A few hundred years ago, people killed one another over religion. Today, historians laugh at them while people fight about iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia or Android. A few hundred years from now, historians, well …
Mathias Penz, top brass of a German carrier, has now posted the following comic to his personal blog. As having a laugh always is fun, enjoy the cartoon below:
P.S. Original image from C Section Comics…
My dislike for the rotten carrier commonly known as T-Mobile has brought me loads of flak in the last few years – the grass always is greener on the other side.
The US division of T-Mobile has now made a very stupid move in an attempt to fight net neutrality: they have openly admitted that a single app managed to bring their network down.
See it yourself in a PDF from the FCC, or read below:
T-Mobile network service was temporarily degraded recently when an independent application developer released an Android-based instant messaging application that was designed to refresh its network connection with substantial frequency.
The frequent refresh feature did not create problems during the testing the developer did via the WiFi to wireline broadband environment, but in the wireless environment, it caused severe overload in certain densely populated network nodes, because it massively increased signaling—especially once it became more popular and more T-Mobile users began downloading it to their smartphones. One study showed that network utilization of one device increased by 1,200% from this one application alone.
These signaling problems not only caused network overload problems that affected all T-Mobile broadband users in the area; it also ended up forcing T-Mobile’s UMTS radio vendors to reevaluate the architecture of their Radio Network Controllers to address this never-before-seen signaling issue.
Ultimately, this was solved in the short term by reaching out to the developer directly to work out a means of better coding the application.
I am pretty sure that this has done them more harm than good – let’s see how long it takes for another carrier to make fun of them…
Governmental institutes have provided readers of the Tamoggemon Content Network quite a few laughs over the years. The latest one is funny as long as you don’t pay taxes in the EU.
Mobile Business Briefing reports the following:
A new European research project aimed at developing technology that will allow applications to be ported across multiple platforms has received EUR10 million in EU funding…
The initiative, known as Webinos, is led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (Fokus) in Germany … as are device vendors Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Webinos is researching a framework for apps … across a wide range of connected environments
…
Looks like the EU hasn’t quite discovered Qt yet – or is there someone making a nice bit of cash essentially duplicating what TrollTech has already done?
Popular devices get “cloned in China”. Usually, the cloners try to get the UI at least “somewhat right” – our “mini review” of a fake N97 shows what to expect.
MicGadget.com now shares the image of a Pre knockoff below. The UI is copied from – you guessed it – an iPhone:
Not much to add here…
Very few topics are as popular as sorting algorithms – if you want to write a book, covering these is a safe bet for finding a publisher somewhere 
.
The YouTube video below shows the process of various sorting algorithms in an “audible” form – each element has a frequency, and a sine tone is played whenever the algorithm accesses an element:
Call it 90 seconds of work-safe fun…
Thanks to Summeli for pointing this out
Even though I had no major issues with Handango during my tenure at a large Palm OS house, the reputation of neither PalmGear nor Handango is excessively good. When the two entities combined, many expected a Murphy’s Law-type effect(Moron + Moron = 2 Moron). And indeed, Murphy was right.
A few developer colleagues of mine have now been given statements similar to the one below:
Handango has advised us that Handango’s unaudited accounting records indicate that Handango may have owed you as much as $ 416.70 on February 15, 2010. Our preliminary review of these records indicate that some of these amounts have been outstanding for several years. While we have begun the process of verifying these records, posting payments and credits, identifying offsets, counterclaims and other deductions and determining whether certain payment obligations have lapsed, we have not yet completed that process. Because our review covers several years of invoices, checks, electronic payments and other data, we do not expect to complete this process for some time.
To expedite payment to you and to avoid the costs associated with a comprehensive review of all of Handango’s records relating to these liabilities, PocketGear is offering to pay you $ 41.67 in full and complete satisfaction of all amounts that PocketGear or Handango may owe you for goods and services provided or sold prior to February 15, 2010.
Even though I fully agree that this is not the “fine English way of doing business”, it IMHO shows more tragedy than evilness on the side of the distributor in question.
After all, it would have been highly improbable that any developer would ever have found out about the difference. Let’s be 100% honest here: had Handango pocketed the cash silently, this article wouldn’t be written.
Don’t ask me what is going on here – but a payment processor having unaudited records dating back years definitely is a disturbing sign…
Apple fanboys can sometimes behave, well, irrational.
Matt Brenner from unme2 has now sent us the video below:
Take a short look if you feel like a short laugh on Apple fan boys expense…
Big thanks, Matt
Fate sometimes takes strange turns. Compaq originally wanted to license Palm OS, but ended up white Windows Mobile instead – only to become the arch nemesis of Palm with its once-famous iPaq handhelds.
HP gobbled up Compaq, and now went for Palm. Every true mobile head should thus be able to take a look at the shot below showing the two handheld brands on one site:
Given that the iPaq line is now almost out, take a last good look via the URL below:
http://www.cellstores.com/template/simpleautocontent.aspx?pageid=8481& …
We’ve already seen our fair share of interesting and funny wireless-related political sheganigans – think things like a 3G ban due to fear of mobile pornography.
Our latest tidbit comes from South Korea, where big government wants to limit operator’s marketing spend. The Mobile Business Briefing report reads as follows:
… Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said in a statement yesterday that operators … should not spend more than 22 percent of their revenues on marketing in a bid to cool intense competition in the sector. The regulator said it expects the move, which is scheduled to come into force this month, …
…
I have to openly admit that I am somewhat puzzled by this decision – after all, South Korea is said to be a “free market economy” unlike its neighbor in the north.
Nevertheless, its a fun detail I simply couldnt resist sharing…
In most countries, Google is the largest search engine by far. In fact, many web designers say that Google is all that counts…according to current figures, it accounted for more than 85% of search engine visits to this network.
While this position of power is great for the G boys, it also means that they are the prime target for censorship requests. Google has now created a map which shows where most requests come from – surprisingly, the largest “Google banana republics” Brazil and Germany, with India and the USA in hot pursuit:
Further information can be picked up at the URL below:
http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/
Hello Metalheads,
how you’re know, “MetalFan” is an Palm webOS app for and about all kinds of metal and hard rock (heavy metal, power metal, thrash metal, folk metal, black metal, death metal, melodic metal and all that stuff). I’m the developer of MetalFan and yesterday I received an e-mail about my app. Somebody questioned me: “How about hip hop or pop?”.
Well, I don’t will add hip hop or pop to my app. Why? The most metaller (like I) don’t listen to hip hop or pop. I think it’s not false to say that the most true metaller hate genres like hip hop… .
If you’re interested in MetalFan, check this site or download it to you Palm webOS phone!
When set up against the job of making an ad for a motor saw manufacturer, most of us will probably think of lightly-clad girls, muscular men and the jungle.
According to DirectDaily, the folks at the chainsaw manufacturer STIHL went a different way. They created a self-updating paper calendar, which is pictured below:
Not much to add here…
The folks at Engadget’s usually have excellent columnists and editors – but their latest addition to the team doesn’t seem to be fully up to speed.
His latest column contained the following statement:
Sony led the market in innovation when it entered the PDA space. It offered the first Palm OS devices with removable storage, the first devices that could play back audio and video, and the first high-resolution color devices. All of these clearly drove the market forward. Then the innovations became less innovative and more “gadgetry.”
…
As much as I adore Sony’s work in the PalmOS area, this is wrong – the first-ever Palm OS device with external memory was Handera’s TRGpro.
The two images below show the box:
Further information on this vintage device can be had at my coauthor Oliver W Leibenguth’s – if you can read German, hit the link below:
http://blog.compuseum.de/?p=92
The iPhone’s lack of stylus was praised when the unit first came out – unfortunately, having no stylus makes using the unit with gloves difficult.
Koreans discovered that a popular type of snack sausage could be used as stylus – and an innovative vendor has now capitalized on their findings. His “sausage” is non-edible, but can be used as a stylus for long times without fear of “degeneration”:
Those of you who feel like taking a stab can do so for the acceptable price of 1 USD – further information is at the URL below:
http://www.casecrown.com/iphone/accessories/iphone-1g-3g-3gs-sausage-screen-stylus
Content, RSS
Twitter