It's hard for us to be sure about this stuff for sure in the early stages, but since last night we've gotten a flood of reports from readers that BlackBerry services are down on T-Mobile and possibly also Bell Mobility (if not other providers). What's the story, are you having any trouble? Shout it out in comments -- if you are, do us all a solid and leave your location and provider. Even if it's just an isolated outage, you know you desperately need to get your act together when Palm, of all companies, is taking potshots.
Virtually every smell-based tech that's come through the pipe has fizzled out in one way or another, but that checkered past isn't stopping Germany's ConVisual from partnering with the Institute of Sensory Analysis and Marketing on scent-delivery chips for cell phones. The partnership has been running for eight years and just received a patent on the tech, and the goal now is to start building the chips into phone within the next two years. The chip is initially supposed to have 100 different smells on it, and ConVisual says bad smells are a possibility as users will be able to reject certain messages. That's certainly intersting, but we've got to say, we're not all that keen on the idea of people having even more ways to emit odors -- we'll stick with the non-smelly cellys, thanks much.
Easy come, easy go: looks like that free WiFi for iPhone users could already be turned off, as apparently users are starting to get login screens instead of the free web access they so quickly came to expect. The only real question is whether the whole free iPhone WiFi was simply flipped on early, and will be officially announced at a later time, or AT&T changed its mind about the whole thing. Guess we'll soon see.
T-Mobile's 3G network started going live today, and it looks like that early word from a company memo may not hold true for all users. Some markets may in fact have a silent soft-launch of faster data rates, we've heard from several tipsters who've said that they're already getting faster data service, and now the company itself getting the word out that it's launching data as well. But company peeps were indeed instructed to make sure customers don't count on that faster data being present; bottom line is you may have it, you may not (but if you take T-Mobile at its word, you should). NYC is the first market to light up, but others should come online soon -- anyone trying it out? How's it going? Hit us up in comments and let us know!
Well here's an interesting one. French iPhone blog iPhon.fr got these pics from an anonymous and unverified source, and while there's no way of telling if the shots are legit, they certainly have a truthy ring to them. They follow what we know so far about the shape, size and color of the upcoming 3G iPhone, and while there's always the possibility of knockoff, a Photoshop job, or some other evil plot to mislead us, we're certainly not going to discount these shots entirely in the runup to iPhone's second coming.
Gigabyte has released a new touch-friendly interface for Windows Mobile phones. While the Smart Touch UI is designed to run on Gigabyte's GSmart line of phones, an unofficial version of the software has been leaked and you can download it and install it on pretty much any Windows Mobile 5.0/6 device.
It's hard not to compare the Smart Touch interface to the Apple iPhone interface. Applications can be luanched by pressing large square-ish buttons, and you navigate the interface by dragging your finger across the screen. But Smart Touch does have a few innovative features up its sleeve.
When you first load the UI, you'll see just 4 icons on the bottom of the screen. But you can find more by moving your finger along the bottom of the screen to find 16 in all, including one square that you press to add new items to your menu. You can also customize your menu by dragging and dropping icons across the screen. You can easily flip back and forth between the Smart Touch interface and the default Windows Mobile UI by hitting the Today icon. To switch back, just hit the Smart Touch icon on your today screen.
You can check out a video of Smart Touch in action after the jump.
Well screw us -- T-Mobile's 3G network debut tomorrow? It's going to be voice only. That's right, you heard us, VOICE ONLY. So trepidatious is this company to actually get their 3G data rollout, um, rolled out, they're launching first with kneecapped voice-only service, keeping only EDGE for those demanding data. Here's the snippet from the memo we received:
There are two things that make FLV.To absolutel amazing. The first is the sheer number of Google AdSense and referral ads that the developer managed to cram into a small space. But we're willing to overlook that because the other remarkable thing about FLV.To is how easy the site makes it to save YouTube videos as MP3 files.
No, you're not going crazy. YouTube deals in videos, and MP3 files are audio only. But there's a huge number of music videos on YouTube, and FLV.To will let you save the audio from those videos in a matter of seconds. Just pop in the URL of any YouTube video and the site will proces the file and spit out an MP3 which you can download and listen to. If you've already gone through the process of downloading YouTube videos as FLV files, you can also upload Flash videos from your desktop for easy conversion.
It's been almost a year since Google acquired RSS service Feedburner or $100 million. But in that year, we've seen very little integration of Google services into Feedburner, or vice versa. Sure, it's now easier to redirect your Blogspot feed to Feedburner, but that's about it.
TomTom may be having some profit troubles these days, but that's apparently not stopping it from getting plenty of new products out the door, with it now announcing four new models in its TomTom ONE and TomTom XL series, along with a spiffy new car mount to go along with 'em. As before, the TomTom ONE 130 (pictured above) occupies the low end with a 3.5-inch display, though it sports a redesigned and slimmer body this time around, along with a companion model in the form of the ONE 130S, which adds text-to-speech functionality. Moving on up a bit, the TomTom XL 330 boasts a 4.3-inch widescreen display, and is also available in an XL 330S text-to-speech model. Otherwise, all the models will give you support for TomTom's Map Share technology, support for an optional RDS-TMC traffic receiver, and TomTom's new EasyPort mount (pictured after the break), which can be folded away into the device itself. Look for the whole lot to be available next month, with the ONE 130 setting you back $200, the ONE 130S and XL 330 each running $250, and the XL 330S coming in at $300. If none of those float your boat, you can also take a gander at TomTom's previously-announced x30 series devices, which the company informs us are now available in North America.
[Via: GPS Review ] [Tag: easyport, tomtom, tomtom one, tomtom one 130, tomtom xl, tomtom xl330, TomtomOne, TomtomOne130, TomtomXl, TomtomXl330 ]
Korean manufacturer TG Sambo has seen a few of its products released 'round these parts, but it looks like that won't be the case with its latest PMP, at least as long as it packs some of that mythical T-DMB mobile TV we keep hearing about. If that doesn't preclude you, however, the unit certainly looks to be decent enough, with it boasting a 4.8-inch WVGA touchscreen, built-in WiFi for some supposedly full-fledged web browsing, 16MB of flash memory, and Windows CE 5.0 for an OS. No word on a price, unfortunately, but you can at least get a good look at its 15mm-thick form factor by hitting up the read link below.
We already knew it was coming, now HTC has seemingly confirmed that its Diamond handset will be announced next month presumably at the May 6th event. Unfortunately, the wording of the Taipei Times article (which we assume was translated from Chinese) leaves HTC's comments open to interpretation. Speaking to a group of investors, HTC's financial executive Cheng Hui-ming, said that revenues will grow by 20% this year thanks to the launch of a new Touch phone next month. Referring to the HTC Diamond by name, he then calls the device "the most important product for HTC this year." Interesting considering that HTC is widely expected to launch the first Android handset -- dubbed Dream -- before the end of the year. Regardless, the 3G Diamond with Windows Mobile 6.1 running beneath a large, glossy, VGA touchscreen display with WiFi and 3 megapixel camera is certainly going to attract a lot interest from us and our wallets. [Via: Engadget ] [Tag: diamond, htc, rumor ]
