Pre-paid mobile phone rip-off
The Herald-Sun today reports that pre-paid mobile phone customers are spending up to $1 billion a year on phone calls they never make.
“Millions of mobile owners who pay upfront for their service allow call credits to expire,” the paper says.
Pre-paid phones make up more than half the national mobile phone market. Read more
iPhone not such a big deal
The introduction of the iPhone to Australia on Friday was a marketing success for Apple. They created a real buzz and a perception the product was so sought after you’d be lucky to get one.
That turned out to be the case. Whether it’s true, or whether release numbers were deliberately restricted, I can’t be sure.
There were none for sale in Mount Gambier, apparently. In Melbourne, only selected stores were stocking them. Some people queued for hours to get one. Read more
Yakedi! free SMS
I wrote briefly before about Yakedi! It’s a free web-based service for sending text messages to Australian mobile phones.
I’m so impressed with Yakedi! that this post is simply a blatant plug to say thanks and well done.
I read somewhere the modern human has evolved to be more dextrous with his thumb than his pointer finger, thanks to the phenomenon of text messaging. Read more
Yakedi! and Frog CMS
I haven’t written much tech/web stuff here lately and I don’t plan to change that. I still experiment with various so-called web 2.0 services and site design, but nothing has really grabbed my attention lately with two exceptions.
Yakedi! is a free Australian service for sending SMS messages from the web. There are no strings attached as far as I can tell: “No catch, no spam, no limits and no annoying (and expensive) premium sms sent to your phone,” they proclaim and deliver.
I hate typing text messages on a mobile phone. I’m slow and can’t bring myself to abbreviate anything. I had been using Skype to send messages, but they charge normal rates.
I looked at some other free providers and their web sites were too trashy. The Yakedi! site is clean and easy to navigate.
Frog CMS is a lightweight content management system using PHP5 and SQL. It’s a PHP version of Radiant, a ruby on rails application.
I’m currently using it for Gorey Media. It only took a few minutes to set up and get running.
It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of WordPress or larger portal systems, but for a small site it’s ideal, in my opinion. it can be used as a blog with optional reader comments. There is no search function at the moment though.
It’s hard to love Telstra
I’d like to like Telstra, I really would. They have the best network and they are currently majority Australian owned. They used to be our national public telco.
In addition to having the best network, you’d think one of their competitive advantages in regional Australia was having a network of Telstra shops.
I visited the Telstra Shop in Kalgoorlie today and left unimpressed. Read more
Mobile phone plans
My mobile phone plan with Telstra expires soon, or so I’ve been told four times in the past week. In addition to answering four calls from salespeople I’ve missed about six calls to my phone from the same Melbourne number.
When the first bloke rang, I told him to email the information. “No worries,” he said, but nothing ever arrived. I told the second one that I was waiting for an email. I told the third one I never received an email and he offered to post me the information.
The fourth bloke, who incurred my wrath, said: “To be honest, we can’t email or post anything.” He tried to sell me a new phone plan with a $6 rebate for the last two months.
I asked him to remove me from the sales list. I wonder if I’ll get any more calls? Seriously, this sales pitch is overkill. If it wasn’t for NextG and the wider coverage area I’d switch today.
Wireless broadband at Falcon
I’ve been silently cursing Telstra while on holiday at Falcon, near Mandurah, for the poor wireless broadband connection. Considering that Telstra’s prices are double those of competitors, their wider coverage is an important selling point.
But after reading the Mandurah Mail today I realise it’s not Telstra’s fault. Apparently they applied to Mandurah City Council to install a communications tower in Falcon near the fast-food precinct, but the request was denied.
The councillors thought it would have an adverse impact on the area’s amenity. We’re talking an ugly commercial strip here with no views of the beach or estuary!
The case went to the administrative appeals tribunal, which strangely referred it back to the council and asked for discussions to be held with Telstra. Talk about bureaucracy gone mad.
The mayor was quoted saying he wanted Telstra to consult more with the community. Well, as a repeat visitor who contributes to the city’s prosperity I can tell the council they should stop standing in the way of progress.
Staying connected
Last year on holidays I kept in touch with the electronic world using my mobile phone as a modem with a laptop computer. The connection was slow, and as I later discovered, very expensive (about $500 on casual data rates).
There’s a strong argument to not stay in touch at all. I resisted that because I’m an info junkie and in my job I don’t like surprises. I can read emails on holiday without having to act on them.
This year I have a USB wireless modem. The cost is still excessive ($89 a month) but I know in advance what it will be, and the connection speed is better.
The laptop suffered a casualty though at the hands of Margaret, who pulled out 10 keyboard pads. I’m a pretty good typist, but without clear direction I kept entering a comma instead of an “m”, etc.
I finished up buying a $20 keyboard from Harvey Norman to attach to the laptop until I figure out a solution. I haven’t been able to reattach the letters myself.
Best synchronisation tool
I’ve succeeded in getting the JasJam to synchronise with my home computer and various other media. I’ve never been one to do this in the past, and it’s probably cost me the loss of much data.
Now I have to decide the best method or whether to continue doing all of them.
Firstly, I had some trouble with Vista recognising the iMate. After a few successful runs the system suddenly started claiming “Unknown Device”. A trusty Google search suggested changing a setting on the pocket PC, which seems to have done the trick.
Sychronisation works between Outlook and my phone, also Office OneNote. I’m starting to experience the benefits of OneNote, which isn’t as widely used as many other Office programs, but has some handy benefits in storing data. It’s a very logical structure, flexibly imported and presented, and easily searchable.
It’s simple to sync notes between the program and the phone, but is that necessary given Outlook notes also synchronise? Then as I mentioned the other day, Unyverse mobile wiki does the same job on the web. This requires an internet connection, but has the advantage of saving disk space and memory on the mobile device.
Another option is Club iMate’s exchange server. It provides 10MB of free storage for backup synchonisation between the device and a web version of Outlook. It has worked seamlessly for me so far. I’m still to investigate if I can do the same with my work server.
And finally, I’ve installed a pro version of EssentialPIM on my USB flash drive. It’s a personal organiser which synchronises data between the program, Outlook and a pocket PC.
So many choices? At the moment I’m testing all of them before I decide which one is best.
Unyverse mobile wiki
I’m still playing with my new JasJam. I haven’t bricked it yet, but still can’t figure out a few things. Exploring the world of mobile applications has been fun.
An interesting new tool I thought worth mentioning is the Unyverse mobile wiki. It’s only been around for a few weeks, as far as I can tell.
It’s free to set up an account, which enables synchronisation of wikis between your phone and a personal web site. The wikis can be simple notes, RSS feeds, contacts or whatever you want them to be.
I typed in a test note on the web, then saw it on my phone seconds later.
Sure, you can synchronise data between Outlook or OneNote and the phone, but that requires a physical connection (eg USB, bluetooth). The beauty of Unyverse is that you can send information to your web-enabled mobile from any desktop and vice-versa.
I’ve been searching around for a free pocket PC feed reader and Unyverse performs that role as well as any other I’ve seen so far. It also provides an easy mobile-friendly Wikipedia search.
And you can measure how much data you have transferred.
I can see myself using this application quite a lot, especially if the feature to import contacts is added later this month as promised.
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