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Nokia will be online this week to discuss its environmental track record – post your questions in the comments below

Want to know how green the average Nokia phone is? For this week’s You ask, they answer, the Finnish mobile phone giant joins us to discuss its environmental track record and efforts, so start posting your questions below.

From humble beginnings as a wood pulp mill back in 1865, Nokia is now the world’s number one mobile phone company, with 37% of the global market share. Yet despite its size, the firm enjoys a good record with Greenpeace, holding the top-spot in the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics. However, Nokia lost points this year for failing to do “proactive lobbying” for the revised RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in electronics) directive.

Nokia has also highlighted the potential for mobile phones to collect real-time information about pollution and other local environmental data. Henry Tirri, head of Nokia’s research centre, has cited pollution as an area for which “killer” eco-apps might be created. “The things people don’t usually think about with location-based systems are aggregate things like traffic information, and collective information about air pollution and other environmental data,” he said.

Nokia is online from Monday to Friday this week to answer your environment questions – please post yours below.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Corporation to roll out official applications, beginning with BBC News in April and BBC Sport in May

The BBC has announced a new range of free applications that will deliver its online services to mobile devices, starting with BBC News in April. The BBC is also considering an iPlayer application for release later in the year.

BBC Sport will follow News, lauching its application in May. Both apps will be launched in a UK and a global version.

Announcing the new mobile services today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said: “It’s been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, but as media converges and technology accelerates, licence fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.”

A range of unauthorised BBC applications are already available and fairly popular. The new official applications now give licence payers an authorised alternative as mobile phones become more powerful and connectivity more accessible.

According to the second largest app store GetJar, an unauthorised version of BBC Mobile was downloaded 110,032 times by January. In December, the mobile BBC site attracted by 1,851,000 visitors.

BBC News

BBC News for mobile will not only provide users with updated breaking news including video and audio, it will also allow them to send comments and pictures directly to the newsroom. However, the demo of the new app reveals that the user integration isn’t as prominent as with the BBC’s international rival CNN.

The simple and intuitive navigation of thn ews app can already be tested online. “The main screen uses a carousel structure so you can quickly catch up on the news by sliding each row sideways to skim through the latest stories. You can also personalise the experience by reordering the rows to put your favourite news section at the top,” says David Madden of the future media and technology mobile team in a blogpost.

BBC News will first be available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, followed by the BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android later in the year.

BBC Sport

Starting with the football World Cup in South Africa, the sport app will focus on the live match experience. Content that is broadcast on TV by the BBC will be available for football fans as well as on-demand clips of every goal scored in the tournament. Users will also be able to access content from BBC Radio 5 Live, and live text commentaries from BBC presenters and blogs.

The 2010/11 English football season, Formula One and coverage of other sports will be added later in the year. While the UK version of the spoart app will be free, the global version will be released separately by BBC Worldwide and, in line with other international BBC Worldwide services, will feature advertising.

How will news organisations react?

The BBC iPlayer is already optimised for mobile browsers, and available for Nokia’s Ovi app store, but there are plans to make further versions available for other smartphones available to UK audiences only.

While news organisations have pinned their hopes on smartphone applications as a way to make revenue, the BBC will offer its applications for free. Recently, News Corporation’s James Murdoch said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

Should the BBC charge for its mobile applications or does its licence fee already include them? What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Comments by McGraw Hill’s chief executive have confirmed that the new Apple
tablet to be announced tomorrow will be running the iPhone operating system
rather than a version of OSX.

Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)

What would you want from a wine app? Or have you already found one which suits you?

Although I enjoy chatting to sommeliers (once I’ve laid my cards on the table regarding my meagre budget) and will always pick staff brains in a proper wine merchants, the fact is that sometimes you find yourself on your own when it comes to choosing wine. Disappointingly few supermarkets or chain off-licences employ anyone on the shop floor with a real passion for wine, so the idea of applications which can help you pick out a good bottle on the hoof, or identify an unknown grape on a restaurant wine list, is potentially a very exciting one.

Although the wine writers I contacted for recommendations all claimed to be technophobes (it must go with the territory), I found a fan in amateur wine buff and professional expert on mobile apps, Tim Harrison. He’s tested most of what’s out there and, he says, “came to the conclusion that there was a gap in the market since most of the apps I had tried failed either in the area of catalogue, functionality and relevance (and usually all three!)”.

The problem, in his opinion, that many apps are targeted at what he calls ‘vinoraks’, who have large cellars to manage, and the dedication to input detailed tasting notes for every glass, and the majority are aimed at US consumers, which makes price and stockist details irrelevant to the British user. However, there are a few which are worth their modest price-tags.

Wine Enthusiast Guide, £2.99 (MobileAge)

This is useful tool for anyone who’d like to pretend they know more about wine than they actually do (that’s everyone then). Puzzled by a word on the label, or unsure whether 1995 or 1996 was better for Alsatian whites? This app puts the information at your fingertips. It also features reviews from its namesake American magazine and allows you to create a list of your favourite wines, although annoyingly you can’t add your own comments. Search is by price, rating, style, varietal and region, so you can get quite specific and this one seems to have more of a world view than Drync (although still no English wine, sadly).

Wine Chap, £2.99 (Wine Chap)

A good-looking app that claims to be the first to evaluate restaurant wine lists, rather than individual bottles – so should you find yourself, say, at The Box Tree at Ilkley, you can mug up on their selection in the loo, and then breeze out and say authoritatively, after a mere glance at the wine list, “oh, the 2006 Cristom Vineyards Pinot Gris is terribly good value, we must order that!” There are also ‘first date wines’, ‘old school classics’ and ‘treat yourself’ options, specifically tailored to the menu, so, for example, a red from the Luberon at Edinburgh’s The Kitchin is recommended as ‘a sound pick for [chef] Tom’s game specialities’. This is an app which will become increasingly useful as their selection of reviews expands – at the moment, the list is very London-centric (although, for the frequent traveller, Hong Kong and New York are also well served).

Drync Wine Pro, £2.99 (Drync)

If you’re looking for information on a particular wine, then this is almost certainly the app for you as it searches 10 online databases, including Snooth, to bring you ratings on over 80,000 wines and reviews from the likes of Robert Parker. You can also build your own virtual cellar, add your own ratings, and see what’s top of other users’ wish lists. It’s rather US-centric, both in terms of featured bottles (strong on France and the Americas, not so hot on Australia or Eastern Europe, for example) and reviews (you won’t find anything from UK critics here), but it’s easy to use, and if you get lucky, there’s a few wines that can even be bought online from British stockists – although not many.

Wine Quiz, £1.19 (Berry Bros & Rudd)

This is an ideal app to have on your phone, being utterly frivolous and guaranteed to leave you feeling cross and worthless. It’s nothing fancy – just endless rounds of questions on the world of wine, with enough easy ones to keep you motivated and sufficient brain teasers to stop you throwing the phone away with a contemptuous curl of the lip; I’d like to think I’m not alone in failing to name the grapes used to produce ‘the Hungarian wine Egri Bikavér’.

Pair It!, £1.79 (Pair It)

This app is, as the name suggests, a tool that helps you match food with wine, and vice versa, and contains over 20,000 different suggestions, from the standard (Stilton and port) to the extremely niche (spicy citrus bourbon ribs with Asti Spumante, anyone?). Some of the dishes featured are so specific that a link to a recipe would be helpful, and a few of the suggestions are rather general – it suggests nearly 40 styles to go with a beef lasagne – but it’s not a bad tool to have with you in the supermarket, even if you’ll never need to know what to drink with a Sloppy Joe (white zinfandel, apparently which frankly sounds even worse than the thing itself).

There are of course mobile devices other than the iPhone available. We asked Neil Davey how those apps which run on the BlackBerry match up, and this is what he told us.

Wine of the Day, £2.79 (Enigma Games)

Does what it says, suggesting a new and interesting wine each day, but it doesn’t tell you what food to match with, where to buy, what the grape is (well, not all the time), or the price. The descriptions are pretty good though.

Cellar Rat, £2.09 (Telltale Social Media)

A wine rating app that uses emoticons rather than numerical ratings. Rates over 60 regions worldwide, and two decades of vintages. Designed for everyone from the novice to the expert. Generally favourably reviewed, it can help steer you to something on a wine list or a supermarket shelf – but it’s very general, not specific: hence Napa Valley is apparently good for 2005. Er … OK, but is that ALL wine in Napa?!

R-Vintage Lookup, £2.79 (REGARD Solutions Corporation)

Again, rates vintages – numerically – and also suggests “drink” or “hold”. A few reviews on the BlackBerry, mostly of the 4, 5 star variety. Not comprehensive by any stretch but would appear to be the best of its kind on the BlackBerry. Nice interface, simple to use.

Useful as these are in their own ways, none tap into what either Tim or I really want from a mobile wine guide – which is to have a trustworthy sommelier in our pockets, ready for all eventualities. We both agree that a regularly updated app which collated the recommendations of British critics would be helpful, so we could see at a glance what Jancis or Victoria or Jonathan were recommending that week, as would one which noted our favourite styles, and then alerted us when, say, our beloved Sicilian reds were on offer locally.

Tim, who has big ideas, even dreams of a programme which uses the barcode scanner tool already available on the iPhone to give you information about bottles on the shelf – “Wouldn’t it be great to scan something in Sainsbury’s,” he says wistfully, “read a few views from the press and your mates and then go and buy it more cheaply at Majestic?”

So, what would you want from a wine app? Or have you already found one which suits you?

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Comments taken out of context, truth lost in translation

Orange France has denied reports that a company executive admitted the existence of Apple’s much-rumoured iPad tablet.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

• We’ve just wrapped up CES, which took an interesting turn over the weekend as we head interesting comments from Microsoft on the Xbox, Intel’s Sean Maloney and Palm’s Jon Rubinstein. Full coverage here – including our stories, blog posts, videos and three special editions of the Tech Weekly podcast

• Fanning the flames of its war with Microsoft, Google said at CES on Friday that its next phone would focus on business users. Android chief Andy Rubin said might have a physical keyboard to sway heavy emailers away from Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.

• Away from the halls and corridors of Las Vegas, there was still plenty going on in the world this weekend. With airports bringing in more technology to screen passengers, US officials have said that, in part, a
reliance on technology was itself to blame for letting the Christmas bomber slip through the net. Basically, a White House review discovered that poor counterterrorism software couldn’t handle misspellings, and therefore didn’t pick up on the danger posed by Umar Abdulmutallab.

You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter
(@guardiantech.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

As the naughties come to a close, we take a look at the biggest technology stories of the decade – and how the Guardian reported them at the time

Sitting here at the tail end of a vast, sweeping recession, it may feel grim out there. There’s a good reason for that: it is. But for the technology industry, few collapses cut deeper than the dotcom bust that really hit crisis point in 2001.

That year was a defining moment for so many reasons: the attacks on September 11th were not only horrifying to witness (as millions of us did) but they have also warped the world’s political outlook ever since. Not only that, but thousands of people lost their jobs as the economy plunged, struck by the double whammy of the bust and the general climate of fear.

Personally, it was a time of transition. I got my first national newspaper byline (I think it was this article about a cancer-stricken blogger who turned out to be fake). It was the kind of story that told me something fundamental about the web: that the evolution we were seeing online was one that mirrored human nature, even at its most avaricious… and that meant it was where real life was starting to happen.

So, continuing our look back at a decade of the Guardian’s technology coverage, it’s time to cast our eyes over the top stories of the second year of our round-up.

2001

• Barely a day went by without news of one dotcom company or another going bust. Literally: by the end of 2000, closures were happening at the rate of more than one every 24 hours.
The dotcom crash was documented not only in our pages, but also in magazines like the Industry Standard – which itself went under in 2001. One article in March described the climate as “widespread start-up slaughter”, while Duncan Campbell took to the streets of San Francisco to witness the phenomenon of the pink slip party.

• Apple which had been in the doldrums for some time, started finding its way out of the woods once it announced the launch of Mac OSX early in the year. And how the company needed it: US sales had already fallen by 40% and Steve Jobs was struggling to make profit with its iMac and Cube computers.

• Early in 2001, the knives were out for Microsoft in a big way. The judge who ordered the breakup of the company labelled Bill Gates “dinosaur” and “miscreant”, while. A long serialised profile of Gates by Ken Auletta described him as a ‘chilly messiah with a mission to blank out the competitive world’. And yet the Microsoft juggernaut continued: the relentless acquisitions continued (listed in an article with the eerily prescient title of “Vista expands for Bill’s window on the world”) and by the end of the year the company had stretched out into yet another field by launching the Xbox console.

The company ended up sticking together, thanks in part to Auletta’s reporting, and we scanned over the potential competition which appeared to exist in the form of Linux, RealNetworks, AOL and Netscape. My, that wasn’t how things turned out, was it?

• With internet access and mobile phones beginning their incessant rise in the public’s consciousness, a poll looking at the way British people were dealing with these new-found technological riches discovered that 41% of us were regular texters. A survey by Oftel later that year found that 40% of households were now online (dial-up access, of course).

• And while September 11 was responsible for a lot of horrific things, the enormous outpouring of grief and astonishment online was among the most stunning. A number of bloggers documented the strikes on the World Trade Center – and a brand of hawkish political tirade began to establish itself as a recognisable force in blogging. In the US, politicians pushed through a series of draconian monitoring and enforcement laws known as Patriot Act, while Britain began to realise the breadth of things that the recently-enacted Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act granted.

Tomorrow it’s time for 2002 – but if you’ve got any memories of the crash, or anything else you were doing in 2001, then leave them in the comments.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

• The group has increased half-year profits to £75m, from £40m
• Demerger to create two separate stock exchange listed firms

Carphone Warehouse boss Charles Dunstone condemned as “crazy” government plans to combat online piracy by severing people’s broadband connections . The mobile phone retailer and owner of TalkTalk cheered investors by raising its profit forecast for the year.

TalkTalk, Britain’s second largest internet service provider behind BT, has threatened to take legal action if plans championed by Lord Mandelson to cut-off persistent unlawful online file sharers make it into law. An e-petition on the No 10 website against the law, which is part of the government’s Digital Economy Bill, has already garnered 26,000 signatories and the support of such technophiles as Stephen Fry.

“I do get the sense that the debate is moving in our direction,” Dunstone said yesterday. “People are coming to terms with the fact that what is being proposed subverts some of the basic principles of British justice. What’s being proposed is just crazy.”

His comments came as Carphone Warehouse said half year profits increased to £75m, from £40m last year as revenues rose 13% to £789m despite the gloomy economic climate. Accounting for the impact of writedowns, profits were £30m compared with a loss last year of £23m.

TalkTalk and the company’s retail business – named Best Buy Europe after its tie-up with American retailer Best Buy – did better than expected in the first half of the year and Dunstone predicted a strong Christmas quarter, meaning profits will exceed the City’s forecasts. Dunstone is hoping for strong sales of pre-pay mobile phones helped by cheap touchscreen handsets.

Carphone Warehouse, which bought Tiscali in May, is planning to demerge its retail business from its TalkTalk residential telephony and broadband operation by the end of the first quarter next year gave details about the demerger process today. There will be two separately listed businesses: TalkTalk Group PLC, which will have a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, and Carphone Warehouse Group PLC, which will have a secondary listing. The latter will comprise Best Buy Europe – its 50/50 partnership with Best Buy of the US – plus its 48.5% stake in Virgin Mobile France and Carphone’s property assets.

TalkTalk has secured £650m banking facilities for the post-demerger period meaning TalkTalk and Carphone will be fully funded for their anticipated medium-term requirements. Carphone Warehouse Group will not pay dividends for at least two years after demerger, while TalkTalk is expected to pay dividends from the outset equivalent to that of the current group with a progressive policy thereafter.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Two years ago, security researchers showed the Black Hat security conference how hackers could exploit vulnerabilities in Apple’s Safari web browser on the iPhone to steal your data or another exploit to send text messages or turn of the microphone to eavesdrop on you.

The first exploit required the iPhone owner to visit a website. Another exploit was triggered via a maliciously formed text message. Now, a malicious worm is biting its way through Apple’s iPhones.

The worm – called iBotNet.A by Intego or Duh virus by Sophos – looks for new victims on the networks infected iPhones connect to. The Dutch bank ING has linked the worm to a criminal network trying to steal its customers’ banking details.

Like computer worms, this bit of malware is also using techniques similar to botnets, which attack desktop computers. To be fair, some of the vulnerabilities have only been possible after users “jailbroke” their phones to run applications not authorised by Apple, or added features such as data tethering. They also had to install SSH and not change the default password, to which Apple has shown very little sympathy.

Such users should have considered themselves warned by another worm that Rickrolled users by changing their wallpaper to Rick Astley.

Are all iPhones vulnerable to this attack? To put this into perspective, only about 6-8% of iPhone users have jailbroken their handsets, according to InformationWeek.

Are all iPhone owners vulnerable? There have been vulnerabilities that affect all iPhones, but the recent attacks follow the lines of many computer attacks. Computer security experts will often say that the weakest point of computer security is PEBKAC – the problem exists between the keyboard and chair.

The weakest link is the computer user or the iPhone owner. There is a perverse irony that people who have cracked their iPhones are now being targeted by hackers.

Mobile phones used to be just that: phones that you could carry. They were able to make calls, send text messages and manage your contacts. Although smartphones have for a long time been described as handheld computers, it was more aspiration and marketing than reality until relatively recently.

Now, especially with the iPhone-driven apps revolution, smartphones can truly be called handheld computers. However, with great power can come great vulnerabilities. Just as we’ve had to learn how to keep our desktop computers secure, we’re going to have to learn how to keep our handheld computers, our smartphones, secure.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Finnish company Nokia admits that it has underperformed

The many touchscreen mobile phones that have hit the shops this year, from the Apple iPhone and Palm Pre to the HTC Hero, have continued to eat into the commanding lead once enjoyed by Nokia, with the world’s largest handset manufacturer reporting its first loss for over a decade.

The Finnish company admitted that it underperformed the overall mobile phone market in the three months to 30 September. The decision to slash the value of its networks joint venture with Germany’s Siemens, due to the continuing economic gloom, plunged the company into an overall quarterly loss of €913m (£836m) compared with a profit last year of €1bn. It is the first loss for the company since it started reporting on a quarter-by-quarter basis in 1996.

Nokia, which once made more than four out of every 10 mobile phones sold worldwide, has suffered as new entrants including Samsung, LG, Palm, HTC and Apple have barged their way into the lucrative market for so-called smartphones, devices that can access the web, send email and play music. Consumers are increasingly being offered a range of touchscreen devices, most recently the Palm Pre, Motorola Dext and BlackBerry Storm 2, which will hit Britain later this month. Nokia has been slow to react; as a result its average selling price has slipped as it has sold more so-called mid-range phones and its smartphone pricing has come under intense pressure.

The market as a whole, meanwhile, has been suffering as consumers have been holding off getting a new phone, instead switching to cheaper Sim-only deals because of worries about their own finances in the economic downturn. Nokia signalled in its third quarter results that this trend may be coming to an end, helped in part by the slew of attractive new touchscreen devices which operators are using to lure consumers on to long-term contracts. This year, Nokia expects industry mobile device volumes to be approximately 1.12bn units, down 7% from 1.21 bn units in 2008. That is a better performance than Nokia’s previous forecast of a 10% decline this year.

But Nokia itself does not appear to be capitalising on the pick-up, with its sales lagging the overall market in the third quarter.

Nokia said it reckons the entire mobile phone industry shipped 288m units in the quarter, down 7% on the same period a year ago, but up 7% on the second quarter. Nokia, however, shipped 108.5m units in the third quarter, which is down 8% on the same period last year and only up 5% on the previous quarter.

Nokia blamed a shortage of components for its poor third quarter performance compared with the wider market. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, its chief executive, said “We would have sold more devices and smartphones in the third quarter without the capacity constraints. The constraints did in fact hit the smartphone part of the business more than the rest of the devices.”

Nokia’s average selling price in the quarter was €62, at the same level as in the second quarter, but well down on last year’s €72.

Analysts believe Nokia has yet to come up with a real competitor to the iPhone. In a note issued after the results, Standard & Poor’s equity research team said Nokia’s overall market share actually fell in the third quarter, to 37.7% from 38.5% in the previous quarter and its share of the high-end smartphone market was also down. Nokia had originally forecast that it would grow its market share this year but was forced to ditch that forecast in July.

“While commentary that the demand environment for handsets improved during Q3 is encouraging, as is the improved industry outlooks for both handsets and infrastructure, we believe competitive pressures are intensifying and we see nothing from our preliminary read of results to change our view that Q4 will be challenging from both a market share and profitability standpoint,” the S&P team added.

Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at industry specialist Gartner, said sales of Nokia’s flagship N97 smartphone do not appear to have been exactly stellar. “Despite their positive comments on the N97 I am reluctant to say that sales of 1.8m for a flagship product are good enough. Moreover, as Nokia stated at the beginning of September that N97 shipped 1.5m devices since the launch we can see that sales are actually not accelerating.”

Nokia plans to launch four new touchscreen phones in the fourth quarter including the 5230 and 5530. Milanesi said she expects them to do well but “they will help drive volume, not necessarily value” because they are likely to be relatively cheaply priced.

Nokia stripped out smartphone sales for the third quarter, saying 47m “converged mobile devices” were shipped in the three months, compared with an estimated 44.2m units in the third quarter 2008 and 41m units in the second quarter 2009. Of that total figure, Nokia sold 16.4m units in the third quarter 2009, compared with 15.5m units in the third quarter 2008 and 16.9m units in the second quarter 2009.

Nokia’s share of the converged mobile device market was an estimated 35% in the third quarter 2009 down from 41% in the second quarter 2009, suggesting that consumers who were on Sim-only deals in the summer and have recently decided to take a phone on a long-term contract have not been rushing to grab a Nokia device, but instead plumped for rivals such as the iPhone.

In a note on Apple, American investment house Northeast Securities said it has run supply chain checks which indicate that shipments of the iPhone in September “exceeded [Wall] Street estimates of 7m by 25%-30%. Wider distribution and share gains were contributing factors”.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

A row over the pricing of an app upgrade on the iPhone, and hints about Guardian plans there, frame a debate: what’s worth paying for?

Money. Would you spend it on apps? It seems apposite to ask, since something of an argument has blown up inside the blogosphere over the upcoming release of Tweetie 2, a Twitter client (Twitter haters, your work is done) for the iPhone for which the developer, Loren Brichter, says – gasp! – that he will be charging $3 for the paid-for version, just as with the first one. And you don’t get a free upgrade from version 1. You want version 2, you pay for it.

Wait – you mean the updated version costs again? Yup, that’s right. It’s outraged a number of people, such as Just Another iPhone Blog (call them JAIB), which says Tweetie 2 will “spit on existing old app users” on the grounds that “the whole ‘it’s a completely new app’ argument seems like utter bullshit to me. It is still a Twitter app for **** [sic] sake. A slew of new features and functionality does not, to me, make it a different app.”

So the argument is that building a new framework around the content (which is free) shouldn’t attract a charge. It’s not clear whether JAIB would pay for a Twitter account; we’ll leave that hanging.

But now to add to the context, PaidContent has a post that says that the Guardian (that’s us) is planning to launch a paid-for iPhone app:

digital director Emily Bell told [PaidContent]: “It’s still in development, but we are working on an app which I can’t give you too much more detail on at the moment, although we are likely to charge.”

She added that getting apps into the app store is an “unpredictable business”, quite reasonably making a launch date difficult to give; The Spectator’s paid-for iPhone app took three months to get clearance from Apple.

So while the main guardian.co.uk website will remain free (Bell recently reacted strongly in rejecting a pay wall for Guardian.co.uk), it appears that its iPhone app itself will be paid-for, unlike several Guardian rivals.

I don’t know about the iPhone app or pricing plans or stuff like that. PaidContent (whose parent company I must point out is owned by Guardian Media Group, which also owns the Guardian and guardian.co.uk) seems to have what you need.

Here’s the interesting question. The announcement about Tweetie’s pricing suggests that people don’t think they should pay for rewritten apps (though of course they will pay for the hardware and the connectivity – £30 per month upwards). The announcement about the Guardian seeking to offer a paid iPhone app leaves open the possibility of charging for *extra* content in the app. (The Spectator does, for example.) A Guardian spokesperson said: “Initially it will be a one-off charge. We are committing to offering a core level of service for the one-off charge but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of charging for extra functionality at some point in the future.”

The content that a news organisation puts out isn’t identical every day; it’s sort of like building an app each day. (More tightly frameworked, but similar, if you get my drift.)

So which is really worth paying for? The software that provides the framework for the content? The content that hangs off the framework provided by the software? Both? Neither? What’s the balance? Let us know in the comments.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

This is what I’m reading. How about you? Leave links and why it caught your eye in the comments

• Twitter Mania In China: Another Microblogging Service Being Tested (SINA, SOHU) >> Silicon Alley Insider

• Facebook Phishers Target Notification Messages [ALERT] >> Mashable

• RentHop: What Apartment Listings on Craigslist Should Be >> Mashable

• New Ways to Create iPhone Apps on the Cheap >> Time

• Top 10 Most Exciting Web Apps or Services >> ReadWriteWeb

• Facebook’s PayPal Rival? Gift Marketplace On the Way >> Mashable

• The YCombinator list: Bump, Mixpanel, JobPic take off with newest class >> VentureBeat

• Baidu Hopes New Ad System Will Give Quick Lift To Revenues, Image >> paidContent.org

• Tesco Promises 2 Years of Service for Their Grocery API >> Programmable Web

• Droidify: An Unofficial Spotify Android App To Tide You Over >> TechCrunch

• You Don’t Need Bit.ly, Tr.im & Co.: Just Host Your Own URL Shortener >> ReadWriteWeb

• Report: Most Mobile Startups Hedge Their Bets By Developing Apps For All Major Platforms >> mocoNews

Via delicious

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Here is what I’m reading. How about you? Leave those links in the comments and why you found it interesting

• M&A Activity Heats Up In July To $9.6 Billion >> TechCrunch

• So Far the Palm Pre Isn’t Helping Sprint >> GigaOm

• How Much Do You Think Twitter Is Worth? How about a Half-Billion Dollars >> GigaOm

• Immersive Social Gaming: Twitter and Facebook on XBox >> ReadWriteWeb

• Does Yahoo Look Way Too Microsoft Pragmatic To Me Only? >> profy.com

• Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? >> Salon.com

• Chris Anderson: ‘Maybe Media Will Be a Hobby Rather than a Job’ >> Der Spiegel

• Daylife: The Aggregator That Newspapers Like >> The New York Observer

• Yahoo Stock Drops Big >> paidContent.org

• 15 Resources for Setting Up an E-Commerce Site with WordPress >> DesignM.ag

• Yahoo committed seppuku today >> Jason Calacanis

• Moving beyond personalisation >> Kathryn Corrick

• Spinvox, we stand by our story >> BBC dot.life blog

• Yahoo Gives In to Microsoft, Gives Up on Search >> BusinessWeek

Via delicious

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

paidContent: Robert Andrews asks Spinvox’s CEO to set the record straight after the story last week that the company is asking staff to accept stock instead of salary this summer

<img src=”http://paidcontent.org/images/site/logo_uk_secondary.png” style=”float: right;” alt=”Covering the UK’s Digital Media Economy paidContent:UK” align=”right” height=”25″ />Our story last week, that much-talked-about voice-to-text firm SpinVox, which got $100 million funding last year, was having to offer staff equity instead of salary, drew heated allegations from ex-staff about missing salaries, unpaid expenses and lavish company spending.

We asked CEO Christina Domecq to set the record straight. In a frank interview, which we are running in full in two parts, she says flying staff to a team party is important for morale, admits the US team had to go and blames the need for funds on the twin demands of expansion and the same credit crunch that’s hitting everyone else. But SpinVox may again have to draw on funds from backers including Goldman Sachs…

—On the share-for-salary offer: “It is normal for us to make offers of shares for salary, it’s not the first time it’s happened. Taking a business to cash-flow positive is a point of triumph and pride, especially in a market that requires as much investment as this one has – our ability to do this on our own, almost indignantly, is very important. The take-up was in excess of 50 percent – it should be; the employees that work here are very excited … employees of SpinVox today own in excess of 40 percent of the business … we have some very rich equity schemes for employees and this was just another. I’m assuming it was leaked by someone who doesn’t have equity, is angry and was terminated – one of the problems with letting people go is, they lose their equity, so it can create quite a few angry people out there and it’s part of the pains of growth and building a business.”

—Why is money tight right now?: Funding expansion and late payments from carriers: “We’ve got increased supplier demand globally. We grew five-fold in revenue last year and we’re growing another five-fold this year. To go from 30 million users to over 75, 100 million customers, that’s huge growth – we’re talking about doing that within 90 days. I’m not going to say the wireless carriers are the best payers on time – they’ll say they like to pay me within 30 to 45 days; they don’t. Across the board, we’ve seen carriers change their payment terms with us. We’re doing our best to manage day-to-day through this credit crunch like everybody else.”

—Has last year’s $100 million VC round been used up?: “We still have access, through our investors, to capital. Our investors will continue to fund the growth of this business – with this kind of growth, it means continued investment. It’s a point of pride for an entrepreneur and management team like ours to move in to EBITDA-positive and cashflow-positive and to get off the investors’ blood – it’s a really important transition point. There’s availability of growth capital from our investor base.”

—Does that mean new investment?: “Yes, it does mean additional investment, and also additional working capital facilities and additional debt facilities, because we need to continue expanding our infrastructure. I can’t say the banks are extremely helpful these days with facilities, so we are working with our current investor base and current hedge funds and anybody that works with us on extending facilities and creating the right environment for a growing business.” Does that go for Goldman Sachs as well? “Yes, it does.”

—Some people are claiming unpaid salaries and expenses: “We’ve never missed a payroll date in all of our history here; I can’t imagine that there are unpaid salaries. If there’s an unpaid expense, I can only assume the expense hasn’t been signed off or it’s a potential leaver. These may be cases of people who have been exited and believe that they’re due more than they are.”

—Do you still have the New York office?: “No, we don’t have the US office because we don’t need it. In New York, I only really have two employees based there now, and on the west coast I have several more. One of the worst decisions that I ever made was opening an office in Atlanta. We temporarily took some office in New York to be closer to our investor base, it had nothing to do with our employee base. Because of our success with some of our strategic partners on the west coast, I’m on the west coast a lot. We’re undecided on office in the US and not sure we need one. The ones who are still with me there seem generally very happy.” In the US, SpinVox has two carrier partners: “Alltel (NYSE: AT) and Cincinnati Bell, that’s really it.”

—So do you see emerging nations as more important than developed territories?: “No, I just think I need a better team in the US. The Canadian team has done really well, we’ve done deals with Rogers and Telus and SaskTel and we’re announcing another one shortly; you’ll find us owning all of the carriers in Canada, that’s a real testament to my team up there. In Latin America, we’ve got 13 deals. You begin to question one or two things – either our business model isn’t right in the US, or the team wasn’t right. We’ve taken the approach of, replace the team, we let about eight people go. It’s not easy to make those decisions – we build companies with people, letting people go is the worst part of my job.”

—Can you clarify the recent headcount issues?: “We’ve hired in Latin America, in India, Canada is doing very well for us. Our US strategic partnerships are working well, whether it be with voicemail vendors or others; we continue to invest in the team there. When it comes to our wireless carrier team, we’ve seen some turnover and we are currently recruiting, so it’s not a matter of downsizing, it’s a matter of rightsizing or finding the right people for that challenge. When you look at, we have over 30 carrier contracts worldwide and only two of them are in the US, it kind of questions the ability of that team and whether or not I made the right hiring decisions in the past; we have positions available in the United States right now. Back here at base (Marlow, England), we continue to invest in development and operational skills. In the US, in the last 60 days we had several layoffs; in the UK, we generally see an attrition rate of about 15 percent annually, usually through performance management; we do strive to keep the best of the best here. Headcount now is just under 300.”

—Some ex-employees have blamed the financial position on lavish spending: Claims sports cars were bought for senior staff, the Race Across America charity bike ride was a waste of money, flying every employee to London for a party and a private cruise down the Thames. “About 20 percent of employees do have a car as part of their package; these are all leased cars from our existing budget, it’s an agreed-upon budget that we’ve always had. We do believe in getting our team together on an annual basis for a summer party, it’s an important part of the culture, we happened to do it on a river boat last year which was very unique and good for people and also their families. I think there are some jealous and angry people who were no longer part of that and who were upset.

“The business didn’t pay for the Race Across America – the business got all the benefit of the branding, but actually we had tons of sponsorship for it. For me, it was a personal goal – I can’t tell you how many meetings I have with strategic partners, where the first thing they say to me is ‘I can’t believe you rode across America, how’s your bottom?’

“Leadership is about taking the good with the bad. It’s all within budget; building a global business is not cheap at all. I don’t think our business would continue growing – we’ve got 30 carrier contracts and are growing year after year as it is – if management were so poor. I don’t think we’d have such a great product or go from 30 million to nearly 100 million customers this year or have such a great technology team delivering such high rates of automation.”

In part two on Wednesday, Domecq explains human-helped voicemail transcription, organising for the recession and why the future looks bright…

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

BT has called for the government’s proposed £6-a-year broadband tax to be extended to mobile phone users in a move that could reduce the size of the tax.

In his Digital Britain report last month, the communications minister, Lord Carter, proposed a 50p-a-month levy on every fixed-line phone to meet the bill for getting the next generation of super-fast broadband networks to 90% of UK households by 2017.

But it is not only fixed-line companies that would be able to bid for some of the estimated £1.5bn that would be raised by the tax. Mobile phone operators would also be able to use the money. As a result, BT’s director of industry policy and regulation, Emma Gilthorpe, said yesterday that if mobile, wireless-based operators did go through that bid process then “the government should consider the opportunity to widen the base for the tax and possibly reduce the amount that each individual household pays”.

BT reckons it is incongruous that the levy only applies to fixed-line phones even though mobile phone companies and other businesses that want to use wireless solutions can bid for the cash for next-generation networks.

Carter proposed the new broadband tax because there is little chance of the market being able to make an economic case for pushing fibre-optic networks and other super-fast broadband services beyond about 60% of the population. With the Treasury unwilling to make any money available from general taxation, the telephone levy aims to plug the funding gap.

BT has already announced plans to invest £1.5bn over the next three years on a super-fast network but it will only reach four of every 10 homes. Virgin Media, meanwhile, is already offering broadband at 50Mb a second – the sort of speed expected from next-generation networks – but it covers only about half of the country.

Gilthorpe’s comments, at a Westminster Media Forum debate on Digital Britain, came as BT announced that it is speeding up the rollout of its next-generation network.

Having originally planned to have about half a million homes connected by next March, it yesterday said it would have 1.5m homes connected by next summer. By the end of this summer Virgin Media will have completed its next-generation network plan, putting its 50Mb a second service within reach of 12.5m homes.

But there are fears within the industry that Carter’s broadband tax could fail as it would require a new finance bill, which is unlikely to appear before next March. By then the government will be focused on a forthcoming general election and a new tax on consumers is unlikely to be a vote-winner.

• Internet, phones & broadband
• BT
• Telecommunications industry
• Digital Britain
• Mobile phones
• Broadband
• Stephen Carter
• Consumer affairs
• Tax

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(Source The Guardian)

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Compare Nokia E75 Deals & Prices Here

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The Nokia E75 is a high-end, high quality E-series smartphone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The E75 is a compromise between utility and size. It is not as slender as the Nokia E55, nor as slim as the E71 – with which it shares a similar specification and could be considered a direct alternative – but the E75 packs in an all-important full QWERTY keyboard. Considering this, it’s relatively slim and compact, just 14.4mm thick. The steel plated back of the phone oozes quality and style. Sadly this doesn’t continue around to the front of the phone, which is the same glossy plastic found on the Nokia N85 and N96 and may not be to everyone’s taste. The slide out keyboard is in a different class though, it is framed with chrome, very solid and is a joy to use.

The Nokia E75 undoubtedly appeals to professionals on the move, with its business-oriented software and Symbian S60 OS. The 2.4 inch screen is among the best on the market and remains legible in direct sunlight. There are a whole host of email clients supported. With 3G, HSDPA and Wi-Fi, this is a very handy device to have outside of the office. GPS is also present and a 4GB memory card is included.

Symbian S60 Feature Pack 2 is included, which means numerous software updates, making the E75 even better than the class-leading E71 when it comes to messaging and organisation. The camera and multimedia functions are not the main features of this phone; however they are still reasonable with a decent music and video player, FM radio and a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash.

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Compare HTC Touch Diamond2 Deals & Prices Here

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The HTC Touch Diamond2 is the successor to the highly popular Touch Diamond. The phone has a very sleek, professional look which will draw positive attention to itself in any arena. The most striking feature is its high resolution WVGA 480×800 pixel, 3.2 inch, TFT resistive touchscreen which will allow the user to fully exploit the impressive capabilities of the phone.

Another obvious design improvement to the Touch Diamond is the exclusion of its trackball navigation and the inclusion of touch sensitive zoom control which allows for magnification of photos, web pages, documents and texts. The included accelerometer is also a quirky addition. The phone comes with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional which incorporates pocket Office, comprising Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and PDF view. All of these features help make the device a very desirable prospect in the business marketplace.

The Touch Diamond2 comes bundled with a very respectable 5 megapixel camera which has auto focus for good quality image capture. As expected with most Smartphone’s the Diamond2 has Wi-fi, HSPDA (up to 7.2 Mbps), GPS and Bluetooth. Other features include the TouchFLO finger swipe navigation, touch sensitive navigation controls, handwriting recognition, a very good web browser, FM radio with RDS, a VGA videocall camera, the list goes on and on!

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Compare HTC Magic Deals & Prices Here

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The HTC Magic brings you everything you love about the internet, exactly how you want it. It will keep you entertained, up to date and in touch, wherever you are. Exclusive to Vodafone, the HTC Magic is the second mobile to run on the Android OS. The first was the T-Mobile G1. One of the most notable differences between the Magic and the G1 is the lack of a QWERTY keyboard. This makes the Magic slimmer, lighter and more pocket-friendly.

The 3.2 inch touchscreen interface is also an improvement over the G1, with plenty of little tweaks in the latest Cupcake incarnation of the Android OS. The Magic has an accelerometer for autorotation and the screen has the option of handwriting recognition or the onscreen QWERTY keyboard. The trackball makes it easy to navigate around menus and scroll though messages. It’s not to everyone’s liking and HTC have removed the trackball from their new Touch Diamond 2; however it’s not a drawback to the high powered performance of this phone.

As we get into what the HTC Magic can do, it becomes very impressive. The Android OS has Gmail, Google maps – including StreetView and YouTube all just a touch away. The HTC Magic is a practical business phone. It’s equipped with all the standard document viewers and with Wi-fi, Bluetooth and HSPDA (with download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps) this is a very useful device to have outside the office. The HTC Magic is a step up from the G1 and is probably going to be the best Android phone available for a while.

Features:
• Qualcomm® MSM7201a™, 528 MHz Processor	• Android™ Platform	• ROM: 512 MB, RAM: 192 MB Memory
• Size 113 x 55 x 13.65 mm	• 118.5 grams	• GP
• Bluetooth® 2.0	• Wi-Fi	• 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
• Up to 450 mins Talktime, Up to 420 hours Standby time.	• microSD Expansion slot	• Digital Compass
• AAC, AAC+, AMR-NB, MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC-LC, MIDI, OGG Audio & MP4, 3GP Video	• HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)	• 3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 320×480 HVGA resolution

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Compare T-Mobile MDA Vario IV Deals & Prices Here

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The MDA Vario IV from T-Mobile is based on the HTC Touch Pro. Similar to the MDA Compact IV and HTC Touch Diamond, the MDA Vario IV adds a slide out QWERTY keyboard for quick and easy texting and emailing. The MDA Vario IV is a 3G device with HSDPA, with Web’n’Walk it has fast internet access and it can be connected to your laptop for mobile broadband.

The Vario IV is relatively slim when compared to older Vario devices, measuring 18mm. But it still weighs 158g, mainly due to the powerful 1340 mAh battery.

Powered by the highly customisable Windows Mobile 6.1 OS the MDA Vario IV has a clever TouchFLO 3D interface. This allows your photos and music to be searched as you rotate the phone, or via finger gestures on its impressive screen. The screen itself is a 2.8 inch touchscreen TFT LCD with full VGA resolution. There’s a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash, video calling, TV on your phone, FM radio and Windows Media Player.

Built-in GPS completes the impressive feature list and CoPilot Sat Nav can be added as an optional extra.

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Compare Sony Ericsson F305 Deals & Prices Here

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The Sony Ericsson F305 is a gaming phone with a built-in motion sensor and a huge compendium of games including in the box. There are 11 premium games pre-loaded on the phone; Stuntman, Tropical Madness, Racing Fever GT, The Sims 3, Jewel Quest 2, Lumines, Asteroids, Quadrapop Robotics, Bowling, Bass Fishing and Jockey.

Some of the games are played using the motion sensor and even more motion games can be downloaded. With two phones players can compete against each other via Bluetooth. It’s an interesting concept and has almost certainly been inspired by the Nintendo Wii.

As a phone the Sony Ericsson F305 has a 2 inch display, a 2 megapixel camera with picture blogging and basic video record, email, stereo FM radio, stereo speakers, MP3 player, TrackID music recognition and stereo Bluetooth. Apart from its unique gaming feature it’s a low to mid-range phone.

The relatively small screen isn’t ideal for playing games and TV out might have made all the difference. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a Sony Ericsson slider phone, that’s good value for money, with some fun games built in then this could be for you.

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