Mobitrends

Mobile, wireless and virtual worlds

Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

Wireless power gets mainstream

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After Wildcharge, Psyclone TouchCharge kit is next in line to provide wireless power to mass market consumer applications. While I don’t know precisely which vendor is providing with the actual wireless power technology (both companies are “just” device manufacturers), this reminds me of the awesome powercast demo I had during last year’s CES. Would be curious to know which vendor has now taken the lead over that field.

Update: actually I just met Wildcharge’s CEO and it appears that Psyclone is their first OEM deal - I guess it’s not just for nothing that the technology was so similar …

Written by alex

November 1st, 2008 at 4:13 pm

Posted in Mobile

Navteq LBS Challenge

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If you have a cool idea around LBS you want to demonstrate, you really should go there !


Picture 10

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Written by alex

October 9th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

Posted in Mobile

fring(3G, VoIP)=false

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IMG_0003.PNGObviously, the Fring application on iPhone has disabled VoIP when on 3G connection - I guest that was the only way for them to have their way into the app store … Too bad as SIP and skype work great when on WiFI !

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Written by alex

October 5th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

Posted in Mobile

Wireless USB is getting real

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Wireless USB (aka UWB aka Wimedia aka 802.15.3) can stream HD movies over the air, and we just got our hands on a cool reference design kit to play with ! It’s about 15USD on large quantities added to the total bill of materials price, this is getting pretty cheap!


Wireless USB reference design kit

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Written by alex

October 1st, 2008 at 11:42 am

Posted in Mobile

Spore on iPhone

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IMG_0001.PNGSince the latest Mac event, where Jobs talked big about iPhone being the next-gen portable gaming platform, I decided it was time to give it a try. I had only been testing the semi-pro apps and hobbyists games, I wanted to give a shoot at those blockbuster high-budget/high-expectations games. I chose Spore as it certainly reached a climax in the last couple weeks at my RSS buzz-o-meter.
Spore is edited by EA, and I had high expectations on the quality of the game itself. Well, I’ve been most disappointed for quite a lot of reasons, although the game itself is “cute”, you drive your little monster through changing mazes to eat other monster’s DNA and evolve, the realization is really poor:

  • The accelerometer is not precise enough to play - especially on a vibrating environment such as the underground. Every change of seating position will require a re-calibration of the “zero” position - really painful…
  • The intro movie scene is just being played by the quicktime movie player - pressing the screen during the intro shows the control - that’s so cheap and lame !
  • While playing if you ever hit the home key (c’mon guys it’s under the thumb - of course you’re going to hit it), the game exits and your progression is lost … same when you get a phone call… that’s really a pain
  • The gamme is really totally linear, and although I’ve reached level 19 it feels like I’m still wandering in the same environments… and I really have no clue why I’m moving my monster : there is not scenario there

As a conclusion I’d say that it’s amateur work - the game looks like a student project and it’s totally not worth the 9€ 8.99€ EA asks for it - should they have not invested so much in marketing over the “SPORE” brand, that game would have had no more than a 1/5 star rating… I was really expecting more for iPhone high-end games hope we get to see some better stuff soon.

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Written by alex

September 18th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Posted in Mobile, Video Games

World of Warcraft on iPhone

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Thanks @sdelbecque for pointing out this app - “Character” is an iPhone app available free on App Store that lets you search for you WoW avatars and retriever their stats/items/stuuf and displays them live on your iPhone. Wanna show your latest cool epic loot to your frinds in real life, now you can do it straight from your iPhone !


Wowchara3 Wowchara2 Wowchara1

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Written by alex

September 10th, 2008 at 4:18 pm

Posted in Mobile, Video Games

My iPhone apps

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Picture 1-7

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Written by alex

September 4th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Posted in Mobile

WiFi in France

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Hey dear fellow readers - I wanted to share this stupid beliefs that we have in old Europe (France?). WiFi gives headaches ! For real ! And in Europe we’re so stupid that when a bunch of lazy public workers in public libraries yell that putting a WiFi Hotspot in their library give them headaches - they got it removed. Honestly this is depressing to see those uneducated guys that manage to get global knowledge banned from their dusty places…
A few facts : in France, WiFi Hotspots can never emit more than 200mW. Emission is unidirectional, thus powers decreases in 1/r^3. The Librarian is usually sth like ten meters away from the access point - thus gets less than a couple of mW in their heads. If he forbids WiFi than I don’t want to see him use a cell phone or a microwave oven (several hundreds Watts - over one MILLION tmes more radiations).
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, there is Municipal WiFi and Community WiFi (Fon, Meraki…).


Radiation1

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Written by alex

July 30th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

Posted in Mobile

I miss free WiFi

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Now the best you get with Adael (Café WISP) is 20mins free WiFi - that kind of behavior forced me to move to a 3g+ USB stick - it’s weird to see that telcos have won the battle of WiFi - it has become so hard, hectic and rare to find working WiFi that I got almost forced on paying some money to telcos to make sure that I can get network access whenever I need it.
I’m pretty sad about this - WiFi is in my opinion not a reliable technology - it doesn’t propagate well, you have no real way of knowing where antenna is and thus I always am reluctant to pay while I know that I might not get decent service and thus value for money. I really hope that FON could do something here but I feel it hard to be optimistic as there is still so much to do…


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Written by alex

July 28th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Posted in Mobile

Wordpress app for iPhone

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Testing out the latest wordpress app for iPhone - just released !
Taking a pict crashes the app but hey nobody’s perfect and app crashing seem natural on iPhone …

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Update: adding pict from library works…

Written by alex

July 22nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Posted in Mobile