Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Thursday, August 21st, 2008 |
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Visa, in co-operation with eight other financial institutions, plans to test real-time transaction alerts over email and SMS to cut down on account fraud.
2,000 users will be part of the trial, which will allow them to find out within seconds when their account has been used.
Users can choose a number of options for alerts, including cash withdrawal, international use, internet or telephone use or if the transaction exceeds a certain amount. Cardholders can verify the transaction amount by receiving the alert, or immediately contact their bank to stop any further transactions if they think there might have been any untoward activity.
Or it could just make you look popular down the pub when you use your phone to pay for a round that just clears the £5 limit.
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Thursday, August 21st, 2008 |
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The PC-based system, branded yp, enables advertisers to schedule and tailor-make their own SMS campaigns aimed at targeted audiences.
“This is a web-based tool where advertisers can create and manage their campaign entirely themselves. It produces easy and secured database management for clients, as they can just copy and paste their own database for their own SMS campaigns across all mobile operators and not just from PCCW,” explained Lindsay Servian, MD of advertising and interactive services at PCCW.
The charges system offers up to 100 SMS messages for HK$0.85 (US$0.11) without reply and HK$0.90 with reply. Rates becomes cheaper as the number of requested SMS messages increase.
“SMS is a highly engaging advertising format as almost everyone has a mobile phone. People do want to get useful information but targeting is critical – advertisers who abuse the system would simply hurt their own brand as they are using their own database,” stressed Servian.
PCCW tasked boutique agency BLOOD and media partner Maxus to promote the service with print ads in Apple Daily, online banner ads and a TVC on now TV.
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Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 |
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Cell phones, which traditionally operate as communication tools, are fast becoming a widely used interface for online information as well. You’ve probably seen people typing away on their complicated, expensive mobile devices – you know, the kinds of phones that take pictures, send e-mail and can communicate with animals. But travelers don’t need to purchase an expensive iPhone or BlackBerry to use their cell phones for something other than gossip exchange.
Use your cell phone to take a guided tour of a museum, facilitate an airport pickup or check the status of your flight. Any simple cell phone can do this and more, and largely at no cost beyond what you pay for a standard phone call or text message. And don’t worry, using a cell phone as a travel tool does not require a degree in mechanical engineering. (It only necessitates a thorough read of this article.)
Cell phone parking lots
Cell phone parking lots aren’t available at every airport, but they’re a comfortable alternative to the traditional airport pickup dance that involves circling the airport eight times in search of your friend or family member. And better yet, they’re free!
Airports with cell phone parking lots, sometimes called cell phone waiting lots, include Los Angeles International, Seattle-Tacoma, San Diego, Houston Intercontinental, Philadelphia International, JFK and Chicago O’Hare. The airports allow drivers to park for up to half an hour – for free – while calling their arriving loved ones to arrange a meeting point. Check your local airport’s Web site to see if it has a cell phone parking lot.
Travel text messages
SMS, or Short Message Service, allows you to text your friends to ask about a good local spot to grab a meal, or to get directions to a museum. But your loved ones may not have all the answers (or they may innocently misdirect you). So add Google, Orbitz and a host of other knowledgeable organizations to your phone book for instant information. These services are free, but standard text messaging rates do apply.
Cell phone tours
An increasingly popular way to tour a city or attraction, cell phone tours are great for someone who wants to get some in-depth information instantly. Although unreliable reception or the accumulation of valuable cell phone minutes may make this option seem less attractive to some, for travelers who love their independence, the chance to skip a guided tour may be a breath of fresh air.
Source: MSNBC
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Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 |
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Are you one of those who can send SMS‘ at the speed of light? Then here is some news for you. Did you know that the global SMS industry was worth a whopping $100 billion in the year 2007? The study by Informa 2007, further adds that there are about 3.3 billion cell phone users in the world today and the average SMS usage is 2.6 SMS‘ sent per person per day.
SMS is certainly a huge business for the service providers. The charges for SMS also vary from one service provider to another. There may be few among you who find it lazy to punch those letters in your cell phone for an SMS and would rather call up the person on the other end and communicate. There are a lot of websites available that study your pattern of usage of cell phone, compare cell phone plans of various service providers and offer the best cell phone plans for you.
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Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 |
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It has been established that the cellphone is an indispensable part of the lives of a lot of young people. For youngsters, it’s an accessory that can indicate one of many things about the owner. But, what is true across the board is that regardless of how feature-rich or pricey your phone is, it has also morphed into a very personal tool in the game of love.
The very initial stages of most relationships these days usually involve volleys of cleverly written text messages. Messages that are designed to follow up after a first date, perhaps hold his or her attention till the next, and stoke enough curiosity in the other to keep those embers glowing.
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Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 |
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A teenager has won more than €2,500 after writing the fastest text message in the SMS Swedish Championship in Stockholm.
17-year-old student My Svennsson took just 61 seconds to type a 141-character SMS message to claim the championship, sponsored by local telecoms operator Parlino.
‘I was very tense in the finals when I realised how much money I could win,’ said My, who plans to use her €2,650 prize for a holiday in France, according to news agency TT.
The teenager said her secret was practice: she sends 40-50 text messages a day, mostly to her three best friends, Swedish site thelocal.se reported.
Her winning text translates as follows: ‘OK, write fast now. Faster! D1a is going too slowly. Do you spell slowly like that? :-S no time to look, have to get finished. Soon, only 1 more word. 
Ready!’
Despite out-thumbing her nearest rival by seven seconds, My failed to surpass her personal best of 50 seconds, achieved during the semi-finals.
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Sunday, August 17th, 2008 |
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The analyst house estimates the 1.5 trillion messages sent by the region’s subscribers this year will grow to 1.7 trillion in 2008, making up the bulk of messages measured across “major markets worldwide” including North America and Western Europe.
North America is expected to send 189 billion messages by the end of 2007, a number that is forecast to reach 301 billion in 2008. Western Europe will send a total of 202 billion mobile messages by end-2007, and is projected to send 215 billion next year, according to the Gartner figures.
Overall, the analyst’s findings put the volume of messages sent this year–across major markets–at 1.9 trillion. This number is expected to go up by 19.6 percent to 2.3 trillion in 2008, Garter said.
The research firm noted that this anticipated growth will spell a bump of 15.7 percent in mobile messaging revenue worldwide, from US$52 billion this year to US$60.2 billion in 2008.
Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner, said in a statement: “In many markets, there has been strong pressure on operator margins for text messaging services and this has been driven by often intense competition between carriers.”
According to Ingelbrecht, users have grown accustomed to carrier plans which bundle SMS (short message service) into their cellular service packages. As a result, carriers should aim for customer acquisition and retention through various measures. For example, he said, operators should continue to develop their messaging platforms, services portfolios and pricing plans, rather than simply conducting “short-term margin enhancements”.
In developed markets across the Asia-Pacific region where mobile saturation is inhibiting growth of subscriber numbers, social networking applications such as mobile IM (instant messaging) and e-mail are expected to help drive revenues.
Ingelbrecht said: “To sustain growth over the next few years, carriers should look to work with popular established social networking sites.”
However, in spite of the SMS revenue mobile search services and advertising can potentially yield, the Gartner analyst said “most carriers appear poorly placed to support the end-to-end campaign management and reporting requirements of media buyers and advertisers”.
In addition, basic SMS may pose a greater value proposition for emerging markets. According to Gartner research analyst Stephanie Pittet, SMS may spur mobile revenues in these markets, where the people have low buying power, due to the cheaper price of SMS compared to voice calls.
According to a separate study published by Frost & Sullivan in March this year, the Asia-Pacific mobile subscriber base is also expected to be fueled by emerging markets adopting the messaging service.
Source: ZDNet Asia
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Sunday, August 17th, 2008 |
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As I have been going around alternately prodding my friends and family to try Linux, or asking them if they thought it would be possible, one thing I have heard repeatedly is that a lot of people use Microsoft Office and are concerned about their Office documents on Linux. I should also mention that a lot of them are very angry that Microsoft has changed the default document format in Office 2007 (again), such that it is incompatible with previous Office versions. Yes, of course, I know there are converters and such, but it’s just one more thing for users to have to worry about – and in general they aren’t confronted with it, or sometimes even aware of it, until they send a critical document to a colleague and discover that the colleague can’t open it…
Anyway, the point of all this is that all of the versions of Linux I have been testing come with OpenOffice.org included. For those who are not familiar with it, OpenOffice.org is a “free and open productivity suite” (to quote their web page), with programs which are the equivalent of the Microsoft Office suite. It includes:
- Write (Word Processing)
- Calc (Spreadsheet)
- Impress (Presentations)
- Draw (Graphics)
- Base (Database management)
- Math (Equation and Foruma)
Each of these programs is able to open files from the MS Office equivalent EXCEPT, currently, the new Office 2007 format. So if you are using Office 2003 or earlier, you can just open your document with OpenOffice, and off you go. If you are using Office 2007, you can either save your document in Office 2003 format, or you can pick up one of several (free) Office 2007 format converters. The next version of OpenOffice (3.0), due out this fall, will be able to read Office 2007 documents, of course.
Should you ever need to go back to MS Office, or need to send your documents to someone still using MS Office, OpenOffice has the ability to save documents in Office 2003 format and more.
I could go on and on telling you how good OpenOffice is. I have a number of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets which I use to track my work. I simply transferred those files to my Linux system, and started working on them with OpenOffice. Of course there are differences in tool bars, buttons, menus and the like. But it takes an absolute minimum of effort to learn your way around Open Office – certainly no more effort than it takes every time Microsoft comes out with a new release of Office, and a heck of a lot less than it took to learn Office 2007!
The best news of all is that OpenOffice.org runs just fine on Windows as well, both XP and Vista. So you don’t have to take my word for it, and you don’t have to take the Linux plunge to find out if you will be able to work with your documents. If you want to find out, just go to http://www.openoffice.org/, download and install the latest release, and give it a try! I think you will be very pleasantly surprised, I certainly was.
So, if your excuse for not giving Linux a try was that you needed to be able to work with your Office documents… well, you just ran out of excuses. Think of what you will gain, too! No more suffering through all the gratuitous menu/toolbar/button changes that Microsoft makes in every new Office release. No more suffering through incompatible file formats between releases, which Microsoft seems to do every two or three releases – this is the second time it has happened that I can recall, and I assume that the recent OOXML debacle means that there is another change coming in the next Office release. Best of all, no more having to pay to upgrade to the new version every time Microsoft sees fit.
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Friday, August 15th, 2008 |
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(MENAFN – Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) telecommunications company announced on Thursday that it will offer a 60 percent discount on all SMS“>SMS messages to India as they celebrate the Indian Independence Day on August 15.
Zain’s Chief Operations Officer, Khalid Sulaiman Al-Omar, expressed his congratulations on this occasion to the people of India, represented in its leadership, the embassy and all Indian expatriates’ residing in Kuwait.
Al-Omar stressed that Zain is a global company which is always keen to participate in the celebrations of nations.
He added that the offer is extended to all SMS sent to India only on Friday, August 15, for both post-paid and pre-paid customers
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Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 |
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A human rights group has launched a campaign against Short Message Services, arguing SMS has become a root of divorces in India. Some 2.5 million people own mobile telephones. Even innocent text messages like the typical “U4ME” were known to have sparked marital discord ending in divorce. On Deewali day cellular operators clocked a staggering nine million short messages in New Delhi alone.
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