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March 2011
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The Insider -
Pssst, wanna buy some Lindens? How about some virtual gold? Hundi and Hawala have great conversion rates just now, don’t miss out! Welcome to the exciting new world of virtual money laundering. In case you are not aware, Linden dollars and virtual gold are types of online gaming ‘currency’ that can be acquired with real money on the open market. And, wherever there is the chance to move money around unchecked, the money launderers will be on board before you know it. A report emanating... -
You will no doubt recall that soon after it was apparent to Nokia that Apple’s wildly successful iPhone was going to impact its potential earnings it instigated legal proceedings against Apple for infringing no less than ten Nokia patents on mobile phone technology. That was in December 2009. "The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007," Nokia said in a statement... -
In April 2009, RIM’s fledgling BlackBerry App World virtual storefront offered PayPal as its sole billing mechanism. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said back then, to the great relief of telcos, that it was working to introduce carrier billing options sometime in the future. Then, only last month, Vodafone announced at Mobile World Congress that it had entered into an agreement with Research In Motion (RIM) to provide operator billing for BlackBerry App World sometime later this year. Vodafone’s... -
We are living in an age of ‘instantiality.’ Don’t bother looking up the word, it doesn’t exist, I just made it up. The Insider is grappling with an overload of sickening images and news of human tragedy that has been transmitted from Japan constantly and seconds after the big quake struck. It has been a week of ‘instant and constant reality’ via every form of communication we have at our disposal. We have all starting becoming used to the ‘instantiality’... -
No-one has escaped the traumatic images of the earthquake and tsunami destruction in Japan, the latest in a string of natural disasters to hit the Asia Pacific region in recent months. Thousands have been killed and injured so far, but the loss of life has likely been limited by three vital early warning technologies: a new earthquake alert system; an ocean-based tsunami warning system and a mobile phone disaster warning service. Japan has the world's most advanced earthquake early-warning system... -
Did you know that Tuesday, March 8, was International Women’s Day? No, neither did I. Now, before you start applying those old chauvinist labels, I have no idea when International Men’s Day is, either. However, this monumental day was not missed by an enterprising mobile operator in Belgium. Mobistar used the occasion to publish results of a survey on women’s phone habits. They wanted to find how women use their mobile phones and if they have mobile phone behavior which is different... -
One of the great joys, and most under-rated features, of the iPhone when it first launched was the ability to update its operating systems and firmware via iTunes. If, like The Insider, you had bought one or more mobile ‘lemons’ over the years, that had to be returned to a ‘service centre’ for reprogramming, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Despite the iTunes umbilical cord, it meant that an iPhone owner could always choose to have the latest and greatest, for at least... -
Facebook is hot, but The Insider is going cold on it. Maybe it’s an age thing, but the buzz has waned to the point of disinterest. News that almost half the UK population now uses Facebook , 30 million, is mind-boggling. What is even more daunting is that more than half of them use Facebook daily. Haven’t they got better things to do? It’s not just the UK. France is reporting 20 million users and Italy 16 million. No wonder businesses are now jumping on board trying to attract the...
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