Text services are great for stalkers, too!

Useful text services are great; over a Dial-a-Phone we like them so much we even wrote a round-up of our favourites. But when a service becomes so intrusive that its used by opportunists for stalking purposes, its probably time to withdraw it.Thats what the Madhya Pradesh transport department in central India had to do when [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

The 3 Linux Phones to Watch in 2008

Google AndroidWithout doubt the most exciting development in the mobile industry since the iPhone is Android, the new mobile operating system being developed by Google.Android is built on the open Linux Kernel and utilizes a custom virtual machine that has been designed to optimize memory and hardware resources. Developers have been offered a $10 million [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

Carphone Warehouse Staff Caught Misleading Customers about iPhone, see Watchdog Tonight

Staff at Carphone Warehouse, have been caught by undercover researchers from BBC One’s Watchdog, misleading customers about insurance for the Apple iPhone. The BBC researchers found Carphone staff made false claims about what would happen if a phone was stolen and hadn’t been insured. According to the BBC, these false claims were made in the [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

PS3 Phone Out NowMaybe!

Rejoice! One of the most hotly anticipated products is finally on the market and it’s…not what we expected at all! Yes, although it’s called a PS3 and looks suspiciously like a PSP, complete with triangle, circle, square and cross buttons, the Amycall phone has nothing to do with Sony’s Playstation 3, or the recently denied [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

Conpanies that really should bring out a phone

Although the iPhone is currently the chic number-one in terms of mobile phone design, fashion moves very quickly in this market, meaning the next big thing is only just around the corner. But consider for a moment the more exciting prospect of a timeless piece of mobile phone design hitting the market; something ground-breaking but [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

Cell phone college class opens in Japan

TOKYO - Japanese already use cell phones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, they can take a university course.

Cyber University, the nation's only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids.

For classes for personal computers, the lecture downloads play on the monitor as text and images in the middle, and a smaller video of the lecturer shows in the corner, complete with sound.

The cell phone version, which pops up as streaming video on the handset's tiny screen, plays just the Power Point images.

In a demonstration Wednesday at a Tokyo hotel, an image of the pyramids popped up on the screen and changed to a text image as a professor's voice played from the handset speakers.

Cyber University, which opened in April with government approval to give bachelor's degrees, has 1,850 students.

The virtual campus is 71 percent owned by Softbank Corp., a major Japanese mobile carrier, which also has broadband operations and offers online gaming, shopping and electronic stock trading services.

The cell phone lectures may be expanded to other courses but for now will be for the pyramids course, according to Cyber University, which offers about 100 courses, including ancient Chinese culture, online journalism and English literature.

Unlike the other classes, the one on cell phones will be available to the public for free, although viewers must pay phone fees.

The catch is the lectures can only be seen on some Softbank phones. The service may be expanded to other carriers, officials said.

Sakuji Yoshimura, who heads Cyber University and gives the pyramids course, said the university provides educational opportunities for people who find it hard to attend real-life universities, including those with jobs and those who are sick or have disabilities.

"Our duty as educators is to respond to the needs of people who want to learn," Yoshimura said.

He scoffed at those who question the value of Internet and cell-phone classes, noting attendance is relatively high at 86 percent. Whether students play the lecture downloads to the end can be monitored by the university digitally, officials said.

Although real-time exchange with professors and other students isn't possible in Net classes, social networking and other cyber-discussions are flourishing, said Hiroshi Kawahara, professor in the Faculty of Information Technology and Business.

source

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[Source: Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

Suffering from mobile addiction? Try cell phone therapy.

Mobile phone addiction; its a terrible thing. Actually, Im amazed there hasnt been an awareness week for it yet. Phone mast shaped badges, lots of moving photographs of victims with bandaged thumbs. Johns got carpal tunnel syndrome from texting. ...On a serious note, however, there is one country running a programme to help combat mobile [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

Exclusive Nokia N82 Review - What Cameras Have Become

Update: Deliveries of the Nokia N82 have now been confirmed for early January, and if you go to the N82 page here we can either drop you an email when stock is due or take your no-obligation pre-order today.

Yesterday Nokia announced the launch and release of the latest addition to the NSeries range, the Nokia N82. Whilst most people are still waiting for their phone to arrive, we at Mobiles.co.uk have got a handset in house ready to review, thanks to the NSeries Blog.

The N82 focuses mainly on the camera, hence the tagline What cameras have become. However, it would be a shame to think that is all the N82 has to offer. There is a lot more than that. The Nokia N82 also boasts excellent navigation and internet connectivity options too.

Firstly, the camera. The Nokia N82 has is equipped with a 5.0 megapixel camera, that has a Carl Zeiss lens and a Xenon flash. Picture quality is of the highest order. The phone has a lens cover on the back, which when flicked open activates the camera. The camera opening speed is very fast, much quicker than many camera phones to date. Once active, the screen acts as a full view finder, and there is a list of options down the right hand side of the screen. You can navigate through these simply enough with the cursor D-Pad. The first of these options is Scene Modes. Through this you can choose the settings required, for macro, portrait, landscape, sports, night (used without flash) and night portrait (used with flash). There is also an option for you to create your own user defined settings, to access quickly and easily. Other options allow you to control the sequence mode, colour tone, white balance and exposure. There is also a self timer option.

The camera has auto focus, and the quality of pictures is very good. Once a picture has been taken, a quick press of the shutter key takes you back to the main screen ready for another shot. The speed is impressive. Once a picture has been taken, you can upload it to any number of your favourite online services, including VOX and Flickr.

There is a quick access key on the front of the phone, which when pressed takes you to the last picture taken. Through this you can choose different albums to browse through or look through a slide show of pictures available in the gallery. Flick the D-Pad to the right or left and you can quickly browse through other options such as music, videos, games, maps, internet bookmarks and contacts. The order of the tiles can be changed to reflect your own personal requirements. Browsing through captured images is faster than anything I have experienced on previous S60 phones. You can also automatically browse pictures in landscape mode by tilting the handset onto its side, due to the built in motion sensor. This also works well for example when using the web browser, turn the phone onto its side and instantly view websites in landscape mode.

Away from the camera, there are a host of features ready to keep the gadget freaks happy. Navigation wise the phone has an internal GPS receiver and supports A-GPS, and comes with Nokia Maps installed. Testing the phone, lock on to location in Maps took less than 10 seconds. Very quick, and much quicker than experienced with the N95. The bright, clear QVGA TFT screen supporting up to 16million colours makes navigation very clear and very easy to follow.

The Nokia N82 is loaded with connectivity options. It supports WiFi, and uses the simple Nokia navigation wizard to establish connection. From the main standby screen, simply browse for an available WiFi connection, and once located, select start browsing. Simple, quick and effective. As well as WiFi the Nokia N82 has Bluetooth 2.0, supports 3G and HSDPA.

The Nokia N82 has a 3.5mm jack point, which means you can use your own personal choice of headphones when listening to music. The N82 supports Micro SD cards so you can add additional memory to store a whole host of your favourite tracks and videos. There is also support for TV OUT, which simply means you can plug your N82 to the TV and view the screen of the phone on the TV. The cable for this is provided in the sales box. Personally I find it simple and straight forward to use the TV OUT cable with a scart adaptor, similar to that which is used on Playstation consoles. You can then plug the N82 into a free scart socket on the TV.

One of the new options to appear on the active standby screen is the search option. Select this and it opens a whole list of searchable categories on the devise. You can search the internet, or search through content on the device. You can look through music, contacts, calendar, messages, email messages, bookmarks, images applications notes and landmarks from the Maps application. Simply highlight the category you want to search through and press right on the D-Pad to move through to the next screen. It all works smoothly and is very easy to use. The addition of the search option to the standby screen does start to make the screen look very busy, and unfortunately the NSeries handsets do not have the excellent ESeries option of active standby plugins. The plugins on ESeries phones allow you to choose which applications you have showing on the main standby screen and works very well. I wait for the day NSeries will include this excellent feature too.

The Nokia N82 has a nice feel in the hand; it feels well built and very solid. It has a feel of the sort of phone that you would be happy to take out and use. Nokia say the focus market for the handset is for the style conscious person who wants the latest features. And overall feedback on the design from colleagues in the office has been very positive.

The Nokia N82 is a well balanced phone and very easy to navigate, due to the excellent S60 platform. The keypad on the phone is reminiscent of the W880i, but the keys are spaced out wider apart, so are not as difficult to operate as it may seem. It is certainly more comfortable than that found on the N73. It is hard to find fault in the N82. Of course, we may well find a few niggles over the coming weeks but initial impressions are positive. The over-riding impression of the Nokia N82 is how simple it is to use. Whilst there are a host of features available, everything is simple to use and logically laid out.

The N82 is destined to be the next success story in the Nokia NSeries range, so come back on Monday when we’ll have a more detailed look at photos and video taken by the N82 as well as news of more exciting Nokia mobile phones - including the successor to the beautiful 8800.

Some screenshots taken from the phone (Click on the image to see full size):
The Main menu view:

Search Screen:

Standby screen:

Image gallery:

Last picture shortcut menu:

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[Source: The UK Mobile Phone Blog]

New! Google Maps with My Location (beta)

See your location on the map, with or without GPS. Save time and tedious keystrokes finding where you are, what's around you, and how to get there. Watch the video on the right to see how it works.

If you have a GPS-enabled device, this blue dot corresponds to your GPS location. At times, or if you do not have a GPS-enabled phone, you might see the blue dot surrounded by a light blue circle (as shown on the right) to indicate uncertainty about your location.

Why the uncertainty? The My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near you to approximate your current location on the map - it's not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average). We're still in beta, but we're excited to launch this feature and are constantly working to improve our coverage and accuracy.

The My Location feature is available for most web-enabled mobile phones, including Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia/Symbian devices.



Download

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[Source: Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

GooSync

Synchronize your Google Calendar with your mobile phone or PDA.
GooSync will seamlessly synchronize almost any mobile device with your Google Calendar. It's quick and simple, sign-up and start syncing.

Never be without your vital calendar information again!

How It Works
GooSync.com is an over-the-air synchronisation service for Google Calendar.
Just hit the sync button on your mobile device to synchronize your Google Calendar and the calendar on your mobile device.

- Create your Google Calendar
- Create your GooSync.com account
- Initialize the sync from your mobile device

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[Source: Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

Which is the best 5 megapixel camera phone?

5 is the magic number for camera phonesthese days.Of course it’s not all about the megapixel count, it’s about the lens, but still, 5 million pixels, that’s a lot innit!Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG have all got adverts out at the moment proclaiming the brilliance of their camera phones and Samsung’s G800 campaign in particular [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

Sony Ericsson W380 demo video with a surprise

If you didn't look down at the pic then I will tell you what the surprise is. At the end of this Sony Ericsson W380 demo video we get to see the third unannounced color for this Walkman phone. It is an all black W380 with a bit of gold like the record black W660. I really like this funky demo video. The latest batch of demo videos from Sony Ericsson have really been done well. Check out the K66o demo video and the W890 one as well.

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[Source: Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

Its all about ME, me, me with fringME! widget (preview)

Stay connected with your internet communities,
have them communicate with you directly from your favorite internet pages via fring.

To start using fringME! you will need to have a Symbian 9.1 or 9.2 handset and the latest version of fring. Download now.

Whether youre into internet communities, social networking, blogs, auction sites, you name it, life is simply about making online connections. So, weve been working hard to find new ways for fring users everywhere to stay connected with their online buddies, whether theyre fringsters or not. fring essentially enables your entire community to reach and find you on your fring-enabled mobile from anywhere on the web.One happy, intuitive example of this is our new fringME! widget, coming soon to a web page near you!

This WIDGET enables you to paste this cool new fringME! HTML code onto your own web pages, blogs and pretty much anywhere you have an internet presence of your own enabling community members or casual visitors to instantly see whether youre online, offline, or busy in call and also chat with you.

PLUS (are you reading this sitting down?) view your location in real time via Google Maps (if youre one of those lucky #@%$ with a GPS equipped handset).



Important! (pay attention) Privacy settings inside fring on your handset requires you to switch on or switch off the fringME! location feature (you know, like Opt in and out perfect for those occasions when you dont want to be found!)The features included in the fringME! widget will be expanding, with more very cool stuff coming soon.To get your hands on your very own fringME! widget, simply visit the fringME! web page, enter your details, choose your preferred widget design and paste a small piece of html code into your pages. Then, switch on and configure fringME! on your mobile handset with fring installed, and away you go.

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[Source: Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]

First pictures of the Samsung G800 optical zoom

We’ve just had a representative from Samsung in to show off their new flagship model the G800. Get ready for the onslaught, this phone’s going to be everywhere!I did a post a little while ago mentioning the optical zoom, which is a very unusual feature on a camera phone. Just to recap, an optical zoom [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

VIDEO: Will Guitar Hero 3 Blend?

BlendTec master Tom Dickson is back at it again, and this time he attempts to blend Guitar Hero 3. Video after the break.

I won't spoil it, but know that it doesn't hold up too well to a Pete Townshending. For a blender that costs as much as a PlayStation 3 it had better f&*@ this thing up

[via Kotaku]

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[Source: Tech Blog]

VIDEO: Get a Mac Spoof Proves All "Computers Suck"

If you've always wondered what the "Get a Mac" ads would look like in the South Park world, then look no furthur. Gabriel Schwarzer has created quite an interesting clip to say the least. Video after the break.

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[Source: Tech Blog]

VIDEO: Incredible Crysis "CORE-X Graphical Benchmark"

"CORE-X Graphical Benchmark" is basically a "render test by "Blur Studio" for CryTek that shows how they wanted Crysis to look like." Video after the break.

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[Source: Tech Blog]

Amazons Kindle: the future of mobile entertainment?

Amazons Jeff Bezos is on a high right now. The newly launched Amazon Kindle e-book reader sold out in 5.5 hours despite costing a whopping $399 just for the base unit, without downloads or subscriptions. And a seven-page cover story in Newsweek allowed him to explain how technology has finally caught up with the printed [...]

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[Source: Dial-a-Phone]

Video Game Vault: NBA Jam

NBA Jam was basically "one of the first sports games to feature NBA-licensed teams and players, and their real digitized likenesses." ScrewAttack takes a look back at this game after the break.

A key feature of NBA Jam was the exaggerated nature of the play - players jumped many times above their own height, making slam dunks that defied both human capabilities and the laws of physics. There were no fouls, free throws, or violations except goaltending

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[Source: Tech Blog]

PICTURES: Flexible Chair Follows Your Mood

The Protean Chair allows users "to create the desired atmosphere at any given moment -- arranged as a love seat with two end tables or if you wish, you can slide the chairs apart and create two separate seats with a table in between." No word yet on if this technology / concept will go into production. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Another exciting bonus is that if you feel like engaging in a deep conversation, you can flip the chairs allowing the users to look at each other while speaking or flirting, depending on your mood

[via Yankodesign]

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[Source: Tech Blog]

VIDEO: Amazing Flip Book Animation Recreates Matrix Scene

If you thought stop-motion photography was cool, then check out this amazing flip book animation, which recreates a scene from the Matrix. Video after the break.

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[Source: Tech Blog]

Feature: First Manmade Ski Resort to be Open Year-Round (with Video)

Bearfire, opening in 2009, will be the world's first year-round manmade ski resort -- located in Texas. It features a 250-foot mountain, 650,000 square feet of skiing area, and even a village. That's not all, Bearfire will use Snowflex, "a polymer composite consisting of a monofilament fibre and impregnated carrier layer", rather than real snow. Video after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.

[sources 1 | 2]

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[Source: Tech Blog]

PICTURES: $80,000,000 Supersonic Private Jet Sold to Wealthy Individiual (with Video)

That's right, an $80,000,000 Aerion Supersonic Business Jet was recently sold to Sheikh Rashid (ruler of Dubai). This aircraft is capable of reaching Mach 1.6 and is powered by Pratt & Whitney JT8D-219 engines. Video after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Unlike the Concorde, which could only fly to certain airports through the world because of its operative requirements, this supersonic jet is designed to comply with environmental, sound and airport regulations everywhere

[via Gizmodo]

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[Source: Tech Blog]

PICTURES: Presents Your Co-Worker Won't Want to Unwrap

Sure, office pranks might be fun and games, but wrapping your co-workers cubicle entirely in copy paper might not be the best welcome back present. Click here for first picture in gallery.

[sources 1]

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[Source: Tech Blog]

VIDEO: i-SOBOT is Really Small, Might Terrorize Your Desk

The i-SOBOT from ThinkGeek is a "fully articulated humanoid robot" that boasts 17 servo motors for "lifelike" movement. Video after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.

He can balance on one leg, do a handstand and get up from almost any position. String commands together to record more complex performances, or you can use the "Special Action Mode" to be wowed by one of i-SOBOTS intricate built in motion routines. i-SOBOT can also understand 10 different voice commands and speaks using over 200 words and phrases

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[Source: Tech Blog]