Category Archives: Featured
HP blames smartphones and tablets for job cuts
Rating: Doing a Nokia and ignoring Android at its peril
It appears that Hewlett-Packard (H-P) is blaming its current misfortune on the rise of smartphones and tablets – such as the iPad. These have impacted sales of laptops for the world’s largest vendor of computers. GoMobile News isn’t surprise given the mess which current CEO, Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay) inherited from her predecessor, Leo Apotheker. What is it with global market leaders? H-P appears to be ‘doing-a-Nokia’ and ignoring the Android OS. Which is bizarre given that even GoMobile News has been able to port Android onto its H-P TouchPad tablet. Continue reading
Mindspeed and China Mobile collaborate for TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE small cell solutions
Mindspeed’s System-on-Chip (SoC) Processors to Power China Mobile’s Small Cell Base Stations
Press release
May 21st 2012. Mindspeed Technologies, the industry leader in technology for small cell base stations, today announced that it will form a joint development lab with China Mobile Communications Corporation to support the operator’s recent deployment of Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) femtocells. Continue reading
Go Cashless at Barclaycard Wireless Festival 2012
Barclaycard PayBand offers festival-goers the chance to experience a cashless weekend
Press release
May 15th2012. Barclaycard Wireless Festival 2012 is to be the first music event in the country to be fully contactless-enabled, giving music lovers the ability to enjoy the experience without having to carry cash. All vendors at the festival will accept contactless payments, allowing customers to spend less time queuing and more time listening to music. All forms of contactless will be accepted at the event including Barclaycard PayBand, a specially designed wristband that allows festival-goers to pay for goods quickly and easily using contactless technology. Continue reading
ITV airs first 2 Shazam for TV ads on UK’s BGT Final show
Rating: We’re hoping this isn’t another no-actual-winners TV scandal
Billed as the UK’s first Shazam-enabled ads, UK broadcaster, ITV, aired two adverts during the Britain’s Got Talent Final show last Saturday [12th May 2012]. GoMobile News isn’t sure how other viewers fared but the technology didn’t quite work for us. There were two ads involved: – one from soft drinks supplier, Pepsi and the other from confectionary supplier, Cadbury. Our problems could have stemmed from the fact that we were using a Nokia Lumia 800 (W7 Mango) handset. Such users surely represent a tiny minority of the over 10 million Shazam users in the UK. Another clue is that in the promotional blurb, says, “Make sure you have the latest version of Shazam, for the fastest tagging experience!”. Continue reading
28.3 % of mobile ad spend will be from location-based ads says Berg Insight
Rating: The LBA value chain is still forming
A new report from market watchers, Berg Insight, entitled ‘Location-Based Advertising and Marketing’ (see here) estimates that location-based advertising (LBA) will account for 28.3 per cent of mobile ad spend in 2016. That corresponds to a compound annual growth rate of 90.9 per cent, so the real-time LBA market should be worth €4.9 billion in 2016. The company reckons that in 2011 the total global value of the real-time mobile LBA market was €192 million, representing 5.0 per cent of the total mobile ad spend. Asia-Pacific is estimated to be the largest LBA market in 2016, followed by Europe and North America. Continue reading
GoMo discovers Microsoft’s answer to Shazam
Rating: ‘What song is this’ hidden away in Bing
We’re not quite sure why Microsoft hasn’t publicised it better but it turns out that there is a music recognition built into the W7 Mango Windows Phone OS. Microsoft’s answer to Shazam is integrated into the standard Bing search facility. An eagled-eyed reader spotted it and notified us of the relevant help page on the official Windows Phone site here. Naturally this being Microsoft, the whole facility is tied into Zune Marketplace. As with rival offerings this service only works with commercial music. If you’re trying to hum a tune which you can’t place, ‘What song is this?’ won’t help. Continue reading
Guest Post: Thorsten Heins takes RIM by the Reigns as new CEO
Technology journalist, Alysa Jeff, takes you back over the BlackBerry maker’s recent history
Mike Lazaridis, who founded the firm back in 1984, served as the CEO of BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion (RIM), until very recently with the co-chief, Jim Balsillie. The two were heading the firm; however, as of now both Lazaridis and Balsillie have quit, and forwarded Thorsten Heins to take charge of their position as the firm’s chief. Prior to the departure of Lazaridis and Balsillie, RIM was experiencing some turbulence as it faced some serious competition. The maker of the BlackBerry recently underwent a phase where it was unable to provide even its services. Continue reading
GoMo uncovers world’s first sexist QR campaign
Rating: See What You Are Missing ad for Eurolines
Here at GoMobile News we’ve come across QR codes being deployed in some pretty raunchy contexts before but we firmly believe we have just found the world’s first sexist QR campaign. It was discovered in a Mens Room (toilet) found in a Clapham (UK) public house. We managed to capture the ad with our trusty Motorola Defy Android smartphone. The ad (for the Eurolines coach company) says, “See what you are missing”, and features what we assume is supposed to be a barmaid from the Munich Beer festival. She’s holding six glasses (jugs – Geddit?) of lager. Strategically place over her ample bosoms is a QR code and the implication is that if you scan the QR code in, you’ll see a more revealing picture of the young lass. 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
Everything Everywhere W7 Mango users have to wait
Rating: Everybody Else has got the Nokia Lumia 800 update
Drat and double drat as Dick Dastardly used to say! Over here in Blighty [UK], Nokia Europe has been quietly rolling out the third update to Windows Phone 7.5 (W7 Mango). See our previous story here. However, the update is operator specific. Initially only the likes of BT, Vodafone and some 3 UK users could receive the software update – 1600.2487.8107.12070 But if you click on the appropriate Nokia Europe support page here you’ll find that users on every other UK network except Everything Everywhere can get the update. Boo-hoo! Because GoMobile News is on the Orange network (one half of Everything Everywhere along with T-Mobile UK). Unable to tell you exactly what’s in the update, we’ll have to be content with a hot top on how to reboot a Lumia 800. Continue reading
MocoSpace proves power of HTML5 based games
Rating: It’s not just young girls who are suckers for vampire games
MocoSpace claims to be the largest HTML5 mobile gaming community in North America. It recently introduced a new game called True Night which was developed for it by New Game Town. Although you’d think the game was old hat because it features vampires, in fact True Night has rocketed into the fourth most-played game on MocoSpace in just two weeks. “We developed True Night with MocoSpace’s young audience in mind and thought that the theme would bring in all kinds of players,” Jeremy Wang, CTO of New Game Town. commented. “We had no idea it would grow such a large fan base so quickly,” he added. Significantly, half of all True Night players are male, and the vast majority of all players are over 17 years old. This contradicts the general impression that vampire games are just a teenage girl phenomena. Continue reading
SANS claims first ever survey to assess mobility risk
Rating: The dangers of BOYD will be exposed
On April 12th [2012] SANS Institute will be releasing the results to its first annual survey on mobility security. The organisation is planning to release full results and a link to a copy of the report during a webcast on that date. The survey was actually launched back in December [2011], and claims to be the first ever mobility survey to discover if and how organizations are managing risk around their end user mobile devices. What SANS has already discovered is that only 9 per cent of organisations surveyed felt they were fully aware of the devices accessing corporate resources. Additionally, half felt only vaguely or fairly aware of the mobile devices accessing their resources. Continue reading
