We’ve had our first MWC pitch from a startup founder and I reckon we should give him a bit of attention. This one didn’t come from a $500m company. Instead it came from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald of Zcapes.

Here’s what he’s got to say:

Zcapes aims to be world’s leading mobile website and contextual-aware service for shared situations. It is a platform to easily make and host mobile miniblogs around things, places, events and situations. Zcapes stimulates interactions around shared situations. A simple mobile web service that aggregates photo’s, weather information, feeds, comments and also offers rsvp boxes, voting, transactions and even payments.

Zcapes will launch in Beta at MWC.

Story and vision
http://www.sprxmobile.com/ready-to-meet-zcapes/

What’s your Business Model?
Premium services plus contextual advertising

Key Competitors
Ning
Wordpress
Twitter

Link & contact
http://zcapes.com
maarten at zcapes.com twitter.com/dutchcowboy
raimo at zcapes.com twitter.com/rhymo

Company
Zcapes is founded by Raimo van der Klein, Claire Boonstra & Maarten Lens-FitzGerald of SPRXmobile, Mobile Services Architects and (co)Founders of Mobile Monday Amsterdam. Based in Amsterdam, Zcapes is a startup building on the vision of Contextual Marketplaces. Technical partner of Zcapes is Triple-IT.

Team
Raimo van der Klein, General Manager
Claire Boonstra, Manager Content & Partnerships
Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Marketing Manager
Roy Meister, Technical Lead

Do you think we should interview them at MWC? Head over to the Zcapes pitch and give them your thumbs up: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/mwc/story.php?id=29

Give me a Sony Ericsson WITH Google Android and I will be a happy chap, I reckon.

So report thec ahps at Dialaphone. They picked up this quote:

According to Garfield Brusewitz from Sony Ericsson, the company will start by focusing “on products in the higher segment, but later on will also supplement with products for the broad mass market. The first Android phone from Sony Ericsson is expected to show up for the summer.”

Bring it on. I’d like to see what the designers at Sony Ericsson create…

I wondered if this was possible.

Have a look to find out…

All around, bemused skiers hoping off the ski lift nearby watched, wondering what the hell I was doing.

I was testing the XP1.

After stamping away for a good few minutes, I then picked it up and promptly called my mother back in the UK.

No problem. Clear, excellent call quality. I hadn’t damaged the device one jot.

So when the new XP3 arrived — the first waterproof (to 1 metre) handset I’ve ever come across — I was delighted to take delivery and check it out with MIR contributor Ed Hodges.

In this video today, we open up the box and have a play.

Tomorrow, see what happens when we actually put the XP3 in a load of water and try and call it.

When you take the INQ1 out of the box it feels like a quality device with its solid metal and plastic construction. However that illusion was shattered when I switched it on, as the display looks like a low end device and the icons and menus have a basic appearance. Instead of a user guide in the box there are a series of ‘flash’ cards which explain the principle applications. Although I thought the info was a bit thin it probably reflects the fact that non geeks rarely read user guides and just dive straight in! The full user guide is on the CD along with the PC Suite software for copying contacts, photos etc to your PC. Overall the handset’s performance is sluggish and the software seems fairly buggy as the it rebooted several times when I was trying out applications. Not a good start and may mean it has to go back.

Now to move on to the INQ1 as a social networking device.

The Facebook application looks good when you load it and has icons at the top for the key Facebook features – Profile, Inbox, Friends, Photos. The rest of the screen shows your News Feed. Reading and updating Facebook from the application is very easy, although you have to wait a while when you refresh to get your latest Facebook info or select an item to read. Not surprisingly, this is much slower than on a PC. I’ve also noticed that even when refreshed, the News Feed lags behind my PC. So, Facebook on the INQ1 versus Facebook via my E51 browser? I definitely prefer the browser version – it’s more responsive, up to date and I think easier to read. However, from a usability perspective, as an application that is easily available from the home screen, then Facebook on the INQ1 probably works better for Normobs.

The Skype application is very simple to use and incorporates Skype Out for calling ‘real’ phone numbers. Several times when I tried to use Skype, the handset rebooted. Live Messenger works well, with the long and frequently bizarre user names that some people use fully displayed!

In theory the browser provides web access but more often than not it returns an ‘unable to contact the website’ message! When it does work it’s horribly slow to load pages. I wouldn’t have the patience to use it on a regular basis.

Unfortunately there’s no Twitter application. For me that’s a big miss but as Twitter is still niche compared to Facebook I guess that forgivable!

Next I’ll be letting some Normobs in the family have a play with the INQ1 to see whether easy access to Facebook, Skype and Live Messenger holds appeal or whether they’d prefer to stick with their PC.

One very neat feature is the way Facebook, Live Messenger and Skype contacts are imported into the Contacts application on the handset so you can contact people directly from their and view their status. Effectively the INQ1 has presence enabled the Contacts application – something every handset should have.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 - T-Mobile

Deutsche Telekom arrived on the scene today with their BlackBerry 8900 offering, beating the shipping Curve by over a week.

Carphone Warehouse announced earlier on this week their 8900s will be in the shops on the December 20th, O2 said January 5th and T-Mobile will now be selling theirs on the 12th of December. Tadarrr!

This is despite the Carphone Warehouse telling Mobile Industry Review they were exclusively selling the handset, and then revising their statement to saying it’s the ‘Titanium’ version instead.

Earlier on this week we debunked their claim, as it’s the exact model being sold by O2 and now it appears that T-Mobile are selling the same version as well.

Coming along with unlimited access to RIM’s push email, with unlimited web browsing on T-Mobile’s web‘n’walk service.

The BlackBerry Curve will be free if signed up to a £35 a month contract, also known as their Flext 30 with a £5 email bolt-on. A tariff that has £140 worth of calls and texts, which can be made up of 700 mins, 1400 texts or a mixture of both.

O2 has still yet to make public their costings for the 8900 or any of the tariff pricing. Clearing showing the only reason they put out a press release on Monday was to trump the Carphone Warehouse announcement the following day, and T-Mobile’s today.

There isn’t a great deal more we can add to the handset they we haven’t already covered here, here or even here.

We haven’t heard so far from Vodafone or Orange, perhaps they can offer the handset this week, three hours before the phone was announced on a Thursday morning backin May.

Crossing both 2.5 and 3G networks its due out soon, with carries to be mentioned in due course.

Specifications/Compatible computer operating systems: -

• 3G: 850/2100MHz
• GSM:850/900/1800/1900 MHz

• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Mac OS 10.4
• Mac OS 10.5

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

To paraphrase the A-Team introduction: “If nobody else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire Roland Tanglao.”

That’s right, Roland is offering to help anyone understand, install and setup ShoZu — although he rightly points out that if you’re using an iPhone, you probably don’t need any help as it’s so easy.

But if you’re in need, buy Roland a $2.25 macchiato and the knowledge is yours. What a deal. Even if you’re already a dab hand at ShoZu, you might want to hook up with Roland anyway and say hi.

From his blog post this morning:

Hey Vancouverites! Got an N95, N82 or other Nokia cameraphone and a data plan (or a Wifi phone)? If so, I’ll show you how to install ShoZu and configure it to send photos to any email address, flickr, facebook, twitter, Now Public, any arbitrary email address, etc. (ShoZu supports an incredible number of photo and video services in fact over 90% of the popular ones!). All I ask is we do this over coffee in downtown or Gastown before work or at lunch and that you buy me a $2.25 macchiato in return. Text me at 604 729 7924 if interested! iPhone ShoZu users, the offer applies to you too but I doubt you need any help !

Top man Roland. Roland goes on my recently created (and still rather empty) ShoZu Grand Master list.

Roland is a very regular ShoZu’er. Here, for example, is one of his morning bike shadow posts, sent to Flickr via ShoZu:

If you too are a willing to help normobs in your area ‘get’ ShoZu and thus, become listed as a ShoZu Grand Master, details are here.

Voxbone provides iNum numbers to service providers who make them available to customers as part of their own service offering. An example here is Iotum’s Calliflower conferencing service which is offering iNum access on their premium service. Other early partners include Truphone, Gizmo5, Rebtel and Voxeo.

iNum pricing is an interesting area. Calls between iNum service providers are free of charge, whereas calls from outside the iNum community will incur a small charge from Voxbone, which will be reflected in the cost of calling an iNum from a mobile or landline. Voxbone expects calls from outside the iNum community to cost no more than a local call. Voxbone provides service providers with iNums free of charge and the service providers choose what they charge customers for an iNum.

Voxbone are in the process of negotiating access deals with operators worldwide to ensure it’s easy to call an iNum. At the present time this is still somewhat limited so if you pick up your mobile you won’t be able to reach an iNum direct. Voxbone’s short term fix for this is to have local access numbers around the world that allow an iNum to be reached via a two stage dial process. So in the UK I can call 020 3355 6363 and enter the iNum number I want to reach. Not particularly user friendly but a good short term fix to provide ubiquitous access.

The big challenge for Voxbone is to gain recognition of 883 as the iNum global ‘country code’. iNum’s target customers will often be international travellers with a good understanding of technology who will be receptive to this type of product. Voxbone also has plans for an iNum global directory service to make it easier for iNum users to connect with each other. As more service providers come on stream this will also help to raise the 883 profile.

I’ve been testing out a couple of iNum numbers from providers who are among Voxbone’s launch partners. Calls between a single service provider’s numbers, between two service providers and from the PSTN using a local access number are all working well and call quality is great.

At the moment iNum is a voice only product which may limit its appeal to potential users as most of us already have enough phone numbers for people to reach us on! However Voxbone plans to add SMS, video and presence to iNum and these features will start to add real value to the iNum concept and differentiate it from other contact media.

—

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

HTC has launched the MAX 4G, the only WiMAX 4G handset on the market today.

Slight snag though, it’s just for Russia right now on their Scartel network.

When will we see the handset elsewhere? Well, when other places have rolled out a WiMAX network we guess and is capable of supporting such a beast.

Think of the chicken and the egg scenario, and then go around and around in circles until you find the answer. Hopefully, with this handset out now it’s only a matter of time before the egg gets laid or the chicken gives birth to itself.

The HTC MAX 4G comes off looking like a big brother to the HTC Touch Diamond. Being the first GSM/WiMAX it’s got a lot to live up to, so hopefully we’ll hear good things over the next coming months.

As expected the Russian network is talking up the high-speed wireless Internet possibilities of the phone and why not.

Their ‘Home package’ provides users with access to online games, maps, messaging and file exchange applications whist on the move. They’ve much hailed their traffic prioritisation algorithms allowing online films, video and TV programmes to be viewed on the large WVGA screen.

Unbeknown to us they broadcast 14 free channels, with another 23 channels by the end of 2008 for their mobiles. Ideal for the 3.8-inch, 800 x 480 screen on the HTC MAX 4G which by all accounts can display up to nine TV channels simultaneously.

It’s running Windows Mobile 6.1, with their Touch FLO 3D user interface over the top, all with a 5MP camera and 8GB of onboard storage.

Some will undoubtedly say ‘Why not run Android on it instead’; well perhaps over time it could be possible. Keep an eye on the xda-developers site for further developments.

The glorious Vodafone Netbook.

I went for the 25 pounds per month option giving me 1GB of data per month. I figured I could always upgrade if necessary.

Here, then, are some initial thoughts:

• The keyboard is small. Remember the device is only, what, 9 inches across. Dell have had to move the keys around so they fit. At a push, this keyboard is usable for long periods, especially once you get used to it. I’ve made about 6 typos so far – most due to the placement of the enter key.
• You’ve got an 8GB solid state hard disk on board… but only 3.2GB of usable free space. Windows itself takes up 1.54 GB. I imagine you can remove the various Dell and Drivers folders if the mood takes you — and reclaim a lot more space.
• I like the partnership with box.net. There’s a little icon for a 2GB free (‘lite’) box.net account. I made take them up on that.
• The Vodafone Connect stuff is right there on the menu. Fire it up and hit connect and you’re done. Very, very smart. I found the speed really good.
• The keyboard is satisfying.
• The touchpad is rather swish. I like how it feels and works.
• It’s pretty fast. It’s not quite the 8 processor Apple Workstation I’m used to but it works nicely with Windows XP and a wee bit of patience.
• Out of the box there was 78% battery. I can’t comment yet on battery length yet.

More soon.