ArchiveApril, 2008

AT&T and Vizible have quietly entered the browser wars after launching a beta Firefox-based browser with ads called Pogo. It has visual tabbed browsing and is structured into collections that organize and tag your favorites. Pogo has a search feature to keep track of your results and flexibility to provide as many home pages as you want.

In an interview with prolific blogger Robert Scoble, Todd Finch, president and CEO of Toronto-based Vizible, said, “We’re trying to improve the way people find, collect, organize and manage info on the Web,” said. “Humans are visual, and Pogo adds a visual layer to the browsing experience that’s intuitive to use.” According to executives from both AT&T and Vizible, the goal is not to start a browser war, but to create a three-dimensional browser experience.

According to their auto-response email, AT&T Pogo is currently in a ‘Limited Beta’, and, “over the coming weeks, we will let you know about our progress as we move from a limited beta to a closed public beta and finally to an open beta release.”

Pogo’s tagline is: “It’s your internet - do it your way.” Has the browser truly evolved? Can I really manage all my media with one browser?

Cell phone junkies know all about HTC. The Taiwanese manufacturer makes some of the best and most sought-after smartphones in the world.

But the company that brought us ultra-cool cell phones such as the Sprint HTC Touch and AT&T Tilt has yet to become a household name in the U.S.

Well, we’re pleased to see that HTC is looking to do something about it. The company has released an ad campaign in the United States highlighted by a :30 second TV commercial featuring the company’s flagship HTC Touch:

The Touch, which is available for Sprint and Alltel, has been one of our favorite devices since its debut last year, and will now be available in white as the XV6900 for Verizon Wireless. The phone is absolutely beautiful. More importantly, we like the touch screen interface better than the one on the bulkier Apple iPhone, and the HTC’s data speeds leave the iPhone in the dust.

Those of us in the office who carry HTC phones are now a little conflicted. We’re thrilled to see HTC flex a little marketing muscle, but we’re also a little sad to see our secret get out.

Many have had to switch wireless service providers for one reason or another, but if the timing is not right customers can get hit with fees for early termination, up to $200. While there are some loopholes to these contracts (e.g. moving, joining the military, customer impacting carrier imposed rate changes, and death), these contracts and termination fees have been pretty difficult to avoid.

This was tough enough with one year contracts, but it has become even more painful with the proliferation of two-year contracts that started to emerge when Local Number Portability legislation went into effect in November 2003 - they are now pretty much the standard.

Yes, you can get one-year contracts or non-contract plans with most carriers, but you do not get the great device offers that are available to those willing to commit. Further compounding the problem over the years, carriers routinely require a contract extension when changing to a new, more attactive, “promotional” plan.

Read more…

A fascinating revolution is underway in the cell phone world that goes beyond the ‘Break Brick’ days of your Blackberry. Nokia is running full speed towards bringing gaming to your cell phone with its N-Gage Internet platform for devices such as the Nokia N81.

Not to be out done, Sony Ericsson is leveraging the Sony experience in gaming with the Playstation to introduce gaming to its handsets. Phones such as Apple’s iPhone, and the soon-to-be-released RIM Blackberry 9000 series with expanded Internet capabilities, are sure going to enter the fray. But it seems to be Nokia and the N-Gage at the forefront.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nokia plans to leverage the community surrounding its N-Gage platform to aggressively enter the gaming market. They will provide high graphic games at a reasonable price point for download ($10-$15). As more and more handsets offer faster and faster internet experiences on better displays this appears to be a completely new way to expand the uses of your cell phone.

What does all this mean? Well, in a nutshell, that cell phone is not just for calling anymore.

Your state just passed a cell phone driving law. You know this because it’s on your local news. But what if you go on a road trip?

Do you know the cell phone driving laws of every state you pass through? Will you be pulled over for calling your kids to make sure they’re okay? The Governors’ Highway Safety Association has compiled information on cell phone driving laws for every state. Here are a few key points:

* 5 states (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Washington), the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have enacted jurisdiction-wide cell phone laws prohibiting driving while talking on handheld cell phones.

* 17 states and the District of Columbia have special cell phone driving laws for novice drivers.

* No state completely bans all types of cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) while driving.

Since all states allow hands-free cell phone use, play it safe and use speaker phone or a Bluetooth Headset.

Wirefly is pleased to announce the availability on Wirefly.com of AT&T’s new & improved GPS navigation service, called AT&T Navigator. Powered by TeleNav, a leader in consumer navigation tools, the AT&T Navigator service is GPS-driven and is only available on certain AT&T devices.

Thanks to advanced GPS navigation technology, AT&T Navigator offers turn-by-turn driving directions with automatic rerouting, full-color moving maps and audio prompts. Avoid traffic jams with real-time alerts on devices compatible with TeleNav Traffic. Also find restaurants, cafés, hotels, the lowest priced gas and more from over 10 million Points Of Interest (POIs) nationwide.

A similar TeleNav-powered service has been available on certain Nextel, Sprint and Verizon devices for some time, but for AT&T customers the wait is over.

To sign up for the service, order a compatible device on Wirefly.com and then just add the AT&T Navigator feature to your shopping cart. AT&T Navigator is available at $9.99 per month for unlimited routes (recommended) or you can purchase a $2.99 “Day Pass�? directly through your device. Fees are charged directly to your cell phone bill, so there’s no need to provide your credit card information.

Here, by the way, is the list of compatible devices:

*BlackBerry Curve 8310, BlackBerry 8800, BlackBerry 8820
*Motorola Q, Motorola Z9
*Samsung BlackJack II
*AT&T Tilt

Today the tabloids are abuzz with the news that Carrie Underwood broke off her relationship with actor Chace Crawford via text message.

Not so unusual, says a new Wirefly survey.

Today Wirefly released the results of a survey on consumer text messaging, in which 1 in every 25 cell phone users say they have broken off a romance via text message.

And that wasn’t the only surprising result of our survey. This project was designed to take a closer look at consumers’ text messaging habits; we asked people a series of related questions over a month-long span, and actually managed to shatter some common misconceptions. For starters, we assumed people used text messaging for brief, choppy communication full of abbreviations and emoticons. Not so, says the survey data.

We actually found that 35% of respondents typically send lengthy texts of “several sentences.” That beat out the other options, “one word” (4%), “several words” (33%), and “one sentence” (28%), and seems to indicate that text messagers may be more literate than previously thought…

For more on these results, plus additional data that digs further into the motivations for text messaging, click through for the full Wirefly press release.

Shop free cell phones at Wirefly.com