Aaaaaah…Christmas. Time of too much food, too much booze, and, if you’re as clueless as me when it comes to chemistry, too much throwing-up as you try to settle your poor, bloated tummy with ten rennies washed down with vinegar. Christmas revolves around three things, traditionally – gluttony, watching television and touching base with family.

And it’s the family-thing that’s got me in my current mess.

I write this, dear reader, not ensconced in the comfort & stability of my usual kicking ground (the south of England) but instead from my dad’s house, which is uncomfortable, unstable and perched rather precariously a few feet from the raging, black torrents of the Atlantic Ocean, on an island off of the West Coast of Scotland.

The thing is, you see, I don’t really get to see the dear old buffer that often, and so it tends to be the case that either me or my brother will wander up and keep him company for Christmas. This year it was my turn to make the 650-mile trek, and so although filled with the smug warmth of a duty honourably executed I am also frozen by the local temperature, which would be quite warm, were it not for the wind-chill, which is such that if you look directly into the wind your eyes will ice-over, cracking and shrinking until they become the same size & texture of those little baubles of bubble-gum they used to put at the bottom of screwball ice-cream cones. You know the ones I mean; the most delicious way to choke to death, as a child…

Anyway, I’ve been on the island for all of 20 hours, now, which is actually a little less time than it takes to get here. The most amusing leg of the trip is the National Express link to the ferry port, a strange and humbling experience that always feels like entering some foreign country. In fact, it’s exactly like a foreign country – the toilets are awful, the customs & morals are at odds with your own and everyone’s speaking a language you can’t understand (I counted Spanish, Polish and, most unintelligible of all, Glaswegian).

One thing that did make me giggle, though, was a little transfer stuck to the window that encouraged passengers to SMS their comments about the trip into a shortcode. However, a couple of hours down the road - jinking around a loch - when I was about to punt off a text critiquing the driver’s body-odour, this giggle rapidly dried into a rolling gurgle of shock when the three most horrid, damning & generally disastrous words that the world has ever thrown at me plopped onto my screen. And, oh, they were bad words. More frightening that “you’re fired, Harvey”. More anguishing than “I’m leaving you”. More generally life-changing than “I love you” and more intrinsically mind-shaking than “Pregnant. Triplets. Yours.” And those three fell words were:

NO NETWORK COVERAGE.

My heart responded to the facts of the matter quicker than my brain did, by ramping up my BPMs to about 120 and generally laying down a lot of blood-oxygen to see me through this dire, unspeakable trauma. My adrenal glands were next to cotton-on, squirting out liquid-panic from my kidneys in the same sort of quantities, in terms of fluid-ounceage, as your average Slag & Legless happy-hour cocktail-bucket. This flight-or-fight response would normally come in inordinately useful, were it not for the fact that I was currently penned into a coach-seat that Tom Cruise would’ve had trouble squeezing himself into (legend has it that, in order to fit more passengers on busses, National Express tracked down that serial-killer who crammed all of his corpses into suitcases and promptly hired him as vice-president in charge of revenue).

So I’m sat there going just a little nuts. You expect to lose coverage on two occasions, and two occasions only – when you’re underground, or when you’re in a plane. For it to happen unexpectedly is…well. Unexpected. For it to happen when you’re a self-confessed phonaphilliac like me is hideously jarring, doubly so when you’re being boiled alive by the furnace-like heaters in a wheeled sardine-can, and you really, really need to text a mate to get advice on how to deal with the fact that you appear to be sat next to the Crack Fox from the Mighty Boosh.

So that was fun. It only lasted ten minutes or so, and the relief that returned as the signal-bars did was delicious in itself, but now, alas, it’s a permanent state of affairs. Or, rather, near-permanent. The island I’m on, you see, has coverage – like my winter beard – best described as “patchy”. And the fishing-village where my dad’s retired up to is in a dip, the same granite cove that protects it from the rage of the sea doing a similarly good job at protecting it from the modern inconvenience of functioning mobiles.

So my poor little phone is just sat here, forlornly, like a puppet with its strings cut. The fact that circumstance & distance has reduced this little jewel of modern technology to nothing more than a paperweight is almost absurd – the reason it’s not totally, utterly, complete absurd is because, in a fiendishly cruel twist of fate, the signal here does, about twice a day, get through. And all of a sudden I can inhale communication & correspondence like a drowning swimmer inhales air; it’s not what you need, and it’s not enough to keep you going, but you’re not exactly going to turn it down, either.

Why the signal is so frustratingly fickle I have no idea. Twice-daily slots of coverage would logically be connected to the tides – do radio-waves bounce off water…? – but the timings keep changing. Perhaps it’s a combination of water and cloud, skipping just enough wattage out to me to function. Maybe it’s nothing to do with the weather, and in fact is more to do with one of the implausibly hairy cattle over here getting frisky with a cell-tower. My attempts to logically deduce the exact reasons for my tenuous links out to the rest of you have been just a little bit hampered by the extra fact that this island is, quite literally, the whisky-producing capital of the world. And since the one thing I like doing more than talking is drinking, I just hope that all you charming & wondrous people have a Christmas even half as merry as mine has been so far.

Happy Christmas, everyone. You’re my bhest friendsh!

HO HO HO!

Stick on the cheesy Christmas music. If you’re one of the 3 million workers in the UK that the London Telegraph reckons are planning a 2 week break over Christmas, nice one! 21 billion pounds is the calculated cost to industry for these two weeks of seasonal excitement.

Fear not. SMS Text News continues throughout the holidays. We have to do something to keep the ailing worldwide economy operational when everyone is gorging on turkey.

If you’re still hunting around for a present, might I suggest you give your loved one a big, beautiful SMS Text News Annual? Yes. Provided they’re not a normob, it’s the perfect gift. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. I’ll email your loved one to tell them the gift is on its way soon.

We’ve been working away on creating an it for some time now. Krystal’s been selecting, browsing and editing like no tomorrow on it. It contains a choice selection of posts from across the year, together with highlighted reader comments. Plus a foreword form me. A rollercoaster of a ride! All bound in attractive form replete with pictures galore. I’m really looking forward to the arrival of the first copy. You see the one problem with running a site like this is that it never stops: Time keeps marching. There are temporary lulls. But there’s no end-of-the-day ‘that was good’ or ‘hey, I’m pleased with that, let’s call it a day’. You don’t close the presses for three weeks. You go to bed, you get up and shit! You’ve got to do it all again. So there’s not that much of an opportunity to look back at particular points, posts or issues. It will be nice to have something physical to point to and flick through.

We’re using Blurb to self publish. I don’t quite know what the actual cost will be — I think around $30 plus a bit of postage or so as I’m given to understand it’s ‘coffee table size’. If you’d like one, whack me a mail. I’ll put up a few pictures of a copy when one arrives. Target publication date is first week of January. This also means I will have a book out before my friend Ilana Fox (who’s being properly published but not until February — chick lit but it does feature a reasonable amount of mobile related interaction.)

Seasons greetings to you all. If you’re bored during the next 2 weeks, check back here and drop in for a chat as we’ll be publishing daily.

By the way, if you’re somewhere snowy, do send me some pictures (that you have ideally captured on a mobile device) to make me jealous. I’ll publish them here for maximum personal annoyance. I do like to see snow outside at this time of year … although I don’t think that happens much in the Bay Area.

Three people — including Barry, John and Steve G, sent me this link from The Register, each pointing out that Nokia really has to raise it’s game with the introduction of the iPhone.  The Register piece is relating to the ‘tortuous’ firmware upgrade for the N95.  Bill, the author, is less than impressed that one of the mapping features was removed after install…

Link:  N95 struggles to find itself | The Register

Upgrading firmware on a Nokia is always a tortuous process. Installing version 2 on our N95 here in the office resulted in a third of the installed applications disappearing, another third remaining but unable to run, and only the remaining third unaffected. Still, this is a distinct improvement on last time, when several applications required new activation keys.

I did the same.  I installed version 2 in an apparent seamless upgrade and found half my applications had disappeared, despite following copious backup and restore tutorials.  The experience is what I define as a CLASS-A arse.  Like buying Wing Commander 2, back in the day, and finding it comes with TWENTY 3.5″ disks that needed to be loaded in AND that it needs most of your 640kb memory. (I did enjoy Wing Commander and I do still enjoy my N95).

I’m hopeful though.  Perhaps I’m sounding like a broken record now, but I am hopeful that Nokia’s seen the light.  That the next generation of handsets will be ’shite’ free and that I can continue to obsess with unrestrained delight at their ingenuity.

Link:  3 launches pay-as-you-go mobile broadband - News - Tech.co.uk

Mobile provider 3 has launched a Pay As You Go (PAYG) version of its popular mobile broadband service. To join customers must first purchase a USB modem ‘dongle’ at a cost of £99. From here customers can ‘top-up’ their mobile broadband credit in increments of 1GB, 3GB or 7GB at a cost of £10, £15 and £25 respectively. Credit can be purchased online at the 3 website, over the phone, or from any shop displaying the 3 Top-Up logo.

SMS Text News Reader Chris Drake spotted this and whacked it over. It’s brilliant news.  99 quid for the USB modem and then a tenner for 1GB of data for the month.

The United Kingdom is fast becoming one of the world’s most data friendly mobile countries.  Next time you fly in, get yourself a USB dongle from 3UK.  No contracts, no arsing around.  This is absolutely excellent.

Mind you I’m still quite happy with my tenner-a-month 12 month contract that I got a few months ago from them.

The Palm Treo 750 was gifted with an update earlier this year, offering Windows Mobile 6 and a few other enhancements to AT&T customers. A few of the features of the updated include general speed enhancements, along with better sync support for Vista desktops and support for Microsoft’s direct push technology.

Oh yeah, and AT&T went ahead and removed the Windows Live service, as well. They’d much rather you use their Xpress Mail and instant messaging application, which uses SMS rather than data. Don’t you love when carriers make choices for you, in their favor?

What’s really frustrating for AT&T customers is that the unbranded version of the Treo 750 is fully rocking with Windows Live support, verifying that it was AT&T’s greedy decision. Odd for a company so proud of being so ‘open’ methinks.

Anyone know if you can easily unbrand a Treo 750?

Reports are coming in that the Nokia N82 is showing up online at the Nokia UK online shop, as well as at Carphone Warehouse. The N82 was announced not too long ago in Finland, and brings back the classic Nokia candybar form factor. The phone is an imaging powerhouse, with a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and autofocus. Those crazy Finns have also added a true Xenon flash for really killer pictures. HSDPA, WiFi, GPS, and TV-Out round out the feature set, and I have to say, after spending a few weeks with the handset, it’s really a knock-out device.

The N82 runs 399 GBP at the Nokia UK Online shop, and is part of the ‘N82 Adventure Pack’, bundled with the Nokia Sport Tracker Application and a Salomon backpack. Reports also say that 3 months of free voice-guided GPS navigation (an 18 GBP value) is included as well. Symbian-Guru has a multi-part review of the N82 here.

The Associated Press reports that Palestinians will soon be allowed to setup a 2nd cellular network. Israel controls all of the cellphone frequencies in the West Bank and Gaza, and have repeatedly turned down requests from Palestine to be able to set up a 2nd wireless network, to meet demand.

The change in heart from Israel is due to warming relations between the two groups, who have been at odds since 2000. The second network is not official yet, with with peace negotiations starting last week, they should be announced soon.

James Burland’s sharp eye noticed that Nokia’s doing more product placement in movies these days. The latest is in JJ Abrams’ ‘Cloverfield’, set to debut soon. The trailer features a black Nokia N76, and a pink Nokia 7373 (from their 2nd Fashion Series).

Personally, this is something that I don’t think we see enough of, product placement in movies. It doesn’t need to be overt, but can be just showing a character using a device, that’s it. Typically whenever there’s a movie out with handsets, the forums go crazy with people clipping scenes to try to figure out what the device is.

If you want to see how product placement is done right, watch the U.S. version of The Office (I know, blasphemy, but hey, I’m in the States, and it’s not like I haven’t seen the UK version). The U.S. version has product placement all over the place, but you wouldn’t notice if you don’t watch the commercial breaks.

Do you think product placement is a good idea, or no? Obviously it’s a fine line between overt and not, but I think it can be done tastefully and without intrusion.

Air France announced today that they have equipped an Airbus A318 with an inflight calling system. The network will start up with a 6-month trial. The first three months, service will be limited to SMS and Email, but is expected to be opened up to full voice by the end of the trial. The system is setup with OnAir, which is negotiating deals with Orange, Bouyges Telecom, and SFR, with prices looking to be $2.50/minute.

Personally, the last thing I want on an airplace is cheaper voice calls. I mean, you can already make telephone calls on most flights, it’s just disgustingly expensive. When I flew home from Amsterdam on American, it was $5 just to connect, and $10/minute. I personally enjoy the quiet time on a flight to get things done offline, sleep, and that sort of thing.

The last thing I want on a cross-Atlantic flight is a screaming baby and the guy next to me calling home to tell his girlfriend about it. I don’t mind the data part of it on the plane, though. Not like most laptops will last all that long, but still.

Stefan’s published 7 pictures of the apparent upcoming Nokia N96. Here’s one of them:

Link:  7 pictures of the Nokia N96 leak! This isn’t a render folks, this is real hardware

It’s a big, big screen.  That’s good.  As for the rest of the device, well I hope Nokia really have been looking and learning.  If this is another handset vomitted out by a team of well meaning but entirely blinkered, I’ll go nuts.

Link: SHKSPR.mobi: Bluetooth Spam from Coca-Cola

was quietly sat in a London restaurant when my phone bleeped into action. Would I like to receive a Bluetooth message from “Coca-Cola”.I was curious and I accepted the message

But what we all want to know, Terrence, was did you order a Coke as a result?

On the back of the news story I published earlier related to e2Campus, here’s a note on two other providers, Rave Wireless and Mobile Campus…

Link: Startups rush to deliver phone-based alert systems to campuses : SecureID News

Colleges have other options for cell phone alerts, of course. They could go off campus and hire a company specializing in text messaging. That’s what Rave Wireless and Mobile Campus are offering to universities.

Rave offers what its COO, Raju Rishi, calls “an alert solution, which basically gives the university the ability to get emergency broadcasting to the entire school

Ah hah! Everlast, the real estate/estate agent property board service have launched text messaging. Not only do these guys put up the for sale signs on your property, they also now print a unique identifier and shortcode on each sign, allowing interested buyers to make queries from their handsets. This isn’t a new concept — we’ve seen this tested across various American States and it’s in heavy use in the United Kingdom. However it’s good to see the actual sign companies getting in on the act, rather than it being driven by the real estate agent. Companies like Everlast are well positioned to offer texting as an additional up-sell.

Link: Real LI
As this younger population becomes house hunters, Tiefenworth says he expects they’ll use what’s familiar to them – such as text messaging – when they’re house hunting. What’s called the Mobile Stream service tracks number of hits per code for agents, and since the service debuted on Long Island Dec. 3, the hits have grown, to 163 last weekend in the Hamptons, where at least 700 signs have the new codes.

It’s an “instant” service in this fast-paced era. House hunters can ask for an “immediate” callback from the agent and schedule an appointment. Agents can get “instant” notification when someone keys in the text code for one of their listings

Well I like the sound of this. I might be a bit of a real-time email snob with my reliance on the likes of Good Mobile Messaging but I’m a fan of any service that helps make mobile email simple for your average normob (”normal mobile user”)…

Link: PC Pro: News: O2 pushes email to mobiles

O2 broadband subscribers can now pick up email on their O2 mobile phones, as the operator looks at ways of converging services.
According to O2, the “Memova” technology works with any MMS-capable phone and allows subscribers to “mobilise” their O2 Broadband email accounts without having to install or configure email software on their mobile phones.

Memova also allows users to synchronise contacts, diary and task information between devices. Automatic updates are also routinely synchronised across all mobile and fixed-line services.

So if you’re an o2 fixed-line broadband customer, you can get your email on your mobile without any configuration. Smart. Obviously all they need is your mobile number to get you connected as emails are sent by MMS. And since you’re using o2 infrastructure — broadband and mobile — the cost, one imagines, for transmitting emails to picture messages on your o2 handset is next to nothing as there are no interconnect fees.

I particularly like the sound of the contacts, calendar and task synchronisation. That sounds fantastic.

Good job o2.

Link: 3 Italia, Fenacom to launch MVNO for senior citizens - Telecompaper

That’s an interesting move, eh? One one end of the scale you’ve got Blyk addressing the youth… now in Italy, an MVNO for the oldies in the country? Cool! I don’t think Saga, the UK company specialising in services for the over 50s, has yet launched Saga Mobile… I wonder, if pitched just right, a mobile service aimed at oldies could be successful.

Dan Ilett, Mr Greenbang, was in town last week. I went along with him to a visit of the Aston Martin of electric cars, Tesla Motors. 0-60 in four seconds. And it’s electric. Completely carbon neutral. Plus you can, if you’d like to get entirely fuel-neutral, you can charge it from a solar panel. Very swish.

I filmed the whole thing on my trusty Nokia N95. Fantastic. I do go on about Nokia at times however the N95’s video is still simply extraordinary. Point, click, upload, super quality, done.

Link: Film: Greenbang visits Tesla factory

Tesla cars not only look good, but can get from 0-60mph in four seconds, have a range of 220 miles and take three hours to charge at home.

That’s not bad, but they’re not ready to go on sale yet. The company reckons next year, but they’ve still got a couple of things on the transmission to work on…

Two things you should know - we weren’t allowed to drive one because all the prototypes were being fixed. And we weren’t allowed to film too much of the battery technology.

Visit the link above if you’d like to check out the video tour (which sometimes features my arm, together with occasional marveling sounds and lots of wicked looking cars).

If you’re into retail and mobile, definitely get a cup of coffee and sit and read this USA Today piece on shopping with the aid of mobile. It gives a brilliant insight into what’s going on in small town America and some of the key companies working to make things happen.

Link: Shop by phone gets new meaning - USATODAY.com

It’s not that stores aren’t trying to go higher-tech. Mobile retailing site mPoria is rapidly signing up retailers, going from eight to more than 130 since the start of 2007. Mobile couponing company Cellfire’s discounts can now be used at more than 250 merchants, including retail and restaurant chains, up from 10 in January.

While mobile company Slifter helps shoppers find items in a geographic area, NearbyNow helps them search anywhere in its 200 member malls. All the mall retailers are part of NearbyNow for at least basic searches — for brands of jeans, but not individual styles or products, for instance — and more than 70% offer full access to their inventories. And retailers are experimenting with a variety of text-message campaigns to see what best draws in the young crowds.

I’ll need to take a look at Slifter, mPoria, Cellfire and NearbyNow.

I missed this one last week — fascinating… I wonder how well it will do…

Link: Swedish daily launches first ‘newspaper’ phone - Telegraph

The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter yesterday said it had launched the world’s first “newspaper” telephone: a mobile phone offering the newspaper’s subscribers direct and free access to its website.

“We want our readers to be able to follow the news even when they’re in places where they cannot lay their hands on a paper or (access the Internet on) a computer,” said Thorbjoern Larsson, the editor-in-chief and publisher of the Dagens Nyheter.

“This is yet another way of distributing the news,” he added.

Subscribers can purchase the Nokia 6120 mobile phone on the paper’s website with a 199-kronor (£15) monthly call plan. They can then surf the newspaper’s website by simply hitting a special Dagens Nyheter button on the phone

.

Link: Blog: A spectrum of wireless players - 19 Dec 2007 - NZ Herald: Technology News and reviews from New Zealand and the World

Woosh Wireless, which needs to migrate its technology platform to WiMax also picked up spectrum suitable for these types of services, as did state-owned broadcasting and broadband player Kordia, which likewise has aspirations in the WiMax camp.

I have never, ever heard of Woosh Wireless before. I just had to post on this. That’s the best mobile operator brand name, EVER. I love it!

Ah, the day of mobile video ubiquity is almost upon us.

You can’t even tie up a student with an electricity cable, allegedly humiliate him in front of his peers and taunt him a few times without the footage being transmitted around the globe and (one imagines) Youtubed before you can say the phrase ‘BEG FOR MERCY’.

Have a read…

Link: Academy teachers suspended for tying up pupil in class | Schools special reports | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Two teachers have been suspended after mobile phone footage showed a 16-year-old pupil being tied up with electrical tape and taunted in front of his classmates at a new academy in Kent.

Police and social services have investigated at Folkestone Academy and parents have been told of the incident in a letter from the headteacher of the school that condemns the incident and describes it as a “prank” that went wrong.

The film of the incident on November 28 shows the sixth-form pupil lying face down with his hands tied behind his back. He is surrounded by other pupils and a male teacher is crouched in front of him.

At one point in the five-minute clip a voice, believed to be a teacher’s, says: “Give us a shout when you are ready to start grovelling.” It ends with the pupil being released by another teacher. The boy was reportedly distressed.

I would imagine he was distressed. Unless he was filmed laughing away in a jovial nature, I reckon it’s fairly safe to assume he was distressed.
A source, an unnamed source, reckoned this, according to The Guardian:

“It was like something you would expect in Guantánamo Bay or an al-Qaida video - not in a school. The school has made a lot of noise about being tough on bullies and raising standards, and this kind of thing just makes a mockery of that.

Apparently the students at the school have to sign a 53 page set of pledges related to behaviour - a contract of behaviour or something like that. I wonder if there’s a page covering the use of mobile handsets in class?

Strange, strange. Couldn’t find the video on Youtube…

I’ve been so impressed with Sprint that I called up their PR here in San Francisco and asked if it was possible to borrow one of their PCI express ‘mobile broadband’ data cards to check out their data service via my Apple. I got it today and I’m going to have a play with it then wander around the city using it. More shortly.

Today’s London Telegraph leads with this over-the-top story that drivers could now face jail for using their mobile phones or arsing around with any device whilst in the car…

Link: Drivers who use mobile phones face jail - Telegraph

Motorists caught using a hand-held mobile phone while driving could be jailed for two years under tough new guidelines issued today by prosecutors.

Drivers who adjust sat-navs, tinker with MP3 music players such as iPods or send text messages at the wheel could also face prison sentences.

Prosecutions will be brought if by using the equipment a motorist is judged to have posed a danger to other drivers, such as causing another car to swerve.

Using a hand-held mobile while driving was outlawed in 2003, but it is estimated that half a million motorists flout the ban each day.

Existing guidelines restricted prosecutors to pursuing only a charge of careless driving, for which the maximum fine is £5,000 along with up to nine points on a motorist’s licence.

Now, I reckon penalties for using phones (or other similar equipment) whilst driving are a good thing. I think ‘making it illegal’ is a good thing. It’s really been effective — anecdotally — in the UK. Pull out your handset whilst you’re driving and your passengers are likely to have a fit. The current fines and penalty points have been instrumental in making it socially unacceptable. People still use mobiles and drive, yes. Nutcases. Accidents still do happen — fatal accidents and that’s terrible. However I’m not sure that threatening jail will be more of a deterrent. People who use their mobiles whilst driving are going to continue to do it anyway. Or, on the other hand, perhaps a jail term will be sufficient to dissuade the half million motorists flouting the ban at the moment.

For that matter, using hands-free kits — the legal and acceptable method of communicating whilst driving — is far from safe. I’ve tried using the built-in systems on various cars recently: Each one need some sort of attention, button pressing and knob twiddling, especially when someone calls. You generally have to look at a screen to see who’s calling, usually just as the proverbial old lady is crossing the street. If you’re talking jail terms, you’re serious… ergo you should be banning handsfree kits (whatever way you look at it, it’s a distraction from driving). Ban sat-nav. Particularly the TomTom when it falls off your windshield as you’re doing 70mph in the rain surrounded by other nutters doing the same speed. Ban radios and CD players. Don’t just ban them: Actually rip them out of cars. If you’re talking jail, then get serious about all the other currently legal distractions.

I’ve read quite a few news items, if memory serves, where drivers have been texting and ended up killing other road users as a result. Again, if memory serves, I think most of the protagonists were given jail sentences for various degrees of murder or manslaughter.

Being here in San Francisco, it’s genuinely alarming when the taxi driver is speeding up and down the hills a la Steve McQueen from Bullit, yapping on his (shit, old) mobile phone and paying scant attention to the other traffic and pedestrians… and doing so legally…

The Evening Standard ran a piece of news today about The Portland Hospital in London. The Portland is a private hospital favoured by the likes of Victoria Beckham. They’re offering 40-minute £120 scan that produces high-res pictures of their baby. And every well-to-do expectant career woman in London has a decent handset ready to receive and transmit said pictures. Excellent!

Women can visit the clinic in their lunch hour, have a 40-minute scan and then download the high-definition images to their MP3 player or mobile phone via a secure internet site.

Scanning is vital for doctors to help track the normal development of unborn babies. It is also used to detect potential defects, such as heart problems, which can be corrected in the womb.

It might be a stretch, but Google has introduced new Bots for its Google Talk service that will automatically translate IM conversations on the fly. For it to work, both chatters must add the appropriate bot to the conversation, and off it goes. For instance, if I wanted to chat with someone in Germany, I would add the German-to-English bot, and they would add the English-to-German bot, and we would then chat as normal, with the bots making it all easy cheesy.

This got me thinking about the possibility of an application that could do this through your phone (or over Skype or some other VOIP application). What if you could call someone in a foreign country and chat with them as if you were both chatting in your native tongue?

I don’t know how far off this is, but if it’s in IM, surely it can’t be too much more difficult or far off to add a text-to-speech feature, and then a speech-to-text on the other end, and then make all that happen directly on the handset, with a translator in the middle.

Things like this would really make VOIP something exciting, in my opinion, but there’s also other entertainment values as well. Think women speaking in foreign languages are hot? Does your wife nag you all the time on the phone? Next time she calls, why not switch her into French? It’s not like she expects you to remember what she’s said anyways, and at least then it’s a pleasureable conversation for you.

Any other great business opportunities you can think of with this?

Business is brisk for the chaps over at emergency alert services company, Omnilert, providers of e2Campus. I suspect it’s been a good year for them.

Link:
San Luis Obispo County’s website | 12/19/2007 | New system will use text messages to alert Cal Poly students and staff of campus emergencies

Cal Poly students and employees can now be alerted to campus emergencies via text message.

The new system, administered by the company e2Campus, enables university officials to send instant messages to subscribers’ e-mail accounts and mobile phones via SMS text messages.