Monthly Archives: April 2012
Consumer claims brewery stole his MISDN for marketing
Rating: We’re still waiting for Greene King to comment
An Epsom (UK) man, who refuses to be named, has claimed that the Greene King brewery has stolen his mobile telephone number (MISDN). He has started to receive marketing text messages from his local public house but insists he has never given out the telephone number. The reason he’s so positive is that the Vodafone PAYG number in question is only used for communication with his mistress. So how did the number fall into the brewer’s hands, then? The only explanation he can think of is that he leant the handset to his girlfriend to put records onto the pub jukebox. GoMobile News has been in constant communication with the brewery but they’ve yet to confirm or deny the allegation. Continue reading
madvertise acquires leading Turkish mobile ad player Mobilike
Berlin-based mobile audience targeting platform expands European presence
Press release
April 17th 2012. madvertise, a leading European mobile audience targeting platform, has today announced plans to further expand the company’s European presence with the acquisition of Turkish mobile advertising market leader Mobilike. After securing their Series B in October of last year to assist in driving European growth, this acquisition signifies madvertise’s aggressive plans to take a leading position on the European mobile advertising market. Continue reading
Location data is hidden in EXIF files
Rating: Some applications want to ensure it is present not missing
Following up on your recent story ‘Danger of cameraphone photos’ location data exposed‘, ironically, I have been worrying about the exact opposite problem, writes Geoff Dennis, a mobile software specialist. I want to tell people how to ensure that location based information is present and exposed in their photos. The data held in picture files taken with cameraphones, for example is called EXIF data. It is normally only contained in photos saved in JPEG and TIFF formats. There has been a lot of chat on the Net about accidentally losing EXIF data, as it appears this can often happen when using photo editing software. Perhaps this is what happened to the alleged hacker – Higinio O. Ochoa III? Naturally there are ways to expose this EXIF data should you want to. Continue reading
McAfee says Android malware is getting more sophisticated
Rating: Targets mobile banking users in particular
McAfee is warning that Android malware which attempts to defraud smartphone owners by obtaining their mTANs (Mobile Transaction Numbers) is getting more sophisticated. The security specialist is claiming that it may be possible to obtain the necessary information to defeat the two-factor authentication security scheme which is commonly used by High Street banks. GoMobile News has already covered the banking ‘token generator ‘ scam which seems to have afflicted Spanish banks here. However, McAfee now says that it has now found Android malware that not only has the man-in-the-middle (MIM) functionality but can also be controlled remotely. This means it can grab the initial password from a mobile device without infecting the user’s PC. To avoid being caught out, McAfee has published a number of handy tips of Android owners. Continue reading
Worst UK call centre waits plug mobile apps
Rating: Cunning moves of our time by WeQ4U
What a spiffing wheeze [good idea]! In order to draw attention to its iPhone and iOS apps, WeQ4U has created a Top 10 ‘Worst call centres waits’. That’s a list of the longest times you have to wait before a call centre agent answers. And what’s this? In at Number Five is UK mobile network operator – T-Mobile Direct. How’s this for irony? Guess who comes in at Number Ten? Yup. None other than Apple UK – supplier of none other than the iPhone itself. What a joke! Anyway, you can find the full list here. Continue reading
Tweakker’s mobile connectivity cloud now over Kosovo
Kosova’s ZMobile becomes first Balkan MVNO to subscribe to Tweakker’s Over-the-Air mobile connectivity service
Press release
April 17th 2012. Mobile connectivity firm Tweakker has announced that Zmobile of Kosovo has become the first MVNO in the Balkans to embrace its cloud connectivity services. In just two years operations, Zmobile has captured an over 14 per cent mobile phone market share thanks to its highly aggressive pricing policies for voice and data services. The firm now has a customer base of 150,000 subscribers and with the burgeoning demand for data services such as SMS, MMS, GPRS and EDGE, expects to reach 200,000 subscribers by year end. Continue reading
Danger of cameraphone photos’ location data exposed
Rating: Alleged hacker caught via iPhone photograph
We’ve long known that most people are unaware that when they take photos, embedded into the digital file is a whole wealth of location information. If you’ve got GPS (satellite) switched on then that information can be incredibly precise. As one alleged US hacker recently found out to his [...]
Everything Everywhere Nokia W7 Mango users finally updated
Rating: Third update for Nokia Lumia 800 is damp squib
As we recently reported, Nokia has just released its third OS update for the Lumia 800 (W7 Mango) phone. Out of all of the UK mobile networks, those on T-Mobile and Orange (which together make up Everything Everywhere) were the last to be able to receive this update. As GoMobile News is connected to the Orange network with its Lumia 800, we can now finally update you on the process. Initially, we’d believed that there’d be no formal notification of this update’s availability. We were wrong. You do actually get a message sent to the handset. Ours came on Friday 13th April [2012] – unlucky for some but not us as we’d been expecting to receive it a couple of days from now. Sadly, the whole update has proved to be something of a non-event because there are no visible massive changes. Continue reading
PayByPhone to demonstrate the UK’s first NFC parking solution
Rating: It may eventually be possible to use a Motorola Razr
PayByPhone will be demonstrating its NFC (Near Field Communication) powered parking payments solution at the forthcoming Parkex exhibition at London’s Olympia exhibition halls between April 17th-18th [2012}. This follows its first successful deployment for motorists in Tunbridge Wells [England] was the first time in the UK that NFC enabled smartphones could be used to pay for parking. Customers using the PayByPhone system can download and install Android, iOS (iPhone) and Blackberry apps. Of course, there’s no NFC enabled iPhone app yet. Continue reading
Cimbal has at least 1 fan for its 2D colour barcode tech
Rating: Old chestnut of the Datamatrix code re-appears
Following our recent story ‘ScanLife enters tech spat with logo-centric QR codes’ here, an avid reader – Chris Boone contacted us concerning another alternative to colour QR codes. In this case, they are an alternative ‘Open’ 2D barcode technology – Datamatrix. Loyal readers may remember companies such as Abaxia championing the Datamatrix format in Europe against the rise of the QR code. It preferred to refer to such 2D barcodes as ‘mobiletags’. Continue reading
Synchronised fails to win Grand National for GoMo
Rating: Guess we bet on wrong app, too
Well, the horse GoMobile News picked for the UK’s Grand National horse race – Synchronised, failed to even finish the race – let alone come in the Top Four places. However, we had much worse luck with the app we’d chosen to place our bet via mobile – Bet2Go. We fell at the first hurdle – trying to actually put funds in so we could place a bet on Synchronised. It didn’t help that we wanted to use our W7 Mango Nokia Lumia 800 handset, either. Continue reading
GoMo News tries to place mobile bet on Grand National
Rating: What’s the betting it own’t work?
Every year, there is one horse race in the calendar here in Blighty (the UK) on which even Joe Public bothers to have a flutter. That race is the Grand National and it is today [14th April 2012]. Given that betting has always been one of the applications quoted as being entirely suitable for the mobile web (even back in the dark old days of WAP), GoMobile News has always decided to investigate how easy it is to do. This year there is a twist. We are determined to place the bet from our W7 Mango Nokia Lumia 800 handset. It’s about the one mobile OS that the British bookies (betting shops) don’t seem to support. Let’s see if it works. Continue reading
Nokia and Sony suffering from Ice Age meltdown says Cass
Rating: Both were innovators next-gerarius
This week [April 2012] two former giants in the consumer electronics business – Sony and Nokia, have made announcements which indicate that all is far from being OK. Lots of people ask themselves the question – why have the might fallen? But Ajay Bhalla, a professor of global innovation management at the Cass business school has bravely tried to provide us with some sort of answers. After all, who would have thought a mere two years back that both Nokia and Sony would lose their respective mantles in the consumer electronics space? The curious thing is that neither company stopped trying to innovate. But somehow both have obviously manged to lose their focus. Continue reading
GoMobile News struggles with BARKCODE pet finding solution
Rating: We really don’t get on with ScanLife’s EZcode
You probably wouldn’t have noticed it but here at GoMobile Towers we’re extremely pet friendly. Indeed Rox the cat visits us so often we’re thinking of renaming to Hotel Chat [That's French for cat –Geddit?] Anyway, we were delighted when BARKCODE’s Laura Erickson sent us three BARKCODE ID tags for our cats – Pickles, Poppy and Rox. Unfortunately we struggled to make the technology work. That’s because BARKCODE utilises ScanLife’s EZcode technology (see our original story here. Laura herself has ardently defended the use of EZcode to GoMo News previously here. However, GoMobile News only managed to successfully scan the EZcode on one handset. Three others refused to recognise it. Continue reading
Adfonic launches integrated mobile video advertising
Advertisers can now run TV-style video campaigns across Adfonic’s global network of mobile sites and apps
New offering includes industry-first end-to-end measurement of mobile video user engagement
Press release
April 12th 2012. Global mobile advertising marketplace Adfonic, has announced the availability of its new integrated mobile video advertising product, which enables advertisers and agencies worldwide to replicate the power of a television or online video ad on a mobile device screen. Advertisers can plan and buy mobile video campaigns across Adfonic’s global iOS and Android inventory providing access to circa 200 million unique users each month via a network of approximately 10,000 publishers. Continue reading
