Mobile Phone News:

There’s been a bit of fuss, recently, in the world of mobile phones, thanks to the launch of the new Google Latitude service, questioning whether it’s going to infringe on people’s privacy. If you haven’t heard about Latitude, it’s a new service for Google Maps that publishes your location, so your friends know where you are, either by using Cell ID to find you (through the cell towers dotted about round you), or using GPS on phones what ‘ave got it.

That’s the bit some privacy experts are shouting about, pointing out that whilst there are opt-in (opt-in being a far more favourable option to opt-out) controls to hide your location, there is a potential problem is someone else sets you up with Latitude without your knowing, like a jealous spouse, or a boss who doesn’t trust his employees.

Say, for example, your work buys you a T-Mobile G1 (unlikely, I know, unless you work for a generous company, but go with it). They get hold of the phone before you, and don’t tell you they’ve enabled it.

They are then, effectively, spying on you without your knowledge. Say you work for a bed shop, but you go and buy your bed from a rival bed shop, because it’s cheaper. They’d be able to see you’re in a rival bed shop on Google Maps, and be difficult with you, because of it. The problem, as groups such as Privacy International see it, is that once activated, Latitude doesn’t tell you it’s beaming out your location. Well, ok, to be fair, it does on some mobile phones, like the Blackberry Storm, but even then it only alerts you if you’ve not used Latitude for a while. That’s the big issue Privacy International wanted to highlight.

To me, that highlights the big problem with the system, the same problem that an article on the Mobile Industry Review elegantly points out. The problem isn’t necessarily Latitude itself, although it can and most likely will help clear up a lot of privacy concerns. The big problem is the people using Google Latitude. The jealous spouses. The controlling, vindictive bosses. Google will very likely iron out any security issues with Latitude, but the problem is, the people using it are going to be the same devious, sneaky, distrustful, nosey little dangleberries they’ve always been. I genuinely commend Google for making Latitude as privacy friendly as it is (although it has a little bit of a way still to go), but as far as I’m concerned, my friends don’t need to know where I am, unless I’m upside down in a ditch with a broken back.

And I do reckon Latitude has some real potential, I’ve gotta be honest. Equip it with a “help, the extreme ironing’s gone wrong, and I’m upside down in a ditch with a broken back” button, so the emergency services can find you and either save you, or at least give you a decent burial along with your Toshiba TG01, or whatever, and it’d be brilliant. And I can think of a situation where seeing your friend’s location would be useful, like if they get lost in your hometown, and have no clue where they are (other than it being ‘a street, somewhere‘), so that you can direct them. Fire up Latitude, and you’ll not have to worry about not finding them.

It’s just that, along with these genuine uses, I can see bunny-boiling stalkers finding it useful, too…

Do you reckon Google Latitude is a good thing? Or do you reckon it will infringe on your privacy? Leave us a comment and have your say!

When mobile broadband first came out, everybody (me included) went, “Ooooooh.” It was new, it was exciting, and it let your laptop’s broadband internet connection be as portable and versatile as your mobile phone. The other thing that a lot (and I mean a lot) of people said was, “So, is it a wireless router, as well?”

Well, it wasn’t then, but now it is, with the launch of the brilliant new 3 Wireless Router!

The principle behind it’s laughably simple. It’s a wireless router (obviously), and therefore acts just like any other wireless router. The big difference, though, is that this is designed to work specifically on 3 mobile broadband, with a 3 USB Modem (and yes, it needs to be with a 3 USB Modem).

You plug in the USB modem to the wireless router, power her up, and then you can connect up to four laptops, or PCs, or Macs or WiFi devices to the router, through, you guessed it, WiFi, effectively getting broadband on up to four devices simultaneously, using just one USB Modem.

That leads onto the good bit. All of this means that you can get wireless broadband without needing to set up a landline. So, if you don’t want, or can’t get, a landline, you can still get wireless broadband with the 3 Wireless Router. And of course, it’s a doddle to set up as it’s completely Plug&Play, there’s no wires to worry about, and it looks funky, too.

With the new 3 Wireless Router, mobile broadband has evolved. Check it out today!

Here we go, with part 2 of my mobile adventures in Wales, and as promised, here’s the tale of using mobile broadband over there in one of my favourite ever holiday destinations. I’d always planned to take a USB Modem with me, to find out how well it worked, and give you guys a bit more of an insight into it, but little did I know it would actually save my dad from getting drowned…

Let me explain.

With him being a keen fisherman, and with our holiday cottage being right in the middle of a sheep-field next to the beach, he was naturally going to spend a fair amount of time fishing. Like, at 5 in the morning, something I never could get my head round. And so, he needed to know tide times. We’d already planned the first week of the holiday, using a high-tide-times-websitey-thing, before we went away, but it only let us find those times out for a week in advance (which kinda shafted us for the second week).

Needless to say, the site used Flash (Murphy’s Law in action!), so none of us could check it out on our mobile phones.

Good job I’d snagged a ZTE USB Modem to test then, wasn’t it…

So, I plugged it in, as the sound of high-pitched baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’s reverberated round the cottage, and reflected on the fact that in hindsight, we’d picked a fortnight to go away when the lambs were just becoming most vocal. Still, at least the modem was installed and ready in seconds, otherwise I may have gone outside and shouted at them to shut up.

Down to the big question… did I get full-on, full-fat, HSDPA-powered mobile broadband in the cottage?

No.

Damn.

I did, however, get 3G, and granted, it wasn’t running at 2.8Mbps, but it was quite substantially faster than my mobile phone, and frankly, I was happy with it. The problem was that although there was a hilarious mast a few miles up the road (more on that in Friday’s blog post), there was a honkin’ great hill between us and it. Oh, and let’s not forget that the cottage we were in was a converted barn, and had walls roughly 14 and a half feet thick, which tends to kill any kind of wireless communication…

Here was the funny part, though; on a particularly sunny day, I thought I’d venture down towards the beach, and try it there, where there were no 14-foot thick walls to block the signal. It turns out I must’ve had an almost direct line of sight to the cell tower, then, because I got 5 bars of full HSDPA! In a Welsh sheep-field!

Now, that was awesome.

I did get attacked by a sheep, though.

And as for it saving my dad from drowning… well, ok, I may have overdramatised that a bit, since if he’d headed to the beach when it was high tide, he almost certainly would’ve turned back, rather than wading in and drowning. But hey, it could’ve happened!

Mobile broadband: it saves lives (or, at least, prevents wet feet).

Leave us a comment and have your say!

People are going Mobile Broadband craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy. The world of advertising is obsessed with the must have dongle gadget that is taking over everyone’s laptops!

For example:

Just the other day I was in Surrey on business and everywhere we looked there was a mobile broadband advertisement…. whether it was a 20 foot advertisement at the train station, a P4U ad going up/down the underground escalators or simply information on the paddles of the tube. There’s no escaping the new obsession when you’re darn saaarf.

Also, I went to le cinema a couple of times last weekend (to see a different film I will add!) and although it was like déjà-vu watching the same ads again, the one that stood out was the Vodafone ad, with the little dude flying through space trying to race the dongle as it sped past at 7.2Mbps (14 times faster than standard 3G I will say!) Then I’ve seen that ad a million times since!

Aaaand finally, I listen to good old Galaxy Radio every morning on my way to work, and Hirsty, Danny & JoJo have been giving away a 3 dongle every day this week! What made me chuckle the most though was the examples they gave of where you can use this “amazing… thing” (that’s a quote btw) and some of them I can’t really publish!

Now if you haven’t heard of Mobile Broadband (or MBB as it’s called in the industry) WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?!?! But for those of you who may not know…. Mobile Broadband for laptops is a sophisticated new technology that allows you to access the internet on your laptop almost anywhere, even when you’re abroad.

So go on, take a look at the Mobile Broadband options we offer, with a USB Modem, and you will have to agree that it does what it says on the tin - they give you fully-mobile full-internet, wherever you are, at speeds so fast that it’s quicker than Speedy Gonzales himself!!

Oooooh dear, I think the advertising has gone to my head!!!! Time for the weekend I think….

Keep an eye out over the weekend for MBB adverts and let us know where you’ve seen them. Whether it’s in a magazine or a poster on the side of a bus, let us know!

We’ve noticed a bit of a gap in people’s knowledge about Mobile Broadband, so I’ve taken it upon myself to put together a bit of a guide to what mobile broadband is, why it’s good, and what you could get from it.

First of all, when you say Mobile Broadband, people automatically think of wireless internet. As in, wireless internet through WiFi. As in your home router, or a WiFi hotspot.

Don’t think that. Because it’s not.

No, it’s much, much more than that. It’s totally mobile, so you don’t need a landline, you don’t need a WiFi hotspot… in fact, it has nothing to do with WiFi whatsoever. A better way of picturing it is this:

Imagine you have broadband access on your laptop. Now imagine that like a mobile phone, that broadband access can go anywhere. After all, you don’t need to be in a WiFi hotspot to use your mobile phone. So, you can use Mobile Broadband anywhere you get a mobile signal.

So, that’s what it is. It’s proper, full internet access at broadband speeds, on your laptop. But it can go anywhere, just like your mobile phone can.

And that’s good, because you’re not tied to your desk, you can get the internet and everything you use online ANYWHERE and you don’t need a landline to use it.

And with a whole host of cheap laptops out there, you’ve got the makings of a fabulous system. Grab yourself a lappy, whack in a USB Modem, connect to mobile broadband, and wherever you are, you’ve got the big, full screen world-wide-web. Accept no substitutes.

The day started with me arriving at work, being presented with a laptop and a T Mobile box, and being told, “Here you go, you’re on your own.”

So, I had to set up the T Mobile USB Modem on my own, and get it working on my own. The idea filled me with, well, dread, but you know what? It was a breeze to actually do! I plugged the USB Modem in, and within minutes I was online. All it took was a few minutes, and then, it was down to my first task, one that involved me heading to a secret location (a field), to test out the broadband access in a ‘non-urban locale’ (yep, still a field). The challenge was to try getting online in the field, and see how well it performed.

Well, quite frankly, it performed stunningly! I tried out MSN Messenger on my laptop, using it, and there was, quite literally, no difference to using my PC at home. Except that I was sat on a tree stump, and a cow was getting a bit close for comfort.

[EDIT: Little does he know I added a little extra gizmo to the laptop, that attracts cows, and no, I'm not saying what, lest John finds out... - Technical Markus]

On to the final challenge of the day, which was to use it constantly at home, and see if I could break it (after I’d got rid of the all-pervading smell of friendly cow). Well, I couldn’t, and in fact, the USB Modem gave faster broadband speeds than the modem on my computer, what with my home connection only being 1Mbps. Well, I just had to try it on my computer after that, didn’t I…

So, after five minutes setting it up on my own computer (and I still can’t get over how easy that is to do!), I was ready to surf. I got back into the video I was watching on Youtube (which actually now played smoother, and streamed faster), and yet again, was struck by the fact that the T Mobile USB Modem will work with any computer that has USB. So, pretty much any computer, then…

So, what are my final thoughts after a day with the T Mobile USB Modem? Well, it’s easy to connect and use, it works with every one of the computers I tried it on, you can use it to get broadband access in loads of places other than your desk, and above, it’s broadband fast. So, it really has no downside.

The only thing to bear in mind is that if you’re going to use it with a laptop, never accept one personally from Technical Markus, who has a habit of modifying them to attract cows…

[EDIT:

 

*snigger*

- Technical Markus]

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