The GSMA, the global trade body for the mobile industry, and the NGMN Alliance, the group focused on the evolution to the next generation of mobile networks, have agreed to cooperate to help steer the development of mobile broadband communications to give customers a compelling mobile broadband experience.
The two groups will cooperate to ensure that users of next generation mobile networks, such as those based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, will be able to roam on to existing GSM, W-CDMA and HSPA networks, which now cover more than 80% of the worlds population...
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EU data roaming traffic growing at 75 per cent per annum
Usage of mobile data services, which enable people to access the Internet, email and other multimedia on the move, is growing rapidly in the European Union as mobile broadband networks proliferate and prices fall. The EUs mobile data market grew by 40% to 7 billion euros in 2007 as operators invested... Read more
The GSMA Calls On Europe To Seize The Digital Dividend
Spectrum harmonisation across the EU is vital to ensure affordable handsets
The GSMA, the global body for the mobile industry, has called upon European policy makers to set aside around 25% of the spectrum currently used for analogue television for mobile broadband services... Read more
The GSMA calls on governments to review their mobile sector taxation strategies in consultation with the industry and other experts... Download the GSMAs new report (French & English available).
Sony Ericsson announced a handful of handsets today with the 8 megapixel Sony Ericsson C905 leading the pack. The Wii-like gaming centric F305 follows along...
Inspiration is one thing you cant deny the Samsung Soul lineup. Well, that goes to the Ultra too, though all of them thin and sexy handsets are pretty much doomed to oblivion by their own offspring. Back in the day, we said the original...
The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot has managed to create a real stir in the mobile community its the first GSM handset that ships with the whopping 8 megapixels worth of camera goodies and such things simply cannot...
At a London live, Nokia presented the long- awaited E-series newcomers - Nokia E66 and Nokia E71. The two handsets are Nokia craftsmanship at its highest and high-tech goodies galore...
The HTC Touch Diamond is finally in our office and you can count on it getting all the attention it deserves. Just as a little teaser we decided to give you this short preview of the highly sought after gadget that seems to...
Love it or leave it wont do here, were afraid. Love it or hate it is more like it. Theres so much to get excited about with Nokia N78. The excellent display and capable camera, topped with Navi wheel, FM transmitter, GPS and Wi-Fi sure round off a...
One thing we know about the LG KF750 Secret is that its hard to resist. The handset seems to have it all - turn-head exterior, top-notch skill and a few exotic extras to spice things up. Looks have long been the defining...
Two new devices were revealed by T-Mobile at a press conference held in Germany - the MDA Compact IV and MDA Vario IV, both close relatives to the recently announced HTC Touch Diamond. Actually...
Samsung are obviously not of two minds about two-in-one phones. A new dual SIM handset - the Samsung D780 - is underway and its intended as a more affordable dual SIM solution a downgrade to D880 Duos in terms of...
Its no news any more that weve been playing with one of the hotties of the season for some time now. Sony Ericsson W980 made a glorious entrance but were yet to see about the exit. Set to top the Walkman feature phone...
Weâre nearing the final week of June. Which means Bill Gates is soon to make his transition from the day-to-day at Microsoft to a more casual routine. As has been said numerous times before, the move is to be a mostly symbolic one. Gates has of course spent a good deal of his time traveling for not only the sake of the company he co-founded, but the philanthropic endeavor he and his wife, Melinda, took up and formed in an official capacity in 2000. Heâll sensibly move to a more permanent and more involved role at the Gates Foundation from July onward.
Whatâs to become of Microsoft? Most signs point to Mesh, donât they? Thatâs the effort by the company to connect all facets of the consumerâs digital life across a web of devices and software services, whether online or off.
As for Gatesâs fellow executives - namely, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Craig Mundie - theyâll likely handle Gateâs absence without much trouble. The machine is definitely large enough to dispel notions of an alarming void formed, and though theyâll have to proceed with the migration of a number of utilities to a more Web-based reality without Gates watching the engineers work (not that that was his primary occupation for the last several years; still, Iâm sure he was more hands on with developments than some might think him to be), theyâll do okay.
Ozzie alone has shown himself to be as adventurous with technological strategy as Gates proved himself to be throughout much of his tenure, discounting the idle time between the last two OS launches. If anything, Ozzie, with Gates as chairman and advisor only, will offer up a fresher perspective still, and he will perhaps grow less devoted to the cash cows and venture more deeply into the bleeding edge and ensure that Microsoft can at least adapt in part to the vastly more agile Internet startup market, from which the (arguably) best inventions in tech have emerged since silicon and the American West Coast discovered one another.
If one were to make an amendment today to that odious âthere are only two certainties in life: death and taxesâ adage, I suspect many of you might write in a carrot for shipping fees, too. Particularly for stuff sent to your door that weighs a few ounces or, oppositely, many, many pounds. Well, if youâre ever the scrimper when it comes those levies demanded by UPS, DHL, FedEx or any other courier of the modern era, you may enjoy a convenient invention dubbed FreeShipping.
Segmented into popular outlets, featured coupons, editorsâ picks, and categorical and keyword search, FreeShipping, first launched in December, helps you to save pennies normally wasted on keeping âBrown,â âYellow,â and the rest in business just to deliver you your own super secret copy of âThe Secret,â and instead let you do what you really want. Like buy more stuff. Preferably not another copy of “The Secret.”
Of course, I dramatize the current shipping situation. The lure of free shipping simply entices consumers to buy more, and everybody wins. In any case, if you happen to find any one of 750 online storefronts, from Amazon to Cabelas to NewEgg to SnapFish to Wal-Mart appealing places to spend your credit, FreeShipping helps the U.S.-based frugalists among us stretch our respective stimuli the best ways possible. (The site’s creators expect its list of stores to rise to 1,000 by 2009.)
If youâre happy enough with the service, you can even put a nice little badge on your blog, and show your friends where to go for the deals. Share the savings, as FreeShipping tells it.
So comScore [CNET] tells us Facebook surpassed MySpace in worldwide visitors for the first time. This shift evidently occurred sometime in the last few months, between March and May.
Yawn.
Iâll be frank. I was surprised to hear MySpace take second to Facebook. I didnât think it would happen. At least not now. A while back I saw MySpace a good bit ahead of Facebook, and I figured, at that point, with north of a hundred million users a pop, neither had it in them to make a big leap forward. Evidently Zuckerberg has proved able to move forward faster than Murdoch. Or the people actually in charge of running MySpace, and not just raking cash.
But as far as financing goes, of course, MySpace still has the advantage. Several hundred million more income per year, if Rupert & Co. estimates correctly. (He says $800m, give or take. Which is fairly good, actually, if you look at where the company was the year after News Corp laid down $580m for the network in mid-2005.) Looking at what Facebookâs lunar $15b valuation reveals of the companyâs founderâs intentions, Iâd say MySpace, whether #1 or #2 in worldwide activity, is standing on more solid ground - so to speak.
Hereâs the thing, though. Weâre, what, more than a year into the era of serious, big-money social working, with grand advertising exclusivity deals and some application awesomeness in the works? Youâd think Facebook and MySpace wouldâve each have shown the beginnings of their rise from nine-figure returns to ten. MySpace alone is sitting close to the mark.
Getting that extra zero is turning out to be a real you-know-what.
The options by which to create websites today are virtually endless. The choices are almost too many. WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type. Those are the names which come immediately to mind. The rest are a figurative blur. So is there room for another? One way to find out, I suppose. Enter, Markup Factory.
Created by a quartet over the course of what is described to be a seven-year development process, Markup Factory, based in Iowa, presents the prospective user a relatively simple and attractive setup. With emphasis on simple and attractive.
It boasts most all of the features basic website builders might opt to make use of, from blogs to podcast storage to calendar software to support for sales. But its bound to turn away quite a few interested users who would otherwise quickly become adopters. Why? Paid monthly subscriptions are required. $14.95 to start, and $149 for something âfully loaded.â
Whatâs more, even if one finds the tiered monthly fees acceptable, there are things that any minimalist site owner might want or need. For example, subscribers of the âBasicâ package, sans extras like podcast and storefront support, will have to make do with 50MB of storage, 2GB bandwidth allowance, and a limit of three pages. Suffice it to say âBasicâ is no bargain. Even at $50/month youâre still only given 500MB/10GB as standard.
Really, only at the $149 level is the user given a truly decent amount of access, with support for all functions. Limitless pages plus podcasts, calendar and storefront. Yet storage sits at 2GB. One would expect more, I imagine. (Markup Factory does note extra storage can be purchased upon request, for any choice of subscription.)
Value is presumably what many publishers have highest on their agendas when picking and choosing a platform on the Web. So given the free options currently available, Markup Factory will not convince many to sign up. Fully-customizable platforms like WordPress, Drupal certainly offer more options to the user, and established popular opinion carries weight. But if a new all-in-one service is what youâre aiming for, Markup Factory, with the exception of its unimpressive storage quotas, is something that, architecturally speaking, seems worth a try.
As busy as a "b" can be
First look
First look
First look
Bitter sweet
No secret, all guts
First Look
Dual SIMplicity
8 gigs of character
Sony Ericsson C905
Nokia E71
LG KF700
Sony Ericsson C902
RSS feed
You
of the consumerâs digital life across a web of devices and software services, whether online or off.
Ping This!
âYellow,â and the rest in business just to deliver you your own super secret copy of âThe Secret,â and instead let you do what you really want. Like buy more stuff. Preferably not another copy of “The Secret.”
Looking at what Facebookâs lunar 
