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.

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.

Palm Pre

The commercials feature a woman who I guess is some sort of angel up in the clouds. She barely smiles while using the device and apparently she is considered “creepy” based on the number of creepy remixes on YouTube. One of the commercials shows the woman receiving an update from a friend – looked like a status update. Another video shows the woman clicking a button which will alert her meeting attendees that she is running late. I wonder how many networks support this functionality. More importantly…are these the best two features of the device? The Palm Pre supports apps like the iPhone – why not show some of these off? Here’s the commercial with the woman showing off the late calendar notification:

Droid

This is my favorite ad of the three mobile devices. It scares me. When the commercial transitions to the Robotron voice, I get it. The Droid is everything the iPhone isn’t. Simple and makes the point clear. I’d like to see some images of the Droid device in the ad itself but even without it, I get it. I will need to read some reviews of this device — looks like the reviews hit the gadget blogs today. Here’s the commercial:

MyTouch3G

This is the worst ad of the three – and that’s saying a lot considering that the Palm Pre commercial is pretty crappy. I have an idea – let’s bring together some F-level celebs and show off how they can “customize” a phone. At least I think that is what they are doing. Trust me, I have no desire to own the phone that Whoopi Goldberg does – I remember her from her Web 1.0 pimping days. We know it plays videos, shows photos and makes pretty background images. And it has Google.

Conclusion

Droid, Pre, MyTouch3G in that order. I’d love to chat with the agency who created the MyTouch commercial. Commercials should get me excited to run out and spend money I don’t have for a new device. Only the Droid even remotely did that and I don’t even know what the device does besides support Android.

One of the reasons I am sharing these commercials is because it’s something I hope you think about with your startups. Last week I spoke to a startup here in NYC. Thirty-minutes into the call and I was more confused as to what service they provide than before the call began. Keep it simple and make sure that the customer “gets it”. And that they get so excited about it that they want it before it’s even ready.

I will leave the “these devices will never take down the iPhone” conversation for another day. As much as we can crap on Apple, their iPhone commercials are very solid and so simple. They show the device and what you can do with it. The apps, the maps, etc. Sometimes the simplest concepts are the ones that win.

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.

For example, let’s say that Palm wanted to hold the event in NYC as the midpoint between Washington and Boston. Why not take over a few Bolt buses, bring the mobile developers from nearly anywhere to NYC, and create an awesome event. It wouldn’t cost much but would certainly get the developers talking. If the Palm WebOS platform fails (and I sure hope it doesn’t), you can bet that one of my main reasons for failure will be their ability to attract developers across the markets that the Palm WebOS serves.

I am working on the mobile strategy for my startup and it’s been interesting to look at how each of the different mobile platforms embrace developers and startups around the world. More on that to come…

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.

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.

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.

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.

The report says that kids are texting each other with answers during the exams along with storing notes on their phones. I guess I am confused – when I was in grad school, we had to leave our bags at the front of the room and could only have a bottle of water/drink that was clear, pens, pencils, etc. Clearly the professor could see if someone pulled out a mobile device.

Other key findings from the poll include:

• 41% of teens say that storing notes on a cell phone to access during a test is a serious cheating offense, while 23% don’t think it’s cheating at all.
• 45% of teens say that texting friends about answers during tests is a serious cheating offense, while 20% say it’s not cheating at all.
• 76% of parents say that cell phone cheating happens at their teens’ schools, but only 3% believe their own teen has ever used a cell phone to cheat.
• Nearly two-thirds of students with cell phones use them during school, regardless of school policies against it.
• Teens with cell phones send 440 text messages a week and 110 a week while in the classroom.

Robert Andrews from MocoNews is reporting that the UK regulator is investigating whether the UK’s National Rail violated any rules when they forced some third-party mobile apps developers offline while pushing their own new mobile train tracking application. Interestingly, the two apps that were pushed offline were free while the “official” app is just over $8.

The two apps in question are the  UK Train Times mobile web app and the MyRail iPhone app.

Robert notes, “Now the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) says it’s ‘investigating the supply of Real Time Train Information (RTTI) (by NRE) under the Competition Act 1998, having been made aware of concerns in this area including from members of the public, and from Members of Parliament on behalf of their constituents. RTTI is a key input into the provision of live train running information to passengers through media such as train information websites or services accessed over mobile phones.’”

I’d love to see real time tracking for bus and train service in the U.S. — it would be a great way to create more usable time for passengers.

“This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities,” said Renee James, Intel vice president and general manager of the company’s Software and Services Group.

Here’s a bit on Wind River from the acquisition release, “Wind River is a publicly held company with headquarters in Alameda, Calif., with more than 1,600 employees and operations in more than 15 countries. During its fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2009, Wind River reported annual revenues of $359.7 million.”

The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of summer. Wind River will report into Intel’s Software and Services Group, headed by Renee James.

To be honest, the Skyfire browser freaking rocks. Last week I had a family pickup at the airport and while waiting for them to arrive, I opened Skyfire, loaded up YouTube and Hulu and watched all the videos I wanted in perfect streaming. I’ve written full blog posts in Drupal on Amtrak using Skyfire.  Oddly, I can’t seem to activate the Javascript functionality in Wordpress from Skyfire.

Today the company has announced the 1.0 release of the Skyfire browser. The company notes 1 million installed browsers to-date.

The only gripe I had with the browser was that each time you loaded it, it seemed to call home and “authenticate” which meant I lost where I was. This appears to be corrected in the current release.

I still believe that Microsoft would be smart to acquire or partner with Skyfire and replace the nasty IE mobile browser with Skyfire or Skyfire-like browsing. It really makes the Windows Mobile OS much more powerful.

Here’s my video demo from last summer:

The app is called “Elvis Mobile” and here’s a list of what’s included:

• An “Elvis Sightings” section allows fans to submit their Elvis pictures, taken with their iPhone, directly to www.elvis.com from anywhere in the world and simultaneously update their Facebook pages with the same information.
• An “Image” section will be updated weekly and will feature never-before-seen and rare pictures of the life and times of Elvis Presley.
• A “Video” section will be updated periodically with clips of Elvis and special Elvis events/happenings.
• A “News” section features the latest information on all things Elvis from www.elvis.com.
• A “Livecam” section gives fans a real-time look at Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, TN.
• A “Podcast” section allows users to listen to The Graceland Beat from Elvis Radio.

I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t enjoy the King as a I travel around the city. It looks like the application is free and even offers a Facebook Connect option so you can share your Elvis Sightings with your Facebook friends. Hmm, I wonder if Elvis is on Twitter?

Let me make this clear, however: I will not be jailbreaking my iPhone. Even if the phone was not owned by the government (which it is), I would still have no interest in jailbreaking it.

Saving E-mail Attachments

Aside from photos (which you can save to your Camera Roll by holding your finger on the picture while viewing the e-mail message), there is no way to save attachments. Ultimately, my ideal situation would be to be able to save a Word, Excel or PDF document attached to an e-mail message, then upload it to my Web server.

I have found an FTP app that looks promising (FTP on the Go). Unfortunately, however, after contacting the developer of the app, I have discovered that iPhone development kit does not allow apps to interact with each other. Therefore, there’s not really any realistic way for the FTP app to allow you to upload e-mail attachments.

Adding E-mail Attachments

On a similar note, there is no real way to attach items to e-mail messages. Again, you can attach a single photo to an e-mail message by going to your Camera Roll, holding your finger on the image and selecting to e-mail it to someone. Unfortunately, you don’t currently have that option with any other type of document or file.

Cut, Copy, Paste

I mentioned this in my review of the iPhone, but this is a major complaint. I am extremely frustrated by the fact that there is no way to copy text from one thing (for instance, a Word document or an e-mail message) and paste it into another app (for instance, Safari). I have a sinking feeling that, even when Apple does institute cut, copy and paste within its native apps, it will not work across apps. In other words, you will most likely be able to cut or copy text from an e-mail message and paste it somewhere else in the e-mail app, but you won’t be able to copy text from an e-mail message and paste it into Safari. I would definitely assume that, even if Apple does somehow institute cross-browser copy/paste, it will be extremely difficult for other app developers to figure out how to access the clipboard, so I won’t be able to copy from a Word document in an app like QuickOffice and paste it into an e-mail message or Safari.

Another issue I have with the fact that there is no copy/paste is the fact that there is no way to e-mail multiple URLs to someone. You can e-mail a single URL by clicking the plus (+) icon at the bottom of Safari and choosing “Mail Link to This Page,” but there is no way to back out and choose another URL to add to the message.

Easy Organization of Icons

While the concept behind moving the icons on the “home” screens is innovative and unique, it is also extremely frustrating when you want to move large batches of icons. First of all, there should be a way to insert a blank page in between two other pages. Secondly, there really needs to be a way to use iTunes somehow to drag and drop multiple icons into various locations, then sync those new locations onto your iPhone.

Ideally, there would also be a way to sort your apps according to specific categories.

Sorting E-mail Messages

One more annoyance about the iPhone is the fact that there is no way to sort your e-mail messages. They can only be sorted by date. There is no way to sort by sender, subject, etc.

I’m sure there are more things missing from the iPhone that have currently left my mind or that I have not yet noticed. If you own one, or have researched buying one, what are some of your pet peaves about the iPhone? I have seen a lot of people complaining about the fact that you can’t send and receive MMS (photo/video) messages. What else frustrates you about this device?

Curtiss Grymala is the full-time Webmaster for a community college in Virginia. In his spare time, he runs a freelance Web development company called Ten-321 Enterprises, is an active participant in the HTMLCenter Forums and offers small snippets of code and bug reports to the developers and modders of the YaBB Forum system. He has been developing Web sites and applications for nearly 15 years.

Basically UpNext provides an interactive map (currently Manhattan only) that allows you to move around the map as if you were flying through the city. In the iPhone application you can use different finger gestures to see different views of the map. Clicking on a building will show you what’s inside the building – from companies, to shops to eateries.

The application uses the GPS functions on the iPhone to locate you within the map and then you can search for items based on their distance from where you are. You can send your location to Twitter and Facebook if you connect via Facebook connect. The team drew all the subway lines by hand so you can see which subways are close to where you are or where you are searching. My suggestion to the team was to tie in real-time subway alerts so that you can make any necessary changes. This would also make the app more useful on a daily basis.

For many of the locations, UpNext provides ratings, reviews, and descriptions. You can leave comments as well about a location as you travel through the city. You can also add photos to locations.

What would be great is if UpNext pulled in data from SitOrSquat so that you can see where clean toilets are near your location.

The UpNext iPhone app is available for $2.99. Here’s a video the team created about how the application works.