News: Anti-spam Gaming Phone For The Hip

By | November 24, 2011
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It’s hard to be innovative in mobile phones these days but that doesn’t stop Nokia from trying. Often the results are dreadful. Here’s news of one that may not be: the Nokia 2300. Aimed squarely at young-minded, fun-loving people (who isn’t?) in new growth markets such as China, India and Russia, the Nokia 2300 features an alarm clock, a calculator, an FM radio, three games and an internal hands-free speaker. It also stops spam.
 
 
There’s also some changes to the keypad and navigating buttons, via “a new 4-way scroll with a Navi key” for fast messaging and gaming. Right scrolling provides a shortcut to the menus or options lists, allowing users to access features quickly or accomplish selected tasks without going through the complete menu sequence.
 
To help users monitor their mobile usage, the Nokia 2300 offers an in-call timer for checking the duration of a call, as well as an SMS counter to keep track of the number of text messages sent or received. The Nokia 2300 is also the first Nokia phone to enable users to filter out junk text messages from unwanted numbers.

News: Hotels Ban Phones, Sort Of

By | November 24, 2011
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 From the very sizeable Cheapskate Hoteliers Dept comes a report (thanks textually.org) from Scotland of a mobile phone jamming scam, as exposed by the Daily Record. Businessman Ronnie McGuire, the paper says, is flooding Scotland with high-tech phone jammers that are illegal to use. Sold to hotels, restaurants, bars and bed and breakfasts, the devices emit radio waves which wipe out the signal to mobile phones, rendering them useless. Guests, unaware their signal has been sabotaged, are forced to use expensive hotel phone lines or call boxes.
 
McGuire is quoted as saying: “It comes up on their phone `no service’ and people think there’s no service in that area.
But it’s best not to tell anyone you’ve got it because they might not be too happy.” True, too true. Of course they must be great for a bit of peace and quiet.

News: Terra Lycos Invents Blogging

By | November 24, 2011
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For those of you keen to emulate the runaway success of the loose wire blog, Terra Lycos , “the global Internet Group”, are trumpeting their Tripod Blog Builder which this month won Editor’s Choice from PC Magazine. “Every step of the way, we found Tripod Blog Builder a pleasure and easy to use,” the rag gushed. “If you’re just starting out and want a simple, good-looking blog, this is the way to go.”
 
 
Revealing how little they know about blogging’s roots, Terra Lycos reckons: “Blogging is not just for the political pundits and technical elite anymore. >From families and friends to clubs, teams and students, anyone can now publish on the Web with Tripod Blog Builder. We’ve transitioned blogs from a technology tool to a lifestyle accessory, adding features most requested by our millions of members.” Er, no. Blogging has long been available to technoluddites like moi. I publish to mine via email, and you can’t get much simpler than that. Sheesh, people who claim to have ‘transitioned’ something make me cranky.

Update: The Sleazy Side Of Virus-Stopping

By | November 24, 2011
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 Further evidence of viruses being turned into advertising spam: MailWatch kindly informed me that a message sent in my name had SoBig F aboard: “MailWatch has scanned your e-mail message and determined it can not be delivered as originally sent,” the message says.  As I’ve pointed out earlier, just because a virus appears to be from the sender, doesn’t mean it is. You’d think MailWatch, being in the business, would know this.
The email then goes on to say that “MailWatch can help you avoid these problems in the future by scanning your e-mail for viruses, Spam and objectionable content. Visit http://www.MailWatch.com to read about the benefits of MailWatch.” While I guess it’s ok to send notification emails that a virus has been found, I think it’s something else to turn it into a piece of gratuitous advertising. Especially one that misleads the average Joe into thinking they may be the source of viruses. Shape up, MailWatch. Don’t add to the problem.