Author Archives: Tony Dennis
BMW’s connected car offers streamed music thru rara
Powered by Vodafone across five European countries
It appears that the connected car (or smart vehicle) has suddenly become all of the rage. At the forefront, it seems is BMW which has just launched Europe’s first in-car music streaming service in association with rara.com. Crucially, no smartphone; (user supplied) SIM card, or dongle is needed. Instead rara.com streams its music catalogue of 14 million plus music tracks direct to a new BMW 5 Series fitted with a ConnectedDrive online entertainment system. The service is powered by Vodafone – an interesting use of M2M (Machine-to-Machine) communications. Crucially this means that you can drive across UK, Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands and still be connected thanks to Vodafone. Continue reading
BBM Money’s adoption rate in Indonesia beats expectations
Mobile money married to BlackBerry’s industry-leading messaging service
It seems that a mobile money service offered in Indonesia by Monitise – BBM Money, is beating expectations. It has already attracted 60,000 registered users in its headlong charge towards a target of 200,000 users by Q1 2014. The service is a result of close cooperation between Monetise’ joint venture with Astra International (AGIT Monitise Indonesia) in association with Indonesia’s Bank Permata (PermataBank) and BlackBerry, of course. Indonesia is one market where BlackBerry reigns supreme. BlackBerry is the Number One selling mobile smartphone, constituting over 50 per cent of all smartphones sold in the market. Continue reading
GoMo offers free tickets for prime Payforit event
Be at THE mobile payments summit or be square
Thanks to our close contacts with virtually all of the major players in the mobile payments sector, GoMo News is able to offer five free tickets to give away to attend the year’s most important event in this sector. It’s the Payforit Summit – organised by AIME, which will take place next month [June 2013] in London (England). Readers only have to go here to find out all they need to know about what Payforit is about. Now we can offer a few lucky readers the chance to be at the Summit which is dedicated exclusively to this mobile billing opportunity. Continue reading
payvia combines with Mogreet for industry first
DoB platform acquires with rich messaging specialist
The acquisition of a rich media specialist, Mogreet by a US based mobile payments provider, payvia, has led to some pretty radical claims. For starters, payvia claims to be the leader in direct carrier billing (DoB) mobile payments. It then describes the combination of its DoB [Direct Carrier Billing] system with
Mogreet’s technology as creating “the first end-to-end mobile payments, user targeting and engagement platform.” Extremely useful, yes. But the first??? Continue reading
Yahoo! wants your mobile blog from Tumblr
Web 2.0 conspiracy theories of our time
It does seem a little strange that Yahoo! would want a major blogging host company and be willing to pay a massive $1.1 billion for the privilege, according to the latest reports. But it seems to have happened. As all GoMo News will instinctively know, nothing happens on the Net unless it is mobile related. This had left us scratching our proverbial heads until we saw a story in London’s Evening Standard. Apparently, it is a mobile related move. Continue reading
Yes you can play casino games on your mobile
GoMo discovers how through William Hill Casino
The Monaco Grand Prix is probably the most famous race in the Formula One (F1) motor racing calendar. And it’s this weekend [May 2013]. So GoMo News thought we continue our long tradition and try to place a bet from our mobile phone. This time we decided to pick William Hill which appears to offer the widest range of betting methods for mobile phones of any betting shop chain in the UK. In the process we discovered that it is actually possible to gamble real money on casino style games courtesy of William Hill Casino. Continue reading
After Summly Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr blogs
We’re still waiting for results of Summly acquistion
It appears that Yahoo! – best known for its search engine, is on the acquisition path again according to report coming out of the Wall Street Journal. Current CEO, Marissa Meyer, apparently will be given the go-ahead to purchase Tumblr – the NY based blog hosting site. GoMo News hopes it goes better than Yahoo!’s acquisition of Summly the smartphone app created by Brit, Nick D’Aloisio. It seems that only those residing in the USA can currently enjoy the benefits of Summly technology incorporated into Yahoo!’s mobile apps. Continue reading
BBC’s Watchdog on Samsung S4 sparks interest in bloatware
Luckily GoMo News knew about it over three years ago
After Samsung’s latest flagship handset, the Galaxy S4, featured in a recent episode of the BBC’s Watchdog TV programme, the term ‘bloatware’ has suddenly become extremely newsworthy. Handy for GoMo News since we’ve been reporting on it for years. The problem derives from the way Samsung describes its models. Quite correctly. its best selling model is described as a 16 GB version. It genuinely does have 16 GB of onboard memory. Only problem? When the latest version of the Android OS and all of Samsung’s sophisticated UI ( including eye-tracking) are loaded, you are left with a handset that only has around 9 GB of free memory space. Continue reading
Google lets slip intention to support SMS in RTC offering
Google Hangouts’ Dori Storbeck reveals it in Google blog
It seems that Google’s Google’s G+ community manager of Hangouts and Chat, Dori Storbeck, accidentally let the cat out of the bag over Google’s intention to roll out support for SMS within Google Hangouts here. She was actually trying to publicise the release of an iOS client for Hangouts here. Storbeck describes the move as an upgrade to Google’s Real-Time Communication product. Asked about support for SMS, Dori replied, “Yes, SMS integration is coming soon – it is one of our most requested features!” However, the blog was later edited to say,” Oops! We actually have nothing to announce at this time. My apologies.” Still, JF Sullivan, CMO with Acision, still believes Google’s inevitable move into SMS will have major repercussions. Continue reading
EE picks Glastonbury when it could have had the world
EE picks Glastonbury when it could have had the world
Backs popular UK music festival instead of WOMAD
It seems that EE (which owns the Orange brand as well as T-Mobile) has decided to maintain its establish links with the Glastonbury UK music festival. Here at GoMo News we were kind of hoping EE might have defected to WOMAD (the UK version of the World music festival event) that is. EE is, of course, hoping to showcase the fact that it is the only UK network capable of providing the festival with 4G coverage via 4GEE. You have to wonder, however, how many mud soaked revellers will realise they can stream their Glastonbury experiences live to friends who couldn’t get tickets. Continue reading
BlackBerry opens up BBM to Android & iOS
No mention of WP8 version, though
In a typical if-you-cant-beat-em-join-em approach, BlackBerry has just announced plans to make its IMS facility BlackBerry Messenger BBM available to iOS and Android users. That is, of course, if Apple and Google allow BlackBerry to upload the apps to their resxpecitive app stores. There’s no mention of a Windows Phone 8 (WP8) client, of course. One UK publication described BBM as the “rioters’ texting toool” because BBM proved to be the IMS of choice amongst London rioters. Other observers take the view that WhatsApp is likely to have the most to lose. However, GoMo News believes that it’s the mobile operators who are most in danger as a universal BBM could seriously dent their SMS revenues. Continue reading
GoMo still puzzled by NFC’s interworking
NFC technology obviously still in its early days
Sadly, GoMo News has been around for so long that we can recall Bluetooth – which most smartphone users take for granted, being in its early days. We firmly believe that NFC (Near Field Communication) is still in its early days presently. Particularly judging from our recent experience playing [testing] with two Sony handsets and the Sony Xperia Z tablet. We were particularly impressed with Sony’s pledge on its support for NFC. It claims, “No other consumer electronics company is bringing as many NFC-enabled products to market.” Shame NFC doesn’t work perfectly, then. Continue reading
Nokia’s latest WP8 handset – Lumia 925 gets cautious welcome
925 first with Amber software to differentiate the Nokia’s WP8 line
Following last week’s [May 10th 2013] of the Nokia Lumia 928 exclusive for Verizon Wireless in the USA, Nokia has introduced its international model – the Lumia 925. Verizon’s co-owner, Vodafone, interestingly offers an exclusive 32 GB version for its subscribers. GoMo News highlights the introduction of a software release cycle from Nokia. The first of these, Amber, ships with the 925. The releases are about new functionality, not developer APIs. Rather than going heavy on the bundled software, Nokia’s ads will focus on the smartphone’s camera. Continue reading
Nokia Lumia 925 – Full Technical Specs
The latest addition to Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 powered Lumia range
Launched in London on May 14th 2013 as the follow up to the Nokia Lumia 920. In addition to Europe with Vodafone, the Nokia Lumia 925 will be introduced into the USA by T-Mobile and into China by China Mobile and China Unicom. Sales are expected to start in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and China in June 2013, followed by the USA and a number of other markets. The Nokia Lumia 925 will be priced around €469 before taxes and subsidies. Continue reading
Asha 501 should prove Nokia isn’t a spent force
Handset has strong appeal in markets like India
Hot on the heels of Nokia’s launch of the Asha 501, GoMo News has been deluged with observers proclaiming that handsets such as this should help to prove Nokia isn’t a spent force in emerging markets – and India in particular. A typical example comes from Marco Veremis CEO of Upstream, whose recent research into mobile attitudes in emerging markets indicates that the Nokia brand is far from dead on a global basis. Continue reading
