Tracking where you’ve been through foursquare
A number of month’s ago, on a regular business trip to the west coast of Ireland, I stopped off at a random filling station somewhere between Dublin and Limerick. With the new carrageway opening up in stage’s every month or two it’s easy to get disoriantated on the journey and wonder just where in the midlands you are. Rather than do the ‘scouting thing’ and dig out the map from the boot of my car, I decided to just check in on foursquare which would geo-locate my exact location and publish it not only to the world but for me to glance at it again later on and see just where I had been. Another check in on the road back to Dublin the next day, secured me the mayorship and my place in Toomevara 4sq history.
Yesterday on a similar business trip, I stopped again at the same station and again checked into 4sq to see what had been ‘going on’ since my last visit, I had been outed as Mayor by my arch-nemesis Evert Bopp which is understandable as he lives near by but as I looked through the near by locations, my recent check in’s and where Evert had been checking into recently I began to think, wouldn’t it be great to see all these check in’s on a simple google map ? Perfect for any one who travel’s a lot like myself. (more…)
Bitbuzz Provides Complimentary Wi-Fi Access to Costa Coffee Customers
Michelle Mclaughlin, General Manager, Costa Coffee Belfast George Best Airport, and Russell McQuillan, Business Development Manager, Bitbuzz, launching the Wi-Fi hotspot at Costa Coffee in Belfast George Best Airport.Initially Bitbuzz will roll-out the Wi-Fi service for Costa Coffee customers at Belfast George Best Airport. The deal is with parent company MBCC Foods, who hold the Irish Costa Coffee, KFC and Pizza hut franchises. (more…)
The iPad will not change the world
Before reading this you should know, I am not an Apple hater, nor am I afraid of technology. I do in fact love Apple products, I have two iPhone’s and three MacBooks.
OK, so lets get started. I am sick of reading posts, tweets and status updates about how the iPad will change the world, one I ever read from a fellow Wi-Fi network CEO who said ‘the iPad will treble my business’ ! come on, on what basis? The iPhone is the single busiest device on my Network and even that does not even represent 10%.
How is the iPad going to change the world ? It adds nothing of worth to society as a whole, it is nothing more than a big iPhone or restricted computer. Of course, I like many other people will find a use for it and try and justify the money it cost with all the new things I can do but the truth of the matter is it will doing nothing for me that I can’t already so on my Macbook, iPhone or GPS unit.
It will not make us more connected, or bring Internet to the masses. It is not a $100 laptop or long range OTA Internet tranmitter aimed at connecting the thousands in Africa. The wind up radio has done more for the world than the iPad ever will. It is just a big cool toy.
That said, I can’t wait to get mine but lets not try and justify our purchase with nonsense, please !
Russell
Sonim, the worlds toughest phone ….. but no match for my wife
After breaking nearly every phone I have ever owned when I bought an iPhone I decided that maybe it wasent the best phone to take off roading, to scout camps or the numerous other outdoorman type things I get up which usually end up in a £400 paper weight.
I set about looking for a phone, just for calls, one I could drop, use in the rain and generally abuse. When I worked for Phones4u we sold the Sonim x1, supposedly the worlds toughest phone, the only problem with this was we sold it (by the truck load to farmers) for the hefty price tag of £450.
Anyway I did some more research and then found a pay and go (unlocked) JCB phone on play.com for £99.99. The JCB phone is just a Sonim x1 rebranded.
Their advertising goes like this.
Sonim XP1, Military grade phone, unbreakable, this is the worlds toughest phone. Complete with 3 year unconditional warranty. (more…)
Are Facebooks new privacy laws out of line or do we need to do more ourselves to retain privacy ?
Mark Zuckerberg in a recent interview reckons the age of privacy is all but a thing of the past, here is an excerpt of what he said. (The full interview can be seen here)
“When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’
“And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time (more…)
Northern Ireland’s mobile phone network is the worst in the UK
On my monthly drive to Enniskillen yesterday I was plaiged with the usual problems, no data service on my 02 iPhone and no service at all on my T-Mobile Blackberry. It was not until I got into Enniskillen itself that my phones locked onto the network and pulled down my data.
At home I have to go to the garden to make a call and I can forget about getting in touch with my friends who are on Orange when they are in Lisburn.
In shocking new figures printed today in the Belfast Telegraph today it has become apparent that the problem is worse than it seems with 59% of Northern Ireland’s mobile phone users reporting problems with signal on their phone, making our networks the worst in the UK.
The problem as I see it comes down to cold hard cash, with only 1.6 million people living in Northern Ireland it doesn’t make commercial sense to provide a full coverage, however with 02 retaining a 65% market share you would think they at least would be up to the job although anyone with an iPhone will know that the 3G functions on the handset are pretty much useless when you are out of Belfast.
Historically Vodafone always had the best coverage in Northern Ireland as the local infrasture and backhaul were owned by Vodac Ulster, powered by Bramwell who set up the network in Northern Ireland but this was sold in around 2000 / 2002 to Vodafone UK and the local network became part of a national strategy meaning the mast would not only be used by Vodafone customers but BT Cellnet (now o2) customers as well as part of a network sharing move.
The old school planning of rolling out a mobile phone network no longer applies, as the old school network roll out provisioned only for Voice and Text. As data came into play the networks simply upgraded the cell sites with out taking into consideration the fact that these cell sites would now house more traffic as people crave data on the move.
Looking at the coverage maps, it is hard to see today who has the best voice and data signal in the provence and most people subscribe to the network that gives them the best signal in their area – not much use for me who travels all over Northern and Southern Ireland every day.
Whats the answer ?
Commercially as I said. It does not make sense for all 5 mobile networks to roll out a fantastic network in NI, however it does make sense for one network to roll out a network with more capacity than they need and share the mast.
We will have to see how the proposed T-Mobile UK and Orange UK merger will improve things but I would not hold my breath !
iPhones for all !
In two seperate press releases this week it has been announced that 02 exclusivity of the iPhone has ended and other networks have been keen to pick it up.
There are over 1 million iPhones in the UK and all the networks have already claimed to have seen unlocked versions live on their networks, it was first thought that 02 would retain the exclusive deal for the latest model and Orange & T-Mobile would run a product behind, however it now appears that both Orange and Vodafone have been able to pick up the lucritive 3Gs deal.
Orange now have the iPhone availalbe in 28 countries and have the largest 3G network in the UK. Both Vodafone and o2 will be able to offer the product across the UK and Ireland and it is rumoured that T-Mobile (who will get the phone anyway when the Orange merger goes through) and H3g are also in negotiated to get the product.
Orange will go live with the iPhone 3g and 3gs this year whilst Voda will have to wait until the new year.
What does this mean for the customer ?
We will have to wait and see how these deals will effect the price of the handset. Apple are very clever at setting and sticking to thier prices, the Macbook Pro is availalbe in mulitply competing retailers but you will struggle to get it for less that £899.
It does mean more choice for customers though and more competitive tarriffs. People will be able to choose a network that gives them the coverage that they need, something that 02 have suffered from greatly in Northern Ireland is the lack of 3G coverage.
See below – Vodafones press release.
29 September 2009
VODAFONE TO SELL iPHONE IN UK AND IRELAND
Vodafone and Apple today confirmed that they have reached agreement to bring iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to the UK and Ireland in early 2010.
Beginning today, Vodafone UK and Vodafone Ireland customers can register their interest in iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS at www.vodafone.co.uk/iphone and www.vodafone.ie/iphone respectively. Pricing, tariffs and availability information will be announced locally in the future.
Vodafone now offers iPhone through thirteen of its operating companies.
T-Mobile and Orange to merge UK businesses to become largest mobile telco
Discussions with other Telecoms people lately have left us all thinking the same thing. 5 Mobile operators in the UK is to much and not sustainable.
It was thought that eventually Hutchinson (3) would eventually merge or be purchased by one of the smaller UK operators such as Orange (once owned by Hutchinson) or T-Mobile (the worlds 6th largest provider).
In 2005 T-Mobile tried to purchase its smaller competitor O2 but was beaten to the post by Telefonica.
The UK messes things up and all is not as it appears, Vodafone the worlds 2nd largest provider (after China Mobile) is the 2nd largest provider in the UK but telefonica O2 which does not even rate in the worlds top 20 provider is and always has been the largest provider in UK, this is however set to change as Orange (France Telecom) and T-Mobile (T-Mobile AG) have announced they are to merge their UK businesses creating in the process, the UKs largest and leading mobile operator.
The deal (subject to competition commission approval) will take around 18 months to fully complete and see a full merger of all assets, transmitters, stores and customer bases into the new company – yet to be named.
The joint company will hold close to 40% of the UK mobile market.
From a backhaul point of view – both companies use GSM 1800 so this will make the merger of assets easier and from a customer point of view, customers will have access to more masts, faster data, edge and 3G – something that both companies have been poor at but combined the network will be not to shabby however you will have to share it with close to 30million other users.
It is likely that competition authorities in the UK and EU will probe the deal and job losses are very likely !
The death of the pager
Back in the day anyone who was anyone had a pager, doctors, nurses, business people, firemen, coastguards, IT pros. I even had one myself for a short time.
The pager was in essence one of the most important pieces of technology of its time. It offered for the first time a way to relay small pieces of information to people whilst they where away from a fixed line phone and is the reason why people like Sir Christopher Gent went on to develop the Mobile Phone technology we use today.
The first pager (type) system was introduced way back in 1921 by Detroit Police Department. However, it was not until 1949 that the very first telephone pager was patented. The first successful consumer pager was Motorola’s Pageboy I first introduced in 1974. It had no display and could not store messages, however, it was portable and notified the wearer that a message had been sent.
By 1980, there were 3.2 million pager users worldwide. At that time pagers had a limited range and were used mostly in on-site situations for example when medical workers communicate with each other within a hospital.
By 1990, wide-area paging had been invented and over 22 million pagers were in use. By 1994, there were over 61 million pagers in use and pagers.
But their domonation of communications was not to last, in the early 1990′s as the 2G 900 MHz Mobile Phone network began to roll out, people began to prefer voice to voice communication over that of the pager. In Finland in 2003 the first person to person text message was sent and the demise of the consumer pager had begun.
In 2001, with only 30,000 users in the UK – Orange decided enough was enough and switched off their pager network, offering customers £50 of executive gifts or a free mobile phone as a replacement.
Vodafone however kept on going and today has the only Pager network in the UK. Pagers are still today a vital method of commication to the emergency services (and any business that must communicate vital up to date information) such as on call firefighters, doctors and coastguards. The devices have the ability to receive text as well as offering signal where mobile phone’s fail, a long battery live and great robustness.
What amazes me most, that today we have not moved on from that of the people on the go in the 40′s, 50′s, 60′s. 70′s and 80′s We all crave data and information knowmatter where we are or what we are doing.
1 comment