mobile Archive

I’ve received several calls over the past few hours that there are outage and service down issues currently with mobile provider T-Mobile. I haven’t been able to reach a close friend of mine this evening – all I get when I call him is a fast busy signal. He just sent me the following message from T-Mobile customer service:

Important message for T-Mobile customers

Some T-Mobile customers may be experiencing intermittent service disruptions impacting calls and messages.

Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible.

There is a thread on the T-Mobile support forums noting, “Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time.”  The forums say that it could take as long as 24 hours to get service restored.

Update: T-Mobile says that all service has been restored. You may now continue making your calls and telling the world on twitter that you had a turkey sandwich for dinner.

Additional coverage on Gizmodo and MocoNews notes that 5% of T-Mobile customers are affected.  Please leave a comment if you are using T-Mobile and your service is currently in service or is down.

I currently own a Samsung Ace mobile phone which runs Windows Mobile and is on the Sprint network. I love the phone – it does everything I need a mobile to do. Sure it doesn’t have a huge screen and it hasn’t helped me pick up any women like the iPhone apparently does, but it works great. I use the awesome Skyfire mobile browser for the web and unlike many, I don’t use Twitter or Facebook on my phone.

My contract with Sprint is coming to an end soon and I am considering what my next mobile device might be. I haven’t had much time to read any reviews of the latest devices. I do see a ton of advertising on television for three specific devices: Palm Pre (Sprint), Droid (Verizon), and the MyTouch3G (T-Mobile).  I’d like to share my thoughts about what I’ve learned about the three devices solely based on the television advertising. I have never used any of these devices.
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Earlier this year I wrote several times about the mistake that I believed Yahoo was making with regards to wanting to get the developers on board with their apps and programs. It seemed (and continues to seem) that Yahoo wants to win over the valley developers when they are so locked to Google and Apple that it is near impossible for the “big win” that Yahoo is seeking. My take is that Yahoo should go after other developer markets and then come back to the Valley with the world’s developers behind them (that is if they would even care about the valley at that point). Yahoo is bringing their OpenHack event to NYC this week and as I mentioned to the team responsible for the event, they should work to own the other major startup centers around the world.

Let’s move forward to October 2009. I see that Palm is making exactly the same mistake that Yahoo has. Palm held an event earlier this week in San Francisco to discuss the state of the hardware, the platform, etc. There were also several major announcements at the event including the ability for users to install applications without using a store and some open source changes. You can read more about the announcements on GigaOM and SFGate.

Palm also provided a free Palm Pre mobile device to everyone that was in the audience. The Pre came with a free month of service so look for a flood of Pre devices on eBay in about 40 days.

The issue for Palm is about winning over developers and getting startups to want to develop on their platform. Just like Yahoo, Palm could work to “own” the developer communities around the world…instead they decide to try to woo the developer’s who would do anything to touch Steve Jobs. The “Apple Magnet” is very tight in the valley but isn’t as strong as you move further away from 94103. My take is that Palm should have announced these features (and all future releases) in different cities. Palm executives could easily attend the local Meet the local mobile developers and startups – get them excited about the Palm Pre and WebOS platform.

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A couple of years ago we reported on the launch of Pac-man for iGoogle. Today we’ve learned that Pac-man is now available for the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I wonder what the gameplay is like seeing as you have to hit tiny buttons on the iPhone screen. The game costs $5.99.

Want to feel old? Read this line from Jonathan Kromrey, general manager for Apple Games for Namco Networks, “With tricks and traps, special items and battles against giant ghost-bosses, this isn’t your parents’ PAC-MAN.” Luckily the “old” version of Pac-Man is also available.

Without looking, can you name the orange ghost?

Pacman is great, but where is that hottie Ms. Pac-man? Useless bit of info: I won a Ms. Pac-man tourney in Atlantic City when I was a wee little kid.

Consulting firm Accenture has announced their plans to acquire the Symbian Professional Services group from Nokia. The group is responsible for customer engineering and customer support with regards to the Symbian operating system.

Approximately 165 Nokia professional services engineers and consultants in the United Kingdom, Finland, Japan, Korea and Australia are expected to transfer to Accenture as a result of the agreement.  Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Peter Ropke, senior vice president of Devices at Nokia, said, “This agreement allows the Symbian professional services team to realize its full potential in the supply of independent services to the open-source ecosystem. The transaction underscores Nokia’s commitment to the open-source community and the Symbian ecosystem.”

Blogger Robert Scoble started a good discussion last week about Nokia, Symbian and the mobile market in Europe.

I guess the people at group SMS service Tatango are loving the “Five…Five Dollar Footlong” commercial these days. Tatango has been testing a program with a 16-store Subway franchise in upstate New York over the past few months. The company says the program went so well that 300 more Subway stores in Seattle will be testing the SMS marketing option over the coming months.

Tatango provides a group SMS product – basically the idea is that companies can send out SMS messages to mass groups of people who have requested (opt-in) to be part of the group. You can think of group SMS similar to opt-in email marketing except with much shorter messages that are usually very targeted. Check out our video interview with Tatango CEO Derek Johnson to learn more about the company.

While financial terms were not disclosed, Tatango notes, “Over 5,000 customers have signed up, 13,000 messages have been sent, and most importantly – they have experienced a 9% redemption rate of all messages, as opposed to a 1% rate for direct mail.”

Earlier this year Subway partnered with NY-based GoMobo to allow customers to order food before they arrive to save time.

It’s interesting to see Subway testing a variety of new online options for reaching their customers. I can only imagine that Grimace and the King won’t be too far behind.

AOL announced today that their online coupon application shortcuts.com is now supporting Safeway (a supermarket chain). Safeway has 1,554 stores in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Shortcuts.com allows you to pick coupons online and they automatically get deducted at checkout – no more coupon clipping.

I’ve spent a number of years working with retailers and their frequent shopper cards. I have a variety of frequent shopper cards including CVS, Kroger, Cosi, etc. I also have a few bank cards that I use at ATM machines that are owned by the bank.

Why can’t any of these systems get smarter with regards to receipts. Apple allows you to provide an email address and have a receipt emailed to you. The few times I’ve purchased items at the Apple Store, it’s worked perfectly – the emails will usually hit my mobile before I even leave the store.

CVS knows my email address – can’t they just email me the receipt each time I shop? It would help me manage my books, it would help CVS save money on the receipt printing and would save a number of trees (how many I have no idea but certainly a good number).

Banks are even worse with regards to receipts. Let’s not even talk about the fact that my bank knows I speak English – why they prompt me for 7 other languages is beyond me (and could be a security risk). With so many banks offering online banking, can’t they too email me a receipt when I complete a transaction? If they removed the language question and the receipt question, they could easily shave 10-15 seconds off the total transaction time. I can’t imagine it would be hard – the bank already knows my email address and they could offer a button that allows me to enter my pin and get a hardcopy receipt or enter my pin and get a receipt via email. Sure this won’t work when I use a foreign ATM, but I bet the majority of transactions are made at one of your own bank’s ATM.

So many of the things we do on a daily basis could be made smarter and save us time and natural resources. Ok, I’m done ranting…leave your thoughts on how machines like ATMs and cash registers can become smarter.