Mobile Stew

Bidding for Premiership Football Rights starts this week and for once it looks like BSkyB won't have things their own way.  For starters, of the six packages available only a maximum of five can be sold to one broadcaster.  Also, ntl:Telewest are rumoured to be looking to challenge Sky, and The Guardian also reports that Setanta, the Irish pay-TV broadcaster, is planning to bid for two packages.

I guess one of the advantages of Sky's monopoly over live Premiership football was that viewers only had to subscribe to one premium channel.  I really hope we don't end up with an awful scenario where users have to choose between 3 or more channels.

I was trying to explain to one of my colleagues the other day that he should just slap a 'beta' tag on a service he was struggling to launch, as this seems to be the new way to launch services on the net without testing them properly.

Well Google, who are one of the major abusers of the beta tag, have gone one further by launching a beta version of a beta service.  A beta version of a new interface for the Google Talk beta has just been leaked.  The beta version doesn't include anything spectacular, but it does add customisable user pictures, a few little conversation window themes to complement it and a few new options to customise your buddy list.   Still a long way to go before the ...

eBay's online payment service PayPal launched a mobile payment service
that includes person-to-person money transfers and "Text To Buy," which
allows users to order products through SMS that they see advertised "on
a poster, in a magazine, at an event." PayPal's mobile debut has long
been expected, but the Text To Buy feature was a surprise to many.



Read more here.

I know I keep harping on about XBMC but given that Xbox's can be picked up so cheaply on eBay now there is no cheaper way to build a fully-functional media center.  Here are some screenshots of my setup in response to chall5's request for screenshots of my setup and also to hopefully encourage other people.

The image below shows how I've organised the files on my PC.  It looks complicated, but I decided this approach was the best way to store files across my 4 HDDs (2x250GB, 1x200GB and 1x400GB).  

My 250GB drives are my two fastest (Samsung Spinpoint P120S SATAII).  The first one contains my C,D and R drives and the second my E and S drives.
I try to keep my C: Boot Drive quite slim as ...

Skype and 3 launched 3G data card, which enables subscribers to make cheaper VoIP calls.

Currently the card is priced at £ 39.99 and is bundled with the special
starter pack provided by skype which includes Skype software, a Skype
headset and a Skype starter voucher.

Users hoping to get the card at the cheapest price - £ 39.99 will have to opt
for the Web and Office 512 package priced at £45 per month. However users will
get half a Gb of data bundled in each month.



READ MORE HERE

Zopa, an online service that matches personal borrowers with lenders typically resulting in lower interest rates than high-street banks, turned one year old last week. 

The service seems to be doing quite well, with over 50,000 registered users and the supply/demand equation is currently in the right place with more people wanting to borrow than there are people wanting to lend.

Things have got so bad that Zopa are paying an additional 2% to any new lenders i.e. even if a borrower is only paying 4.9%, Zopa will pay the lender an additional 2% giving a total payment of 6.9%. 

I'm toying with putting some cash in next month to see how the system works and also because one of my old colleagues is one of the founders.  In ...

This week, Sony Ericsson has signed a deal with Google, which enablesSony Ericsson to integrate Google's Blogger.com and Google Web Searchfeatures on all of its future mobile phones.

This meansblogger.com account holder with the new Sony Ericsson phone can writeand post content to his blog on the move using the bundles software. Soyou can post content to your blog even on a vacation, travel or awayfrom a computer. This is the first any mobile handsent manfacturerporviding this kind of features related to blogging. This shows howpopular is blogging in the present internet era and it looks likesurely this is going to be a hit feature.

READ MORE HERE

The much awaited and biggest of its kind,  3GSM World Congress 2006 has kicked off today. 3GSM 2006 is being held in Barcelona this year and is being attended by every major wireless, mobile, telecom related companies.

So, what to expect from this big event? There are plenty of new and interesting technologies, exciting services and hottest gadgets to make their debut.
Some of the themes talked about last year will surface as products this year, including HSDPA  mobile phones, dual-mode handsets supporting both GSM and Wi-Fi technologies, handsets capable of receiving broadcast TV signals. Mobile TV, MVNOs, mobile search and discovery and the road map to 4G will be some of the hottest themes at this event in Spanish metropolis, according to many industry experts.

READ MORE HERE

Kotaku has discovered details of what could be the first tournament on Xbox Live.  Details have appeared on the UK...

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recently announced 'Mobile WebBest Practices'  through Mobile Web Initiative. This documentspecifies best practices for Web content when accessed from mobiledevices, with a primary goal is to improve the user experience of theWeb when accessed from mobile devices.

According to W3C, "Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0" condenses theexperience of many mobile Web stakeholders into practical advice oncreating content that will work well on mobile devices. Authors andother content producers will value the shared experience of how tocreate content that makes browsing convenient on mobile devices and toavoid known pitfalls on those devices (such as pop-ups andpage-scrolling).

This work is part of the W3C MobileWeb Initiative, which is supported by nineteen MWI Sponsors, including...