So…in looking for a new NextG phone three things were on my list of must haves:

• A phone that worked really well in regional and remote areas
• A phone that could be connected to a computer and used as a modem
• A phone that could have an external antenna attached to it

After visiting the new T [life] store in Melbourne, i found all the things i was looking for in the ZTE T165i.

The phone specifications are:

Durable candy bar design with extendable antenna for maximum coverage. Ideal for all users offering top coverage performance in a durable case. Includes FM radio, daylight viewable QVGA display and 2 megapixel camera.

Main features:
Daylight viewable TFT LCD display
FM radio, MP3 player and ringtones
A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) support
Tri band UMTS, Quad band GSM
Extendable antenna
Bluetooth 1.2 with stereo headset support
2.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with digital zoom
Dual camera design for video calling
T-Flash memory up to 4GB microSDHC
Personal organiser / calendar
Speakerphone
Java MIDP 2.0 for games and applications
USB connectivity included
Compatible with handsfree car kit with external antenna
Predictive text and built in dictionary for easy SMS
Large Li-ion battery for long life

Comes with:
USB cable
Windows 2000 (SP4), XP (SP2), Vista compatible PC software
MAC OS drivers and Dial Up Client
Personal handsfree kit
AC charger
User manual

Technical Specifications:
UMTS 850 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
HSDPA 7.2 Mbps*
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
250 hours standby, 3.5 hours talk time
TFT display 240 x 320, 262K colours
Java MIDP 2.0
Bluetooth 1.2 – FTP / HFP / A2DP (Stereo) / DUN
Size 117mm x 51mm x 16mm
Weight 119g (including standard battery)

The phone was apparently designed by ZTE in Australia, after Telstra’s request for a good regional NextG phone, and manufactured by ZTE in China.

At the country property, about 100km east of the Melbourne CBD, i have never been able to get my mobile phone to work or had any luck getting a working internet connection (except with a very funky modem and high gain antenna from work). I can’t get ADSL or ISDN because the place is to far from the closest exchange, the standard NextG modem won’t work accorsing to the NextG website, so that left me looking at a possible dual satellite setup. Even with the government rebate, the cost is excessive…for $500 a month you et a 4GB plan (15c per MB on excess) and speeds of 800kbps for downloads and 128 kbps for uploads.

Well…the T165i works fine as a NextG modem (with the external antenna) as i wrote this post with it from the country property :)

The iGenie line is brilliant :)

Mobile Monday Sydney
The Shellbourne Hotel – 200 Sussex St, Sydney – map
Monday 4th September 2006
7pm start

Mobile Monday has landed in Sydney – www.mobilemondaysydney.com. The event especially for wireless professionals promotes the mobile & wireless industries and fosters cooperation and networking among industry people and their companies by providing opportunities for personal and virtual contacts.

The original Mobile Monday group started in a pub in Finland on September 2000 and today there are close to 20 chapters worldwide – www.mobilemonday.net.

Mobile Monday Sydney will be held on the second Monday of each month and is currently located at the Shellbourne Hotel at the corner of Market & Sussex Streets in Sydney.

The evening is designed to be as open as possible so you can enjoy a drink in a relaxed atmosphere of networking and listening in on a conversation or two by players in the local and international mobile & wireless markets.

(NOTE: The above was taken borrowed ;) from Shane Williamson’s blog)

Mobile Monday Sydney is being put together by two great, extremely talented and knowledgable guys; Tim Parsons (i’m sure Tim has a blog…I just can’t find it ;) and Shane Williamson. It is also supported by AIMIA (press release), the AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group (MCIDG), Hill & Knowlton Australia, The One Centre, m*swap, and the global Mobile Monday organisation.

And if you are based in Melbourne, don’t forget to also check out Melbourne’s Mobile Monday get together which is on the first Monday of every month.

The Australian mobile content industry continues to evolve and offer exciting new products, services and experiences including video, music, chat, games, news, email and social networking. The opportunities available to companies active in the mobile content market are the envy of more mature markets such as film, television, video games and online.

However, we also need to recognise that with increased sophistication comes an increased burden on the consumer to understand, interact with, and consume mobile content. Recent reports such as the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, international research and much consumer feedback shows that only a relatively small group of early adopters are engaging with mobile content. Early experiences with mobile content – good or bad, will spread quickly via word of mouth. We need to ensure that consumers overwhelmingly have positive experiences with mobile content – and tell their friends!

For consumers to engage more readily with content they need to feel empowered and clearly understand the types of mobile content experiences available and how to go about it. The key to empowerment is education.

The AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group is inviting mobile content companies to join with operators, content providers, trade associations and handset manufacturers in developing a cross-industry national education campaign focusing on:

• What is mobile content?
• Why engage with mobile content?
• How much does it cost?
• How do I get it?
• What do I do if I have a problem?

The campaign is envisaged to include television advertising, in-store brochures, web site and a mobile site and will be ‘owned’ by the industry as a whole.

We cannot answer questions for every handset/operator/plan/content option and will not seek to promote individual services; however we can provide consumers with sufficient information and confidence and empower them to ask the right questions. In so doing we will remove many of the barriers to mass-market mobile content usage.

Initiatives such as the one we are proposing have been run in various European countries, in Germany for example; this has led to 60% of mobile phone users accessing content on their handsets each month. In Australia this would equate to over 10 million mobile subscribers regularly consuming mobile content, a dramatic increase in ARPU for everyone involved in mobile content.

An information session will be held on: Thursday 31 August 2006 at 3pm at ninemsn, Level 7, 264 George St, Sydney NSW 2000.
Please RSVP to Alice Champion at AIMIA aimia@aimia.com.au (02) 9248 7900.

This is initiative is supported by the AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group and the following companies: Ninemsn, HWW, 5th Finger, m swap, Tigerspike, Ideal Interfaces, Illumin8, VentureOne, AAP, ABC, Amethon, B33hive, Copyright Agency, Dialect Solutions, dLux Media Arts, eHound, Frost & Sullivan, Hutchison, Hyro, IMTV/One Centre, Legion Interactive, m.Net Corporation, Mobile 365, Optus, News Digital Media, 247 Network, Principius, Project TV, Proxar, S2M, Vodafone, i-Touch, Fairfax Digital, Slice Wireless, Oplayo, Worth Digital, Telstra.

We look forward to the support of Aimia in this important industry growth initiative.

Yours sincerely,
AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Group – Education sub-committee

I am looking forward to seeing how this goes and will be doing my bit buy supporting it as you should if you are in any way involved in the Australian mobile content industry.

That got me thinking…I blog on and off about blogs, podcasts and moblogs and I am constantly asked to speak at conferences in Australia about these and other emerging technologies (as you would if you were known as a emerging technology evangelist), so i just ran a search on Google on the words Australian blog, Australian podcast and Australian moblog to see where i rank…the results for those searchs on the 26th of May 2006 are below…

Australian blog – 5th spot (image) global & 3rd spot (image) in Australia.

Australian podcast – 7th spot (image) global & 4th spot (image) in Australia.

Australian moblog – 5th spot (image) global & 3rd spot (image) in Australia.

Now you know why i get invited to speak and present at conferences, why i get interviewed by a lot of journalists (two or three articles coming out next month on a variety of topics), why people pay me to consult on emerging technology and why my next little bunch of projects is bound to stir up some interest…when i get around to annoucing them that is ;)

While i’m doing a bit of shameless self-promotion…heres one other thing…with my diverse background in the new media sector, my knoweldge of emerging technologies, my industry contacts both in Australia and overseas and my profile from conferences, stories in the media, and my blog, it probably all adds up to being a good reason for voting for me in the upcoming AIMIA National Executive elections which are on soon ;)

(Source: PSFK and me hunting around :)

What is the index all about i hear you ask…here is a quote from the email i just recieved…“The Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index tracks the behaviour and interests of Australian mobile phone users including details on demographics, consumption of types of mobile content, handset penetration, attitudes to migrating to 3G, future mobile content preferences and much more.”

The index is put together from data gathered by the AIMIA Mobile Content Industry Development Groups (MCIDG) Mobile Content Consumer Web Survey. The first report last year was full of really interesting information so if you work in the mobile content field you just have to get this thing.

And while you are at it, if you aren’t a member of AIMIA yet do yourself and your industry a favour and go and join it right now :)

As most of the articles floating about point out, its only for listening to podcasts and not for producing them…that comes later…

It has a 300 MHz CPU with 64 MB of SDRAM and has USB, Ethernet, flash memory, monitor port, Space wire, serial connection, and microphone ports / connections. It runs Linux…but who cares…this thing is huge…i mean small….

Info in English can be found here and here (good photos of it out of its case).

(via Games Digest)

Wi-fi network for the City of London

Its great to see more and more cities around the world investigating not only the possibility of, but actually putting up Wi-Fi networks that wil provide free and ubiquitous access to the internet to everyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device. Check out MuniWireless for more news and info about citywide wirelss projects around the world.

But the big question is…when will Melbourne, Sydney and other major Australian towns jump on board??

You might be asking yourself, why i got invited to the first ROKR launch event and why i am so interested in what Motorola are up to…well…you will just have to stay tuned until the 10th of October for that answer ;)

It was held in a little club called “Dragonfly” in the back alleys of King’s Cross in Sydney and it was essentially a media only event from what i could tell.

There was a minimal speech by Nick Mann (National Marketing Manager Australia, Motorola Mobile Devices) that touched on the ease of use of the device with its familiar iTunes interface along with an announcement of the in-store date for Australia (which looks like it will be the second week of October) and a quick mention of its recommended retail price of $499…and it was onto other things.

They played the global launch campaign video which stars music acts such as Madonna, Little Richard, Alanis Morrisette, The Bravery, Iggy Pop, Biggy Smalls, Emir and Beethoven all squeezing into a phone booth to the tunes of Madonna’s latest single “Hung Up”…um…yeah…i get the idea…but i doubt they will be creating a local version for Australia.

Once that was done it was onto the phone demo’s, the drinking, the eating and the band…as far as product launches go…it wasn’t that bad.

Oh yeah…the schwag included a bag from Crumpler which is pretty nice… :)

more photos

So…the Australian launch of the fabled iTunes phone, the Motorola ROKR E1 (Australian web site) is happening tomorrow night at a music venue somewhere in Sydney…and i’ll be there :)

The ROKR has copped bit of a beating from the Apple crowd because they were basically expecting an iPod with a phone built into it..but as the name should have given it away…Motorola ROKR…not Apple iTunes phone…hello…it’s a Motorola product…not an Apple product people…hello…or should that be HelloMoto ;)

The Motorola E398 (the phone the ROKR E1 is based on) may not be the sexiest phone in the world…and 100 songs is certainly not going to replace your other portable music device for longer journeys…but imagine if they stick iTunes sync capabilities inside a black RAZR or a PEBL???

If you are an iTunes fan, even the ROKR makes for a perect form factor on the train into work to listen to your music or your favourite podcasts from The Podcast Network…and lets be honest people…phones that can double as your music playing device, like the Motorola ROKR, the Nokia N91 or any one of a number of Microsoft Windows Mobile based Smart Phones or Pocket PC phones are really the way of the future aren’t they???