Remember making new friends without the help of the Internet? Thanks to a new service called rmbrMe, you can convert those messy real life acquaintances into easily manageable social networking formats! rmbrMe lets you send a code via text message that will link people you just met to your profiles on Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, or whatever other networks you choose.
There is a bit of a missing link between having someone's phone number and having their URLs. Not everyone has an iPhone, so it's not always easy to send a hyperlink that won't have to be retyped into a browser later. RmbrMe is a clever concept, but it makes us wish for something even easier. Instead of going to a browser and typing in a five-digit code to get to a profile that aggregates all of your other profiles, it would be nice to see a service that generated friend requests straight from the text message.
For now, rmbrMe is a fairly elegant solution to the problem of helping people, well, remember you. The catch, and the reason we probably won't become frequent users of the service, is that it charges 49 cents a message, on top of whatever your carrier charges. Asking for an e-mail address might be a little bit dorkier, but it's also cheaper.
If you've ever been caught in a speed trap and thought, "I wish someone had warned me!" then we have just the service for you. Trapster lets users report speed traps as they find them, using their mobile devices. There's even support for Jott, a voice-to-text service, so that you can make a report and still keep your hands on the wheel. The coolest part, though, is that Trapster will warn you through your mobile phone if you're approaching any of the speed traps it knows about.
The front page of the site features an informative Google Map, visualizing Trapster's whole database. This is cool, but it doesn't do a whole lot of good while you're actually on the road. That's why there's a Trapster app for Nokia Smartphones, BlackBerries, and phones with Windows Mobile 5 or 6. If you don't want to keep Trapster running all the time, you can just turn on SMS alerts to be informed when a new trap is reported in your area.
The Trapster team has taken into account that people might feel uncomfortable attaching a name to the info they send in, so anonymous reporting via email is also an option. Don't be too worried about Trapster getting shut down by the cops anyway. What's the harm in encouraging people to slow down?
The UK's Omnifone will be the "first" company to offer unlimited, free music to all mobile handsets branded with the "MusicStation" name. LG will be the first to release a MusicStation Max phone, which will become available in the first half of 2008 to European and Asian-Pacific regions.
The new phone, announced at the World Mobile Congress, will likely include a touchscreen plus a pull-out keyboard (to hopefully compliment a decent amount of flash memory). What's unlimited music worth if you can't actually download it?
Omnifone's music selection includes about 1.6 million songs from the four major labels and other countless smaller record companies. Also, if you happen to snag one of these but happen to drop it in a pool, don't worry! Omnifone keeps a list of all the music you downloaded if you happen to damage your handset.
Life's getting mobile, and it seems that's the way it's always going to be. Humans don't come off as the traveling type, yet we do. From horse carriages to cell phones, we're always looking for ways to do more on the move, so what's missing from your mobile life in 2008 and how can you fix it? The following list may help.
1. Full access to YouTube in Windows Mobile: Everyone's got a solution for playing YouTube Mobile videos on a Windows Mobile phone, but it seems no one's giving Windows Mobile users a way to access YouTube.com's full, flash video library. Oh wait, there is a solution. It only requires users to install a specific version of TCPMP and the Flash Video Bundle, an add-on to TCPMP to give it the ability to play flash video. Use Pocket IE to navigate to YouTube (a few other flash video sites are also supported). Clicking on a video will open TCPMP to play it. Easy, right?
You could also install Orb on your PC and use the Orb mobile client to find YouTube videos on the go, but that solution requires you to leave your home PC on all the time.
At first, it sounds like a texting nightmare from hell, but RSS via SMS has a place in our world through Web-Alerts, a small web experiment that may get lost in the vast internet desert that is web 2.0 failures. The service sends you a text message for every update to a chosen site's RSS feed.
The service is simple and easy to use. When you first visit the site, it'll ask your to enter a web address. If it finds an RSS feed for your chosen site, it'll ask you to enter your cell phone number. Should any updates happen to your chosen feed, a preview of the update will be forwarded to your phone. Removing a subscription is easy enough. "Just open the link in your text message and choose 'My Alerts' to remove any alert you are subscribed to." Furthermore, you can enter a keyword with your phone number so that you'll only be forwarded updates via SMS when they contain the keyword.
This could be extremely useful for someone closely watching a specific topic such as a stock broker. It could also become extremely annoying if you find yourself answering your phone every ten minutes to stop the latest SMS from incessantly vibrating in your pocket. Our advice: use wisely.
Get ready for iPhone and iPod Touch applications to roll out of the pipes early next year, an SDK is coming!
We heard a rumor yesterday, but our friends over at TUAW have let us in on some exciting news from the Apple front. Apple has said that the much anticipated iPhone SDK will be released to developers by February 2008. This Software Developer Kit will allow developers to create applications for the iPhone, as well as the iPod Touch. Of course, hackers have been developing iPhone apps pretty much since the day the device was released, but now we're talking about applications that won't be deleted every time Apple issues firmware updates.
So start that special savings account now, things are going to get really interesting with Apple devices. Its not like it wasn't heavily expected by Apple developers and loyal fans, but it sure has been long overdue and will unfortunately take some time for the release of the kit. This is mainly to ensure a proper advanced open platform is built that will not only protect iPhone's from viruses but from associated privacy attacks made on users.
This vital and dynamic third party community that is about to be created will be able to grab the SDK after MacWorld San Francisco in February 2008, something Apple and their stockholders are genuinely excited about.
Rumors about a Google phone have been flying for months. And since they started around the time that Apple was releasing its game-changing iPhone, it should come as no surprise that we all started to get the idea that Google might get into the hardware game and release a gPhone handset featuring Google software.
But according to the New York Times, while Google has developed a few prototype handsets for internal testing, what the company is really working on is a mobile operating system. Or to put it another way, what the company is really working on is a way to serve up advertisements on your mobile device.
Google will offer up its OS to hardware manufacturers, so perhaps one day you'll be able to get a Treo running PalmOS, Windows Mobile, or a Google operating system. The OS will be Linux-based and will include Google applications including mail, directions, possibly a web browser, and probably some sort of mobile version of Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Jajah has made it easier for people to contact each other without giving away phone numbers with the Jajah Button.
Jajah lets you make free calls to other users, or low-cost calls to phones using a web-based VoIP service. We have covered them before here with their low cost mobile web service.
With the new Jajah Button service, users can place a button on a website, blog, social network or in email signatures through an embed code and will be able to accept calls. This button will automatically connect the presser without giving out a phone number. Don't feel like answering the call? Reject it, or even block specific numbers. Again, if the button presser is a Jajah user, the call will be free. But there will be a charge per minute if they are not, that's were restrictions can be implemented.
The team in Redmond Washington has just announced that they will be acquiring Chicago based Parlano, developers of a cross functional group communication technology, that goes beyond your typical IM and email toolsets.
Terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but Microsoft is planning to integrate Parlano's technology in order to give its office programs a broader vision. For example, users would be able to see who is available only by IM as oppose to Phone or video chat. Then they would be able to transition seamlessly from email to an IM to a video chat.
This move by Microsoft marks a milestone in its Office Communications server due out late next year. An application that lets users find and communicate with the right person, immediately, through the applications that they use most.
And the rumors keep rolling in on Google's phone development. This magical device that will be host to Google's powerful services like Gmail and Search while on the go. This time a person inside HTC has confirmed the development of the device.
The rumors specify that the Gphone will be shipping from Taiwan, and is scheduled to launch Q1 of 2008. The team at Google has been going over the current 20 HTC models on the market and finalizing its handset design. Gphone will have a specially built version of Google Maps, just as the iPhone does, with built in GPS compatibility. Previous reports stated that the device would not have GPS, and that it would support both 3G and EDGE platforms. Gmail and Calendar will be present, with Google Talk becoming part of the phone in a VoIP mode. As for the operating system on the Gphone, the insider said it would use Windows Mobile 6, however some think that a Linux OS would be more realistic. As for price, there have been buzzing's that the device would stay in the range of only $100. Will it be unlocked? We will have to wait and see, but chances of that are fairly slim.
Or is it all just a bunch of gossip that we have been hearing about for the past year? There have been endless amounts of rumors about the GPhone, but will it soon see the light of day in two weeks?
There has been so much said about the GPhone that it's hard to listen to yet another story on the topic. Is Google merely building some specialized software for mobile devices, or are they getting into full fledged handsets? An India publication has cited a few sources in the Google phone, and has said that it could be only two weeks away. Talks are believed to be underway in India with two of their largest networks, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Essar, with US regulatory approval going through soon.
Google has not commented on the GPhone rumors, and their plans to enter the market. All the pieces sure fit together, and it was even reported that a late 2007 launch could be in place. From the mobile Gmail and Maps applications, to YouTube on cellphones, and the iPhone email and mapping solutions.
In the annals of video game history, there is no finer an opportunity for endless explosive glee than the vertical shooter. Most vertical shooter games involve a little two-dimensional spaceship that flies only in one direction (up) and shoot lots of interesting projectiles at an abundant cache of enemies. These seemingly endless enemy spaceships apparently have figured out how to fly in many directions--including right at you, which is bad--unless your trigger finger is fast enough.
Naturally, if you've just had a stressful day at work and you're wedged between two New Yorkers on the subway as you drive home, you might have the urge to blow something up. This is when the vertical shooter is at its most valuable. Pop open your mobile phone, fire up the latest Robotech offering, a vertical shooter in every respect, and blow away thousands of virtual enemies until your stress is gone, you reach your subway stop, or your cell-phone's softkeys (the game's trigger buttons) wear out.
Google has now made it possible to send updates to Calendars using SMS. The request to do so came in on the Google tip lines. People wanted a way in which to send text messages to add events, or a way to find out which events they had coming up.
The SMS updates work by sending a text message to 'GVENT' (48368) , with some details about the event, (ie. Starbucks meeting at 2pm). The GVENT will them be added to the users calendar immediately, and a text message confirming the details will get sent. If the word "day" is sent to 'GVENT', a text message will get sent back that contains all of the day's events. "nday" can also be used to get a list of all schedules for the next day.
Way to go Google, always innovating. Just let me pull out my cheat sheet so I can take a look at all the other shortcuts like this I can use.
Cell phone signals are pretty easy to catch now. Major providers have boosted their signals, and troubleshooted hard to reach areas, but every once and a while we hit a dead spot and the dreaded "hello?, hello? Are you there? hello?" kicks into play.
SignalMap hopes to alleviate any pain in this area. They have used the Google Maps API and mapped up a user generated list of cell phone signals by major service providers, mapping dead spots and comparing signal strengths.
There are a lot of mapped signal areas, but it is not by any means a comprehensive guide at the moment. However, it's building into a great site to check before heading out on business or pleasure to check if you might be heading into a bad area. To help the directory grow users can add their signal strengths, phone type and carrier to the list.
Google has beefed up its 411 voice search service with some directions.
Google launched a 411 voice search at 1-800-GOOG-411 in April. The service allows users to call in a search query and get the result by voice. Now Google has integrated maps into the voice search. The 411 voice search service with maps works the same way, but during your call you would say "map it" to get a text message with details of your search plus a link out to a map result on your mobile phone.
1-800-GOOG-411 is a free service, but only available in the US for US based business listings.
Remember making new friends without the help of the Internet? Thanks to a new service called rmbrMe, you can convert those messy real life acquaintances into easily manageable social networking formats! rmbrMe lets you send a code via text message that will link people you just met to your profiles on Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, or whatever other networks you choose. 
The UK's 
