Wireless Village Anyone?

If you own anyone of these phones: Nokia 3220, Nokia 6220, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6230, Nokia 5140, Nokia 6810, Nokia 7200, Nokia 7610, Motorola V500, Motorola V600, Motorola E398, Sony Ericsson T637, Sony Ericsson T630, SonyEricsson F500i, SonyEricsson K500i, SonyEricsson K700i, SonyEricsson S700, SonyEricsson Z1010, SonyEricsson T206, chances are you have a Wireless Village client in your mobile phone. For Sony Ericsson they call it My Friends. And now you can USE IT!

Wireless Village started out with the Wireless Village initiative that is composed of
different companies wanting to integrate Instant Messaging into mobile phones. But instead of creating another IM standard, they used the existing ones and provided a client for all famous IMs (i.e. Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ & AOL). This is pretty much the same as with the Agile Messenger in PocketPC's and VeriChat for the PalmOS devices but this is in the cellular phone itself. The wireless village is a part of the Mobile IMPS (instant messaging and presence services) initiative formed by Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia in 2001.

There are four key features of wireless village: presence, IM (instant messaging), groups or chat, and shared content. Presence is an extension to IMs. It will include your status (online/offline/on a call/in a meeting), device capabilities (GPRS, text, voice, multimedia), device availability (is the phone or mobile device on/off), and your mood and hobby information. IM will be essentially the same as today, with interoperability between desktops and mobile devices.It will allow you to create and manage chat groups. These groups can be taken a step ahead by having an online storage for this content. It will also include access control features to enable or disable the above-mentioned services.

Ok, so you have the WV-enabled phone, what now? How do you set it up? It has been thought that it's the telcos that will be putting up the structure based on the specifications from Wireless Village. Up 'til now, no telco has put up that structure, thus we are left waiting, and the client in the phone is just another useles application.

Lo and behold, a website is offering to help us with our problem. www.yamigo.com is now offering FREE service for us to use the Wireless Village application in our phone. Unfortunately though, we will be forced to get/invent another username to add to the thousands we are using already. But after that, it's chatting on-the-go!

I've tried it on my K700 and I was able to log-in 5 minutes after I set-up my FREE account in yamigo.com. Though there are still some quirks like, Buddies from your IM is NOT added automatically, meaning you have to add your contacts/buddy one-by-one. And for Motorola and Sony Ericsson users, they are still figuring out how to do this since there seems to be some conflict with the firmwares of the said phones. One consolation though (for SE and Motorola owners) you can still add any registered Yamigo user.

The NEW Clie VZ90



Sony released a new PalmOS PDA using the Clie brand...only in Japan. As announced by Sony a few months back they will not be releasing any Clie other than the Japan market. This is a pity since the new handheld sports a lot of improvements from the previous models with this one focusing on the new sliding design. Sony praises in the press-release the OLED display of the CLIE VZ90. Besides a Memorystick slot the new Clie also has a CF-Card slot. Possible a first for Sony.The VZ90 has software bundled to play Movies, display photos and of course play Music.30fps is possible for MP4 movie playback on the new sony gadget.The VZ90 runs Palm OS 5.2.1 on the Sony Handheld Engine CPU with 123MHz.

Group Sense is now Making Sense!

The makers of the cute and powerful smartphone Zircon z3 has now announced their new upcoming handheld, the Xplore M28. This time, GSL has updated their hardware to comply with PalmOS 5 (they are using Palm OS 5.2 to be exact). Still with the camera and the sliding form factor (which was introduced on the Zircon G88), but this time no protruding antenna. It will now have the capability to play MP3's and the memory won't be limited to the phone but will now have expansion property with the use of SD/MMC cards. Still using the dual band configuration, meaning it can't be used in the US.It still has that stunning screen. One thing's for sure, the Treo will surely have a competition with this device!



FEATURE SET:
Main Features for Xplore M28
Display
- Size: 2.2" TFT
- Max Color: 260K colors
- Extra light backlight
- Turn on and off animations
- Show clock, phone status (e.g.
battery capacity, signal strength, profile,...etc) and caller ID info
- Show GSM status in LED in sleep mode
- Wallpaper
Built-in camera:
- VGA 300K pixels CMOS digital camera
- Digital zoom
- Multi-shot function
- Brightness, white balance adjustment
- Mode selection
- Resolution selection
- Self-portrait with timer
- Photo effects and photo sticker frames, preview and editing function
- Photo capture for MMS, Wallpaper, Caller ID

Multi Media entertainment:
- MP3 player
- Video player: MPEG4, 3GPP
- Unlimited Video recording (depends on the capacity of memory card)
- Download Video and audio clip
- Digital voice recording (AMR) and can be sent and receive by MMS
- Palm games

Ringtone:
- 40 polyphonic ringtones
- MIDI, MP3, True tone
- Group/Caller profile via ringtone & graphics
- Ringtone download thru OTA

WAP and Data:
- xHTML browser over WAP 2.0
- GPRS, Class 10
- OTA for GPRS settings
- WAP push function
- Data transmission thru IrDA

Message:
- SMS, MMS
- Support file format: 3gp, mpeg4, jpeg, gif, png, midi, amr
- Email support (POP3, SMTP)

Others features:
- Dual-band GSM 900/1800
- Dictionary
- Notes (Memo)
- Calculator
- Calendar with notes view and calendar alarm (Datebook)
- To do list
- Alarm Clock
- Changeable color schemes

Storage:
- Total user accessible memory: 32MB (16MB flash RAM, 16MB SDRAM)
- External SD/MMC card slot

Batteries:
- Talk time up to: at least 3-4 hrs
- Stand by time: 150-200 hrs

Synchronization:
- Synchronize your data to your PC. Or use it to download applications, create ringing tones and edit images. Then upload them onto your phone
- USB data cable for synchronization

Accessories:
- Extended battery
- Traveler charger
- Handfree headset
- USB cable

Dimension:
- 106mm x 50.8mm x 23.5mm
- 130.5mm x 50.8mm x 23.5mm (Slide up)
Weight:
- 132g (including battery and stylus)

Globelines Broadband's Modems

I salute Globe for giving subscribers the flexibility in choices available for them. A good example is how customers can connect to the internet. There are two ways, one is the built-in the line NetExpress Dial-up where users are charged by the minute and is billed within the existing billing of the phone. And there is the Broadband services. Within the Broadband area, customers have the choice of getting the P995 package offering 30 Hrs/month of DSL use with almost 10x the speed of dial-up and 2x the speed of PLDT's entry level myDSL. Then there's the P1995/month with unlimited use for residential subscribers. Of course there's choices for the Business subcribers as well.

Unfortunately though, for the subscribers, the modem that comes with the DSL subscription is a USB modem, a SpeedTouch 330 to be exact. I have nothing against the modem really, only for the fact that, you can't connect it to a Wireless network. Meaning, if you plan to intall a wireless network in your home, so as to take advantage of the increased internet speed, then you're out of luck if you subscribe of the Globelines plans that uses SpeedTouch 330 as the modem. It's because, majority of the Wireless Access Points on the market has no USB input port in it. Most uses the RJ45 (Ethernet) jack as input from the DSL modem. So, at the moment, there is no way to create a wireless network in your home with the current modem set-up, but to pass through a PC where the Broadband connection will be routed to. Although getting another modem, this time with an Ethernet (RJ45) jack is an option. An option that would prove expensive one you realize it's not compatible with your operator's specs. Besides, it's every hard to find a DSL modem in the Philippine market.

Panasonic X300

This looks like it'll be a great phone. The flip screen is one nice idea, but from the reviews I've read, looks like, it's just the looks. The features are low-end. It doesn't have Bluetooth, no memory expansion capabilities (there goes the video thing). I'll be posting more about this phone when I get more specific details, but so far, it has been launched already in the Philippines.