Forum Nokia Open C Roadshow comes to Chennai

Great news for Mobile Developers in and around chennai.

Nokia is starting of its Open C Events in the Country.

If you are wondering what Open C is about but are interested to find out, then head to the venue.
Venue

Le Royal Meridien
1 GST Road,
St. Thomas Mount,
Chennai – 600 016,
Tamil Nadu,
India.

Date 24th April 2007, Tuesday
Time 09:00 – 17:25

Register Now

Mobile phone theft whom to blame?

Mobile phone theft whom to blame?

Mobile phone theft is on the rise in India.

A huge section of India’s working population use public transport.
IT, Call center jobs have lead to an increase in purchasing power.
Low Cost handsets have also lead to an increase in mobile phone users.

In a country of vast geographical distribution, the mobile phone has
transformed from being a luxury to a bare necessity. Cell phones have
become so common and theft also has risen dramatically over the past 2
years.

Major locations where theft occurs are railway stations, bus
stops, traffic signals, pathways Motorists who use their mobile when
driving might not only be risking their lives but also be a potential
target for the culprits. Of late there have been too many incidences of
bikers being robbed on roadways.

Insurance Cos had stopped offering Mobile Theft Insurance due to a
large number of false claims.

When you loose your mobile phone, more than anything it’s the personal
information that really matters.

Some pointers to avoid mobile theft

* Avoid using your mobile phone in heavily crowded areas
* Avoid using your mobile phone in public transport
* Avoid lending your mobile phone to strangers who might try to trick you
* Don’t talk while driving
* Avoid leaving your handset in your vehicle
* Do not leave you phone unattended in any place, even at your home

Hutchison Essar rechristens as Vodafone Essar

Vodafone Essar will be the new name of the old Hutch venture in India. This move comes after Vodafone’s acquistion of HTIL.

Asim Ghosh, Hutchison Essar’s current chief executive, will be chairman and chief executive officer.

Arun Sarin will be the Vice Chairman.

Ravi Ruia will  non-executive chairman

What will Vodafone do with Hutch ?

Hutch has changed colors since it started operations in India.

I remember seeing Hutch first in the Orange. They then changed to pink and blue.

Now after Vodafone has taken over Hutch , will Hutch move to Red synonymous with India’s other largest telecom provider Airtel.

It would be interesting to see what Vodafone does with Hutch.

hutch_dog_vodafone.jpg

Hutch India now Vodafone’s Baby

The battle’s finally over ? Atleast IBN Live says so.

The long battle amongst the Telecom biggies for the aquisition of Hutch India might be over.

Vodafone has won the bid for $19 Billion.Essar is happy about the deal and the price. Vodafone is said to have even offered Essar to become a partner firm.

Hutch is expected to announce an official statement tomorrow

via [ibnlive]

Bangalore based Motvik readying WWIGO

M.Thiyagarajan of Bangalore,India is the person behind Motvik – a startup in the mobile media space, its flagship product WWIGO (pronounced as ‘vigo’) stands for ‘Webcam Wherever I Go’.

It allows a user to transform a bluetooth enabled camera phone into a wireless webcam to be used along with a PC/Laptop. Currently in private alpha testing it would be soon made available for wider public use.”

I m going to test this app soon and post my impressions on the same here.

Wow !! Its so great to see some activity happenning in the Indian Mobile Space.

Motvik site 

Spice Mobile S1000 Windows Mobile Phone

Spice Mobile Phones which is being promoted by the Spice Telecom Group has come up with a rather interesting phone the S1000

s1000.jpg

Features

  • Windows Mobile OS
  • Touchscreen
  • 2.0 Megapixel Camera
  • Wi-fi , Bluetooth, Infrared
  • miniSD Memory Expansion

Specifications

Network GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Connectivity Wi-fi, Bluetooth ,IrDA
Memory RAM 128 MBROM 64 MB

Expansion : Mini SD (512 MB in package)

Up to 2GB

Display 240×320 pixels ,65k TFT Touch screen with Handwriting Recognition
Camera 1600×1200 pixels, flash,zoom,video recording
Tones Polyphonic,MP3
Battery Talk time : upto 5 Hours Standby : 6 Days
Messaging SMS,MMS, Email
Operating System Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ 5.0 Pocket PC Edition
Software Word, Excel, PowerPoint Viewer, Java Enabled

PriceThe handset is Priced at Rs.34999

Fring : Make free mobile VOIP Calls

Fring™ is a 3G mobile application that allows you to make free mobile calls and send instant messages (chat) to other fring users and PC based VoIP services such as Skype and Google Talk at no extra cost.
fring™ calls cost nothing extra because they utilize the 3G mobile internet connections and VoIP technologies that are already embedded in your mobile handset.

I was surprised to find that this Software works in India.The voice quality was really great for a normal GPRS connection.

Will post a video or images of our test soon.

fring™ works transparently over 3G networks while bypassing traditional mobile voice and sms text messaging services. This means that fring™ enables mobile-to-mobile calls, mobile-to-landline calls, and mobile-to-PC calls including integration into Skype and Google Talk services wherever you are.

Download

Nokia announces N76, Competion for Moto Razr ?

At CES Today , Nokia announced the N76 which is the latest entrant to the N Series family. Looks like the guys at Nokia want to give some competition for Motorola Razr. The phone is about .5mm thick weighs 115g .

nokia_n76.jpg

Features

  • 3g
  • 2 Megapixel Cam
  • microSD Memory Expansion
  • FM Radio
  • Bluetooth version 2.0
  • External Display

nokia_n76_2.jpg
Price

This one might be priced at around 500 USD which is about Rs.20000-25000 range.

Availability

Q1 2007

 More info about Nokia N76

Event : Cellshow 2006 in Chennai

I had attended the Cell Show 2006 which is taking place at Rani Meyyammai Hall, Chennai between 22nd and 25th December.

This is the 3rd time the event is being held in Chennai. There was a good turnout for the show despite the Rs.30 entry fee. This is just an indication of the mobile madness in this city.

Airtel had a huge stall at the entrance with their red balloons. They were giving away Free Prepaid SIM cards if you had an ID proof. They were also displaying the new Blackberry Handsets. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and BlackBerry 8700g . It was just a demo piece and could not see them in action.

Univercell was to be seen with their stalls at every each and every corner. They had a stall for each of the popular brands.

I got my hands on the The Motorola Fone F3 which was launched recently.Its called the ” Unbreakable Handset ” Its priced at around Rs.1500. Its appears like a low price market winner from Motorola. The handset is interestingly manufactured in India by Flextronics in Chennai.

I tried the Motorola Ming A1200 – the Linux PDA. The Handwriting recognition is not the best one.But its a phone which has got a unique combination of features.

Wizdom.in who are the pioneers in mobile learning in India were showcasing their Mobile Application. A free demo app was available to the visitors on request.

Pictures will be available soon.

The Hutch Saga continues

The rumors have started again. Reports suggest that the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa group is believed to be considering a sale of its telecom business. The sale might include Hutchison Essar as well. Hutch has postponed its IPO in India so many times.

Vodafone has shown interest in taking over Hutchison Essar. Its willing to offer upto 13.5 Billion Dollars for the deal. Reliance is reported to have teamed up with Blackstone Ventures and is willing to offer upto 15 Billion Dollars.

Its interesting to note that Vodafone has an 10% stake in Bharti Airtel which is valued at close to 1.4 Billion pounds. But there is a no compete attached to this deal.

We still need to wait and see the turn of events.

[ibnlive ]

Reduce your mobile bills

This is a great website I have come accross recently.Texas-based technology-enabled business value services provider, Trilogy, has developed a portal YourBillBuddy.com. Its currently in Beta and free for use. If you are an Airtel subscriber like me, or have an ebill available from your operator head straight to YourBillBuddy.com and upload the same. Even if your Ebill pdf is password protected , the service is smart enough to validate the same.

Once you upload the bill, within seconds the site analyses your bill and gives you a break up of your usage viz. Local Voice,STD Voice , SMS, Data and Roaming

yourbillbuddy_logo.jpg

yourbill_breakup_1.jpg

The Current Networks supported are : Airtel , Reliance, Hutch, Spice, Bsnl and Tata Indicom

The service is certainly a laudable one.

Sony Ericsson M600i

Sony Ericsson M600i is a perfect multitasking phone.The highlighting features are the secure push email,internet and intranet access. The sleek design with 2.8-inch QVGA high resolution touch-sensitive display makes it easy for accessing the internet, watching videos and images. M600i has got a dual form keypad which houses both the QWERTY form and normal keypad apart from the handwriting recognition that makes it easy for writing emails and messages.

Continue reading “Sony Ericsson M600i”

Mobile Blogging now possible with Reliance

Reliance has launched mobile blogging for its customers. RCL has partnered with the Hyderabad-based mobile content solutions company IMI Mobile for moblogging. The service is priced at Rs 5 per MMS/SMS for posting a blog. The blogs are hosted on www.relianceinfo.com/mblog. In any case, it will take a while for moblogging to become a mass application.

via contentsutra and The Economic Times