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Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Looks like we'll never get to see that sweet Tegra chipset in a smartphone anytime soon, with the Zune HD coming the closest to such a device.

That's okay, as NVIDIA is poised to launch its next version of the powerhouse chipset in January at CES (and we'll be there to cover it, of course).  At CES, they will demonstrate the chipset on current and upcoming smartbooks, MIDs, netbooks and the like, then in the second half of the year a big push into the smartphone world.

We obviously don't really need to point out what is launching in late 2010, do we?

The Tegra 2 chip, at least according to Slashgear, is "...expected to have roughly twice the power and graphical capabilities of the original and be based on 40nm processes."  Considering how awesome the Zune HD is, that sounds pretty sweet to us if accurate.

Now just close your eyes and imagine it is one year from now ... aaahhh ... technology bliss and why am I fatter?

[via Slashgear]

Apparently, AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega’s recent remarks concerning the carrier’s plans to “incentivize” mobile data hogs to cut back on their usage rates aren’t sitting well with AT&T customers. Shocker.

Fake Steve Jobs, for one, has had enough of AT&T’s excuses. After penning a colorful post on why AT&T is taking the wrong stance, the Fake Steve Jobs, a.k.a. Dan Lyons, has taken to his widely read blog — written in the assumed voice of Apple’s head honcho — to publicly call for a customer backlash via a digital flash mob.

The mission (written as though dreamed up by Apple engineers) is dubbed Operation Chokehold, and it’s designed to encourage iPhone owners to use the most data-intensive apps for a full hour starting at 12 p.m. PST on Friday, December, 18, 2009. The ultimate goal being to bring down the network and “send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments.”

The false Jobs writes:

“The engineers have asked me to serve as a kind of communications director for their efforts — soliciting ideas on what apps to use (Pandora may not be the best) and how to refine the attack on the network.

If anyone has ideas, use the comment strings. Tell your friends. Get people involved. We have five days to create a movement and plan a major assault. As the Portuguese said during the Obama campaign: Si, se puede.”

We’re not too sure how many people will take this revolt seriously or follow the impostor’s lead. We do know, however, that the blog has an active following and that there are probably enough livid AT&T customers to take part and make a dent in AT&T’s service. Of course, we should not forget that bringing down a network the size of AT&T could have disastrous implications. Still, we’re curious to know what you think of the crusade and whether or not you’re going to participate.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, albertc111.

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Reviews: Pandora, iPhone, iStockphoto

Tags: att, dan lyons, fake steve jobs, iphone

Incensed at Facebook’s recent privacy changes? Had it up to here with your social networking virtual life? Kill it off with honor using the “anti-social network” Seppukoo.

The site is a rather brilliant subversion of Facebook, offering users the ritual destruction of their virtual identities complete with a customizable memorial page. There’s even a leaderboard showing off the top users, whose scores are determined by how many others in their network decide to Seppukoo.

Named after the seppuku ritual suicide practiced by ancient Japanese samurai warriors, the site draws a parallel between restoring a samurai’s honor and the “liberation of the digital body.” It stands as a playful protest of the modern-day social networking experience as controlled by huge corporations making significant profits from users’ social graphs. Seppukoo turns the concept on its head by turning the individual suicide ritual into “an exciting ’social’ experience.”

The site is operated by a group calling themselves Les Liens Invisibles, an “imaginary art group from Italy.” Media artists Clemente Pestelli and Gionatan Quintini’s other projects include Flickr parody Subvertr and Google Maps parody Google is not the map.

Seppukoo is an intense jab at corporate interest in social media, but perhaps all the more powerful for it. What do you think of the site: playful and fun, or going too far? Would you consider virtually ending it all with a Seppukoo memorial?

[via Yahoo]

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Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps, Yahoo!

Tags: facebook, humor, parody, seppukoo, social networking

Thanks to all of the support from our loyal customers, partners, and the mobile community.  Your voices have been heard loud and clear.   This marks the 5^th year in a row that MobileFrame has demonstrated Gold Star status at the MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards.

We are very proud to say that we’ve been recognized as the SuperStar in of the following categories.

• Developer and Enterprise Software – Application Development*
• Enterprise Software – Asset Management
• Enterprise Software – Data Collection
• Enterprise Software – Field Sales & CRM
• Enterprise Software – Field Service
• Success Story – Field Service (Miller Pipeline)
• Success Story – Delivery Service (Hunt Brothers)

Our 100% Award Winning Code free mobile computing environment eliminates the need for custom programming and allows for organizations to focus on automating multiple different electronic business processes.  To learn more about our award winning mobile computing environment, please click here

*recognized as shining star

Considering Microsoft just launched Windows Mobile 6.5 last month, hitting 30 new or upgraded phones, they are increasingly under fire from many in the industry, especially following those market share figures.

The latest is 'Wired' who writes that Microsoft had a lot of advantages but, quoting others in the business, they concentrated too much on enterprise (not consumers) and really let their platform lag, especially considering they started Windows CE in 1996.

Even Kinoma's CEO Peter Hoddie had some thoughts when he said

The sad part for Microsoft is that in terms of operating systems, they have a great one, and they had it long before anyone else did... Their first problem is the built-in apps are uninspiring, so that sets a very low bar for developers who are coming to the platform.

In essence, it was the iPhone that really changed the game, bringing consumer-level appeal to an industry focused on enterprise function.  Indeed, many of us purchased one of the first 3G Windows Mobile 5 devices (HTC PPC-6700 Apache) because we saw that the mobile internet and computing was the future.  However, it wasn't always a joyous ride with sparse updates, terrible transition from WM2003 to WM5 and buggy software.  There has always been that disconnect between what we wanted and what was offered: enter XDA Developers.

Actually, nothing in the 'Wired' article is really new or profound--in fact it is pretty obvious: Microsoft has been in this for the beginning, had hardware partners and a great head start, but failed to offer something  tangible for the mobile-ready consumer.  Sure we all know a Touch Pro 2 can smoke an iPhone in terms of functionality, power and even hardware, let alone a HD2, but at the end of the day, it is about branding, marketing, consumer appeal and making it desirable.  And Android so far doesn't do anything that Windows Mobile can't.

At least the news coming out from Mobius is positive and we're getting anxious for Windows Mobile 7--lets hope they deliver.  Read the full article here.

A couple of days ago we wrote about the Black Screen of Death, a problem that caused Windows-based machines to freeze and lock out users, leaving them teary-eyed and black-screened.

The issue, however, doesn’t seem to be a common one, nor is it tied to Microsoft’s security updates, as we’d previously thought. In fact, UK security company Prevx, who pointed out the issue (and actually offered a software fix), admitted that the problem is likely caused by malware and not by Microsoft’s error.

Prevx’s CEO Mel Morris wrote a blog post, apologizing to Microsoft for the inconvenience. From the post:

“The issue appears to be related to a characteristic of the Windows Registry related to the storage of string data. In parsing the Shell value in the registry, Windows requires a null terminated ‘REG_SZ’ string. However, if malware or indeed any other program modifies the shell entry to not include null terminating characters, the shell will no longer load properly, resulting in the infamous Black Screen with the PC showing only the My Computer folder.”

The folks at Microsoft, understandably, aren’t happy. Chief Security Advisor of Microsoft EMEA Roger Halbheer fired at Prevx on his blog, saying:

“Looking at that, you should now make your risk assessment and decide which source you want to trust. For me, the ultimate source for information you should build your assessment on is neither Twitter nor your brother’s sister in law’s father’s brother (unless he works for Microsoft’s security) but our website.”

While this particular case was a false alarm, Halbheer forgets to point out that if we had listened exclusively to what Microsoft says when it comes to security issues in the past, we would have missed quite a lot of them. As always, don’t believe everything you read, see or hear, but also don’t immediately write off any news that doesn’t come from an official source.

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Reviews: Twitter

Tags: BSOD, microsoft

Google Maps for Mobile turned the big 3.3 today (for Windows Mobile, anyway). The big change this time around: Synchronizing starred locations with Google Maps on the desktop.

As often is the case we're left scrambling for release notes. But we do have an entire blog post from the Google Mobile team to go by.

Google Maps for mobile has long allowed you to add stars on a map to mark your favorite places. You may have noticed a few months ago that Google Maps for desktop browsers introduced the ability to star places as well. Unfortunately, there was no way to keep these starred places in sync with Google Maps on your phone. With today's release of Google Maps for mobile 3.3 on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, you'll now be able to keep the starred places on your phone and on your computer completely synchronized.

For users upgrading from an older version of Google Maps for mobile, you'll be asked, when you log in, whether you'd like to synchronize your existing starred items with your Google Account. This means you can preserve all the work you've put into customizing your map on your mobile, and have it show up, conveniently, in Google Maps in your desktop browser.

Get the CAB file here for the latest version of Google Maps for Windows Mobile.

Opera Mobile 10 (see our video hands-on and full review) has hit the beta 2 stage of its life. Here's what's improved, via the Opera Moble Blog:

• Opera Link.
• Download manager.
• Improved UI for finger touch.
• You can now manage search engines.
• Remembers page position and zoom state.
• Column snapping on touch.
• Better memory management.
• Fix for mobile view crash.
• Start page available from touch menu.
• Clear cache setting.
• Asks whether to set as default browser.
• Fix for startup crash (on some devices due to encoding in imported bookmarks).
• Shortcut support.
• Other minor bug fixes.

That enough for a beta 2 release? We're definitely happy to see better memory management -- that was our chief complaint of the early beta. And for what its worth, we're now getting 99 out of 100 on the Acid3 test, down a point from the first release. But as this is still a beta release, there are bugs. Peep a list of them after the break. Now, what about you guys? This latest release of Opera Mobile 10 working for you? Grab it here.

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Known bugs in the Opera Mobile 10 beta 2 release

• Non-Touch devices are not supported (Smartphone profile)
• No plug-in support (e.g. Flash)
• Some input method editors “IME” (hard and soft phone keyboards) are known not to work well with Opera because they do not comply with Microsoft's SIP and/or IME standard. When such an editor is detected by Opera, Opera will use a known (default) input method instead. An exception is EzInput v1.5, where the phone keypad and compact QWERTY, ABC mode doesn't work, but the rest of the modes work fine. We recommend upgrading to EzInput v2.0 to avoid this.
• Many IME's (Input Method Editor) will override the Opera shortcuts
• Certain HTC devices with TouchFLO will force Opera back to portrait mode if visiting home screen when Opera is in landscape.
• On older WM 5.0 Devices with 480x800 resolution, switching between portrait and landscape may cause display errors. This is due to lack of support for this resolution in early versions of Microsoft's driver.
• You must click connect twice to use Opera Dragonfly