Desert Island Challenge « Mobile Industry Review

Archive for the ‘Desert Island Challenge’ Category

Private Mobile Network: First look!

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Now I’ve got the Private Mobile Network from Teleware in my hands, I’ve been putting it through it’s paces.

Whilst it’s rather complex (bordering on arousing, for a geek like me) technology, it’s actually very simple to operate.

Want a mobile network? Heh! Simple! You just switch it on. Wait a few minutes for it to finish it’s boot sequence and bish bash bosh, you’re live with your own mobile network.

There’s been a significant amount of mail in from people asking for pictures and video. Video is coming shortly but in the meantime, there are the photos.

No wonder it scared the chaps at the Maldives Customs counter… it does look rather futuristic.

Tags: Private Mobile Network, Teleware
Posted in Desert Island Challenge, Feature | View Comments

Rocking back to the UK with my PMN and a massive todo list

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

That’s me returned back to Blighty. A buggy whisked me from the SMS Text News villa to the seaplane. The seaplane took me through a timezone (-1) to Male and that’s where I stood sweating and every so slightly panicking about whether or not I’d be able to get this Private Mobile Network (PMN) unit back from the Maldives Customs easily.

Well it turns out it was a simple formality. I handed over my half of the chitty and one of the chaps brought out the PMN box.

Right.

It’s that simple.

I whisked over to the Thomson Fly premium counter and checked in. Then an Airbus whisked me to Gatwick.

Cue more panic at UK Customs. If the Maldives Customs Service didn’t like my PMN, what of their ‘how many mobile phones have you got’ British counterparts?

I walked through the Green nothing-to-declare counter — everything I had with me was legal and woosh. No problem.

No ‘can I see inside your box?’

No ‘is this your mobile network, sir?’

Perfect.

So I am now ready to test out the Private Mobile Network unit properly. For all those who have been emailing me and accosting me on instant messenger to show off and use the unit, I say ‘Standby’. It’s going to be good.

I’ve also got a substantial amount of content to publish, including a look at Blue Mobile from Blue Systems — a brilliant real-time market data service for mobile devices.

There’s also a lot to get moving. We’ve got the SMS Text News Awards fast approaching. That’s going to be an interesting one. If you haven’t nominated your company, product or service, do. It’s not some staid boring know-nothing set of awards. We’ve put a heck of a lot of thought into it. There’s also no ceremony. We’re not doing tables and black ties and slightly-ok-food. But there is a hhh-yougeeee party.

We’re in the midst of the DeviceAnywhere Developer Roadshow. In fact I’m due to pop up to Newcastle to meet one particular mobile developer and innovator soon.

And the guest list is growing for our intimate social gathering that is Unlimited Drinks Dublin, coming soon, very soon. Next week in fact — the 10th of July. If you’d like to come along, the details are here.

Tons moving.

It’s good to be back in the centre of mobile diversity.

Tags: massive, PMN, todo list
Posted in Desert Island Challenge, Feature | View Comments

The President of the Maldives to the rescue!

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Mundhu, the Spokesperson to the President of the Maldives has sorted it.

I had a continuing nightmare over the last week and a bit with my prized ‘private mobile network’ test unit from Teleware stuck in Customs at Male Airport, here in the Maldives.

The nightmare, it turns out, is all of my very own making.

Yes. Totally my fault.

If I’d notified the Maldivian Government that I was coming, I’d have sailed through Customs with the unit. The trouble is, up until now, I’ve not been entirely sure how to do notify the Government. I spoke to the UK Maldives Embassy a few times prior to departing the UK but that was only to ask advice about whom to speak to. They suggested I talk to the Telecoms Ministry regarding permission. I tried… but didn’t get a response.

I should have emailed the UK Embassy with my details and made it clear what I was planning on doing and when I was arriving. My bad.

I talked to H&K. Although they no longer work with the Maldives Government, they have good contacts. Gaylene talked to Tim who sent me Mundhu’s details.

I sent off a text to Mundhu with my issue and received a call from him 120 seconds later.

“Send me the details and I’ll sort it,” he said.

Obviously I feel rather stupid for not notifying the Government. Communication, eh? That’s the whole basis of SMS Text News! Chalk that up as a learning experience.

Gahh. If only I’d done this a few days ago, eh?

Hopefully the item should be released from Customs today or tomorrow and I’ll see if I can get it shipped over here to the Conrad Hotel for Sunday. That’ll give me a day or so to test it out on the island before I head back to boring London.

Thank you Mundhu and thank you Mr President!

Tags: Maldives, President
Posted in Desert Island Challenge, Feature | View Comments

Help, my private mobile network is still in Customs

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Aye, it’s no good. Despite the initial valiant efforts of Aisha at the Ministry of Information, I’ve heard nothing from the Customs folk, nor Aisha herself. That’s the end of the day here in the Maldives. The end of the day on Thursday heralds the arrival of the Maldives weekend. So nothing’s gonna be happening until Sunday. (Pick up the background to this story here.)

And then I leave on Monday. Arse.

I actually sat at the bar in The Conrad this afternoon waiting for the 5pm arrival of the Seaplane. It arrived. Folk got off it. The pilot got out and stretched. Luggage was unloaded. No big carboard box though. No Private Mobile Network unit…

So the focus of my stress now shifts. It’s all very well being sat in the sunshine with the waves lapping at the shore, but I’m sure you’ll agree, when you’ve got 20 grand’s worth of Private Mobile Network sitting in Male Airport Customs, with lots of hoops and shite to jump through to get at it, there’s not much relaxing going on.

My next concern now is how I get hold of the unit to get it back to London and, one hopes, normality. (I will obviously be able to test the unit properly in London).

I’m told be various smart folks here at The Conrad Hotel who are in the know, that, it should be quite easy to pick up the unit on my way to my flight.

I hope.

That’s going to be a nerve-wracking experience.

“Hi, my flight is departing in 20 minutes, can I just pick up my illegal private mobile networking equipment from you?”

“Eh?”

“I present to you my chitty of record that you gave to me 2 weeks ago when you took it off me.”

“Errrr.”

“So my flight’s departing and I need to take this back with me.”

“This is no problem, sir,” I hope will be the response, “Here is your unit, thank you for your understanding.”

I HOPE.

I’m mentally preparing myself for something perhaps closer to reality:

“No sir, sorry sir. You can have it back. In fact, here it is. But you can’t take it out the airport until the Customs CEO signs your chitty.”

“Right,” I respond, “And where is the Customs CEO?”

“Belgium, sir,”

Right.

Do you get on the plane and leave it? Bearing in mind that I’ve signed a contract with the Teleware chaps to take care of their equipment. I can hardly go leaving it sat in it’s (well protected) box next to all the contraband alcohol at Male Airport’s Customs room, can I?

Perhaps I extend my stay. That would be OK if I could guarantee it would actually arrive on Monday or Tuesday. But prohibitively expensive all the same.

I tell you what would be REALLY annoying: The unit arrives first thing on Monday morning on the plane that I’m due to leave on. Gahh!

I would thus welcome your opinions on the way ahead…

Tags: Customs, Private Mobile Network
Posted in Desert Island Challenge | View Comments

I’m in the hands of Aisha at the Ministry of Information

Friday, June 27th, 2008

I called up the Ministry of Information this morning. Somebody answered! I was put through to a lady who then put me through to Aisha, who listened to my issue.

“It really doesn’t take a week!” she replied, after I explained that I was waiting for Customs to contact her Ministry.

“Ah really?” I said, allowing myself to feel a slight feeling of hope.

The centrepiece of the Desert Island Challenge was Teleware’s Private Mobile Network unit. It’s a yellow ruggedised box about the size of a small hamper. Open it up and you’ll find a cord inside. It’s got a ton of battery power, but you can also plug that cord into a power source. Switch it on and you have an instant mobile network, 500m squared. The units are typically deployed in disaster zones or — literally in the middle of nowhere. Think, for example, an oil exploratory team in the middle of Siberia. Of course, the technology can be deployed in more conventional settings too.

Everyone I’ve spoken to has reacted with some surprise and excitement at the possibility of seeing just how one of these things works. We all know, don’t we? We all ‘get it’. Plug it in and woosh, yeah, small mobile network. No biggie.

But it’s seeing it work. I had some pretty smart experiments and tests planned. The PMN (“Private Mobile Network”) test unit comes with four JCB ToughPhones (made by Sonim) so I was going to see if I could get some of the staff here to each take one and see if we could call each other via our very own mobile network. I planned video. I planned audio. I planned lots of photos and some wicked editorial.

In fact, I was hoping to place the unit in the business centre of the Conrad Rangali Island Hotel where I’m based for this feature. If you plug the PMN unit into an IP connection, bish bash bosh, it will connect back to the Teleware service in London and… theoretically, I’d be able to make calls to the UK — to anywhere — via my JCB ToughPhone connected to my own mobile network. Neat.

All this scenarios are eminently possible. We know they are. I just wanted to prove it. To document it, to show it working.

Circle back then, about one and a half weeks. My PNM unit was held by Customs at Male airport and the management here at the hotel have been jumping through various hoops to try and see if I can get the unit released to test.

I tell you, a photo of the PMN unit sat in a bit of sand surrounded by palm trees.. I’d have been brilliant.

Aisha at the Maldives Ministry of Information reckoned that she might be able to speed things up. She needed a fax with the details. Interesting that they’re still in fax mode. I think if I was having this kind of issue in the UK, we’d probably be doing it by email. I got on the phone to Elvis, the PR manager for the resort here. He was out on a photoshoot — there are, understandably, a lot of publications coming to the Conrad here now and again for shoots. I reckoned all Aisha would need was a copy of the fax we’d previously sent to the Customs Service. Elvis agreed. I phoned Rena in the hotel office who sent off the fax and called Aisha to confirm she received it.

Now we wait.

Tomorrow — Friday — is the holy day in the Maldives. Saturday also comprises the weekend. Things start once again on Sunday and Monday.

My challenge? IF Aisha is able to triumph and the Customs Service are able to release the unit, it’s not all good news yet. Male Airport is a 30 minute flight by seaplane. Round the corner, it ain’t. So the next trauma will be getting the unit here.

We shall see.

(The photo above: My Iridium Sat Phone – more on that soon)

Tags: Ministry of Information
Posted in Desert Island Challenge | View Comments

“That M1330 of yours is nice, how do you find it?”

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Cover me in marmalade and call me Susannah!

I was sat in the Dhoni (the boat) the other night with Marcus, the Director of Operations for The Conrad Rangali Island.

“It was you I saw in the bar this morning wasn’t it?” He asked.

“Errr,” was my initial response.

“With the M1330 and the Air?”

Wow. I didn’t think to expect to encounter any geeks in the Maldives.

Turns out Marcus is a big fan of Dell and Apple. In particular Dell. I was privately hugely impressed that he didn’t even bother naming the brand of Dell. He simply called it the M1330 — their ultralight range.

He asked me how I found it.

“Well,” I told him as we bounced up and down in the inter-island Dhoni heading from one island of the resort to the other, “It’s shit hot.” Or words to that effect.

The Dell M1330 is the workhorse of a global nomad. Your Apple Air is fancy. It’s really slim. It gets looks of admiration … but when it comes to processing power, it does its best.

But sometimes you just need a Windows machine, as I do, often. And the Dell XPS M1330 is a piece of genius.

Here are some pictures:

I won’t bore you with exact specifications — they’re entirely configurable on the Dell site — other than this overview: For 589 UK pounds you can have an ultra light M1330 with a gig of RAM, 120 gig hard disk, T5750 Dual Core Intel Processor, gorgeous 13.3″ screen (1280×800) and more. Just amazing. And it’s got an SD slot, 2 USBs, an HDMI port and a proper monitor-out port. If you need a bit more oomph, you can top up the processor to a 2.6Ghz 8,000 series Dual Core, knock up the hard disk to 320 gig, boost ram to 3 gig (an extra 35 quid, would you believe?), add an nVidia 128mb graphics card and a few other enhancements and you’re still only talking 1,170 UK pounds. Right on. That’s including VAT!

The Apple Air is wider — and a bit slimmer. But not by much. You’d struggle getting the M1130 in a fancy Steve-Jobs-style-envelope but it’s a workhorse. A real beast.

I’ve been putting the M1330 through a heck of a lot of use whilst here on the island. I’ve been using it for a lot of blogging — perhaps one of the most demanding uses of a machine in my care. That is OODLES of web browsing and image processing along with video and audio encoding. I used the machine to comfortably process and record my podcast submission for Podcast 10. I’ve filled up a substantial amount of the hard disk with bucketloads of videos and photos that I won’t use — I’ve been deliberately annoying it. And it’s still standing. Battery life is excellent — 3 to 4 hours depending on how horrid you are to the machine and the screen brightness.

And one more thing.

You know, I was about to write that it doesn’t have a CD drive. It does. I just looked. Seriously, I spent a few minutes the other day looking to see and couldn’t find it. It’s on the right. An 8x DVD writer. Genius. I never knew!

I’d seen the M1330 before. I’ve seen a few folk using it and my dad had one of the first but I’d never been hands on with it before.

It’s precisely the kind of machine you want when you’ve got work to do and you’re on a desert island. Or on the train, the bus, or you’re moving often and you don’t want to be messing around with large ‘desktop replacements’.

Thank you to Dell for loaning us the M1330 for the Desert Island Challenge. And thank you to Marcus, Director of Operations for the Conrad here, for validating my geek existence with his question.

If you’ve got any questions about the Dell, let me know – ewan@smstextnews.com.

Tags: dell, M1330
Posted in Desert Island Challenge, Feature | View Comments

Remember to think about the batteries with The Flip!

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I have been snorkeling. Probably one of the only times that I don’t take my mobile phone with me when I go out. Sad, but true.

But you’re the same, right?

I did, however, take The Flip. In fact, if I’m totally honest, The Flip is the major reason that I agreed to snorkeling in the first place.

If you haven’t snorkeled before — or gone diving — then a unique experience awaits. The biggest trauma I had was learning that when I stick my head underwater, I can still breathe.

That and the sharks.

They have sharks in the Maldives.

“Little baby tiny ones that you just have to tap on the nose to get’em to go away,” my friend Angus told me a few weeks ago.

Riiight.

I took my Flip and I placed it into the water-tight container and turned it on. Then I arsed about with my snorkel and mask for a few minutes whilst being gently buffeted by the little waves.

The Flip gave me purpose. If I hadn’t had that, I’d have spent the time panicking about breathing underwater, I reckon.

I set about filming stuff. So much stuff, fishes and coral and such, that when I came back in, I discovered I’d recorded just over a gig of video!

Standby. I’m going to upload some shortly.

The ease of use of The Flip is fantastic. I’ve seen one Japanese tourist with a specialised watertight case for his fancy camcorder. The real problem is getting the footage off the camcorder without an array of leads and arsing about. I love how you just ‘Flip’ out the USB connector from the device and plug it in, then watch your videos. Really, really smart.

As I’ve commented before, The Flip shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t have been allowed to exist. Nokia, in particular — along with Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG — shouldn’t have let the market open up. One of the chief benefits of having a mobile handset, apart from the usual guff, is that you can take pictures and video with it.

The mobile networks and the handset manufacturers have been spectacularly shit in this regard. I kid ye not. I’ve stood in front of representatives from them all and found myself shocked at the total lack of understanding.

Only a month or so ago I was at the LG Secret launch. It’s a beautifully designed handset, it really is. 5 megapixel camera and an uber-uber-good video camera with, if memory serves, 120 frames per second capabilities.

Great.

Getting the footage OFF the device is a total and utter arse. This issue is the first one I put to the UK Marketing Director. He’s a smart chappy but he readily admitted that it’s not a priority and, to paraphrase from memory, it won’t be a priority for quite a while.

Meanwhile The Flip has come along and eaten everyone’s lunch.

Want to take video, easily? Get a Flip. Don’t bother with anything else and especially not your mobile handset. Chances are it was designed by a team who simply DO NOT GET IT or are unwilling to GET IT because of market dynamics. Obviously, your average mobile network would rather you transmitted your 1gig video of your snorkeling adventure via their data network to Youtube. So they’re rather likely to frown upon any manufacturer coming along and making it reaaaaally simple for normobs (“normal mobile users”) to be able to take video and send it to Youtube or friends and family easily.

Incidentally, it would cost me about 7,500 UK pounds to transmit the videos I took the other day on the Fllip via my T-Mobile connection, right now, here in the Maldives.

I just used the hotel’s complimentary internet connection. What a shame.

But, big up The Flip. If you haven’t got one, do consider a purchase. You can find them on Amazon.

I don’t hold with James Whatley’s viewpoint. James, our uber-mobile correspondent (who’s currently heading to the Glastonbury festival to get very muddy and try out some technology there for us) doesn’t like The Flip.

He especially doesn’t like it because it doesn’t do live. He wants to be able to stream, a la QIK.

I don’t really want every bit of footage captured to be streamed to the planet. I’d like to edit. You don’t want to watch 30 minutes of me arsing about in the water, do you?

The other viewpoint — expressed by Dan Lane, uber-mobile geek and SMS Text News podcast contributor — is that having a Flip makes good sense when you’re out and about — at a festival, for example. Because taking footage on the Flip doesn’t wear down your battery on your mobile, rendering you contactable by your friends.

These opinions and more, by the way, you can hear on Podcast 10.

And so to my final point. There I was, 100m off shore, trying to take a video of a rather colourful fish and wondering why The Flip wasn’t playing ball. In the end I stood up. I was rather surprised to find that the water came up to my thighs. Heh. I stood up, opened up the watertight container and then read the ‘battery low’ message.

Ahh.

For some reason I’d got it into my mind that The Flip is powered by USB. It’s not. It takes 2xAA batteries. A quick trip to the hotel shop and I’m now good for another 2.5 hours worth of footage. Right on.

Tags: Batteries, Flip
Posted in Desert Island Challenge | View Comments

I’m in the hands of Aisha at the Ministry of Information

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I called up the Ministry of Information this morning. Somebody answered! I was put through to a lady who then put me through to Aisha, who listened to my issue.

“It really doesn’t take a week!” she replied, after I explained that I was waiting for Customs to contact her Ministry.

“Ah really?” I said, allowing myself to feel a slight feeling of hope.

All this scenarios are eminently possible. We know they are. I just wanted to prove it. To document it, to show it working.

I tell you, a photo of the PMN unit sat in a bit of sand surrounded by palm trees.. I’d have been brilliant.

Now we wait.

Tomorrow — Friday — is the holy day in the Maldives. Saturday also comprises the weekend. Things start once again on Sunday and Monday.

We shall see.

(The photo above: My Iridium Sat Phone – more on that soon)

Tags: Aisha, Ministry of Information
Posted in Desert Island Challenge, Feature | View Comments

	YES!		10%
	No - boring!		90%

Archive for the ‘Desert Island Challenge’ Category

Private Mobile Network: First look!

Rocking back to the UK with my PMN and a massive todo list

The President of the Maldives to the rescue!

Help, my private mobile network is still in Customs

I’m in the hands of Aisha at the Ministry of Information

“That M1330 of yours is nice, how do you find it?”

Remember to think about the batteries with The Flip!

I’m in the hands of Aisha at the Ministry of Information

Useful Services

More Useful Services: