Archive for October, 2007

Oh man, I can hardly wait. I am addicted to my T-Mobile Wing, and if Firefox was on there, I would never put the damn thing down.

Mozilla’s mobile Firefox browser, which the company said earlier this week is in the works, will likely be available for phones running Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux operating systems, a developer working on the project said.

Windows Mobile and Linux phones are likely initial candidates for the browser in part because those operating systems share code with their corresponding operating systems on computers, making it easier to build the mobile version of the browser, said Doug Turner, a Mozilla engineer working on the mobile project.

Of course, it’s going to be a couple of years, but I can wait…

I don’t even have an iPhone, and I know this is a stupid lawsuit.

Complaints over Apple Inc.’s use restrictions and recent software update for the iPhone have erupted in two lawsuits alleging Apple and its carrier partner, AT&T Inc., engaged in illegal monopolistic behavior.

Two separate lawsuits were filed in San Jose on Oct. 5 — one in federal court and the other in state court and both seeking class-action status.

Both cases accuse the companies of unfair business practices and violations of antitrust, telecommunications and warranty laws.

Apple spokeswoman Susan Lundgren and AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel both declined to comment on them Wednesday.

Wouldn’t this be like suing a jewelry store because the ring you were trying to melt down didn’t fit any more?

Okay… So here’s my unrelated story. I have a T-Mobile Wing. Thanks to the awesome power of Windows Mobile 6 I can set up 6 pop3 email accounts in addition to the Outlook Mail default eamil on the device. Last week I decided to hack the device to delete the Outlook Mail, since I do not use Outlook. After hacking the registry to remove Outlook Mail, the messaging on the Wing, text messaging, email, etc. No longer worked. It literally killed the Wing.

Of course, I was able to do a hard reset to return the phone to it’s pristine naturally installed state so I could start all over installing stuff on it again.

Long story short. If you hack a device and that hack results in killing your device, either through the hack itself or a software update, it is YOUR FAULT. Not your cell phone provider, not the company that makes the phone, not the company that designed the software. It is YOUR FAULT.

Got it yet?

I am a Twitter fan. A complete, addicted Twitter fan. Sure, I’ve tried Jaiku, but I didn’t like it. I am not going to knock it, it’s just not something I would use. I did try though, twice. Didn’t work for me. I bet everyone at Google has silver cufflinks, don’t they?

Google announced on Tuesday it is buying Jaiku, a Finnish startup specializing in letting friends use mobile telephones to share what they are doing at any given moment.

Google is making a priority of following Internet users as they go mobile and is even reported to be crafting a “gphone” with an open-source software platform tailored to its online services.

Jaiku is a social networking and mini-messaging service that enables people to keep track of each others’ activities while on the move using curt missives sent to mobile telephones.

The Helsinki-based firm founded early last year by Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen has been compared to the popular US-based service Twitter.

The reason I love Twitter? It’s simple. It isn’t hard to use and literally anyone can use it.

I think it’s great that Google bought Jaiku. But in all honesty, it’s just another Google service I don’t plan to use anytime soon.

A few weeks ago, my Blackberry 8700g died. Well. Let me rephrase that. A few weeks ago, the scroll wheel on my Blackberry 8700g decided it wasn’t going to play nice anymore. That makes the third time this has happened. It happened twice on the first Blackberry I owned, and got fixed once, and now it has happened on the almost brand new one. When it comes to success with the Blackberry, it sucks to be me.

It doesn’t matter now. Because I got a T-Mobile Wing instead. All I can say is, I love it. It took me about 4 days to get used to it, and to get everything installed and set just the way I like it. Then again, I am quite anal about the way my phone/pda works, so it took some getting used too.

I got it all set up, and then I tried to hack Windows Live out of the email, because, well, I don’t use it, and I could use the extra spot for one of my real email accounts. Anyway, I turned the phone into a brick when it came to messaging. I had to perform a hard reset and start over. Sigh…

Long story short, after a long afternoon and night, I got it all back the way I want it (yes, I am getting quicker at configuring things) and tonight I learn Twitter has a new feature. Well, I am not sure how new it is, but I just found out about it tonight while I was reading Justine’s blog.

Who knew I could track keywords and get updates on my phone even if I am not following the people who use those keywords? Now that is awesome. I love the feature, but I am so excited right now, I can’t think of what I want to track. Once I settle down and think of what I want to track, it’s going to be fun sending ‘track this’ and ‘track that’ to 40404.

Have you tried Twitter tracking? If so, what do you track?

Good news for Vonage customers.

Internet phone company Vonage Holdings Corp. took a step back from the brink Monday, saying it has settled for $80 million a patent suit filed by Sprint Nextel Corp.

On Sept. 25, a jury in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., found that Vonage infringed on six Sprint patents, and ordered Vonage to pay $69.5 million in damages.

Monday’s settlement resolves all claims in the dispute, the companies said.

Sprint agreed to license Vonage its portfolio of more than 100 patents on connecting calls between a regular telephone network and a packet-switched network such as the Internet.

The $80 million Vonage agreed to pay consists of $35 million for past use of the patents, $40 million for a fully paid future license, and $5 million in prepayment for services.

Now if they can just stop spending almost $300 to grab each customer, they just might make it. Maybe they should start working on some succession planning or something, because something tells me they will be changing up management soon.

I wonder if it makes phone calls?

It can take your pulse, check your body fat, time your jogs and tell you if you have bad breath. It even assesses stress levels and inspires you with a pep talk. Meet your new personal trainer: your cell phone.

The prototype Wellness mobile phone from Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc. targets users with busy lives who want a hassle-free way of keeping track of their health, according to company spokesman Noriaki Tobita.

The phone, unveiled this week at the CEATEC electronics show outside Tokyo, has an inbuilt motion sensor that detects body movement and calculates how many calories you burn.

The sensor can tell whether you’re walking, running, climbing stairs, or resting, and counts the calories accordingly to tally daily totals, Tobita said.

All they need now is the ability for the phone to burn the calories for you, and the device would be perfect. Then again, moving some of these plasma tv lifts around the room might give you the same results, yes?

Hahaha. I had to laugh when I read this article. The woman who owes the RIAA over $200,000 says she will pay it herself. She’s not looking for a handout. But she won’t turn one away.

Jammie Thomas makes $36,000 a year but says she’s not looking for a handout to pay a $222,000 judgment after a jury decided she illegally shared music online.

“I’m not going to ask for financial help,” she told The Associated Press on Friday. But she added, “If it comes, I’m not going to turn it down, either.”

Record labels have sued more than 26,000 people they accuse of downloading and offering music for sharing online in violation of copyright laws. Many of those people have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

So what was the point of that article then? Exactly.

They could have done a better job talking about her coffee habit, animal jewelry obsession, or some other unrelated thing and it would have made more sense.

$9,250 per song? Holy moly. No wonder the music industry still has trouble digesting 99 cent per song downloads.

The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

Thomas and her attorney, Brian Toder, declined comment as they left the courthouse. Jurors also left without commenting.

I can understand making your point, but didn’t this take it just a bit too far? They charged her for 24 songs, but they say she shared 1,702 songs. I guess she should be thankful they didn’t whack her for all 1,702 of them huh?

Man… That’s one area where you definitely don’t want to see the blue screen of death…

Microsoft Corp. launched a Web site Thursday for managing personal health and medical information, but privacy advocates worry that neither the technology nor U.S. law will protect patients’ most confidential details.

From the consumer’s point of view, Microsoft’s HealthVault site is part filing cabinet, part library and part fax machine for an individual’s or a family’s medical records and notes.

Unless of course they came up with a way for us to reboot when our time comes.

Is anyone actually excited about this news? I didn’t see anyone else talking about it yesterday.

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) introduced on Tuesday three new models of its Zune digital media player that wirelessly and automatically update their music, photos and videos when placed near a user’s computer.

They mark the second generation of Microsoft’s answer to Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iPod, which has sold more than 100 million units in various shapes and sizes since its 2001 launch.

By comparison, Microsoft joined the fray last year with a single 30-gigabyte Zune model and has sold 1.2 million units.

The new Zunes will come in 4-gigabyte, 8-gigabyte and 80-gigabyte models. All will come with a feature that allows a user to automatically sync media via a WiFi network from a PC to the Zune when its battery is charging.

Why wouldn’t they talk about something like this? Maybe people have just had enough news about bricks this week. People seem as excited about Zune’s as they do about Patriots tickets. Although, I would take Patriot tickets over a Zune, any day.