Does Your Wi-Fi Hotspot Have an Evil Twin?

Fake hotspots article here….  I’m sure its been said before. But food for thought all the same.

Museum of Modern BETAS

For those who are not already aware, this is a great site for a bit of fun browsing. More importantly, a belated thanks to Saurier Duval, curator of the Museum of the Modern Betas for adding playtxt.

I’d buy that for a dollar! A dedicated Venture Capital resource – for the entrepreneur.

TheFunded.com – a VC resource for entrepreneurs. This is great; no waffle, no long monologues or rants of the sort I might be found writing – just hard info and speedy reviews. It also serves as a great directory at a practical level. I have not dug deeper to look at who is behind it, but full marks from what Ive seen thus far. My only concern is how the reviews will be moderated…if at all. Oh well, it will all come out in the wash I’m sure … and thanks to The Next Net where I found it to start with!

Well somebody must be using Java!

We’ve had 887 downloads for the playtxt mobile instant messenger client, in 48 hours since posting J2ME version on the www.getjar.com website (hence I thought I’d give them a quick plug ; -) …onward and updward!

TweetTweet

Birds out side my window at times annoy but in general calm. Sadly, their Web 2.0 namesake has not the same effect. The rise of Twitter, especially since SXSW fell in love, got all gooey and rushed off to Las Vegas to get married to it, has been impressive.

But I am neither a fan nor a convert. I don’t have the belief; not in the “oh my god I wish I had shares in that company” kinda way. I’ll go so far as to say it can’t last. I’ve said it before so I might as well stick to my own bird song, that unless it evolves it will eventually die. It’s just a matter of how long is that trail of breadcrumbs..?

I just had to steal this great graphic, from Pete at Mashable

playtxt Mobile live on CNET downloads.com

Well our playtxt J2ME Java application (with built-in location based instant messaging and support for playtxt IM but also connection to any of the major networks – Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Jabber, Google Talk, ICQ etc) has been put live on CNET.com’s almighty www.downloads.com .

If you’re feeling nice and friendly please log in and rate it – and if you haven’t tried it, you can download it using the link below or directly to your phone by visiting http://www.playtxt.net in your phone’s browser!

Oh no its O2 again! More mobile operator rants…

I do hate this sort of online advertising. It is normally reserved for the likes of the despised Kelkoo and other lame shopping comparison sites that claim best prices, all products in the world and independent reviews. More often than not, the products are not available when you do click through, there is no review and the information held as a specification is out of date or wrong.

O2 have succesfully learnt from these mammoth over bearing online sites and started advertising phones they dont even have; or even say they WILL have anytime soon. Infact, the O2 site cant even find the very thing it says it is selling. There is no sign on the page you click through to, of an N73, let alone an N95; and the search engine cant find it. I suspect that enough idiots click through and by other things to make it worth while of these sites to keyword advertise everything!

WAP continues its life as the troublesome sibbling

I recently asked the MomoLondon thread what we should advertise:

wap.playtxt.net or www.playtxt.net/wap

As predicted it certainly caused a flurry of activity. The majority of opinions voiced, probably rightly sounded that www.playtxt.net should sniff the device and work for mobile -i.e. serve whichever page is appropriate for the device. However, sticking dogmatically to this view inevitably gets one in to trouble in the real world. For example, I don’t want to view the WAP (or mobile XHTML version) when I using my Mini-S over Wifi – I want the regular website thank you very much. Actually, even on 3G on my K800i, sometimes I want the regular website (and yes I’ll stomach the repurposed page).

Other times – yes even on my 14.1″ screened Thinkpad – I actually want the WAP site; because I’m connected in the depths of Italy with really bad signal over GPRS on my Samsung D500.

So the conclusion I’ve come to is to have a redirect in the header that sniffs for a mobile device, but then pushes users to a WAP page (lowest common denominator) to choose what they want; which by-the-way also includes a Java client should they care to download it! This solution should keep everyone happy. Then we advertise the main domain (that certainly makes sense) and keep wap.playtxt.net for those who know what they want or when sending out a WAP push (although even with the wap push, I suppose strictly speaking it should send the main domain in this case).

Two other quick inputs – while WAP might remind us of the original wap debacle, finally consumers are actually starting to know WAP means easily-browsable-mobile-site – even if actually technically its incorrect because the page being served is XHTML …. I for one am loath to discourage them.

The second contentious point is of course .mobi Were it a perfect world of course this would not be needed, but in the long run its probably a good idea because its not a perfect world and the vast majority of sites (including playtxt currently!) do not serve up for the right device from the main domain.

Finally, regards name.wap.com , I feel bad not to back up the Bango boys Trevor and Ray; but I’ve got to be honest and say this concept, which originated from their heritage in “Bango numbers” is flawed; even if you open it up to be completely free, you’ll have an uphill struggle to get it adopted, and I view it rather like the uk.com botch in the regular domain space; users are used to regular domain names, and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. At least, from that perspective, it does no harm I guess……

Wireless power – the holy grail of an untangled future

I’ve seen more and more comment and reference to wireless power recently – and not only in dreamy references to a future world of untangled wires. By all accounts, the boffins are actually on to something with a practical basis. It’s clearly going to be some time before I no longer have to run four four-way power supplies off one socket in the hope that I wont be frazzled alive in my slumber; but it does seem to be something that might happen in my lifetime (that’s circa another 50 years, give or take a decade for those who don’t know!).

Our friend and technology adventurer Mr Tesla, the father of electricity, would have been most excited to see his dreams finally beginning to edge into reality. Wouldn’t it be great to never have to plug that mobile phone in again to charge? This chap Marin is one of the pioneering bods currently researching this new untangled dawn; although don’t click on the PowerPoint link at the top unless you understand algorithms that I cannot even pronounce.

The mean of comedy is never going to be good

The jury might still be out as to whether crowds have wisdom, but good taste in comedy they certainly do not. I am still trying to work out why this clip of the Italian who went to Malta, is so extraordinarily popular.

Not only have I been sent it or IM’d it at-least three times in as many weeks, but a nearly 1/2 million people have viewed it on You Tube and nearly as many have rehashed the same audio track into their own visual edits. . .even a live action version is on there . . . It’s not completely unfunny, but nor is it hilarious! Viral media continues to surprise.

Personally, this is my idea of heaven sent comedy. I must have seen this fifty times in my life and it still as inspired as it is impossibly funny.