TechWinter

Yesterday Joiku announced a new version of their very popular mobile software application JoikuSpot for Windows Mobile.  If you have not heard about Joiku then you may be interested to know this software turns any WiFi enabled mobile such as RIM’s Blackberries and Nokia’s E-series into a HotSpot.

This is a great tool for those mobile warriors that have laptops without Bluetooth or a tether and need to access the web.

We are happy to announce that
“JoikuSpot for Windows Mobile”,
WMWiFiRouter ships at JoikuShop as for to-date.

Similar to JoikuSpot Premium Edition for S60 platform, WMWiFiRouter does the same for
Windows Mobile devices, transforming the WM devices to wireless Wi-Fi (WLAN) HotSpots.

Get your JoikuSpot for Windows Mobile today!

We are also happy to inform that JoikuSpot Premium for S60 is offered with
40% discount at JoikuShop.
Click here
to make use of the market special. JoikuSpot Premium adds Email and Corporate intraweb access to the solution,
and allows direct access to internet with no forced first landing page.
The limited Edition JoikuSpot Light is and continues to stay FREE.

For more information on Joiku you can check out a great article by Lets Go Mobile

Note: CNET News’ Tom Krazit and Marguerite Reardon co-wrote this article.

After his third iPhone 3G continued to cut him off in the middle of his conversations, Ryan Shaw had seen enough.

“The phone was a disappointment from the standpoint that it couldn’t maintain a consistent connection with the 3G network…All the other features were fantastic,” said Shaw, a sales professional living in a Cleveland suburb. But those other features weren’t enough to prevent him from returning to Verizon and the BlackBerry after deciding the hassle just wasn’t worth it.

Widespread complaints about the iPhone 3G’s reception have spread across the Internet in the month since Apple and AT&T released the successor to the original iPhone. The companies insist that nothing is wrong, but the complaints have been mounting through e-mails, water-cooler discussions, and message boards on Apple’s own Web site: iPhone 3G users are having trouble connecting, and staying connected, to the 3G networks in their areas.

Source: Apple, AT&T mum on iPhone 3G issues | One More Thing - CNET News.com

After having written myself an article recently on the potential of ‘Mapping‘ and our very own Justin Peer having done the same as regards its ‘Utility‘, I would like to revisit the topic and explain the most important upgrade to location based services since GPS - A-GPS.

Have you heard of A-GPS (Assisted-Global Positioning System)?
A-GPS, a new technology hybrid that was developed to meet the need for 911 Emergency calls in the US where it was mandated that networks make available a capability to find emergency callers like they can using a landline.

A-GPS utilises Cell/Mobile network towers, Wifi and GPS in order to determine your location.  According to WMExperts A-GPS is faster in making a location determination, it is more accurate and it requires generally less power do to the speed with which it determines your location.

Diagram: Explaining A-GPS. *This is a WMExperts image

Additionally because urban areas can provide challenging environments for GPS satellites in determining a users location, A-GPS’s hybrid utility allowing for triangulation. Triangulation e.g. ‘best guess’ can be up to 90% accurate without GPS availability. If you want to learn more about A-GPS you can go to SkyHook as they are one of the leaders in this technology.

What other supporting hardware or software technologies do you see impacting Mapping?

Press release
08/08/2008, Espoo, Finland

Joikusoft, the mobile software development house, maker of the mobile Wi-Fi HotSpot software JoikuSpot, announces a collaboration with FON, the world’s largest WiFi community. FON and Joikusoft are releasing an exclusive version of Joikusoft’s mobile hotspot solution, named FonSpot. FonSpot turns a mobile phone into a Wi-Fi HotSpot, enabling any laptop, iPod Touch, internet tablet or other Wi-Fi device to connect to the Internet using any compatible mobile phone as a secure high speed Internet gateway.

FonSpot with Wi-Fi will effectively replace Bluetooth, cable and USB dongles to access the Internet using mobile phones and 3G connectivity. The FonSpot is a fully secure mobile internet HotSpot solution, and makes use of the maximum security offered by the underlying Symbian OS platform. The users have full control over who will be able to access their FonSpot’s wireless internet connection.

FonSpot is an exclusive offering for members of the FON community. Foneros will be able to share their mobile Internet connection with up to 5 friends, who can connect to their FonSpot. It will be made commercially available for Foneros during 3Q 2008.

According to the Joikusoft Chairman and Founder Mr. Tom Ojala “FON is a perfect companion to roll out wireless Wi-Fi access in mobile phones as FON already has an established user base of hundreds of thousands of physical FON Wi-Fi base-stations. FON users will now enjoy even broader access to internet wherever they are, literally carrying internet in their pocket.”

Alexander Puregger, FON’s Director of Business Development, states, “FON is very glad to work with Joikusoft as the company is proving to be an innovative contributor to the proliferation of Wi-Fi. And FON is all about WiFi everywhere!”

About Joikusoft Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the little things

Sometimes I wonder if some companies actually give their prototype products to people to test in the ‘real world’.

Anyone who knows me will agree that I’m rather in love with my Nokia N95 8Gb. It is, without doubt, the most useful phone I’ve ever owned, and it’s opened up a whole new world of what’s possible with the current technology. For instance, I’m currently sitting in a little hotel in the Andalucia, Spain, typing this up on my phone using the Stowaway keyboard (now sadly discontinued), a combination that fits in one pocket of my shorts. In the past I would have had to lug a laptop along with me so this is quite revolutionary in terms of slimming down my luggage and creating new opportunities to get my ideas down wherever I happen to be.

However, the device isn’t perfect by any means, although I think it’s the best one out there in terms of functionality and features even though the user friendliness could use some improvement. One or two items particularly have had me sitting there thinking ‘did they ever test this in the real world’ as some things just beggar belief in their lack of thought.

Now, I don’t work in the mobile phone industry nor, at the moment, am I in a technology field professionally (although that will change in a few months). However, I’m a geek by nature and so would probably see things similar to anyone who you might consider a ‘power user’, a bit more clued up than a ‘normob’ and therefore I would think I’m exactly the sort of market this phone is aimed at. So then, what do I find irritating about the phone: Well, first of all, Nokia have pushed the N95 as being a real convergence device, one that will have you ditching all the electronic detritus from your pockets to be replaced by one sleek machine that does it all: phone, mp3 player, satnav, video player, gps tracker, email device and web browser. I use mine for all those things, but some are easier than others.

Take, for example, it’s use as a video playback device. On the flight down to spain I’d planned to watch a film as the budget airline I was flying on had no inflight entertainment. First of all the airlines won’t let you use your phone as such and specifically warn you that using a phone during the flight even when it’s switched to offline or flight mode. If the phone manufacturers are going to continue putting this capability on their phones and pushing it in advertising, couldn’t they actually get with the airlines and do some testing on this. I’m allowed to use my laptop, my ipod, a portable dvd player and every type of mp3 player, but not a phone in flight mode. This is patently silly.

However, lets ignore that fact for a moment, as the problem for me is just the same if I’m on a train and want to watch a film on my phone. Now, a film is usually anywhere from 1:30-2:30 in length. I don’t want to hand-hold my phone for that length of time while watching, so I prop it up against a book (why is there no stand feature on a phone designed for this function) with the phone in landscape mode to take advantage of the gorgeous wide colour screen it has. Only I can’t, because the headphone socket is on the bottom.

Here’s a phone designed to be used as a video player, but you can only use it when holding it in your hand. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to sit on a plane or train and hand-hold the phone for 2 hours while watching a film. It’s a small thing, but it’s the sort that really bugs me, and just the same ‘feature’ makes carrying the phone in a shirt or jacket pocket awkward as the side mounted socket means it tends to catch on clothing. Put the socket on the top.

The other big thing that bugs me is Nokia’s web browser which I really, really dislike because of it’s useability ‘features’, or rather the way they just get in the way of you being able to use it like any regular browser. So, what do I dislike? Well it’s slow, [insert deity of choice] is it slow. It takes a lot longer to load and render a page than Opera Mini does for example. Even more annoyingly, it starts to load and render, and after about half the page is opened and you’re starting to scroll down it, it’ll get to a certain point in the loading, blank the screen and reload again. I mean, ‘what!!’. Once it has loaded fully, I find it will often just stall when you’re scrolling for no apparent reason, for anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more, which is just infuriating. I don’t have any of these problems with Opera mini, which you would think would be slower given that it’s a java app rather than native, but no, Nokia’s browswer is much slower. This irritated me so much that I simply won’t use the Nokia browser as it makes me want to throw the phone through a window.

Oh and caching pages. With Nokia’s browser, if you want to go back a page, you get offered a quick history of recent pages, which is great but when you select one it completely reloads the page instead of pulling it from the cache like any normal browser. Now, it may be that there’s some setup option that I’m missing, but I can’t find any and I’ve spent quite a while looking. In Opera Mini, for example, it just pings you straight back to the previous page with no additional loading or render delay, exactly the way I expect a browser to work.

If the phone companies expect people to take these new multi-media phones and replace everything else with them, they need to make the useability better for the general public. People like me are prepared to play with them, mess with them, spend hours tweeking them, because we’re geeks and that’s what we like to do. I have a whole slew of neat bits of software loaded on mine to either enhance to user experience or leverage the abilities of the device. My usual way of testing devices like this in the real world is to give them to my mum and see how easy she finds them, and how much explaining it takes for her to be happy using them. My step-dad has an N95, one of the original series and, in a few weeks when I go over to see them again, it will be interesting to see how he’s been getting on with it since my last visit, and whether he’s installed much 3rd party software or is even aware of some of the things it can do. That will tell me far more about how these devices are doing in their acceptance in the world of normobs than anything you’ll find on a geek forum.

I’ll report back after that visit and let you know what I’ve found.