Welcome to Hedgehogging, the editorial staff’s weekly column about wireless-related stories that got us talking this week.
Is it just us, or are a lot of people who work in the wireless industry checking to see what the high bids are for their home towns in the AWS auction? Actually, some of the edit staff is thinking we should have applied for about $3 billion in venture capital and bid on Puerto Rico (which had the lowest minimum bid at the time. And it looks pretty nice in the travel ads. Did we mention the beach?) A few thousand dollars probably would be all we need for the license, and we have 15 years to build out, so we’d pay ourselves well for awhile, then declare bankruptcy. Too bad no one had the foresight to fill out an application.
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Opera Software announced Opera Mini users have surfed more than 1 billion Web pages since the handset-based mini-browser was launched earlier this year. Not surprisingly, the more popular sites include Google, community and dating sites, and … wait for it … “domains for more grown-up entertainment.” Come on people, can’t you wait to get home before surfing for grown-up entertainment? You’re better than that.
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Purveyor of prepaid, Virgin Mobile USA launched a made-for-mobile short story told in text message form designed to “raise awareness about the plight of homeless teens among Virgin Mobile’s youth audience.” RCR Wireless News is all for trying to teach the spoiled youth of today about social issues and maybe squeezing those lessons into 160 character bites is the way to do it.
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Like many of you, some of us enjoy stories that go all wrong in the end. I was a much bigger fan of Reservoir Dogs than Pulp Fiction based on the endings alone. In the same vain, I am expecting nothing but a bloody shootout for Sony’s latest Mylo mobile device.
What brainiac thought it would be a good idea to combine an oversized messaging device with the limitations of Wi-Fi connectivity and no voice capabilities-though a claim of future VoIP support is supposed to lessen that deficiency. Let me get this straight, the Mylo costs $350, only allows for text messaging and e-mail, or eventually VoIP services, and only works within range of a hotspot?
Where do I start? They might as well price it at $1 million ’cause no one is spending that much; the target market already carries a text-messaging device known as a mobile phone, which also happens to support voice; and I know kids like their coffee, but free hot spots are still few and far between and I doubt Gen-Yers are going to plunk down $10 for access to a hot spot just to send off a “where r u at?” text.
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Intrepid RCR Wireless News reporter Colin Gibbs recently hipped us to the growing business of so-called background tones. These are sounds mobile users pay for that play in the background of conversations. Did I mention that people pay for these things? Have mobile calls all of a sudden become so clear that we need to inject background noise? And did I mention that people pay for this?
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LG Electronics Co. Ltd.’s much-hyped Chocolate device has been making the rounds of the RCR Wireless News office, and one thing has become clear. If touch pads are the wave of the future, we have some adjusting to do. Nearly everyone who has used the device has mentioned the extreme sensitivity of the touch pad even when set on its least sensitive setting. If fact, a mis-cast glance is often all that is needed to skip songs mid-track. Beyond that main foible, the handset is dare we say “tasty?”
