Google Nexus One

The Nexus One is the Google Phone launched on January 5th, 2010. The Phone is sold at google.com/phone and it will be soon available at T-Mobile.
The phone runs on a Qualcomm 1 GHz Snapdragon chip, has a super high-resolution OLED touchscreen, is thinner than the iPhone, has no keyboard, and two mics. The mic on the back of the phone helps eliminate background noise, and it also has a “weirdly” large camera for a phone. And if you don’t like the touchscreen keyboard, a voice-to-text feature is supposed to let you dictate emails and notes by speaking directly into the phone.

Mobile phones to replace cash from 2011

NFC technology will be used to replace everything from credit cards and loyalty cards to bus and train tickets, library cards, door keys and even cash.

A new mobile phone technology called near field communication (NFC) will begin to replace traditional wallets and purses from 2011, according to a new research report.

Banks and mobile network operators will both be seeking to make money from the introduction of the new mobile payments technology, the report predicts, and are set to go head to head in a bid to gain control of the market.

"NFC technology will be used to replace everything from credit cards and loyalty cards to bus and train tickets, library cards, door keys and even cash," says Sarah Clark, author of 'NFC: The Road to Commercial Deployment'. "What hasn't yet been decided, however, is who will win the battle to provide consumers with their new hi-tech mobile wallets."

The UK, France, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea will be the first countries to get the new mobile wallets, the report predicts. The US, Canada, Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, the Czech Republic, Romania and Australia are also expected to be early adopters of NFC.

Businesses ranging from retail and travel to fast food, consumer goods, tourism and entertainment are all expected to be affected by the arrival of NFC services. Government and educational service providers will also be impacted by its arrival.

"Decisions made in 2010 will be critical in determining which mobile network operators, which banks, which industry suppliers and which service providers become the leaders in the field," she adds.

"Ultimately, only two or three companies in each country will succeed in building a major new business providing NFC services to businesses and consumers. The winners could be banks or mobile operators, or even a new entrant to the market."

Consumers with NFC-enabled phones will be able to simply touch their phone to a 'smart' poster or product label containing an RFID chip to sign up for a loyalty programme, collect a money-off coupon, download a trailer for a new movie, access the latest travel information or go straight to a product's website to read customer ratings and reviews and compare prices.

Android-based Acer Liquid now available in Black colour

There is good news for cell phone lovers, Acer Liquid earlier known as the Acer A1, is now available in black colour in UK market. The cell phone was only available in white color till now.
Recently launched, Acer Liquid is the latest addition to the Acer range of mobile phones. The cell phone utilises the QUALCOMM snapdragon 8250 768 MHz processor as its main central processing unit, and is equipped with a 3.5-inch WVGA-resolution touch screen, which is able to display up to 256,000 colours at a pixel screen size of 480 x 800 pixels.
Furthermore, Acer A1 Liquid features a 5.0 mega pixel camera, which operates at a resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels and comes with auto focus and an LED flash.
Its other feature includes MP3/MP4 player, accelerometer, proximity sensor, Smart integration of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Picasa and Flickr in the address book, pocket office and voice memo facility.
The smart phone (Acer Liquid), which is based on latest release of the Android 1.6 Operating System (aka Donut), comes with an internal memory of 256 MB, with the option to upgrade up to 32 GB by utilising the relevant micro SD card slot.
In addition, Acer Liquid’s communication feature includes GPRS, 3G, EDGE, Bluetooth, HSDPA, HSUPA, Wi Fi, and miniUSB port. The handset is powered with 1350mAh Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery, which offer talk time up to 300 minutes and standby time of up to 400 hours.

Mythbuster Adam Savage Has an $11,000 AT&TMath Moment

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but a few readers have brought this to my attention recently (thank you!).

It appears Mythbuster Adam Savage has run into the same sort of issue I had with Verizon, with his provider (and now mine) AT&T.

According to Adam's tweets, due to him very quickly getting a following on twitter (50,000 or so), he seems to have already resolved his issue. It sounded like the service he received from the AT&T reps was significantly better than in my case, consistent with my experiences with AT&T CS in general. FYI, no one pays me to say that, I just like to give credit where credit is due.

I wonder if he was quoted over the phone like I was. Actually I hope he was, otherwise he should have been able to do the math. That said, these companies really need to start quoting in $/MB as I had suggested in the aftermath of my debacle. They might also want to start negotiating and charging more reasonable roaming rates. It's hard to believe that while AT&T charges $60/month for "unlimited" data, (which translates to 5gb magically) in the US, it has to charge $75,000 (1,250 times as much!) for the same amount of data if you cross the border into Canada.

Surprisingly, on Verizon, that same 5gb of Canadian roaming data (in my case) would only have cost $10,000 - quite a bargain by comparison ;). Also interestingly, had I had my problem back in the day with AT&T instead of Verizon, my $71.79 vs 71.79c would have been $538 vs. $5.38 - yeesh. Remember, that was about 35 megs, or equivalent to 10ish mobile mp3/iTunes downloads.

Now of course not everyone with that plan uses the whole 5gb, a fact that I'm sure the actuaries at AT&T and Verizon have worked out. So if for example we us a more conservative assumption, like perhaps the average monthly usage is 400mb/month, that would still cost $6000 with AT&T and $800 with Verizon, as roaming data vs. domestic. Something still seems out of whack.

Follow Adam here: https://twitter.com/donttrythis, and check out the comments here: https://twitter.com/#search?q=donttrythis.

Also, this event has prompted me to setup a verizonmath twitter account. At this point I don't know how much twitting is in order, but maybe you'll see something new up there now and then.

As a side note, Adam, if you are reading this, I'd jump the first plane to SF if I ever had the opportunity to have a beer with you and/or the rest of the amazing MB crew and/or a couple of birds! One can dream :).

Failblog Verizonmath Youtube Video hits #45 of all time in Comedy

It looks like via failblog.com my call (in condensed form) has reached over 1.8 million people, and ranks in the top 50 of all time in terms of user ratings. Not too shabby. :)

Verizon refuses to activate missing man's phone for Sheriff unless he pays overdue balance of $20

Wow. You can't make this stuff up.

And for a measly $20, or 10 megs of roaming data ;).

Receive SMS updates about the Swine Flu

A reader has submitted a link to her sms based swine flu update service. According to the article, it will only cost you the same as your usual SMS messages cost.

Get SMS Updates about Swine Flu