
Mobile users will be able to access specific content including yellow and white pages, the mobile internet, local news and weather information. With the downloadable client the user benefits from a robust and efficient method of search, a better user experience over browser based solutions and additional functionality. Search results can be shown on an interactive map, saved to the mobile phone’s address book, sent to a friend and users can easily initiate a call via click-to-call. Predictive text functionality makes it easy to enter search terms by simply selecting from a list which also includes previously used search terms.
Keep tabs on loans to mates with BillMonk
Jun 13th
Link: » Billmonk, track money owed between friends | The Social Web | ZDNet.com
Have you ever lent a friend or relative money, only for them to conveniently ‘forget’ – or even worse dispute – the money? If so, your troubles are over, courtesy of a new service called BillMonk.
Billmonk is a web service that helps users organise their ‘social money”, defined by the site as the informal currency between friends. So for example, you’re out for dinner with a group of friends and the final bill has to be split in some way. Who owes who what? And to complicate things further, different people are likely to ‘settle up’ at different times. Things aren’t always written down and the process can sometimes put a stress on friendships. Billmonk hopes to solve this problem by managing social money ‘in a manner that is easy and fair.”
You can use it from your mobile too, but alas it’s a little backward, relying on you being able to email via SMS. Apparently Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon support this in the US at the moment. What would be better is a shortcode or long number (like Twitter use) instead – then there’d be no faffing around with email via SMS.
Text a rickshaw comes to Bangalore, India
Jun 12th
Link: Techtree.com India > News > General > Hire Auto Rickshaw through SMS!
Come this Friday, Bangaloreans will have some respite from ‘hunting’ auto rickshaws, thanks to Easy Auto (EA), a scheme endorsed by the city police and RTOs.
With this pilot project in place, passengers can book autos by calling or SMSing to an IVRS number at 98441 12233. Besides, EAs can also be booked through www.easyauto.in.
According to the officials, most of the auto rickshaw users are wasting an average of 20 to 30 minutes on the road trying to get a willing auto to take you in. And refusal is a major challenge that is faced not only by passengers but by law enforcement agencies as well.
Check email on basic mobiles with Flurry and Teleflip
Jun 12th
Link: PC World – First Look: New Services Offer E-Mail for Everyday Cell Phones
Full-blown e-mail management is the raison d’etre for smart phones such as BlackBerry units, Windows Mobile devices, Palm Treos, and Symbian-based handsets. But what if you don’t have a high-end cell phone? A pair of free services, Flurry and Teleflip, let you monitor (but unfortunately not respond to) e-mail on a wide variety of mass-market handsets. Both are useful, but in different ways.
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