currybetdotnet Mobiles archive

Postcard from Macau #6: The land of SMS spam
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. Macau's telecomms industry seems to have a great deal of competition in the mobile network sector. With leaks from mainland China, at...

Read the full post - Published March 23, 2008 in Macau, Mobiles, Travelogue

Orange could do with a usability upgrade
I used the Orange online service last week to upgrade my phone - and I have to say I was left distinctly unimpressed with some of the usability. I still retain a UK mobile phone for when I'm in the country. It means that I've been able to keep the same number that I've been giving out since the year dot on business cards and email signatures. However, if you've tried to call me on my UK phone over the...

Read the full post - Published September 4, 2007 in Mobiles, Usability, Web

T-Mobile MMS addicted to Internet Explorer on the web
A friend sent me a picture message from the UK the other day. It originated from the T-Mobile network, and made its way across Europe to arrive on my non-MMS enabled Vodafone network phone in Greece. It appeared as a text message with a link and a password. I was very impressed with the whole cross-platform, cross-network, cross-national boundary operation. Until I got to the web bit of it course. The first thing that greeted me when I tried to...

Read the full post - Published August 10, 2007 in Microsoft, Mobiles

Slacker equivalent already on the market in Europe - meet Sony and Vodafone's Radio DJ
There has been a bit of a buzz around the announcement of a service called Slacker in the USA, which will be a device which plays personalised radio stations to the user on the go. Matt Marshall at VentureBeat even touted it as a potential "iPod killer". As I read through the promised feature-set, I started to get a little nagging voice in my head, saying "Hang on, isn't....this....what...I..do?" Because for the last few months I've been working on...

Read the full post - Published March 14, 2007 in Apple, Mobiles, Music, Radio, Sony

Thanks for the score BBC Sport - but who actually won?
I'm sure, like the media coverage of A-Level results, I moan about this every year, but it is that time of the year - F.A. Cup replays - where I get to gripe again about the way replay results are presented on the BBC's mobile phone service. Last night provided a classic example. The tie between Middlesbrough and Bristol City turned out to be an epic of the genre, with first one team being ahead, then the other, and in...

Read the full post - Published February 14, 2007 in BBC, Football, Mobiles

The anonymous CD sleeves in 3's music download advertising campaign
I was on the top deck of a London bus last week, and noticed that all of the advertising space had been given over to promoting mobile network operator 3's music download store. They are advertising that the service has half a million tracks, and is, of course, open anywhere you can get a mobile signal, including the top deck of the bus itself. A couple of things struck me about the advert, which featured shelves and shelves of CD...

Read the full post - Published January 29, 2007 in Mobiles, Music

Coverage of the Apple and Cisco iPhone trademark battle
Yesterday I wrote about the accessibility issue with Apple's newly announced "iPhone" product - and my concern that should many devices end up adopting their approach of a mobile phone without a tactile interface, usability for the large section of the population with some visual or motor impairment might be a problem. I also looked at the very vocal response of a section of the Apple fan community to the very suggestion that this might even be a question worth...

Read the full post - Published January 17, 2007 in Apple, Mobiles

iPhone and the blindness of the Apple fans
Well, it seemed churlish not to join in with virtually every other blog I read and not post something about the mobile phone / multimedia device you may have seen launched by Apple last week. I have to start by saying that I am intrigued by the user interface, and I'll be fascinated to hear about how people get on with it out in the wild. Rather than talk about the much-vaunted product itself, I wanted to look at a...

Read the full post - Published January 16, 2007 in Accessibility, Apple, Mobiles

Poor mobile UEFA Cup service from the BBC
Everybody knows that the UEFA Cup is the poor man's "Euro Vase" to the "Big Cup" of the Champions League, but I'm not sure why the BBC's coverage of the competition has to be so poor on their WAP mobile service. Last night I wanted to find out what time the Blackburn vs Red Bull Salzburg tie kicked off. So the obvious thing to do on my phone was to go to the BBC's Football menu, the European menu, then...

Read the full post - Published September 29, 2006 in BBC, Football, Mobiles

BBC.co.uk gets animated over Doctor Who
The homepage got all animated today in anticipation of the forthcoming series of Doctor Who - promoting the teaser trailer that is now available online. It was a visual approach the team first took to promote last years webcast - Scream Of The Shalka - which featured Richard E Grant as the Doctor. At the time I was so excited I downloaded and resized the animated TARDIS image to use as the screensaver on my T610...

Read the full post - Published December 6, 2004 in BBC, Doctor Who, Mobiles

Java powered interactive tube map for Orange phones

Published July 11, 2004 in London Underground, Mobiles

Converting BBC Sport RSS feeds to WML

Published June 23, 2004 in BBC, Mobiles, RSS

The future of the BBC is mobile, according to 'the kids'

Published January 22, 2004 in BBC, Mobiles