Monthly Archives: September 2009

Apple iPhone will soon be available with Orange!

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But there has not come any exact information about pricing or availability yet

Well, there has come an announcement from Orange about its offering of Apple iPhones very soon. As the Apple’s exclusive deal with O2 is about to end, the announcement puts down all the speculations about network service providers of UK having Apple iphone in their offerings.

As stated by Orange, “Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year”.

Claiming to have the largest 3G network of UK, Orange has plans to sell the handset through various channels including its shops, its website and selling the handset via telesales and selected high-street partners as well. But, until now, Orange has not said anything about pricing and availability of the handset. But, it had come up with facility for buyers to get registered on its dedicated website. Which is  (https://interest.orange.co.uk/default.aspx).

It looks that O2 (another major network service provider of UK) is not happy with this deal and has made a sarcastic remark, referring both its ongoing relationship with Apple and its deal with Palm (for Palm Pre smart phone!) as well!

The timing of this news is also noticeable as it has been just few weeks, since Orange and T-mobile had announced their merger plans. As far as time frame of this deal goes, Orange and Apple expect the deal to complete in October, thinking the plan will manage to get approval of competition regulators. At present, Orange and T-mobile holds the third and fourth place respectively in the list of leading network service providers of UK. And, after merger of both, the new company will be bigger than current biggies including O2 and Vodafone, and would easily be able to get top slot amongst leading network service providers of UK. The merged entity will have around 28.4 million customers, covering around 37% of total UK mobile phone market.

Apart from this, there have been coming information from different sources that even after getting merged, both brands (Orange and T-mobile) would continue to operate as independent organizations, at least for 18 months, the time duration the new organization will use in developing its future market strategies.

U, 14 or 18 certificate for Broadband

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The latest attempt to control internet piracy is by making parents keep check on the accessible sites
TalkTalk is working to introduce a new concept in broadband industry. They have already proposed classifications for the broadband connections provided by them. This is an attempt to keep check on the growing piracy evident on the internet.

Giving introduction of the scheme, TalkTalk’s CEO Charles Dunstone said: “We are working on introducing parental controls within our network, so your household can decide whether you want to be a U, 14 or 18 certificate or unclassified.”

Dunstone clarified the concept by saying that the U or 14 rating for the broadband connection would prevent the users from accessing filesharing, visiting porn sites and sites designed for gambling.

“Whilst it won’t stop all piracy it could help to reduce significantly the volume of files that are downloaded illegally,” Dunstone added.

He said that “through doing it we can also help the content industry by blacklisting sites that have BitTorrent files on them”.

Dunstone supported the TalkTalk’s plans with strong arguments and revealed that the proposals do not “violate basic human rights, nor ride roughshod over judicial process”. Contrary to this is the scheme proposed by the government to check unnecessary piracy. The government’s proposal is designed to put illegal filesharers away from the internet by denying them connections.

The new proposals have been included in the Digital Britain report. This happened after the consultation period for the proposal which ended yesterday and with the help of strong support from Peter Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

The scheme has not been welcomed by the ISPs. The ISPs are opposing the proposal as they fear the amount required for it to materialize will be very large. They also said that, eventually the broadband users will have to bear the increased cost of the connections.

“The approach proposed by Lord Mandelson is based on the principle of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ and substitutes proper judicial process for a kangaroo court,” Dunstone said.

“What is being proposed is wrong in principle and it won’t work in practice. The unintended consequence of Mandelson’s plan will be to encourage more Wi-Fi and PC hi-jacking and expose more innocent people to being penalised wrongfully.”

Adding to the information, Dunstone said that the TalkTalk will “continue to resist any attempts to make it impose technical measures on its customers (unless directed to do so by a court or recognised tribunal)”.

For better penetrating the tech market, Toshiba has come up with ultra-mobile laptops at £429

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Branded as “Satellite T-Series”, these stylish laptops are designed to offer a handsome 11-hours of battery life

In order to raise its market share in specific segment of high end stylish laptops, Toshiba has announced the launch of its two Satellite-branded laptops which are backed by the power of Intel’s CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processors. With thickness of just 11.6 in and 13.3 inches, both these models easily fits into the category of sleek & stylish laptops. Battery back up offered by these newbies could be their USP as both are set to deliver a good 11 hours of battery back up.

Toshiba has launched these two new models in London with color choices of pearlescent white, black and dark red. And, pricing of just £429 is surely going to swallow the market share of other lightweight laptops including MacBook Air which currently costs at whopping £1,300.

Toshiba which has mainly been known for offering business-focused laptops and Toshiba Qosmio laptops which are dedicated for gaming and entertainment, it is the first time, Toshiba has launched such “ultra-mobile” CULV laptops.

And if we believe what Toshiba’s spokesman has said, the new models will surpass the popularity of netbooks in terms of delivering the benefits of easy portability and longer battery life. Coming on to detailed technical specifications, both the models T110 and T130 do not have dedicated graphics chips installed and rather having Intel graphics processor of netbooks, latest released Intel GMA chipsets have been embedded in.

Both the laptops are 22 mm thick with 13in Satellite T130 weighing 1.76 Kg along with 11.6in T110 model which weighs 1.58 Kg. Screen of both the laptops offer stunning image resolution of 1366×768 pixels.

Some of the prime features of model T110 include preinstalled 3GB of DDR3RAM, whopping 250GB of hard drive, built in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, an HDMI port, webcam with face-recognition function and three USB ports. However, there is no optical drive featured in T110. Toshiba is giving buyers option of choosing either Intel Pentium or Celeron Single Core Solo ultra-low voltage processors.

Contrary to this, the 13.3in Satellite T130 offers better specifications which include DD3RAM of up to 4GB, hard disk drive of up to 500 GB, along with same processor options as for T110 model. But, there is available a Satellite Pro version of T130 which offers a pair of options to buyers featuring Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processor along with option of choosing 320 GB hard disk.

After discussing the hardware specifications, let us talk about some software aspects of these latest released laptops as well. As per the Toshiba’s spokesman, 60 days free trial of Microsoft Office and pre- installed anti virus software come bundled with laptops. With these attractive bonuses, Toshiba hopes to reduce the need of having an optical drive. Apart from this, as of now, there are not available any external DVD drive from Toshiba for its newly launched ultra-mobile models. However, there are currently available compatible DVD drives from Toshiba at £50.

Shorter and flexible contracts launched by Plusnet

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The Plusnet Broadband made its cancellation policy very simple and flexible along with the reduction in the length of its broadband contracts. Plusnet bring Down the length of its broadband contracts from 18 to 12 months. Now the users only need to pay for setting up their account or for any hardware in case they leave the contract within 12 months. They do not need to pay for the outstanding cost of their subscription as is done in case of many long-contract broadband providers. This new policy is applicable for the new as well as the existing customers. The Plusnet CEO, Anthony Vollmer stated that the shorter commitment periods offers flexibility to the customers. Also he made a statement that we want that our customers should remain with us because of the quality of our phone and broadband products, not because they have signed lengthy contracts.

Customers can choose the no contract broadband package in which they only need to pay for connection and hardware upfront.

Presently, the Plusnet broadband comes with the UK’s cheapest standalone broadband package for up to 8Mb connection with a 10GB download allowance at just £5.99 a month. It also offers “unlimited broadband packages” and “broadband and home phone bundles”.

According to Michael Phillips, the customers are charged by no contract broadband packages for their set-up and hardware during the time they sign up or at the time when they leave. This is much more cheaper rather than paying out the remainder of the contract. He also suggested to find out the full costs before leaving it. In case if only few months of the contract are left, it may be cheaper to see it out.

New Innovation of Vodafone: Handset with LiMo Operating Systems

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Vodafone is one of the popular network providers as well mobile phone manufacturers. Now, this big brand has launched two handsets which run on the LiMo operating system. The newly released handsets are Vodafone 360 M1 and Vodafone 360 H1. Handsets are launched with excellent software and hardware. Bluetooth, Internet, camera, good storages space etc., are the salient features of this nice device.

Vodafone 360 H1 is a good multimedia handset with the weight of 134 and the dimensions of 115.9 x 58 x 12.9 mm. Good AMOLED touchscreen is another good feature of this nice device which allows the users to handle the functions of the handset on the screen itself. The screen comes with the size of 3.5 inches and supports 16 million colours. For photography lovers, the 360 H1 has 5 MP camera. The internal memory of the device is 16 GB, which is good enough to store a large amount of data. GPS, Bluetooth, HSPDA are some other features which are available in this nice handset.

The Vodafone 360 M1 is another handset launched by Vodafone brand. It appears that this handsets comes at much more low prices as compared to the H1. The touch screen is comparatively smaller which is just 3.2 inches. Sizes of both the handsets are same. The M1 is being offered with the dimensions of 111 x 55 x 13.3 mm. Handset weighs 111 grams which is very low as compared to that of H1. Internet features of this handset are Wi-Fi, HSPDA and GPRS. GPRS feature allows the users to access Internet with the help of network provider. On the other hand, Wi-Fi facilitates to access unlimited Internet at the Wi-Fi supported areas.

It is for sure that both of these handsets have been launched by keeping the demands of present day users in mind.

One of the longest phone, LG BL40 Chocolate will soon be available in UK

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Cementing his promise, LG has announced to sell its stunning BL40 Chocolate in Europe from next month. For this, LG has partnered with Carphone Warehouse and will also make the handset available at its own mobile.co.uk.

Some of the prime feature of LG BL40 include 4” HD LCD which is protected by temped glass, complete web page display via 345×800 (Real WVGA) wide screen, duel screen UI (allowing the users to split the screen into two, helping users to view emails on Outlook with much ease ), panoramic entertainment with its wide screen 16:9 display ratio, optimized web browsing which enable user to copy and paste web content at just one simple touch and gesture shortcut features (with the help of which users can quickly access frequently used menus). The new LG BL40 features built in 5.0 MP camera with added specifications of CMOS and LED flash. Other specifications of the mobile phone which deserve to be mentioned are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Java compatibility, instant messaging, video MMS, GSM quad band , A-GPS, Ambient light sensor, built in FM radio, video telephony and video codec.

In UK, the handset will be available with O2 and Orange mobile carriers. And, as far as the pricing goes, the cost of this mobile phone will lie in between £19.99 and £129.99, depending upon the mobile carrier and plan option chosen.

Worsened Travel scenario persuaded Ryanair to offer one million seats for free

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The plummeting travel numbers influenced Ryanair to give away one million free air seats, to entice more number of travelers.

After the disaster of 9/11 this is first instance to be observed that offers a true fire sales of airline seats. The intriguing offer is catching travelers’ attention all across the nation.

The UK based low cost airlines, Ryanair is offering one million air seats free of fair to destinations all across Europe. Travelers can avail these seats at a minimal cost of £1 that includes the taxes and charges which would not make it exceed over £20 for sure.

The aviation industry is observing its worst phase since 9/11 in 2001 with the number of travelers declining drastically in Britain. According to an estimate UK will observe an estimated 10m fewer visits abroad this year, down from 70m in 2008. This has shaken the travel industry badly and has influenced it to resort to Tactical sales to promote business.

Although the aviation industry is observing its worst of the times, MSN Travel is citing that 2010 will be even worse than this.

Systems like Improved yield management and office/website integration spot the weak periods of the year in advance and indicate the service providers about the prospective losses.

Many Airlines are taking to lucrative deals to entice more and more travelers to use their services. To promote these deals a number of measures are being employed that also include tweets. Airlines like Air France and KLM tweet the travelers doling out information on their latest deals. BA is seen reminding its followers about the last day when its sales ends. The airline also introduced recently a facility to find the cheapest fares on its website.

The other means adopted to promote the free flights since 2010 also subsume emails and direct mail communications.

Ryanair announced its entrapping deal offering one million flights to the travelers for £5 via an email sent three weeks ago. The final cost would however include the amount of £5 along with the taxes and charges levied upon it.

But the last week saw yet another path breaking deal from Ryanair with the airline made another announcement of further sales at £1 per flight (taxes and other charges excluding). The race doesn’t stop here, as Ryanair made fresh announcement this afternoon, claiming to offer one million seats for nothing, all-in, across the network if booked before midnight Wednesday (Sep 23) for travel in late October or November. The deals will go live at midnight tonight.

Denon announces its cutting edge DBT-1610 Blu-ray player at just £399

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This blue ray player is a good option for adding Japanese look to one’s living room

Denon which has always been known for offering costly high end audio/video products, has announced its sophisticated DBT-1610 Blu-ray player at unbelievable price tag of just £399.

Some of the prime features of this device are 1080p video output, deep color and Dolby True HD, DTS-HD Master Audio.The feature of digital video noise reduction nils down the compressions artifacts. With center mounted precision drive mechanism, the player’s chassis has been built as per the Denon’s Separated Unit Structure architecture, featuring five seperate sections of mechanical and electronic blocks, in order to eliminate any mutual interference. One of the best high end Blu-ray/DVD player by Denon, the device is equipped with latest specifications including an Ethernet port, 2.0 BD-Live web-enabled interactivity and compatibility with firmware upgrade. The revolutionary HDMI output offers highest resolution Dolby TrueHD along with DTS-HD digital multi-channel audio compatibility as well. The DBP-1610 Blu-ray player has stereo analog outputs, offering high-resolution Burr-Brown DACs for optimum audio purity. This Blu-ray player is compatible with numbers of disc formats such as Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD, CD-R and CD-RW. Popular WMA, MP3 and DivxHD can easily be played, besides playback of Kodak and Fuji picture discs.

With this Blu-ray player, purchasing AK-HM 300 HDMI cable and AK-HM100 HDMI cable accessories would be best.

Palm loosing, despite of strong Palm pre sales

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Despite of strong Palm pre sales, Smartphone maker Palm reported many losses in the first quarter. A s stated by ZD. Net.co.uk, Palm increased its handset sales by 134 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the last quarter of 2009. In the first quarter, the smartphone maker Palm sold around 823,000 smartphones. Most of these included the palm pres. But then also, this company continuously suffered eighth loss along with a decrease in the sales rate by around 80 percent. Net losses for the firm’s in the first-quarter 2010 reach US$164.5 million, compared to losses of US$41.9 million earlier this year. According to Reuters, the company reported a loss of ten cents per share. On the other hand, analysts reported a loss of 25 cents per share. The sales of Palm were decreased to $68 million with a revenue to $360.7 million. On the other hand, according to the wall street analysts, the sales dropped between $289-$297 million. In the previous two years, Palm lost the market shares to Apple and to the RIM makers of the Blackberry. The company believes that the Palm Pre will contribute in reestablishing its position. The Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein stated that we are making significant progress with Palm’s transformation, and our culture of innovation is stronger than ever. He further added that we are introducing more great Palm webOS products with more carriers, and turning our sights toward growth. Palm stated that Pre will be very soon available on other carrier networks also starting from the European carrier network Telefonica.

Motorola to launch first Android Phone in UK

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This week, the US Mobile phone manufacturer, Motorola, announced the launch of its first mobile phone with the social networking skills. It is referred as cliq. The company is planning to launch model to UK next month with a different brand name, Dext. Dext will be available on the Orange network in the UK on a contract of 2 years by paying just £25 per month or it is available on an 18 months contract for just £30 per month. As far as features of the handset are concerned, it is a slider phone that comes with 3.2 inch touchscreen display having a resolution of 320×480 pixels. Other remarkable features include Wi-Fi, accelerometer and GPS. The 5 megapixel camera of the gadget is equipped with autofocus and flash feature. It also comes with a Micro SD card. The Dext runs on the Google Android platform. Thus, the users can easily access social networking sites like facebook, My space, Twitter etc. The new model features a user face known as Motoblur. It syncs the owner’s e-mails, posts, photos, phone contacts and feeds from an array of messaging and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Gmail etc. All the contacts can be seen together instead of visiting the social networks separately. The Motoblur has another advantage also. It carries a single application for messaging. The inbox can hold all the messages from the user’s e-mail accounts. Sanjay Jha, the company’s co-chief executive believes that the Motorola Cliq with Motoblur will differentiates the Android experience for the consumers by being the only smartphone which syncs conversations, contacts and content and also provides an instinctive, smart as well as social solution. He also stated that the company is planning to launch many more Android-based phones by the end of 2010.