It's easy to keep track of your mobile phone data usage if you don't travel. After all, there are third-party tracking applications that can do that. Some service providers have also implemented price caps on their mobile broadband plans, so there are no surprises at the end of the month when customers receive their bills.
However, all that goes out the window when you travel, where your mobile data price caps don't apply and you are at the mercy of the local telco with regard to roaming charges. There have been horror stories of travelers getting bills in the thousands simply because they forgot to turn off an online background application. Bridgewater Systems, a Canadian service developer, has the solution.
Read more »
Amidst a challenging economic downturn, Singapore's Infocomm (ICT) sector was one of the few to show continued growth in 2008, with revenue increasing by 12.4 percent to S$58.1 billion (US$39.8 billion). To take advantage of the constantly evolving ICT climate, IMBX 2009 will see the launch of several new initiatives while extending and enhancing current programs.
Read more »
"There're certainly some new products coming along from that Internet Tablet range in the product roadmap. There's already one that will be launched in the second half of the year." Those were the words from Nokia's Vice President of Sales in Southeast Asia Pacific, Chris Carr, during a group interview session at the launch of the N97 in Kuala Lumpur this evening. Carr remained coy when we pressed for more details, though the buzz on the Web is on the N900 Rover tablet that's rumored to succeed the N810 Internet Tablet.
Word has it that the N900 will run Maemo 5 and will be fitted with a 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen, OMAP3430 500/600MHz processor, 5-megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and 32GB of onboard memory. Connectivity options include HSPA, Wi-Fi and built-in GPS. It's also said that the announcement will come as early as July. Granted that we were referencing information from two different sources, one official and one from a tipster courtesy of MobileCrunch, it's safe to assume there will be at least one new tablet from the Finns this year. Nokia is as usual tight-lipped about its product roadmaps, but I guess it wouldn't be too long before we hear more news on this.
According to a report on Open Salon, Apple appears to be preparing direct movie and TV show downloads on the
iPhone.
Open Salon claims that an ad appearing in the free version of the app Twitterfon is the first place this new iPhone feature was discovered. However, the ad in question is nowhere to be found at press time and hasn't been confirmed.
iTunes TV ad (Credit: Open Salon)
According to the report, the ad supposedly led to a place that pointed to some movie and TV show listings. The listings were broken down by genre, and although titles were listed, none would work when accessed.
Read more »
During Intel's mobility event at Computex Taipei this week, a few device manufacturers showed off their new products bearing the chipmaker's upcoming platform for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) codenamed Moorestown. This platform puts the processor, graphics and memory controller, among others, on a single chip. It's built for power efficiency, and according to Intel, will consume 50 times less power than the original Atom chip when idle.
Companies that showed off their new prototypes included big names such as Inventec and Quanta, but also lesser-known ones such as Finland-based EB. Each of these devices also came with some sort of custom interface built upon either Windows or Linux. This makes sense as fiddling around with a full-fledged desktop OS is difficult on devices with screen sizes of about 4 inches diagonally.
The Moorestown platform is not ready for production at this point, so we won't see these products hit the market till at least next year. Here are more pictures of these upcoming MIDs.
Read more »