Showing posts with label Mobile Humour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mobile Humour. Show all posts

Sunday 1 August 2010

The Tester's Prayer



The Tester's Prayer

Oh Lord, give us our daily bugs;
and the wisdom to find the solution or pass the blame.

Oh Lord, help us find the problems before the developers;
for if they fix the problems there may be none for us left to find.

Oh Lord, make sure that developers dont fix their problems properly;
for it gives us time to sit and relax.

Oh Lord, grant us the patience when same problem comes again and again;
for some things are better left unfixed for us to find.

Oh Lord, grant us serenity when all things work fine;
and the belief that things will soon fall in line.


Thanks to everyone who contributed and helped refine this over the years :)

Saturday 24 July 2010

iRon

For my son's birthday, we got him a iPod; my daughter got an iPhone for hers. I was extremely delighted to receive an iPad for my birthday. Thinking along the same lines, for my wife's birthday, I got her an iRon. Thats when the fight started...



Saturday 3 July 2010

Mobile Apps a fad

It has always been a debatable issue as to how big the mobile Apps market is. Right now it is huge and seems to be growing fast.

Dean Bubley of Disruptive wireless on the other hand thinks of Apps as a fad that will die sooner or later. He re-iterated the point he made back in February that:

a) There is no mobile Internet, just the Internet on mobile. The vast bulk of usage of the Internet on mobile devices mirrors the usage on fixed networks and from PCs. In particular, there is a huge amount of mobilisation (with tweaks, yes) of existing social networks (Facebook), email and content downloads (YouTube). With the exception of mapping, most mobile-specific Internet services are niche and useless, eg Foursquare and Gowalla.

b) I'm still expecting that users will get bored of hundreds of applications, and will have a few well-chosen ones - most of which should have been in the core OS when it left the factory anyway. eg on an iPhone - Facebook, RSS and Skype clients. The "long tail" of apps will be of limited interest to most mid-late adopters apart from the occasional game or advertiser-sponsored thing. I'd expect <$2 of spend on apps per month once high-end smartphones get to, say, 30% penetration, perhaps <$1

Mind you, maybe I'm biased. I haven't bought a mobile application for personal use since a Java game in 2005, and don't have any payment mechanism registered with iTunes.


I tend to agree with him but I think that the Apps threshold will be slightly higher like $5 per month which would be stealthily provided by the operators mainly through offers like "free apps allowance" kinda stuff.

This article reminds me of the dilbert joke (below) that other professionals can also make money around the Apps marketplace:


Saturday 5 June 2010

Your number’s up


In what sounds like the plot of a horror movie, a Bulgarian cellphone company has reportedly suspended the number 0888-888-888 after every single person who was assigned to it in the last 10 years died.

A spokesperson for Bulgarian firm MobilTel refused to comment, telling the Telegraphthat they don’t discuss individual numbers. But the newspaper tracked down the phone number’s eerie history and discovered that each owner had met an untimely end.

The first owner was the former MobilTel CEO, Vladimir Grashnov. In 2001, the 48-year-old died of cancer, although some speculated that he was radioactively poisoned by a business rival.

The number was then passed on to Konstantin Dimitrov, a Bulgarian mafia boss and owner of a $775-million drug smuggling empire. He was shot by a lone assassin in 2003 while eating out with a model in the Netherlands. He was 31.

The third and final owner was Konstantin Dishliev, a real-estate-agent-by-day and a drug-lord-by-night, who secretly ran a massive cocaine trafficking ring. In 2005, after police intercepted $200-million of the white stuff on its way in from Columbia, Mr. Dishliev was assassinated outside a restaurant in Bulgaria’s capital city.

After being temporarily suspended during the investigation into Mr. Dishliev’s death, the number is said to have been de-activated for good. Now anyone who calls is greeted with a recorded message saying the phone is “outside network coverage.”

So are the deaths merely coincidence or proof of a cell phone curse?

Whatever the case, MobilTel could stand to profit off the number by selling it to someone in China, where the number eight is considered lucky. In 2003, a Chinese airline paid 2.33-million yuan (US$280,723) for the phone number 8888-8888.



Monday 3 August 2009

Didnt I tell you, phones are too complicated ;)



As the former head of the British army, General Sir Mike Jackson oversaw a range of regiments armed with some of the most complex weapons and technology ever invented.

But yesterday, the general was left embarrassed live on television after he was defeated by a ringing mobile phone.His phone went off twice during an interview with the BBC's economics editor Stephanie Flanders, who was standing in for Andrew Marr.

Jackson was talking about compensation given to wounded soldiers when the mobile began to ring.

Flanders told the general: "You'll have to turn that phone off." Jackson apologised and after sheepishly fumbling with some buttons, managed to silence the call and put the phone in his pocket – only for it to ring again.

As he tried to turn it off once more, technology appeared to get the better of him.

In the end, Jackson lost his patience, turned around in his seat and flung the handset off camera across the studio in exasperation. After the sound of a heavy crash rang out, he returned to face Flanders and the interview with as straight a face as he could manage.

Now even Texting can be dangerous :-)


Police say a truck driver was texting on one mobile phone while talking on another when he slammed into a car and crashed into a swimming pool.

Niagara County sheriff's deputies say 25-year-old Nicholas Sparks admitted he was texting and talking when his flatbed rescue truck hit the car in Lockport, which is outside Buffalo.

The truck then crashed through a fence and sideswiped a house before rolling into an in-ground pool.

Police say the 68-year-old woman driving the car suffered head injuries and was in good condition. Her 8-year-old niece suffered minor injuries.

Sparks was charged with reckless driving, talking on a cell phone and following too closely.

Saturday 25 July 2009

...and the Android shall inherit the earth



Android fever seems to be catching on. Everyone phone manufacturer now wants to show that they are active in Android market. Few weeks back there were also rumours of Nokia launching android device (which may still be true). HTC is at the moment the leader, releasing more Android phones than anyone else.

The following is from a very interesting article in The Independent:

With four billion handsets in the world – more than twice the number of internet users, and two and half a billion more than the number of televisions – it's safe to describe the mobile phone as the most successful technology of our generation. But what's the next step for mobile communication? If Google has its way, the future is Android – and the next few months are going to be crucial to its success.

Android, in case the news has passed you by, is billed as the mobile phone operating system that will change the way we use mobiles. Where traditionally, phones have all worked differently, with usability ranging from the passable to the infuriating, Android's mission is to simplify, partially by devising a more intuitive interface, and also by making it so widely available that it becomes a standard. "Combining the simplicity of Android software with its imminent availability on a range of mass-market phones from various manufacturers, and the trend in developing countries to go 'straight to mobile', makes Android an exciting global platform for the next few years," says Richard Warmsley, head of internet and entertainment of T-Mobile.

From Android's humble beginnings as a two-person company in Palo Alto, California, through being bought up by Google in 2005, it has grown into the flagship operation of a group of 48 companies known as the Open Handset Alliance. Featuring such heavyweights of the tech world as LG, Toshiba and Samsung, its aim is to "enrich the lives of countless people across the globe" by improving mobile experiences.

The handset manufacturer Motorola is so confident the future is Android it's reportedly retired its team of 77 engineers who were working on the company's own operating system, and is now hiring software engineers familiar with Google's free alternative. Such is its potential that Android has been mooted as the software of the future for netbooks and set-top boxes as well as phones.


With any discussion of mobile phones, the elephant in the room is always going to be Apple's iPhone, which has been a huge critical and commercial success. Android phones and the iPhone might appear to be in direct competition; they are both high-spec, and similarly priced. But Al Sutton, a UK-based Android developer, thinks the situation may develop along similar lines to the home computing market: "I can see the iPhone and Android co-existing in the future in a similar way that Macs and Windows PCs do at the moment", he says. "Apple is focused on being a premium brand, whereas Android's focus is ubiquity."

Although Android phones are only rarely to be spotted in the wild in Britain right now, the groundswell of support for the system from manufacturers may well see a number of devices launched at once in the coming year. "We are not facing a shortage of offers powered by Android," claims Peter Becker-Pennrich, director of terminals marketing for Vodafone, on the brand's future product line-up. T-Mobile is similarly enamoured: "The open nature of Android, the innovation and choice it bring, mean that it will establish itself as one of the most important mobile platforms of the next few years", agrees Richard Warmsley.

Next month will see the release of the G2 Touch from T-Mobile and the Hero from Orange, both versions of a new touchscreen handset from HTC, which features a hefty five-megapixel camera with video functionality, GPS and, of course, full integration with Google products like Gmail, Google Talk and YouTube.

Read the complete article here.

Friday 17 July 2009

Dilbert humour on Mobile Rebates

Missed this one earlier but otherwise I am a big Dilbert fan. Thought it would be nice to end the week with.

By the way, last year I blogged about the Mobile Billing strategies which may be useful for you if you are considering getting new contract.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Texting teen falls down New York manhole

Last year there was a talk here in UK about adding padding to the lamp-posts because people were bumping into them while texting. The survey of over 1,000 Britons suggested that one in 10 had suffered an injury from a collision while sending an SMS. The research claimed that there were 68,000 SMS-related injuries in the UK last year, ranging from minor bumps to skull fractures.

Now, I read this news about Alexa Longueira, 15, whose family is suing after the teenager fell into an open manhole in Staten Island, New York, while trying to send a text message. Poor Alexa apparently suffered a fright and some scrapes on her arms and back when she fell.

Her mother, Kim Longueira, said it did not matter that her daughter was texting when she fell down the hole. "Oh my God, it was putrid," she told MNBC. "One of her sneakers is still down there."

If the case comes to court it is destined to join such infamous lawsuits as the woman who sued McDonald's after spilling hot coffee on herself, which inspired an annual award for the most ridiculous lawsuit. A glance at British legal history suggests Longueira may have actually have a chance of winning. In the 1964 case of Haley v London Electricity Board it was deemed workmen should have known a hole might pose a threat to visually impaired people.

Whether texting and walking is now so common that a court ruling will require workmen – and the rest of us – to adjust our actions accordingly remains to be seen.

Iranians start boycott Nokia campaign


The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime.

Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half in the wake of calls to boycott Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for selling communications monitoring systems to Iran.

There are signs that the boycott is spreading: consumers are shunning SMS messaging in protest at the perceived complicity with the regime by the state telecoms company, TCI. Iran's state-run broadcaster has been hit by a collapse in advertising as companies fear being blacklisted in a Facebook petition. There is also anecdotal evidence that people are moving money out of state banks and into private banks.

Nokia is the most prominent western company to suffer from its dealings with the Iranian authorities. Its NSN joint venture with Siemens provided Iran with a monitoring system as it expanded a mobile network last year. NSN says the technology is standard issue to dozens of countries, but protesters believe the company could have provided the network without the monitoring function.

Siemens is also accused of providing Iran with an internet filtering system called Webwasher.


"Iranians' first choice has been Nokia cellphones for several years, partly because Nokia has installed the facility in the country. But in the past weeks, customers' priority has changed," said Reza, a mobile phone seller in Tehran's Big Bazaar.

"Since the news spread that NSN had sold electronic surveillance systems to the Iranian government, people have decided to buy other company's products although they know that Nokia cellphones function better with network coverage in Iran."

Some Tehran shops have removed Nokia phones from their window displays. Hashem, another mobile phone vendor, said: "I don't like to lose my customers and now people don't feel happy seeing Nokia's products. We even had customers who wanted to refund their new Nokia cellphones or change them with just another cellphone from any other companies.

"It's not just a limited case to my shop – I'm also a wholesaler to small shops in provincial markets, and I can say that there is half the demand for Nokia's product these days in comparison with just one month ago, and it's really unprecedented. People feel ashamed of having Nokia cellphones," he added.

News of the boycott has appeared on the front page of Iranian pro-reform papers such as Etemad-e Melli, owned by the reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi. Hadi Heidari, a prominent Iranian cartoonist, has published an image of a Nokia phone on a No Entry traffic sign.
A Nokia spokeswoman refused to comment on the company's sales in Iran.


The Iranian authorities are believed to have used Nokia's mobile phone monitoring system to target dissidents. Released prisoners have revealed that the authorities were keeping them in custody on the basis of their SMS and phone calls archive, which was at officials' disposal.

One Iranian journalist who has just been released from detention said: "I always had this impression that monitoring calls is just a rumour for threatening us from continuing our job properly, but the nightmare became real when they had my phone calls – conversations in my case.

"And the most unbelievable thing for me is that Nokia sold this system to our government. It would be a reasonable excuse for Nokia if they had sold the monitoring technology to a democratic country for controlling child abuse or other uses, but selling it to the Iranian government with a very clear background of human rights violence and suppression of dissent, it's just inexcusable for me. I'd like to tell Nokia that I'm tortured because they had sold this damn technology to our government."

NSN spokesman Ben Roome said: "As in every other country, telecoms networks in Iran require the capability to lawfully intercept voice calls. In the last two years, the number of mobile subscribers in Iran has grown from 12 million to over 53 million, so to expand the network in the second half of 2008 we were required to provide the facility to intercept voice calls on this network."

The SMS boycott, meanwhile, has apparently forced TCI into drastic price hikes. The cost of an SMS has doubled in recent days. Protesters view the move as a victory.

Friday 10 July 2009

You know you're Mobsessed when...



Tomi and friends are having fun on Twitter under #mobsessed. They are challenging everyone to complete the sentence "You know you are mobsessed if..". Here are few funny ones:

You know you're #mobsessed when you think text'n'drive is for amateurs. You google and drive.

You know you are #mobsessed if while on vacation,you value a place because it's 3G network coverage

you are #mobsessed if you and your wife squabble over the phone chargers (even though you have one in every room of your house)

You are #mobsessed when you think in sentences of 140 characters or less.

You know you are #mobsessed if you wake up your children in the morning by sending them SMS text messages,

You're #mobsessed when you go to toilet just so you can #tweet legally without being seen as #twitterholic in office

You know you're #mobsessed when you can't download new apps to your iPhone without deleting old ones.

You know you are #mobsessed when dropping your phone causes a near death experience. And you can't help singing when the phone still works.

If u carry 2 phones and are considering 3rd, u are #mobsessed

Check the search results on Twitter.

Monday 13 April 2009

Qualcomm to put Femtocells in Mutant Animals ;)



In the latest breakthrough from its labs, Qualcomm has perfected a new version of its system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology that can be embedded into animals, turning them into living, breathing highly mobile femtocells. By creating biological femtocells, Qualcomm is allaying one of the critical weaknesses of the wireless network: while the devices on the network are mobile, the infrastructure of the network is static. By turning the family dog, for example, into a femtocell, the issues of dead zones and coverage gaps disappear as coverage moves with you wherever you—and your dog—go.

Research into these dynamic biological networks is still in its infancy, but Qualcomm has released a demo video on the technology, which you can view below. As part of that research, Qualcomm is trying to overcome what it sees as the inherent limitations of many species of animals. Pigeons, for instance, could be used to create a pervasive flying network in any heavily trafficked downtown area, but the pigeon isn’t the most long-lived of animals and it has several predators, thus requiring an operator to constantly reintroduce new pigeons into the network to maintain capacity levels.

Qualcomm has solved that problem through genetic engineering. It has crossbred a pigeon with a wolf, creating a hardier more aggressive femtocell that can defend itself from both predators and the elements. The only problem with this approach, though, is its high susceptibility to industrial espionage. A rival operator could introduce biological femtocell predators into a market, to attack, maim and possible even eat another operator’s femtocells. While bio-engineering femtocells such as the wolf-pigeon might seem a natural defense mechanism against tactics, the rival operator could always engineer a better femtocell. Qualcomm demonstrated how a shark crossbred with a hawk could effectively nullify a femtocell networks composed of wolf pigeons.

See the Video below:




By the way, I hope you have realised that it was an April Fools joke :)