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Apple announces social networking service which will display the music interests of friends via iTunes, iPhones and iPod TouchHaving cornered the MP3 player, mobile phone and computer tablet markets with the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices respectively, last night Apple announced its latest expansion – into social media – with Ping.Ping will be integrated into Apple’s latest iTunes software update and will enable users, or “Pingers”, to follow musicians, friends and others to see details including what music they’re buying and what concerts they’re attending.Steve Jobs, Apple’s chairman and chief executive, said the information will arrive in a long stream of updates, similar to the way Facebook and Twitter work.”Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up,” he said adding that users can choose to automatically accept followers or decide on a follower-by-follower basis – similar sounding controls to those on Twitter.The service is available immediately to more than 160 million iTunes users, Jobs said, and will also be available across the iPhone and iPod Touch ranges.The feature is believed to have been based on the technology Apple acquired with the purchase of the former online music store Lala.com last year.The iTunes logo will no longer feature a CD – mirroring the change in the program’s focus.Jobs unveiled a range of other upgrades to its products and services, including a new version of Apple TV – which will allow users to stream television programmes and films.The company is also releasing a revamped range of iPods, including an iPod touch with front- and rear-facing camera, Jobs told an assembled crowd of journalists, bloggers and analysts in California.Until now the Apple TV device was “never a huge hit”, admitted Jobs.The box originally allowed users to buy films and television programmes, but the latest version, which is smaller and, at $99, much cheaper than its $229 predecessor, will only allow the renting, rather than purchasing, of content.Users will pay $4.99 for high-definition films on the day they come out on DVD, while the rent of high-definition TV shows will be $0.99, Apple announced.”We’ve sold a lot of them, but it’s never been a huge hit,” Jobs said of Apple TV. The new version will be available within a month.Jobs also introduced a new design across the range of iPods, including the latest Nano, featuring a rotatable screen and a new Shuffle which sees the return of buttons – its predecessor was voice activated.The new iPod Touch will have front- and rear-facing cameras, the latter of which will be able to record HD video content, Jobs added.AppleComputingSteve JobsitunesSoftwareiPodiPhoneMobile phonesTelecomsUnited StatesAdam Gabbattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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Apple launches a music-based social network called Ping as part of its latest upgrade to the iTunes music software.

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60 days to prove lack of security The Indian government has granted BlackBerry users a two-month stay of execution, while it evaluates RIM’s latest interception facility and serves notice to Google and Skype.…

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

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Or, take a SIM only deal on a 12 month contract and get a free Bluetooth headset using voucher code FREEBT. Just £10 a month gives you 300 minutes and unlimited texts.

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The device combines the benefits of a powerful modern smartphone with some of those of an iPadI’ve been a heavy user of Google Calendar and Contacts for a couple of years now, and that is why I first started using an Android phone, the HTC Magic. My boyfriend recently got the HTC Desire which showed me how the Magic was getting dated, so I decided it was time to upgrade.However, as an SMS-addict and avid tweeter I found the small keyboard on my old phone a bit fiddly and didn’t see that improving with the latest incarnations. Added to that, we recently got an iPad and I liked its convenience for reading articles. I didn’t want to be carrying yet another device around in my handbag, though. So, when I heard about the Dell Streak it sounded perfect: one device that combined the benefits of a powerful modern smartphone with some of those of a ‘pad.I ordered it straight from Dell, SIM-free, for £449. Taking it out of the box I was immediately impressed with the look and feel. It is slim and dense, but not too heavy, and sexily sleek all in black. I find it balances surprisingly well in my left hand, naturally lending itself to being held sideways (landscape). It is also not so large that it cannot fit in a man’s suit or shirt pocket.Actually making calls on the phone in public can be a little ‘Dom Joly’ due to its size. However, that is easily addressed with a Bluetooth earpiece and was not unexpected.The 800 x 480, five-inch screen is crisp, clear and bright, and I am now regularly using it to read the Economist or New Scientist on the train. The 1GHz Snapdragon processor is blisteringly fast, as is the HSDPA 3G and WiFi, making the browsing experience similar in speed to that of a netbook. With K9Mail I can even now access my industrial-strength IMAP mailbox (250 folders and more than 200,000 emails), something I have not previously managed on a phone.As for the 16GB storage, I’m barely scratching it despite telling Spotify to download all my playlists. There is plenty of space for downloading films, and the playback quality of those I’ve tried was great. Sadly there is no BBC iPlayer support, yet.Unfortunately there are other issues, though mostly minor. The supposedly near-indestructible Gorilla glass screen has been disappointing. In three weeks my Streak has picked up a number of fine scratches, two of which I now regularly notice when using it.Further, unlike the HTC Desire or Google’s Nexus One my Streak was shipped with the now ageing Android 1.6 operating system, complete with a number of irritating quirks and bugs despite Dell’s customisations. I have even had to remove the battery to force a reset after a particularly bad crash. The keyboard has also been disappointing, mainly because of the software. Unlike my HTC Magic, the auto-correction system seems over-complex and counter-intuitive, and I can no longer blindly touch-type.The default software bundle could also be better. As an experienced Android user I was fine, just downloading my usual set of apps and syncing up with Google. Those used to the intuitive ease of Apple’s products and without previous Android experience may find it a somewhat steep learning curve. However, Android 2.2 for the Streak is coming out soon and I expect that will be a big improvement.In summary, despite some minor niggles, the Dell Streak is an excellent device. I also think my experiment of trying to get the benefits of a ‘pad and a smart phone in one device has worked. It is big enough to be easy to read, watch or interact with for extended periods but small enough to be highly portable, with all the other benefits of a high-end smartphone. It is a little let down by its older operating system, but even Android 1.6 still overall excels. If you like the idea of a hybrid pad-phone then this could be for you, even if not an Android user. The small investment of time to get to grips with Android would certainly be worthwhile in order to get the full benefits of this device.Pros: Big, crisp screen; fast processor and commas; slim, sleek and good-looking.Cons: No Android 2.2 (yet); poor typing auto-correction; weak software bundle.Dell Streak, £449 (SIM-free).Specs: 5″ 800 x 480 multi-touch screen, Android OS, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 processor. 5MP rear camera, VGA front-facing camera. Browser: WebKit (Android). Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB2.0. Plays: MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, Midi, WAV, H.263 / H.264, .3GP, MPEG4, WMV. Size: 152.9 x 79.1 x 9.98 mm. Weight: 220g.Kate Craig-Wood is CEO of Memset Dedicated Hosting.Mobile phonesAndroidguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Buy Mobile Phones have the Samsung Galaxy Portal I5700 available on 3’s £12 Internet Talker tariff, plus they’ll send you £15 automatic cash back.
The deal is subject to a 24 month contract and comes with 300 minutes per month, 500MB data, 300 texts, an extra 300 minutes to call other mobiles on 3 plus all of the other 3 Mobile benefits such as free Skype-to-Skype calls. It’s a hefty package for just £12 per month.
The Samsung Galaxy Portal I5700 is a touchscreen Android phone with a fast and powerful 800 MHz processor. Ideal for leisure and business users it supports HSDPA and Wi-Fi for fast web browsing when you are out and about, plus it has built-in GPS.
The capacitive 3 inch AMOLED display has a built in accelerometer which is great for viewing web pages, photos and videos. With expandable memory up to 16GB via a microSD card this smartphone is packed full of fantastic features.

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Mozilla has released the fourth beta of its latest Firefox browser, claiming
improved responsiveness, syncing and tabbed browsing functionality.

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16 to 24-year-olds particularly adept at juggling act, cramming nine and a half hours of media into six and a half hours of actual timeBritons are juggling several types of media at the same time to sate their appetite and leave enough time for everything else in their lives, the Ofcom study reveals.The average media consumer’s digital day is seven hours and five minutes. From breakfast radio to peaktime evening TV, via surfing and texting at home or at our desks, media takes up 45% of our time.The actual amount being consumed is even higher, Ofcom believes, with the boom in mobile computing helping Britons to multitask. “The ability of people to surf the web on their laptop while also watching TV has given people a licence to roam while staying connected,” said Peter Phillips, Ofcom’s strategy and market developments partner. A fifth of our media time is this kind of “simultaneous” consumption.Those aged between 16 and 24 are particularly adept at this juggling act, and are mopping up more media than any other age group. They cram nine and a half hours worth of media into six and a half hours of actual time – data that suggests the cliche of the youngster loafing in the lounge is an unfair one.”Sixteen-to-24-year-olds go out more, and spend less time watching TV,” Phillips commented. He also acknowledged that this multitasking can mean we devote less attention to any one media source, although this was more pronounced when using new technology. It appears we are simply better at combining reading, landline calls or TV watching with another activity without our attention drifting.Discovering that teenagers are happier than their parents to combine web surfing, phone calls, tweeting and TV is not exactly a revelation, and Ofcom’s research does show that some other truisms also still apply. The over 55s are still wedded to their TVs and radios (67% of all the media they consume), while computers, mobile phones and handheld gadgets make up 58% of 16- to 24-year olds’ media diet.But there are also plenty of surprises in this latest snapshot of the UK marketplace. The gap between the way different generations use old and new media is closing fast. For the first time, more than 50% of over-55s have broadband at home, and a third are sending and reading emails each day.There have also been some interesting changes in the importance people give to different media activities. Half of all adults said they would miss TV the most, up from 44% in 2005, followed by 15% who cited the internet (up from 8%) and 11% who would pine for their mobile phone (up from 10%). Hi-fi equipment and CD players have fallen most sharply in our affections with a mere 2% of people saying they would miss them the most, down from 13% four years ago. For the 16 to 24 age group, though, the mobile phone would be missed nearly as much as the telly.But the death of television as the dominant media platform appears to be far away as ever. TV continues to take centre stage in the evenings, partly due to the success of talent shows. However the box in the corner of the room is increasingly likely to be a high-definition flatscreen. More than five million households now have a HD set, up from 1.9 million in March 2009.”Television still has a central role in our lives. We are watching more TV than at any time in the last five years,” said James Thickett, Ofcom’s research director.While Simon Cowell can take some credit for maintaining the nation’s TV fix (measured at three hours and 45 minutes per day), another factor is the growing demand for time-shifted viewing, thanks to digital video recorders as well as catch-up TV services such as the BBC iPlayer or ITV Player.”The ability to watch what we want when we want it is bringing people back into the living room, said Phillips. Commercial broadcasters should not rejoice too much, though, as DVR owners have the option to skip through the adverts.While TV appears to have maintained its ability to hold our attention, 17% of viewing is still taking place alongside another media format – typically a computer or mobile phone.Smartphone sales have risen rapidly in the UK in recent years, up 81% in the 12 months to May. The research shows this led to much more media consumption “on the go”, although in many cases people appear to be heading straight for Facebook and staying there.The social networking site makes up 45% of the total time spent online on mobile phones during December 2009, Ofcom said. This may have been skewed by a surge of family photos or amusing Christmas party pictures, although the regulator also cited more recent data that illustrates Facebook’s remarkable “stickiness”.”The average user spent around six hours and 30 minutes on Facebook in May 2010, compared with nearly one hour 30 minutes for users of Google, and nearly two hours for users of MSN [Microsoft] services,” said the regulator. Twitter holds second place on the social networking ladder ahead of MySpace and LinkedIn, with traffic to its website up 56% in the past year.Increased adoption of high-powered mobile phones also means that more young people are abandoning their fixed broadband line.Ofcom’s research also shows the impact of the recession. Revenues in the telecoms industry were badly hit in 2009, falling for the first time since the regulator started tracking this data in the early 1990s. Ofcom said this was also due to increased price pressure as operators try to lure customers to take a bundle of services, and a tailing-off in the boom in mobile phone and broadband connections.With TV revenues contracting, it was little surprise that the amount consumers spend on communications fell again to £91.24 per month. Five years ago we spent an average of £100.71 per month. “Consumers are using communications services more – including phone calls, texting and the internet. Yet they are paying less despite getting more, partly through buying in bundles,” said Ofcom.Digital mediaSocial mediaSocial trendsOfcomInternetMobile phonesGadgetsGraeme Weardenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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Police move to shut down criminal network suspected of global fraud using premium-rate phone lines and stolen iPhonesPolice have moved to shut down a criminal network suspected of running a complex global scam which made millions of pounds from UK mobile phone networks using stolen iPhones and premium-rate phone lines.Eight men and one woman were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud in a series of early morning raids across England today.Officers had been investigating a complex conspiracy where mobile phones were purchased using false identities, and then the SIM cards used to call premium-rate phone lines owned by people involved in the scam.City of London police detectives seized dozens of mobile phones, hundreds of SIM cards, thousands of pounds in cash and fake documentation from homes in Southend, Walsall, central Birmingham, Middlesbrough, and Forest Gate and Southall in London this morning.The raids followed a month-long investigation into a rapidly growing criminal conspiracy profiting from the theft and illegal use of almost 1,000 mobile phones – the vast majority of which were iPhones.SIM cards were removed from illegally obtained phones then shipped abroad and plugged into automatic dialling machines, which repeatedly called lines that charged up to £10 a minute and were owned by members of the conspiracy.The cards accrued enormous bills in a matter of weeks, which were paid by mobile phone networks, but when the companies contacted the registered owners they invariably found people who had fallen victim to identity fraud.O2 was one of the networks hit by the scam, and had £1.2m stolen through premium phone lines in July alone. They contacted police with the results of their own investigation and worked in partnership with detectives from the City of London police – the national lead force for fraud – to uncover an elaborate and expensive fraud.Police now believe a gang of West Africans bought mobile phones on contracts from high street stores using false identities and stolen or fraudulent credit cards.The gang predominantly targeted iPhones for their high resale value. Once the phones were purchased they were sold to a middleman, believed to be based in Birmingham, who would split the SIM cards and handsets before selling the phones to criminal contacts abroad.The SIM cards were then sold to a gang based in London and Essex who were involved in running the premium phoneline scam.Police arrested several members of the gang, all of whom are of Pakistani origin, at homes in Forest Gate, Southall and Southend this morning.They are suspected of setting up a complex network of shell companies to launder the profits from the premium phone lines and hide their identities.At one home in Forest Gate, police found hundreds of SIM cards, £15,000-worth of iPhones still in their boxes, 20 bank cards and several fake passports. At another property they uncovered hundreds of letters that had been prepared to try to con people out of their savings with a promise of a lottery win, a scam known as a 419 con.Investigators have traced the stolen handsets and SIM cards all over the world, including several countries in the Middle East, continental Europe and Vietnam.Police are now hunting to find out where the profits went, as many of those involved lived “under the radar” in council houses with few obvious assets, apart from relatively expensive cars.Detective superintendent Bob Wishart said officers had struck at “a highly sophisticated criminal network” that had been targeting the telecommunications industry and stealing millions of pounds.”Our investigation found a crime gathering momentum,” he said.”Each month more SIM cards were being used to make more phone calls to premium-rate lines at more expense to the network provider.”The criminal exploitation of the latest consumer technology is a recurring theme of our work.”Our collaboration with O2 on this investigation highlights the benefits of how the private sector can work with the police to proactively target common threats to our communities.”Adrian Goreham, responsible for tackling fraud at O2, said: “This was a sophisticated and organised attempt to defraud mobile phone operators.”We are committed to reducing mobile phone crime and have a dedicated team that monitors and investigates such attempted criminal activity.”CrimeMobile phonesiPhoneAdam Gabbattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Onestopphoneshop have the new Sony Ericsson Spiro on Orange with a massive £552 cash back. Line rental is just £25 per month, for that you get 400 anytime minutes to any network and unlimited texts.
The catch is that you need to claim the cash back in five stages by sending off your bills at month 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18. Onestopphoneshop is part of The Carphone Warehouse and claiming cash back shouldn’t be too difficult. The dates which you need to send off your bills are detailed after you place your order. Place reminders on your calendar and you could bag the latest Walkman phone with loads of minutes and texts plus £552 cash.
The total cost of the contract over 24 months will be just £47.76 after cash back, or effectively £1.99 per month on average.
What about the phone? The Spiro is one of the latest releases in the Walkman range. This compact slider features a 2.2 inch QVGA TFT screen and palm friendly dimensions of 92 x 48 x 17mm. The Walkman player offers a great music experience with TrackID music recognition and PlayNow that allows you to easily download new music to your phone. Listen to your favourite tracks with your own headphones via the 3.5mm audio jack or with a Bluetooth headset.
Social network integration with quick access to Facebook and Twitter ensures you get the latest updates when out and about and the web browser with GPRS/EDGE gets you to the latest news, weather and gossip quickly and easily.
The modest 2 megapixel camera takes great snaps and features 2x digital zoom and video recording capabilities. Store your captured moments on the expandable memory (up to 16GB) or share with family and friends via MMS or Bluetooth. The Sony Ericsson Spiro is a dual-band handset and also includes a FM Radio, calendar and built-in speakerphone.

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RIM has released the latest version of its free BlackBerry Enterprise Server
(BES) Express software, which allows the smartphone to synchronise wirelessly
with Microsoft Exchange and Windows Small Business Server.

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India has become the latest country to inform RIM that it will block key
BlackBerry services if it is not given access to encrypted data streams.

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Malware posing as movie player sends premium-rate text messages – but permission alert should protect careful usersTwo new attacks on Android mobile phones and other devices have been uncovered by security firms.One, a piece of malware posing as a movie player, sends text messages to premium-rate numbers, collecting charges applied to the user. Kaspersky Labs, which found the program, claims it is the first SMS-based malware attack on mobiles running Google’s Android operating system. It is thought to be most prevalent among Russian users; the threat to worldwide users is said to be low.Prior to installation, as required by Android’s application permissions, the “Media Player” asks users to confirm permission for the application to run “services that cost you money (send SMS messages)”.A statement released by Google said:”Our applications permissions model protects against this type of threat. When installing an application, users see a screen that explains clearly what information and system resources the application has permission to access, such as a user’s phone number or sending an SMS.”Users must explicitly approve this access in order to continue with the installation, and they may uninstall applications at any time. We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust. In particular, users should exercise caution when installing applications outside of Android Market.”This application is not thought to have been available in the Android Market, so affected users would have had to change a default setting on their handsets to allow installation of it from an external website.Meanwhile, the British security firm MWR InfoSecurity has found a flaw in the internet browser of Android versions 1.6 to 2.1, allowing an attacker to remotely access a user’s internet history – including sites visited, cookies, usernames and passwords – by code injected in a compromised website, or through an unsecured Wi-Fi network.The vulnerability was reported to Google’s Android team in May this year, according to the security firm. A fix present in the latest version of Android, 2.2 Froyo, eradicates the problem, while Android is said to be working on a patch for previous iterations.Alex Fidgen, MWR’s commercial director, advised users simply to avoid using unsecured Wi-Fi networks. He said: “This is one of the most serious implications in mobile technologies to date and calls into question fundamental assumptions about mobile phone security.”The best way an attacker could affect this is to mimic an unsecured network or spoof an access point – this has been around years. [Attackers are] all using techniques that have been around years now.”This is a really serious problem, there’s no two ways about it. Mobile companies are not encorporating security enough while smartphone adoption is increasingly widespread.”The flaws could have been ‘fixed’ when the mobile phone companies issued new operating software recently but they did nothing.”AndroidMobile phonesData and computer securityJosh Hallidayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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Saudi Arabia agrees to let BlackBerry messaging continue for now as India becomes the latest country to address security concerns.

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Google and Apple are gearing up to launch ads on their apps, a strategy which is set to change the advertising landscape for everBritish mobile users will soon find themselves embroiled in the epic confrontation taking shape between Apple and Google. iAds, Apple’s bid to run advertisements inside apps, is expected to make its UK debut in September. Separately, Google has adopted what its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, calls a “mobile first” approach, prioritising investment in a medium that has become “fundamental to everything we do”.With the iPhone moving into mass market territory and the iPad selling 200,000 units a week, Apple’s decision to start selling mobile advertising seems likely to concentrate a few media minds.In early June, Steve Jobs demonstrated iAds in front of Apple developers in San Francisco. The ad he showed off was a work-in-progress by Nissan. The demo, which included a 15-second video, an interactive application and a form to sign up for a competition, didn’t quite live up to Jobs’s aim of “trying to combine the emotion of video with the interactivity of the web”. But it was slick. In the future, Jobs promised, iAds would bring in the revenue that would allow developers to continue producing “free and low-cost apps to delight users”.There are early signs that mobile advertising, like everything else touched by Cupertino’s genius, will turn to gold. During the eight weeks leading up to the presentation in San Francisco, Apple sold $60m-worth of iAds to the likes of Unilever and Disney. This compares with the $250m mobile online display revenue generated across the whole of 2009 in the US.For media owners, there are two major problems with Apple’s ad model, which the analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research suggested in a recent report has the potential to become an $800m-a-year business within the next year.First, Apple’s approach threatens to reduce media owners to the status of “developers” alongside tens of thousands of competitors. The second problem is that Apple’s business model, like Google’s, reduces media owners’ involvement in advertising markets to a minimum.Mobile giantsApple and Google already own the world’s two largest mobile ad networks. Both are already selling ads directly to advertisers. Advertisers, for their part, aren’t paying to reach mobile users attracted by a specific media company. Instead, in the case of iAds, they pay Apple to reach broad swaths of iPhone and iPad users who share common demographic characteristics.In order to stitch together these communities of users, Apple has been analysing the purchasing history of its 150 million iTunes account holders worldwide who also use iPhones and iPads. Its own hardware produces a separate stream of data about what users do, and where and how they do it. Notably, the privacy policy associated with the iPhone 4 allows Apple, for the first time, to collect anonymised real-time location data on its users.How much of this data will Apple share with advertisers and publishers? “We talk to Apple a lot,” says one publisher. “But we haven’t had that conversation yet.” The ad industry seems similarly uncertain. Michael Collins, the chief executive of Joule, a WPP-owned mobile agency, recently told Business Week that data sharing is “the question that many of us in the industry are very curious about”.Google, too, is forging ahead, but in a different way. On the mobile web, it continues to emphasise lead generation rather than branding. Ian Carrington, director of mobile ad sales for Google Europe, Middle East and Africa, sketches out a scenario in which a mobile user is reading a book review on a handset in a cafe. “The accompanying ad will understand its context,” he says. “It will know what book is being discussed in that review. He adds: “You’ve also got GPS in most smartphones now, so your handset can tell you that this book is £5.99 in a shop 100 yards away, and £4.99 in a shop a mile away.”Google, Carrington says, already knows how to do “the contextual part” of a scenario like this. “We’re still working on the location-based bit,” he adds. Yet the bottom line is that Google’s results-based approach will probably yield small revenues on the mobile web, just as it did on the desktop web.Despite different approaches to advertising, one thing unites Apple and Google. Both companies want to hold on to a relatively large proportion of the ad revenue they generate. Apple, for example, proposes to pass on to developers 60% of the revenue generated by iAds. Google continues to suggest it passes on to publishers “at least 50%” of the revenue generated by ads it runs next to publishers’ content. These levels of commission will look high to anyone who recalls the 15% commission that used to go to media agencies for bringing in advertising for publishers.There’s a further reason for publishers to be wary about the mobile web. As it turns out, Apple and Google plan to take a large slice of what, by anyone’s standards, is a very small pie. Last year, the latest in a series of years dubbed the “year of mobile advertising” by industry boosters, advertisers spent a mere £35m trying to reach British mobile users, according to Enders Analysis. That’s 1% of what advertisers spent on all digital advertising and, as Benedict Evans, a consultant at Enders Analysis, points out, less than the £50m he estimates Britons shelled out last year to have pornographic images texted to their handsets.In the words of one publisher, the cumulative effect of these challenges is a “cautious” and “risk-averse” approach to publishing on tablets and handsets.Others take a more positive view: Matt Kelly, digital content director at Trinity Mirror’s national papers, says Apple has the upper hand “because they’re first into the market, they’ve done all of the development, all of the creative hard work”. “They’re reaping that reward,” he adds. “At the moment, content producers are at the mercy of great technology innovators. But it won’t stay that way forever. We may see a swing towards publishing content on Android if Google’s business terms become more attractive.”Not a bad dealKelly is also wary of the argument that Apple and Google are skimming off too much mobile ad revenue. “The overheads at Trinity Mirror’s newspapers are 75% of revenue – for paper, ink, transport and so on. If someone comes along and says, we’ll replicate the revenues, but the bulk of your costs will be 40%, it’s not automatically a bad deal.”Kelly remains confident about the value of content: “Technology will become commoditised and homogeneous, more open for third parties to come in and innovate and copy. The profits for platforms will decline and the profits associated with content will increase.”Steve Pinches, lead product development manager at ft.com, says that Apple wants to use iAds to sustain a “huge long tail of apps that really have no easy way of monetising themselves”. Big media is different, argues Pinches. “We have very deep relationships with our advertisers that have been formed over years and years,” he says. “We also have an incredibly deep relationship with our readers.”Evans also sees positives in Apple’s pricing of iAds. “They’re trying to catalyse the market,” he says. “If they’d gone out and said this is going to be cheap, advertisers would have carried on with their small experimental budgets. “But Apple has told advertisers they’re not spending $80,000 on another experimental campaign. Instead they’re each going to spend a minimum of $1m on each iAds campaign.”Rupert Murdoch thinks the iPad “may well be the saving of the newspaper industry”. Yet Apple would like to claim the lion’s share of profits from the mobile web by charging a high price for its hardware. By contrast, Schmidt at Google foresees a future in which handsets and airtime are free, subsidised by advertising.Both Apple and Google need what Jobs describes as “free and low cost” content that engages users and attracts advertisers. On the mobile web, the task facing media owners is to figure out how much revenue they can wring out in return.AdvertisingGoogleAppleAppsSteve JobsiPhoneNissanMobile phonesTrinity MirrorRupert MurdochPeter Kirwanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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(Source The Guardian)

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Religious fervour surrounds the latest phone technology, despite it only representing a small slice of the world marketI’ve just discovered that the ancient Egyptians worshipped a beetle – a scarab. Quaint, isn’t it? I mean to say, we’ve come on such a lot since those primitive times.But what’s this? A note from my Guardian colleague, Charlie Brooker, about something he calls the Jabscreen. “Several times over the last year,” he writes, “I’ve attended meetings that started with everyone present gently placing their Jabscreen face-down on the table, as though commencing a futuristic game of poker. It wasn’t rehearsed, wasn’t planned, it just happened; a spontaneous modern ceremony.” Charlie was struck by “the sight of a roomful of media types perched reverentially around their shiny twit machines… each time it happened, a vague discomfort would hang in the air until, in a desperate bid to break the tension, someone would mumble a sardonic comment about the sinister ubiquity of the Jabscreen, likening it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This would prompt a 25-minute chat about apps and gizmos and which level of Angry Birds you’re stuck on. Sometimes there wasn’t much time for the meeting after that. But never mind. You could all schedule a follow-up on your Jabscreens.”The Jabscreen, you will have guessed, is the Apple iPhone, an object currently regarded with Egyptian-grade reverence by the chattering classes. But, in fact, the obsession with so-called “smartphones” extends way beyond Apple’s device. Whole swathes of geekdom are devoted to various embodiments of Google’s Android phone. Legions of men in suits – up to and including the US president – swear by their BlackBerrys. There are people who believe that their Sony-Ericsson scarab not only spreads sweetness and light, but can also cure chilblains. There are, incredibly, even people who worship devices running Windows Mobile. And so it goes.Not surprisingly, the mainstream media are anxious to service these obsessions, and so every launch of a sacred object is lavishly reported. Last week, for example, RIM – the company that makes the BlackBerry – unveiled its latest assault on the smartphone market. It’s called the Torch and it has a shiny glass screen just like the iPhone. But – lo! – it has something else: a slide-out keyboard!!! Wow!All of which makes one want to scream that it’s only a bloody gadget. But by then one has moved on to the business pages, which are regularly gobsmacked by the sales figures for electronic scarabs. It seems that Apple is selling 4m of the things every month, and is having trouble keeping up with demand. But Android sales – at 4.8m a month – have now overtaken them. Is this a sign that Android will win out? Or will Apple pull some clever marketing stunt – like releasing a cut-down nano iPhone for the Christmas market, just as it did with the iPod? Will the BlackBerry Torch make a late run? And where the hell is Nokia?Are we perhaps losing our sense of proportion? The smartphone market is interesting, but just a small segment of the overall market. In 2009, for example, something like 175m smartphones were sold. The top end of industry predictions of sales over the next few years is about 500m devices. But the world currently buys about 1.3bn phones a year, the vast majority of which are “dumbphones” – ie simple handsets that can’t access the internet and which are much cheaper to own and run.Now, over time, Moore’s Law – which says that computing power doubles every 18 months – will ensure that these dumbphones become smarter. What this means is that the way the market will evolve is not by Apple & co selling more sophisticated, pricey, expensive-to-run smartphones to increasingly downmarket sectors, but by cheap phones gradually becoming more capable as they start to run more sophisticated operating systems.All of which means that the factor that will determine the evolution of the phone market is not the features of specific devices, but the operating system that they run. At the moment there are about 10 different mobile operating systems, which is patently unsustainable. My guess is that we will eventually get down to two or three. Apple’s iOS and Android look like certainties. The question is what comes third – BlackBerry, Nokia’s MeeGo or Microsoft’s Windows Mobile?No matter what happens, let’s remember that these things are just gadgets. After all, even the Egyptians’ holy scarab was only a dung beetle.Mobile phonesiPhoneAndroidBlackBerryAppleJohn Naughtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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(Source The Guardian)

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Amazing value with 300 anytime minutes per month to any network and unlimited texts, or choose 300 texts and virtually unlimited mobile internet. Line rental is £25 per month on an 18 month contract and all £450 can be claimed back from the retailer, Affordable Mobiles, as cash back. Effectively, the deal is completely free. You’ll need to send off your bills at months 4, 8, 12, 15 and 18 to claim cash back.
The Samsung Tocco Lite is lighter than the original Tocco and it has a larger screen, now 3 inches with a higher resolution, plus gesture lock and handwriting recognition. The interactive TouchWiz interface lets you customise your home screen by dragging and dropping the widgets you use most. The screen also has an accelerometer, turn the phone sideways and the display automatically switches to widescreen landscape mode, great for viewing movies. With a microSD card slot and an excellent video and audio player, it will keep you entertained on long journeys.
The Tocco Lite has stereo Bluetooth, allowing music and sound to be streamed wirelessly with a compatible headset. The web browser is also very good. Although with no 3G or W-Fi, it relies on GRPS, so large web pages and downloads are slower than a 3G phone. It’s still fine for moderate internet use and there’s no significant speed difference when using email, Twitter or Facebook.
The 3.2 megapixel camera has smile detection, which means it will focus and then wait until your subject smiles before taking a picture. The Samsung Tocco Lite is a fun phone and excellent value for money. It has a nice interface and good multimedia capabilities.

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The new Nokia C6 is out now on T-Mobile and it comes with up to £240 cash back on an 18 month contract.
With a 4 row QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2 inch, HD touchscreen display the Nokia C6 brings social networking to the palm of your hand. The homescreen can be customised with your favourite applications and can display emails, messages and Facebook updates from your top contacts.
All the email accounts you could ask for are supported such as Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail. The C6 can store up to 10 different email accounts and let you simply flick between them. Access to the Ovi store gives a huge choice of applications for the handset including Instant messaging clients like Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.
The built-in 5 megapixel camera features autofocus and flash and can also record video clips. A secondary video camera is also included for use during video calls. Nokia Ovi maps offers on-foot and driving navigation to help you explore new places. Other features include an expandable memory to 16GB, quad-band for international use and a multimedia player that supports all popular file formats. An FM radio is also included as well as Wi-Fi/WLAN for web browsing.

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The Samsung Galaxy Europa i5500 is an affordable smartphone that allows even those on a budget to experience the intuitive Android 2.1 OS. With 3G HSDPA web browsing you can access your favourite social networks and web pages at broadband like speeds. Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth ensure a comprehensive choice of connection options and with GPS support you can be sure to find your way. The multimedia player offers entertainment on the move and supports all popular video and music file formats.
The built-in camera lets you capture the moment with a choice of either still images or video clips. The bright touchscreen acts as a viewfinder for the camera and browsing the captured images is a joy. The Samsung i5500 offers the appealing and popular Android OS in a budget smartphone that will appeal to all pockets.

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Just 99p with free delivery, offer is subject to buying a £10 top up. Available on a choice of networks; Vodafone, T-Mobile or TalkMobile. Don’t delay as this is likely to sell out very quickly.
The Nokia 1661 is frequently one of our most popular phones. It costs less than £1 (limited stock) and it has some amazing cash back deals on contract too. There are no complicated features, it’s just the thing for people who want to make calls and send a few texts. Even though it’s an entry-level phone it does have a couple of nifty tricks. Such as a speaking alarm clock and a built-in torch. Nothing cutting edge but you will find these to be surprisingly useful features!
The Nokia 1661 has six classic Nokia games pre-loaded, including Snake Xenia, Beach Rally, Bounce and Sudoku. It would be unfair to compare them to the impressive 3D games found on high end phones, but they do have their moments and are just as enjoyable, even on the primitive 1.8 inch screen. There’s also a built-in radio and a basic wired headset is included in the box. What a wonderful little phone it is.

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