Gravity will soon allow you to forward a Tweet as an SMS.

A few days back I tweeted the message below, wishing that the awesome app Gravity had the feature to forward tweets as an SMS.

A couple of days latter @janole tweets back;

Now that’s what I call a service. The reason behind the idea was that there were a few really funny tweets from @genehunt that I thought would be appreciated by a few friends who weren’t on twitter. As tweets are 140 characters they fit right into SMS 160 characters just fine.

So this is @janole’s handy work, as you can see there’s a “FWD” option, Reply, retweet, favourite and then Forward.

The “FWD” option allows you to forward either as an SMS, an Email or copy to the clipboard. The Email options requires you to have an email account set up obviously. The copy to clipboard allows you to do what you like with it.

And here it is, the tweet dumped straight into the message window, allowing users to pick the recipient from the contact list and send away.

It’s a bit ironic that here in the UK, where twitter stopped it’s SMS alerts we’ve found a way back to text…

E63 The hardware; comparing an E63 to an E71.

First up is the two devices placed side by side, here you can see the differences in the keyboards very clearly. The space bar is smaller on the E63 and had two extra keys along the bottom row allowing for more characters to be directly accessed via the keyboard. This has got to be a good thing as inserting brackets on the E71 is a pain. The keyboard also extends slightly further down the handset making the keys lightly larger, again anything that makes the keys lightly larger has to be good. You can also notice that the microphone socket has moved to the bottom of the handset too. The casing is plastic both front and back. The front is a metallic effect so looks like the E71 but a tap reveals a plastic casing, that’s fine and it looks good.

The surround of the speaker has also changed and there’s no front facing camera on the E63 either.

The wrist strap has also flipped sides too. You can also see the graphic for the phone book key has changed too and those function keys are a little larger too. The red off button of the E71 is gone and the red handset key now doubles as the on/off. But the big one for me here is the extra keys for more characters that an improvement. There’s also a torch function too, hold down the space bar and the flash light comes on, along with a beeping noise, I guess to let you know it’s on an chewing your battery.

In the above pic you can see  the E63 on top off the E71, The E63 is a little thicker and you can see the memory slot and usb connector is smaller and a nicer finish to them, the covers on the E71 keeps catching. So that’s an improvement. You can only see there’s no infra-red port on the E63 and the small round lug of the 3.5mm headphone socket on the top of the handset.

The right hand side of the E63 doesn’t have anything on it, the Volume keys are gone, so this picture gives you a clearer view as to how much thicker the E63 is over the E71.

The backs of both devices are different, the E63’s is made of plastic, whilst the E71’s is a more classy metal. The E63 has a small locking catch which is very simple to use. My impression though it that this back makes the device feel cheaper and more of a cheaper handset. It’s OK it works, it’s less of a finger print magnet, but it puts the handset in a certain market which is fine.

A close up of the Camera’s the E71 has an average 3.2mp camera and the E63 has a 2.0mp camera with no mention of AF (Auto Focus). The holding down the T function in the E71 doesn’t work on the E63 and the camera app looks the same as the camera app on my E61i, which is a big step backwards. To it looks like it’s the same camera and same app as the E61i which is a poor camera, so I wouldn’t expect great shots from it, but we’ll run some tests later.

Overall, the changes are good, the bigger keyboard with more keys is good, the better memory card slot is also an improvement over the E71, so there are some good improvements over the E71 in terms of keyboard, but there’s several backward steps, the camera, the thickness and the plastic casing that clearly point to this device being a smaller brother of the E71.

OK, I think that’s it in terms of physical any questions, onto software, Camera and general overview next up.

Another great holiday at Compton Pool

I can safely blog our vacation now as we’re booked back in for next year, yep almost a year in advance.

The award winning Compton Pool was a spotless as ever and there’s a new reception building with a flat screen pulling data feeds on tide times and weather into a customer compton pool page, very nice. The only thing I hope they fix for next year is the wi-fi in the cottage we’re in, so that’s 12 months notice John, it worked great down at the reception building though.

The girls had the treat of feeding the pigs and goats their leftover apple stumps and crusts each morning followed by a quick spring on the trampoline before leaving for the beach. So if you’re looking for somewhere to stay in Devon that’s a cut above the rest, look no further than Compton Pool.

There’s quality TV’s and Bose Hi-Fi’s in the cottages and I was able to hook up my N95 to the flat screen play some Editors through the TV’s speakers while the pictures we’d taken that day scrolled past in a slideshow, very pleasing.

Just as we left John had been selected as an extra in the new Tim Burton film, Alice in Wonderland that’s being filmed in Devon too…break a leg John!

Mobile Geeks of London IV

It’s MGoL IV tonight, I’m not able to make it as we’re travelling to Devon, but I wish Whatleydude all the best and I’m sure it’ll be a huge success. I’ve missed them all so far, but I’m determined to make it to the next one come hell or high water.

Another new role at Orange!

It’s only been a few months since the last time I mentioned that I’d got a new role within Orange Business, but it’s all change again, I’ve moved Managers and become the Manager of a new group, Telecoms Integrated Operators.

The Sourcing department of Orange Business Services (OBS) has created a new Telecom Integrated Operators Group for Europe or TIO as it’s known. It’s role is to look after telecoms sourcing within the countries where there’s both a Orange Business Network and an Orange Mobile Network, so countries like, UK, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Ukraine, Poland etc. I’ve got a team of  managers across Europe reporting to me, which is great, so I’ll be polishing up my management skills again as well as learning the ins and outs of various new telecoms markets such as Poland which is very exciting and a great challenge.

So I’ve been with OBS now for 1 year and this is my 3rd role, so things move fast here!

1 week with the Nokia E66

I’ve now had the brand new Nokia E66 for just over a week and..I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s one of the best phone’s I’ve ever had. So I’ll kick off with the bad points first of all then cover the good things about this device.

First off, the firmware has a few bug’s scrolling in the browser doesn’t show the web page image (see below), I’m sure this will get fixed so no big deal. The headset socket is 2.5mm and not the larger 3.5mm like the N95, this means having a different set of headphones for it than my iPod and N800. The camera doesn’t deal with low light environments at all, but outside on a bright day no problem, photo’s are fine. The N95 camera is in a different league compared to it which is fine, but for taking snaps it does a job.

The good points, the size and build quality, this phone is so nice to hold and fit’s in your pocket with ease with no unsightly bulge like the N95. The metal back and case makes it feel really solid and expensive and the sliding mechanism is perfect. The keyboard is excellent, slightly flatter than the N95 keyboard and as a result easier to use. There are lot’s of other good points such as the new calendar which I like, the new message notification. The ram is also a massive plus over the N95-1, not so over the N95 8G. The battery life is also better on the E66 than the N95, the E66 has a 1000mAh battery, whilst the N95 has a 950mAh battery. The E66 is lasting all day, 7am till 11pm with jaiku on ‘more up to date’ and push email is on too. With both of those on my N95 it’d start beeping around 5pm, so that’s a major bonus, a battery that copes with a solid day of use.

I’ve replaced my N95 with the E66 and I’m still using my E61i for work, the difference between the E66 and the E61i is huge though, it’s like using a phone that’s 10 years older. But for me it’s about the E66 being a viable replacement for my N95. The N95 is about creating and consuming media, and the camera, TV out, 30 fps video, stereo speakers and 3.5mm headset socket are all benefits of the N95 over the E66. But I could live with those, the camera is OK, the upload straight to blyk missing out the TV negates that issue, I’m not a chav so don’t tend to listen to music via the stereo speakers whilst waiting for the bus so again they won’t be missed. Finally having and carrying around in a bag a second pair of headphones isn’t such a huge bind.

So to conclude, for me the E66 can do pretty much everything that the N95 can do, and last longer in my pocket as the phone. So the E67 needs a 3.5mm headphones socket and a 30fps 5mp camera and we’re done.

Again thanks to WOM World.

Dell’s day is over

Looks like Dell is hitting a tricky patch. This is the second article I’ve seen chronicling the demise of Dell $3bn saving is a big job and when you’ve had razor thin margins like Dell and a pretty slick operation already, there’s not going to be lot’s of fat in the business to get that $3bn. The anecdotal evidence I have is that we can’t get any Dell laptops right now. Orange buy’s it’s laptops from Dell and we just can’t get them, if I recall correctly a 3 month wait, which is just mad in today’s on demand world. How long Dell stays our supplier is anyone’s guess.

As a PC they are fine, a piece of design they suck, gray and black, extremely bland. I’ve thought about just buying my own and using that, something a bit smaller and not so damn thick. Anyway, looks like my next PC when it get’s refreshed could be something different, I hope it’s a Lenovo machine, fingers crossed.

Share Online v3.0 and location tagger

I upgraded the share online app on my N95 the other day to the new version 3.0. That added a nice little comments and new photo’s tracker to the homw screen and allows me to read the comments on my flickr pictures on my N95 which is great.

I also installed the Beta App location tagger, it requires that you fire it up before you take your picture so that it can get a GPS fix whilst you’re focusing and taking your pic. You need to adjust your Flickr to accept meta data with GPS co-ordinates, which was easy enough.

So all I need to do is test it out, shame I’m laying off the travelling as much as possible right now.

No 10 is on the social

Just going through my Google reader when I read JP’s street cred post, No 10 is on twitter. That’s pretty cool and it’s obviously pretty new as they are replying to @responses.

But one of the tweets also states they are on Flickr too, so my regard for the people behind the shiny black doors goes up a notch or two. There are only 20 photo’s there right now, so again this looks like a new initiative, but one that should be applauded.

Nice work No 10 and thanks for giving us a look behind the gloss.

Telco Dilemma Series: 3. So is it unlimited or unlimited*

The implication of truly unlimited bandwidth for the users can have huge impacts on the network. We’ve seen the impact of iPlayer on Easynet (a 20% rise in bandwidth and rising), is that there needs to be investment in the underlying backbones to cope with the data.

Take a look at data on GSM, 4Kb/s speeds, now look at 3G about 2.5MBits/s and with HSDPA already being rolled out 14Mbits/s. Home broadband for most people if they are lucky is 6Mbits/s, So the impact is going to be huge as this Fierce Wireless posts states, Mobile broadband use up 154%.

Therefore the carrier has to invest huge sums in it’s backbone to cope with the hockey stick like impact of data traffic on it’s networks, while battling to retain revenue and market share where price is the only differential. Therefore the carriers see the only way to have any control over that bandwidth is to put a cap on it, so it’s unlimited*, where the asterisk points to a cap imposed by the carrier, usually either 1gb or 2gb. But is the cap only a short term stop gap to the bigger problem demanded by the market, of uncapped flat rate tariffs?

The Telco2.0 blog picked up the above diagram and highlight the unsustainability of the mobile broadband market, especially on flat-rate tariffs.

The presentations (from) Hamid Akhavan’s, CEO at T-Mobile International, seems to have been withdrawn from the site now. We managed to grab it before it was. The key image is below. It shows the economic unsustainability of mobile broadband, especially on flat-rate tariffs. If you understand that low quality YouTube videos now account for 10% of all global web traffic, then imagine what will happen when the quality improves. In fact you don’t need to imagine: see the real stats of the impact of the BBC’s iPlayer (high quality streaming video) on UK ISP’s in the last 8 weeks since launch (a doubling of streaming traffic and a trebling of costs – analysis here).

So T-Mobile, who may have now changed their mind, since they withdrew their presentation, seem to think that this path that we’re currently treading is unsustainable. When you look at some of the facts he may be right.