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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Show-starters at ShowStoppers

Mark Bridge writes:

“Hot products. Cool companies. Meet the press.”

That was the tagline for ShowStoppers, a showcase event that took place last night before today’s opening of Mobile World Congress. As you probably heard in today’s podcast, I went along and met a few of the participants.

Although the overall impression was of start-up businesses, there were also new product from well-established companies. Alcatel-Lucent was there with the lightRadio antenna it announced last week. This promises to replace conventional antennas and base stations… and it was much smaller than I imagined. To describe is as a ‘box’ would be an exaggeration; it’s the size of your fist!

Another well-known name there was touchscreen text input application Swype. Its director of business development, Brian Lysak, talked to me about the company’s existing technology – currently preloaded by 12 OEMs worldwide and distributed on 20 million devices last year – and its plans for the future.

A couple of conversations that didn’t make it into the podcast were my chats with SnapKeys and Wolfhound. In many ways, SnapKeys is a rival to Swype… and in many ways it’s from a different planet. In a nutshell, you use an invisible keyboard to type on-screen. Yes, invisible. How do you know where the keys are?  You don’t really need to know, because there are just four keys. Yes, four. It’s certainly impressive when demonstrated.

Also impressive – and much easier to comprehend – was the Wolfhound-PRO from Berkeley Varitronics Systems. Imagine a mobile phone detector with design by Star Trek. You’ve got it. Rather like a geiger counter for cellphones, it let you know when you’re heading or pointing in the right direction. Ideal for prisons… or even exam halls. The latest version can also detect DECT 6.0 phones, which are approved for use in the US and Canada but are illegal in the EU.

The overwhelming impression at ShowStoppers was that the mobile industry is innovating in pretty much every area. Much as you’d hope, really.

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Opinion Articles

And our survey said...

Mark Bridge writes:

The coolest person in the country admires the French president's wife and lives in East London. Oh, and they use a BlackBerry by day but an iPhone by night. That's what recent surveys say. Nonsense, isn’t it?

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The mobile phone tries to grow up

Mark Bridge writes:

The end of civilisation. The dawn of the future. Mobile phones are somewhere in the middle. Once seen as novelties for people with too much money, the mobile phone is now ubiquitous. And with that ubiquity comes an acceptance that they’re just tools. Doesn't it?

Which is why I was surprised to see a news article from Voice, a trade union that wants mobile phones banned from nurseries because of concern about inappropriate photographs.

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Sounding good to me

Mark Bridge writes:

"Sounding good to me". So sang Charlie Dore, back in the day when radio stations started to realise that quality was as important as quantity. "AM, FM, I feel so ecstatic", opined Cliff Richard, although I’m betting he’d have preferred the lack of hiss and crackle on FM stations.

Yet no-one’s really thought much about the quality of a phone call. Until now.

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The landline phone may be fading... but its number still remains

Mark Bridge writes:

In last weekend’s Sunday Times, Ali Hussain asked "Is this the end for the landline phone?"

He pointed out that the average mobile bill almost halved between 2003 and 2008, while landline bills fell by less than a fifth – which has meant the average mobile bill is now lower than the average landline bill. He went on to list fibre-optic broadband, mobile broadband, mobile calls, VoIP calls and satellite phones as alternatives to using fixed-line phones.

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Mixed verdict on mobile phones as cancer cause

Art Chimes of voanews.com writes:

Nearly two-thirds of the people on Earth now use mobile telephones, according to a study by the International Telecommunications Union. But how safe are those phones? Scientists still aren't sure, but some evidence is starting to suggest there may be danger along with the convenience.

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