Author Archives: Sinead Quealy
Mobile apps are a male thing says mobileSQUARED
Rating: Females only do it occasionally
A mobileSQUARED report – Mobile Consumer Trends (MCT) – forecasts that in the UK males will make up more than 60 per cent of heavy or frequent app downloaders in 4Q 2011. By contrast UK females are only dominant in the occasional downloaders category. Amongst the occasional downloaders, females also form the majority of users – both frequent and infrequent. Continue reading
Could Coverity’s tech speed up Android releases?
Rating: Symbian has used it before
Don’t ask how but GoMo News ended up chatting with CERN’s Axel Naumann at a meal hosted by Coverity in a cheese restaurant in London’s Marylebone district. Naumann works for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – better known as CERN. Of course – as we all know – Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN when he accidentally the worldwide web. Anyway, Naumann was telling GoMo News about how he’d used Coverity’s Static Analysis tool to test 50 million lines of software code in Large Hadron Collider software and it helped CERN fix more than 40,000 defects. This got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be a neat trick to apply this tech to a mobile OS? Say bada, Aliyun or Android? Unfortunately Symbian beat me to it. The company had starting using Coverity’s tools back in 2008. Continue reading
DLNA might be the iOS-killer for Android smartphones
Rating: Probably won’t be as bad as Apple’s previous refusal to to the Wintel line
It seems that Android smartphone manufacturers may well have outmanoeuvred Apple with its iOS based offerings in an almost unexpected area – the digitally connected home. The key to this success will be the Digital Living Network Alliance’s (DLNA) open media [...]
Watch out for WP7 Mango arriving tomorrow (15th)
Rating: Lots of hints from reliable sources
All the signs are that the very latest release of Windows Phone (7.5) – better known as the Mango update – will arrive tomorrow. The initial source for this rumour is the Windows Phone Dev Podcast team. They’ve been chatting prior to their ‘BUILD conference’ which takes place … you guessed it, tomorrow September 15th [2011]. Now GoMo News has run plenty of Mango release stories before but when we quoted Microsoft’s manager for the Nordic territories, Peter Wissinger, here asking the handset manufacturers why they were hanging around, it was obvious the release was imminent. The final piece of the jigsaw comes to us via winrumors here which discovered a very interesting update on the Vodafone (Australia) support site here. It implies Vodafone is merely waiting for Microsoft to give the go-ahead. Continue reading
HP TouchPad refund scheme will upset its employees
Rating: Newly announced refund scheme doesn’t apply to them
Under the heading of ‘HP webOs devices – At HP we always think about you!’, HP has launched a refund programme for those who bought either a TouchPad tablet or a Pre3 smartphone at full price. The company intends to refund the difference between whatever price the customer paid and the fire-sale prices at which both products were sold off. The offer applies to the UK; Ireland; France and Germany. The offer does not, however, apply to HP employees. There are a couple of catches, however. For starters you can’t just rush out and buy such products now because the offer only applies to those who managed to register their webOS device online before August 23rd [2011]. So there’s no point in tearing out to buy a 32 GB TouchPad for £249 from PC World right now and trying to claim the refund. Incidentally, which lucky blighters managed to buy a Pre3 for £69 as the refund page implies? Continue reading
Google ads track promotion site to Music Beta
Rating: Get tracks for free via Magnifier
As skilled news hounds, GoMo News managed to join Google’s Music Beta service even though we don’t actually live in the USA. Well, we’ve just spotted a message from Tim Quirk, head of music programming with Google. He’s promoting a new facility called Magnifier. At first we thought it was a new music search engine but it’s actually a blog. What Magnifier does is highlight new music which you can download free of charge. Each and every day, the team of music experts on Magnifier will add a new track. If you add it you can listen to it on your Android handset by downloading the Music Beta app. Today’s track was Kalimba by Mr Scruff. Continue reading
Stream your own music to a BlackBerry via Wi-fi
Rating; Chonk’s MusicRoom Wifi Music Player
GoMo News found a flier from Chonk regarding its music app for the RIM BlackBerry. Considering there is a free version of this app, we decided to give it a go. No wonder the MusicRoom Wifi Music Player app has already achieved 100,000 downloads as it says on its BlackBerry Apps World page. It works well and is very simple to use. There’s only one slight catch and that’s the necessity for you to download the accompanying server software and load it up on your Windows PC. Continue reading
Its a rugby job but someone has to do it!
Rugby Nations 2011 features a whole new gameplay system designed to deliver an immersive gaming experience with more fully playable elements. The restructured defensive gameplay includes everything from standing tackles and mauls to competitive rucks. With playable lineouts, long passes, grubber kicks, penalties and much more, the way the game turns out is entirely up [...]
Conference to stress mobile’s role for broadband access in African rural areas
Rating: Mobile operators and equipment manufacturers to speak
The sixth annual ‘Connecting Rural Communities’ forum is taking place in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, on 24th – 26th August 2011. Amongst those speaking at the event are major players in the mobile world including Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola and Vodacom. The vent has been organised by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) in conjunction with the Tanzanian Ministry of Communications, Science and Technology and the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority. Prominent African ministers, heads of ICT agencies such as regulators and universal service funds, as well as leading ICT solution providers are attending. The whole event will stress the importance of broadband access in rural communities for building economies and attracting inward investment. Continue reading
ShopAlerts offer location-based push notifications within apps
Rating: Placecast says it works even when app not loaded
Retail software specialist, Placecast, has expanded its ShopAlerts platform to offer location-based push notifications within apps. The new ShopAlerts service will allow a retailer to send push notifications from its own app – similar to the alerts that Facebook or Foursquare send. This should encourage consumers to click back into existing downloaded apps search for discounts and deals. The company claims that ShopAlerts can be integrated with any smartphone app (surely not Nokia, too?) to offer shoppers location-based push notifications. It insists these allerts will be sent when a consumer is near a store – even when the actual app is not actually loaded. Continue reading
Microsoft’s Mango is ready – what’s taking you so long?
Rating: Nordic manager berates phone makers
In a Facebook posting, Peter Wissinger, Microsoft’s Nordic manager, bemoans that fact that it is the hardware manufacturers rather than the software company which is the bottleneck with the latest version of WP7 [Mango/Windows Phone 7.5]. He reckons that it is now it is entirely up to manufacturers to launch Windows Phone handsets with Mango because it is ready. So the betting is now on for who will show their Mango phone first. Whilst everyone would love it to be Nokia because Wissinger is based in the Northern region, this is probably a less than subtle hint to the Finnish giant to hurry up. So who is the smart money on? Well, HTC seems to be the hot favourite – thanks to its long association with Microsoft’s Windows based mobile phone OS’s. The dark horse is Fujitsu – with the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T which was already slated to appear in September. Continue reading
Our Motorola Defy develops weird software glitch
Rating: Shallow attempt to blag the new Defy+ ?
Given the buzz surrounding Motorola and Google today (see our story here), GoMo News‘ problems with its loan Motorola Defy will probably get buried entirely. We think the subject might bear some attention, however, because it could be highlighting a potential flaw in the Defy’s upgrade from Android Éclair (2.1) to Froyo 2.2. (See our previous story here). The handset has suddenly stopped passing audio from a voice call to the handset’s own speaker. This is very definitely a software glitch because tapping the icon to switch the handset over to loudspeaker mode works. If this were a hardware fault then there could be no audio output. Could we use this an excuse to blag the forthcoming Defy+? Continue reading
GSMA releases MWC 2011 case studies
Rating: Aiming to lure you to Barcelona in 2012
Mobile World Congress (MWC) organiser, the GSMA is offering businesses the chance to showcase their brand at what is generally accepted to be the leading mobile event of the year. There are, of course, three main options: – exhibit; advertise or sponsor. Last year’s MWC 2011 exhibition featured more than 1,400 companies from across the globe and 2012 is expected to be even larger. In terms of attendees, MWC 2011 saw a record-breaking attendance of 60,000 senior level industry leaders from more than 200 countries. The GSMA also promises that the App Planet section of MWC 2012 will be expanded even further. To entice companies and organisations to exhibit, the organiser has just released its exhibitor case studies which can be viewed here. Continue reading
Handheld barcode scanner is Android & iOS compatible
Rating: ideal tool for scaling up your smartphone app
There must be plenty of apps written for smartphones that take advantage of the barcode revolution but fail to scale up to high volume usage in harsh environments. That’s the chief reason why Maxa Technologies has released a new rugged handheld barcode scanner – the Pidion BI-500. The device is designed to communicate (via Bluetooth) with apps written for windows Mobile 5.0/6.1/6.5; Apple iOS; and Android. One huge benefit is that this product has GPS built-in. So it can, “Scan barcodes and save the location data simultaneously offering integrated functionality and improved productivity for the user,” as Steve Berry, a director with Maxa, explained. There’s even an option to integrate an RFID reader if you should want it. Continue reading
Going for a Zong – eBay buys mobile payer
Rating: High hopes of addressing four billion phone users
It seems that at least one US based giant, eBay, has recognised the value of having a mobile arm which can process payments for mobile phone users. Consequently, it has announced its intention to buy the mobile-payments company, Zong, for about $240 million. The advantage is that Zong possesses connexions with over 250 different mobile operators in 45 countries worldwide. eBay already has a payments arm, PayPal, and the company is obviously hoping that Zong will help build its position in mobile payments. PayPal virtually disenfranchises the young and the unbanked – two of the most important sectors amongst mobile phone users. The question is – who will be next? Android fans find it incredibly hard to make purchases from the Android Market, so maybe Google should have bought Zong, perhaps? And Bango surely must be an ideal target for anyone wanting to get into the mobile payments business. Continue reading
