Here is the video:

Yup, this one’s off topic. But I need your help. Am I behind the times?

Writing the Nokia N8/Big Screen post just now prompted me to think about my television situation.

I only own one television. It’s a rubbish 32″ Poloroid from 2007 that’s got such bad sound that I had to buy a set of those JBL Creature speakers for it. [If you'd like to know why I've got a shit television, I point you in the direction of my wife. Explanation here.]

I was talking with some chaps yesterday about flatscreen TVs. It’s not something I’ve given much thought to recently. Indeed ever since my wife and I got together, we’ve not bothered buying a new TV beyond ‘that’ one. We hardly ever watch real-time television and the baby has kept us focused on sleep rather than entertainment.

However I was astonished to find that one chap owned 5 flatscreen TVs. He has a 50″ in the ‘living room’ and even has a 40″ in the kitchen.

In the kitchen?

The other chap nodded away as though this was normal. Turns out they both have 40″ and 50″ TVs all over the house. Their 7 year old even has a 40″ in the bedroom!

I think I’ve missed something.

I obviously spend a LOT of money on computers and and mobile phones. Perhaps that’s why?

At Christmas I went home to my parents to find my 23 year old brother (who still lives with them) had just taken delivery of a 60″ flatscreen TV. It’s ridiculously big. He doesn’t even have enough wall space to hang it so it’s sat on the floor.

The more I think about it, the more I recognise I actually consume much more video content on my iPhone or my computers rather than via television.

But tell me about you. Have you got a 40″ flatscreen in the kitchen? Is this normal for people? Or just a small subset of folk? Am I the television equivalent of what I continually refer to as a ‘normob’ (“normal mobile user”) in mobile parlance?

If that’s the case, what should I have?

In this week’s episode, watch Grazia Daily editor Angela Buttolph critique Deb’s new moustache and make sure you can avoid the next fashion faux-pas thanks to three very useful apps. Can you guess which ones we’ll have chosen? Have a watch:

If you’ve got an app you reckon we should include in an upcoming episode drop me a note.

So I’ve taken the opportunity to try out the unit and see how it works. Alas it’s currently only available in the US (for approximately $199 up-front and then $4.99-$14.99/month).

If you’re into sports, movies, news or you simply can’t be without your American Dad fix, this device may well be for you (check-out the full channel line up). Current users of the system have been knocking back 2-hours+ per day of usage on average. Very impressive. After taking a look though, you really can see why.

Here’s my exploration of the device — a cross between an unboxing and a review — see what you think:

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

Here’s the video:

In today’s Part One, we talk about the technology we’ve brought, we visit some landmarks and spot-the-handset, we try making a video call to James back in London and we discuss the merits of cameras on handsets.

Here’s the video:

Part Two is coming soon!

Last night, Stephen Fry got stuck in a lift. Or an elevator.

How did I know this?

Well, I first noticed after a few of my Twitter friends — Martin and Jonathan — pointed out that after my rant about #uksnow, I was liable to go positively ballistic on finding out about the #frylift tag.

The #frylift hashtag on Twitter was setup immediately to manage the avalanche of comments in response to this Tweet from Stephen Fry:

Ok. This is now mad. I am stuck in a lift on the 26th floor of Centre Point. Hell’s teeth. We could be here for hours. Arse, poo and widdle.

Within moments Mr Fry had taken a Twitpic or two and they were online for everyone to see and retweet. Here’s one of them:

Fascinating.

Now whilst I thought the uksnow stuff on Monday was more or less a waste of time (I liked the proof of concept, but I felt it was a bit… banal), I have a totally different viewpoint of the ‘fry-in-a-lift’ Twitter hashtag.

That is entertaining.

It’s entertaining because it’s Stephen Fry.

And because he uses phrases like, ‘Arse, poo and widdle.’

No wonder that pages and pages and PAGES of #frylift comments started flying. The fact that Mr Fry was stuck in a lift was rather irrelevant for most of his followers — the key point was that he was ‘live’ — reading and responding to messages. Witness this Tweet:

Your brilliant comments are keeping us all (hysterically) cheerful. Last a heard engineers still on their way

If you’d like to talk to the chap, that was a particularly good time to do it.

And if you’d like to just sit back and ‘be close’ to the man — sit and watch.

Which leads me to ponder… at 111,566 followers (currently), at what point will a Stephen Fry show — a live experience such as #frylift become commercially viable?

At what point will Mr Fry’s agents sit back and think… right then… You’ve got Ricky Gervais and his podcasts making millions. So if we have 111,566 followers… how many of them would pay a fiver a month to ‘Tweet’ with Stephen?

And to participate in some live interactive ‘things’?

Quite a lot, I reckon.

Assume, for the sake of argument that every single subscriber would chuck up 5 quid a month.

That’s £557,830 revenue per month. Or a smidgen under £7m a year.

And he’s only just started.

If The Sun and the rest of the mainstream media continues to push — and CRUCIALLY, EDUCATE — the normobs across the country, that 111,566 subscribers could shortly hit half a million. Or a million.

The revenue possibilities are fascinating to consider.

How many watching the #frylift entertainment experience last night would have paid £29.99 for a one-hour exclusive pass to watch the live QIK stream of the event?

Perhaps that’s taking it a little bit too far.

But if you look at the games that Stephen is routinely playing with his followers — setting questions, tasks and so on — with little prizes… we’re not a million miles away from some kind of QI-Twitter-Gameshow-Live-Entertainment-Stephen-Fry-Mashup, are we?

Why bother presenting QI on the BBC when (looking into the future) you can reach a bigger, guaranteed, responsive and cash-rich audience via your own @stephenfry channel?

Watch this space!

T-Mobile is about to kick off a new ‘pioneering multimedia campaign’ this week, which will be nicer than the ads they’re running papers at the moment trying to give away a Nintendo DS to anyone buying a new mobile.

Filmed and edited in just 36 hours, the premier of the latest TV commercial will take place at 9.10pm on Friday 16th January – on Channel 4 for the eviction night of Celebrity Big Brother.

The 3 minute advert features 350 dancers breaking into dance en-masse at London Liverpool Street station. Hidden cameras were used so that ordinary commuters could be filmed secretly to see their reaction. Some might see similarities to a ‘flash mob’ event at London Paddington a year or two ago, although this was well and truly planned and rehearsed.

We’ve got a link to a teaser ad, and T-Mobile has created a dedicated YouTube channel to promote its “Life is for Sharing” strategy for 2009. Should you miss the airing of the 3 minute ad, shorter ones will be shown for a further two weeks as well as being shown online.

Anything has to be better then the annoying adverts they have now!

Link to video

Source: What Mobile

I was having a browse about the Telegraph website. Now and again the videos on the right-hand site start playing. Just a moment ago, I was reading away and caught sight of our very own Mr Whatley talking about the LG Renoir handset. I was wondering when this was going to go public!

It appears to be promo’ing in front of most of the Telegraph website vids at the moment, but you can catch all five minutes of joy right here.

Or a direct link to the video here.

Nice!

You can, of course, find James regularly on the MIR Show too.

AV230XL

We were at a lunch and the launch last week of the new personal video Vuzix iWear products, the OLED based AV230XL and the widescreen AV310. Effectively turning your mobile device into a 44-inch and 52-inch screen, respectively, and as if my magic. Tadarr!

These two new models update their range to offer their first, and the actual very first fully, 16:9 widescreen viewable headset in addition to the first OLED display too.

Fitting like a normal pair of glasses, if not a tad bulkier than normal but not uncomfortable, they connect to a mobile source and deliver an image to the onboard screen. If we do say so ourselves, it’s a rather cool and funky accessory to any mobile.

Although the AV230XL isn’t widescreen it makes up for it by offering the OLED display, whilst replicating a 44-inch screen. We were told on the day that a widescreen version is around 18 months away, seeing as they’ve only just introduced this tech in to their range.

As for the AV310, it is widescreen but doesn’t have a stunning image like the V230XL glasses – it’s still quite something to behold. It offers up a 52-inch screen as if viewed from 9 feet away, with Stereo 3D capable headphones.

Both of these new products have connectors for devices with TV Out such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung and HTC. It’s here for our dollars worth they really gain their usefulness. The sets are even bundled with an approved “Made for iPod” cable, besides leads for the likes of the Nokia N96 and N96.

Less not forget other devices such as Apple iPod range, MP4 players and games consoles like Wii. All of which are supported.

The usual retailers have them in stock: Firebox.com, Play.com, Applestore.com, Amazon.com or direct from www.vuzix.co.uk.

The AV230XL pitches up £129.99, whilst the AV310 Widescreen comes along at £149.99.

Having tried these out for a while, they do show off their usefulness and deliver a sharp image. What better way to get away from the family at Christmas, stick a movie on the phone and sit back whilst the arguments ensue all around you.

See more on the AV230XL and AV310 here and here

This week, we’ve turned Google.

And courtesy of T-Mobile UK’s branding of their launch event, we’ve — generally — gone pink, too. Yes indeed, last week we were at T-Mobile’s Winter launch, checking out what’s coming for the all-important Christmas period.

The Nokia N96, the LG Renoir, the E71, one of the top Samsungs, as well as T-Mobile’s own USB Mobile Broadband WiFi Hub (that got Dan Lane very hot under the collar. Despite already having a WiFi router at home with USB broadband stick support, I think he wants one!)

Of course, the T-Mobile Google handset, the G1, manufactured by HTC, is the biggie. For that reason we’ve dedicated most of the show to that. Indeed, we bring you the entire walk-through by T-Mobile’s Richard W. Richard was the event’s assigned G1 expert and he showed us a lot of the device features — we’ve brought you that unedited and direct — almost 10 minutes of it.

What does Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian think of the G1? We bring you his view during the episode. (In fact we’ve got a supplemental show coming this week featuring Mr Blandford in more detail on the G1.)

T-Mobile UK’s Winter launch was also a good opportunity to do some normob (relatively) walk-abouts as we haven’t had the opportunity to do many of those recently. Dan Lane takes the camera — as is right and proper — and follows James Whatley on a tour around the room.

* James takes us on a quick introduction to the event ( 00:58 )

* Rafe Blandford on the G1 ( 02:08 )

* Normob Tour ( 04:00 )

* Ben Smith & Dan Lane walk around each stand at the event ( 08:12 )

* We talk to Will McInnes on his views representing T-Mobile and the new G1 ( 09:52 )

* Richard Warmsley of T-Mobile gives us the ‘official’ T-Mobile G1 walk-through (unedited) ( 12:47 )

* The MIR Show team give their view of the G1 ( 29:13 )

* An finally, we have Ben’s facts ( 33:01 )

A bumper show this week — 35:02 minutes.

This week we’re in London, we’re in Beijing (twice) and we’re in San Francisco checking out Swype. Plus we’ve an interview with Jote Bassi of Anam, we talk about Nokia’s N85 and N79 handsets — and we’ve some cameos from other mobile geniuses (notably Phoneboy and Stefan Constantinescu).

Topics discussed:
1 ) This week: More from Beijing & CTIA Fall 2008 ( 00:44 )
2 ) Ben at The Summer Palace, Beijing ( 00:46 )
- Testing the Overboard Waterproof Cases ( 01:36 )
- Sim4Travel Roaming SIM ( 03:29 )
- ScanSafe Anywhere+ ( 04:04 )
- Lonely Planet iPhone Application ( 05:00 )
3 ) Nokia’s new handsets, The N85 and the N79 ( 07:10 )
4 ) Jote Bassi, VP Sales and Marketing of ANAM ( 12:52 )
5 ) We’ll be at the Future of Mobile Conference in London ( 18:04 )
6 ) Get your tickets right now! www.future-of-mobile.com ( 18:21 )
7 ) Ben at The Great Wall, near Beijing ( 18:29 )
- MacBook Air ( 19:00 )
- Jabra BT8030 Headset ( 19:10 )
- Jabra BT2050 Headset ( 20:31 )
- Flip Ultra, 2GB ( 21:35 )
- Creative Vado ( 22:38 )
- Spot Messenger ( 22:50 )
- Portable USB Li-ion Battery ( 24:21 )
8 ) Cliff Kushler, Founder and CTO of Swype: the next T9 for text entry on any screen ( 25:50 )

Our technical contributor, Dan Lane, anchors the show from his office in London while everyone else was out gallivanting across the globe.

Watch out for:
- Ben Smith live from sticky Beijing
- CTIA interviews with an array of companies including Sonicboom, Trutap, GeoSpot, DeviceAnywhere and Nokia

Topics discussed:
1) Ben’s in Beijing (00:46)
2) CTIA (05:40)
a) ShowStoppers Event Tuesday Evening, CTIA (06:09)
b) DeviceAnywhere: iPhone 3G now available (06:22) : Leila Modarres, Director of Marketing, DeviceAnywhere (06:33)
c) Cascada Mobile (07:46) : Alan Lysne, CEO of Cascada Mobile (07:50)
d) GeoSpot (12:32) : Joe Chen, Founding CEO of GeoSpot.com (12:36)
e) Quick chat with Carl from Trutap (17:02)
f) Bena Roberts, President of Vicinity Mobile and Owner of GoMoNews.com (17:57)
g) David Danon, CEO of Sonicboom.com (20:27)
h) Jeb of TopMobile20.com checks in! (23:09)
i) Mark, top chap at Nokia North America (23:46)

Across this week we’ll be publishing extended interviews with each of the CEOs and Marketing Executives we interviewed. Standby for that!

We just got information that the SlingPlayer Mobile has now been announced for Symbian UIQ phones. It’s been a while that the folks at Sling Media have toyed with us to give the UIQ version of the player. If you are as psyched as I am, head over to their site as they have a free trial for everyone. The new version is compatible with the following UIQ phones.

• Sony Ericsson P1i
• Sony Ericsson P990i
• Sony Ericsson W960i
• Sony Ericsson W950i
• Sony Ericsson M600i
• Sony Ericsson G700
• Sony Ericsson G900
• Motorola MOTORIZR Z8
• Motorola Z10

Now I need some professional headshouts of Dan, Ben and James…

If all goes to plan, the network will be up and running from next year, with all member countries guaranteeing the winning bidder will be able to run a service in their country using reserved spectrum.

I suspect the opportunity to run mobile TV services won’t be the carrot for would-be providers here: opening up mobile access and telemedicine in some of Europe’s most remote regions could be both worthy and profitable for network operators.

The pair’s service will cover: the service platform, a security and encryption technology, the platform for encoding into a DVB-H compatible format, the satellite delivery to terrestrial infrastructure and the TV channels themselves.

There’s a lot of advantages in going for a hosted option – it takes a lot of the upfront costs out of the equation and means that you can test out the service without committing a load of cash. That said, it doesn’t leave much room for differentiating services across different operators, but at least it’s a relatively safe way of testing out DVB-H while the business models – not to mention the demand – for mobile TV are being sounded out.

The Wall Street Journal says Sharp will trade off its TV brand, launching a range of phones under the Aquos banner. The first device will sell for 4,480 yuan (around £333) and come with a 3.2 megapixel camera.

The Chinese market is notoriously tough and recently some handset makers have admitted defeat and ceased selling their wares in the country. Targeting the bigger spenders might prove a wise move for Sharp though: there’s a big enthusiasm for higher-spec phones, as the 400,000 unlocked iPhones that turned up on China Mobile proved.

According to Qualcomm, it’s now got its hands on the 40 MHz (1452-1492 MHz) of L-Band radio spectrum, for the princely sum of £8.3 million. It hasn’t given any definitive word on what the spectrum will be used for, except to say it will “bring a variety of innovative wireless technologies to the UK market”, along with its partners.

Needless to say, it’s keeping quiet on the partners and the services in question, but it’s worth noting that the press release the company’s put out about the spectrum quotes an exec with the clunky job title of “president of Qualcomm Internet Services, MediaFLO Technologies and Qualcomm Europe” – could that be a hint on what we’re about to see? After all, it’s got a bit of history over here with mobile TV, following a trial of MediaFLO in conjunction with Sky not so long ago.

Bloomberg reports that Google’s plan says that the vacant spectrum or “white spaces” could be used for high-speed mobile access without causing interference without disrupting TV signals.

Google has long been tinkering with acquiring spectrum of its own, and lost out last week to Verizon Wireless in a spectrum auction. Now its got the handsets ready and mobile search is opening up, making sure consumers have speedy mobile networks at their disposal would be a boon to Google. It seems, though, that despite Google’s pleas the “white spaces” won’t be opened up any time soon.