 |
 |
 |
|
|
||
| April, 2006 | Home| About us| Services| Contact Info | |
|
Note from Jason Flick Six hundred million dollar contracts are hard to ignore, and when you hear that it’s a handheld government data collection and distribution project, it simply has to be the topic of my monthly thought. I've always believed that a technology is only certain to save your business money once it's become boring to talk about. Certainly the handheld and smartphone space has been one of the most talked about for the past 3-5 years, with of course, the desk and server news here and there speaking about incremental improvements. With a deal of this size and the amount of buzz about handhelds going down, it would appear that 2007 may well be the year where handhelds in business may finally become the norm. Since we spend the bulk of our time at Flick Software working with product companies to enable this sort of functionality, we can certainly attest to a huge increase of product managers asking us to add their mobile pieces. So ask your companies product providers what their handheld plans are, and be sure they fit with your 2007 IT plans.
Cheers, Jason Flick, |
O2, Lenovo Cooking Up WinMob Smartphones
By James Alan Miller
Apil 10, 2006
Two new Windows-based smartphones could soon find their way onto a carrier
network near you. Both are built by Asian manufacturers. The first, the XDA IQ,
is due soon from U.K carrier O2, and the second is from Lenovo, better known in these parts for taking over IBM's PC business.
O2, which often releases Windows Mobile handsets under the XDA banner, has yet another
High Tech Computer (HTC)-built smartphone in the works, the XDA IQ.
By Dave White
April 5, 2006
The last thing you need when you're out in the middle of nowhere is a
cell phone that breaks when you drop it. Motorola has solved that problem with the i580.
Drop it, pick it up, and go on talking.
Push email is the highlight, followed by a 1.3MP
camera that has video clip capture and playback, an MP3 player, GPS, and memory
expansion via TransFlash. Oh, it also has Bluetooth capability, for that
all-important wireless headset conversation.
Asus M307 mobile phone from Taiwan
By Michael Kwan
March 30, 2006
Asus is already a fairly well known name when it comes to computer components, but they’d be one
of the last companies you’d think of when it comes to the lucrative cell phone market. Well, the Taiwanese manufacturer
is indeed pumping out a mobile handset – the M307 – and it is quite the respectable entry.
Follow the voice: MapQuest for your mobile
By Dave White
April 3, 2006
MapQuest is now available for your mobile phone. MapQuest Navigator is the name of the
service, and MapQuest owner AOL hopes to compete with competitors Google and
InfoSpace.
AOL is already working on agreements with Sprint Nextel and
Verizon Wireless. MapQuest boasts as many as 40 million users a month at its
website and hopes to translate that popularity into the mobile user population.
Study: Recognition Green Light For Bluetooth
By Tim Scannell
April 10, 2006
Today, more people than ever are using the short-range Bluetooth wireless mode of communication to swap files and talk
on phones using headsets and earpieces.
Since the technology is essentially designed to replace cables, users rely on it to wirelessly print from their notebooks or handheld PCs and connect to other devices such as LCD projectors.
"It is encouraging to see that consumers not only have heard of Bluetooth technology, but they are also using it for more advanced applications," said Michael Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), in a statement.
Bluetooth awareness increased the most in the U.S, where more than 50 percent of the consumers who took part in a 2005 survey at least recognized the brand name and the technology.
Samsung BlackBerry Connects Flip Phone
By James Alan Miller
April 6, 2006
At the CTIA Wireless show, Samsung unveiled only the second mobile handset to support
BlackBerry Connect, RIM's solution for bringing push e-mail to non-BlackBerry
devices, for the U.S. market. What sets the SGH-T719 (see top image) apart from
the very PDA-like Nokia 9300 is that the Samsung is very much in the vein of a traditional
cell phone, and a small one at that.
Unlike the silver Nokia, the black T719 is a flip phone, which doesn't leave much room for a QWERTY thumb-keyboard. Rather, the Samsung sports the same SureType keyboard/keypad hybrid as RIM's more phone-like 7100 BlackBerry series.
F-Secure Names Smartphone Spyware Trojan
By James Alan Miller
March 30, 2006
The first program to secretly monitor calls and SMS messages on mobile handsets has anti-virus companies up in arms.
Finland’s F-Secure even named FlexiSPY Light, from Thailand-based Vervata, a Symbian Trojan for S60 interface smartphones.
Common in the PC world, FlexiSPY is the first spyware application for handsets.
Vervata plans to add support for Research In Motion's BlackBerry wireless handhelds and Microsoft-based Pocket PC Phones shortly.
Vervata describes FlexiSpy as a 'activity logger' for catching cheating spouses and monitoring children. It logs SMS messages, incoming and outgoing call history and durations, GPRS (data) activity, and contact information on a remote server for access later through a Web page. So not only does it raise questions about the ethical nature of spying, but there are concerns about the remote storage of personal information for people who don’t know their data is being remotely stored - let alone monitored - as well.
Census Bureau Signs Largest Windows Mobile Deal
By Matt Hines
April 5, 2006
The U.S. Census Bureau signed an IT services contract that will make it the
largest user of Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system as part of its
preparations to conduct the 2010 citizen head count.
Under a new deal signed between the Census Bureau and government contractor Harris, which also includes consultant Accenture, the federal agency will distribute some 500,000 wireless handsets to government workers to help collect data for the 2010 survey.
The phones will be made by HTC, a device manufacturer based in Taiwan who has been a longtime partner of Microsoft's and uses only the software giant's operating systems in all of its mobile handsets.
Mandatory Handset Recycling For US County
In California residents cannot put hazardous waste items in their everyday garbage
The government of Westchester County in New York State, USA is passing
legislation which will make it illegal to dispose of cell phones in the
conventional rubbish supplies. When passed, the legislation will effectively
force residents to recycle their unwanted mobile phones, or face a fine for each
handset found in the rubbish. County Executive Andrew Spano is due to sign the
bill shortly, said chief adviser Susan Tolchin, and it will go into effect 90
days later.
It is estimated that more than 50,000 cell phones are retired each month in Westchester County and because of their size, most can easily make it to the waste stream. Penalties start with a warning after the first offense, $150 for a second offense and $250 for a third.
Bluetooth SIG Picks UWB Heir
By Eric Griffith
March 29, 2006
It's not much of a surprise considering past announcements, but today the Bluetooth Special Interest
Group (SIG) announced at its meeting in Bellevue, Washington that the flavor
of ultrawideband wireless called multiband orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (MB-OFDM), backed by the WiMedia Alliance industry group, will be integrated into Bluetooth.
The technology will run in unlicensed radio spectrum above 6GHz to avoid
concerns of regulatory bodies in Asia and Europe. The group says part of the
agreement "will [be to] help Ultrawideband (UWB) achieve global regulatory
acceptance."
The Bluetooth SIG Core Specification Working Group Charter and UWB Feature Requirements Document (FRD) will commence immediately, but don't expect high data rate for file transfers and better voice communication just yet. It will take at least a year for the Bluetooth SIG to come through with a standard and have working prototypes. Actual products aren't likely to ship before 2008.
Nokia 4G phone concept fits on your wrist
By T.O. Whenham
March 30, 2006
A designer for Nokia has come up with a very early concept of what the fourth generation of
mobile phones could look like.
This funky/clunky wristband is designed around the philosophy that you should be
able to manage your information through different peripherals seamlessly depending on
your mood. The wrist phone can work independently as a phone or work with a
Bluetooth style headpiece. The designer goes well beyond just phone functions
for the bracelet. In a demonstration, the wrist piece is also used to pay bus
fare, compare prices of a sweater, make a call and buy coffee. The user, in the
designer’s vision, would also have a flexible, fold-up screen that could
interact with the wrist band for easier, larger scale views of things like
e-commerce.
|
Events |
|
|
MEDC - Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2006 |
|
|
COMPUTERWORLD Mobile&Wireless World |
International Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications |
|
Next Generation Teletraffic and Wired/Wireless Advanced Networking |
Mobile Data Management - |
|
Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2006 |
INTEROP |
Newsletter Archive
|
2005
|
2006
|