Author: Ken McGuire

Ina has an interesting piece of mobile news looking at women in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa who are being encouraged to use mobile phones to report violations of their human rights.

Interesting stuff…

Mobile operator 3 have announced that they are to cut all international roaming charges with the unveiling of ‘3 Like Home’, a new package designed to allow existing 3 customers make use of their personal mobile plans when visiting another 3 network abroad.

What this means – and I’m hoping O2 follow suit – is that you can use your existing minutes and texts bundled with your price plan when you’re out foreign, as if you were on your home network. Charges to receive mobile calls will be wiped and text messages will be charged again as if you’re on your home network.

Just wondering, has anyone who reads my posts by any means made any attempt in the past to silence or at least reduce their noise output of their XBOX 360? That or would you know someone (directly) who has gone through the process? A few cups of coffee last night before recording the latest Sound System Podcast brought us around to discussing the noise output of the 360 and how it might be tackled, similar means to reducing noise output to PC cases etc.

So, if you have made any attempt to reduce the noise output of the 360 I’d be interested to hear what you’ve got to say…

Pat Phelan has launched All Free Calls…nice going.

We do not charge you anything to make this call. Because the access number is an Iowa based number, your phone plan will dictate how much it will cost you to call Iowa. Since most phone plans include free long distance, your call is most likely free!

In three easy looking steps (so long as you’re living in the USA) you can dial a rake of countries for free. If you’ve got relatives living in the US that like to phone home often then this could be the perfect solution for them, especially if they get good rates on phone Iowa or even free long-distance phone calls (depending on your given price plan).

Kudos 🙂

People familiar with the US mobile market (including those of you now tracking that Apple iPhone) will be familiar with the name ‘Cingular’ as the wireless mobile network. Well, Cingular is to be no more now that AT&T have announced they plan to scrap the brand, instead moving all their mobile activities under the parent AT&T brand. Nothing like a bit of denormalisation to make things work in your favour.

Cingular is the largest wireless carrier in the US with over 58m subscribers.

There’s three of us in the office and we’re all sitting within swinging distance of each other day in, day out. If we’re getting into brain storming sessions, we fire everything down on paper but after a while these important sessions can get lost. So, I spent a bit of time looking for some handy groupware software (free / open source) but couldn’t find anything to my liking that could be hosted on our local server. That in turn lead to a suggestion to try Campfire. All I needed was something that would work in real time, without the need for everyone involved to keep refreshing their screens or all saving in turns to the one document.

GoogleTalk is used in the office between the three of us but it doesn’t allow for group chat. Skype was an option but wasn’t too easily accessible from every location. Campfire on the other hand allowed the three of us to “chat” away for the afternoon. By “chat” of course we were simply using it to fire down ideas. The transcripts of each session are then saved to your Campfire account and accessible by whoever you grant permission to (namely the three of us). Since there are only three of us using it as well we fall into their free user category which suits us down to the ground.

I log in tonight and there’s been some new additions by Aidan to the transcripts, which is perfect. Someone gets an idea, fires it into the room and its there for everyone to see when they log back in. You can post away to the room on your own and everything you post is saved and archived. Not only that but images are shared and used in real time, files can be uploaded and shared (up to a 10mb limit) also.

It is the real-time aspect of it though that impresses most. Having only gotten into it today (bar having a previous familiarity with Grouphub through another project) I can certainly see it becoming a very handy tool in the office and would suggest it to anyone looking for something similar.

I missed the coverage yesterday but currently have the Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources hearings on the Proposed Broadcasting Bill playing on one of the machines in the office, streaming their broadband feed through Real Player 10 and I’ve got to say, the quality is highly impressive, even at a near full-screen size.

My interest this morning of course triggered through reaction and feedback from yesterday’s talks in relation to the TV license as it stands now and plans to adapt and modify it to enclose mobile streaming media and the internet.

If you’re interested, catch the stream here. Bless those massive high-speed Heanet connections…

The Oireachteas Committe on Broadcasting has been meeting today and at an early stage feedback looks like the TV license is about to evolve in Ireland to encompass the internet, mobile streaming and media and “websites like YouTube” (according to RTE).

Television is now much more than a ‘box in the corner’, and the concept of a TV licence fee may have to be changed to include developments like mobile phone streaming and websites like YouTube, an Oireachtas committee has been told.

Not only that, but Ronan Coy (technology expert ) has been quoted as bringing internet-based tv stations and video blogging into the equation as well. Now we’ve to pay to watch clips on video blogs? Where does that leave the likes of BalconyTV? Or down the line the online video development behind KilkennyMusic.com (which I picked up some grant funding for during the week – my thanks to Kilkenny Borough Council on that note). License fees for PC monitors, the use of a video capture card?

From CitizensInformation.ie

If your household, business or institution possesses a television or equipment capable of receiving a television signal, you are required by law to have a television licence. Even if the television or other equipment is broken and currently unable to receive a signal, it is regarded as capable of being repaired so it can receive a signal and you must hold a licence for it.

Last time I heard, TV3 was a license-free station meaning that we’re paying the 158 quid TV license for the divine joy of rubbish acting in Fair City and a handful of other programs. There’s nothing at present, in my mind, to seriously justify paying an ever increasing license fee without a match in services to match.

I thought the same about the phone and figure that seen as I’m a bill-paying customer of O2 along with the rest of my family, the house phone has become pretty redundant so Eircom can kiss goodbye to their line rental (we still pay line rental to Eircom albeit we’re customers of Chorus – hurry up and unbundle the lot!). As for making landline calls I’m pushing to bring in a VOIP option to the house with a closed wireless network covering all the rooms.

As it is, the TV in the sitting room is used for DVDs, the TV in my own room used for DVDs and some gaming – everything else comes online. Stream the odd video, download the odd video. If there’s TV on, the liklihood is that TV3 is on to catch a bit of Emmerdale while cooking the dinner during the week – if you’re in the office from 8:30am to 6pm at a minimum (as we all are) then we get the joy of missing the rubbish pumped out in the afternoon. Remember ‘The Afternoon Show’? Good Jesus….

Does anyone think that RTE should be made optional? Or that you could pay your TV license based on the number of TV channels you receive? We’ve got a big property in Sligo but the TV reception is actually non existant where we are. Are there exceptions to the matter if you can pick up TV3 but you physically can’t pick up RTE / Network 2 without forking out for a dish or a huge roof aerial? (Update: actually, refer to the above quote from Oasis, if its possible to get a signal by some means I guess you’ve got to do it) Next thing you know we’ll have to pay a license fee on mobile phones (already in Germany), radio license for the car and beyond. As for having a TV license to cover EVERY TV set, is that rule still in place?

Whatever the outcome of the Oireachtas talks I’m hoping that they seriously don’t consider bringing the internet into the TV license. Spells bad news for us gadget fans…

Gordon Smith over at Silicon Republic has a nice product review of the cameraless Nokia E60. If you’re looking for a strict business phone and don’t need any of the frilly extras offered by more mainstream then the E60, retailing at around E450 sim-free might be right up your street.

Speaking of which I’ve been meaning to upgrade my own business phone, the ole Nokia 6230i has been serving me well for the past 18 months but its time to start looking for a new model 🙂

So today has been a day of some serious announcements for Steve Jobs and Apple, in particular the often-rumoured-never-realised iPhone – which has been made official. The little beauty (pictured below) will run OS X, integrates completely with iTunes, iCal and any other iApplication that the Mac can throw at it.

While the MacWorld expo goes on in San Francisco, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has some good pics and stats on the iPhone. There are some interesting points to note – especially the wifi availability along with the usual bluetooth / gsm / edge etc. Looks like its just Cingular network bound, no mention of sim-free purchase option yet. As for prices you’ll be looking at $499 for the 4GB model, subject to a minimum contract conditions set by the network.

Update: Its going to be shipping from June with Apple looking to shift 10m units by the end of 2008. Not a bad goal…

Cheers to Keith for the headsup but MacRumors.com are live blogging Steve Jobs’ keynote address at the MacWorld con out in San Francisco and reading through everything there’s some massive developments being announced. Might be worth noting that the Apple store is currently offline so they can fill it with all the new goodies as they’re announced.

Apple iPhone running OS X anyone?

Engadget are also running full coverage with big photos like the one from above (hosted on kenmc.com, couldn’t go robbing bandwidth now could we?)