Andy Munarriz is having a happy week.

Andy, one of the chaps behind the rather innovative HulloMail voicemail service, is delighted that T-Mobile UK have finally stopped their ridiculous premium charging policy for voicemail diverts.

If you wanted to use a service such as HulloMail for your voicemail, T-Mobile applied either 17 or 26p per minute voicemail divert charges. That can add up. Especially if you get a lot of voicemail and if people leave you long messages.

T-Mobile has now decided to count divert charges as part of bundled minutes. This is brilliant news for T-Mobile customers — but even better news for Andy and the HulloMail team. One of the painful barriers for them has been the fact that if any of their customers signed up with their T-Mobile G1, they’d get nailed for crazy divert charges.

Madness, considering HulloMail’s success with their HulloMail app for Android (given T-Mobile’s support for the platform).

If you haven’t checked out HulloMail, do so at http://www.hullomail.com/. It just might be what you’re looking for. The service allows you to keep your own voicemails — in your email (Google Mail is ideal) — and if you’d like an introduction from Andy, check out Week 45 of the Mobile Industry Review Show.

HulloMail is available as an application from the Android App Store (UK and USA) but you can also use it with other mobile handsets too.

This is big news from Nimbuzz.

Back in February, Geoff Casely came along to the Mobile Industry Review Developers’ Event in London and showed off the latest version of their instant messaging and VOIP service.

I remember being suitably impressed — and I remember Geoff saying that despite record numbers of users signing up for the service, their real aim was to get mobile operators to adopt and deploy Nimbuzz officially.

Tall order, some might think, convincing an operator to (potentially) canibalise it’s messaging revenues to offer a better experience to their customers.

Well o2 Germany have bitten. They’ve pre-installed the Nimbuzz client on to their new TG01 handset from Toshiba.

Nimbuzz is a brilliant, full-featured mobile instant messaging client. I use it regularly — and I particularly enjoyed using it on my Nokia N95 8GB whilst traveling up and down Silicon Valley annoying jealous iPhone users with Nimbuzz running in the background.

Nimbuzz works with the likes of Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, and social networks including Facebook and MySpace. The Facebook chat functionality is a brilliant offering. I like ‘being online’ to my Facebook community even when I’m not physically using the service on the web.

Nimbuzz also supports StudiVZ. Which is absolutely critical for anything launching in Germany. (StudiVZ is the country’s most popular social network.)

Standby for more news from Nimbuzz. They’re working hard on an array of other mobile operator deals. I won’t be surprised if they’ve more deals to announce shortly.

And if you haven’t taken a look at the service recently, do so. Head over to www.nimbuzz.com and download it for your device. They support almost everything.

A departure from rants and raves this morning here on Mobile Industry Review. It’s time to address matters of the heart.

Or matters semi-relating to that.

First, a bit of background.

Kevin Neely is one of the power Nokia users of the Bay Area. I’ve been bumping into him at events around the city of San Francisco for quite some time — and you’ll shortly be seeing him in some Mobile Developer TV episodes soon.

Kevin and I were having a speculative chat on Twitter — I’m not sure how we got there — but it was relating to the use of mobile handsets for pleasure’s sake. Purely speculative. I remember posing this question to Kevin and my Twitter followers:

@ktneely has anyone build a dildroid App? That vibrates specifically for ‘a lady’?

I reasoned that somebody, somewhere, must have given it a go.

Well, it seems that there is very much indeed an app for that, as Kevin discovered with his follow-up Tweet:

@Ew4n Oh yes! I can’t make this stuff up: “deliver[s] a nice, gentle massage to the user” http://bit.ly/xzRcv In the Android marketplace

That bit.ly link redirects to the website of mobile developer, Mobidroid who, as their name suggests, develop for the Android platform.

Some time ago they came up with the concept of Dildo + Android and created Dildroid.

I kid ye not.

What is Dildroid?

Well I’m glad you asked. Dildroid, Is a FREE multi-speed vibrator system for the Google Android OS Phone/Device.

The editorial on the Dildroid page explains the Mobidroid team’s shock and delight at the popularity of their app:

Probably the most advance technology in the field of personal discreet and hypersubtle massage system you have seen so far. Dildroid deliver nice and gentle massage to the user. You can also share the joy by sending a massage of your choice by dildro-sms.

“It’s amazing what 2 days of R&D can do for a product!” Said the Dildroid creator interviewed by himself. “I never tough someone would actually download it, and now it’s more than 10 000 download in three weeks!” he added just before resuming a article about Dildroid for Mobidroid.com.

You want to know all about the features, right?

* Variable speed - Allow user to pick vibration speed by erecting the head of our Andy buddy.
* Dildro-SMS - Allow user to send SMS to contact list (both user need to have dildroid installed in order fully work)
* Frigid Mode - Block Dildro-sms when you don’t feel vibrant and remove it when you feel horny
* Low battery warning, don’t miss ou wonderfull low battery warning!

I now have some screenshots to share with you:

I am also delighted to be able to bring you a video featuring Dildroid in action:

You can find Dildroid in your Android Market. And remember, if you like the application, be sure to donate (”and receive infinite love”) to the developers.

Mobile social networking and VOIP service, Fring, is on the frontpage of Sky News today — and they’ve been getting a good share of airtime as a result of the Iranian protests taking place at the moment.

Fring’s co-creator Avi Shechter was on live discussing how the service can be used to help Iranians keep in touch with the outside world.

Sky’s editorial bent is highlighting the fact that Fring is, of course, an Israeli company…

You can read the article and watch Avi’s interview here.

If you really want to stop Iranians communicating with the outside world, shouldn’t you just switch off mobile data services and international calls?

Or, simply, switch off the mobile phone networks for a few days.

But that’s a little bit too North Koreaish, rigiht?

Lance Stewart is the smart chap behind the launch of new iPhone travel app, TubeExits.

TubeExits is for the serious tube rider. It tells you specifically what carriage to board to make sure you arrive directly opposite the relevant exit on your journey.

I know Liverpool Street — Tottenham Court Road. I know those exits. I know where to board and exit. But any other tube station in London? No.

I would definitely use this app. I’m going to download it in a moment.

Lance actually visited every single one of the 268 London Underground tube stops, several times a day, to check his data was accurate. Committed, eh?

It’s not just useful, this. It’s business critical! It can, reckons Lance, save you up to 10 minutes per journey during peak times. I get that.

He’s thought of everything. The app contains a journey planner — that doesn’t require access to the internet — it’s all self contained. Good news as you don’t have web access whilst traveling.

Right now it’s only covering London but Lance has plans to extend the concept to other cities.

Here is the full list of features:

- Can be accessed anywhere, including anywhere in the underground station, on the platform and in the train.
- Covers every station on the London Underground. (Zones 1-9)
- Platform exit information provided for ‘Way Out’, line interchange, British Rail and DLR.
- Journey information provided for single or multiple transfer journeys.
- Users can save their favourite journeys for quick access.
- Get the reverse journey with a single tap.
- Journeys can be edited to add/remove stations or to change the required platform exit.
- Output includes train clear visual illustrating which Tube carriage the user should board.
- Users can download the Tube Map from the TFL website in order to view when offline.

The app is 1.79 pounds (2.99 normal price) at the moment. Go and get it on the iPhone App Store.

I’ve been following Sprxmobile, the people behind the upcoming launch of ‘Layar’ for quite some time. Indeed the last I published was back in early January (read post).

Well it’s now all about Layar. That’s the name of their absolutely tip-top-shit-hot-Bladerunner-style-Terminator-style mobile augmented reality browser.

It’s a mouthful. But it’s amazing.

And it’s a really good reason to get hold of an HTC Magic:

What’s it do? Well, the best way to experience it is to check out their video demonstration:

Isn’t that amazing? As you move your handset around you’re being shown pertinent and relevant information on the device. Simply brilliant. I particularly like the idea of browsing the cost of a house I’m interested in buying!

Layers — the type of information shown on top of the display — are completely configurable. Indeed it won’t be long, I don’t think, until an enterprising property rental/sales company jumps Layar and gets their data integrated. Or McDonalds. Or Starbucks… and so on.

Find more information here: http://layar.eu/.

It’ll be available to download shortly — I’ll post a note about that soon.

Yesterday I published a post about Nokia’s Calling All Innovators contest and ended the editorial by suggesting that anyone entering should also drop me a note and do a post.

I’m willing to bet that you will be reaching for the download button in a few moments.

First off all, the obligatory screenshot:

Let’s hear from one of the founders, Pieter:

Hi Ewan,

Thanks for posting about the Nokia competition on MIR this morning. It reminded me to not just submit to the Calling All Innovators but also the Apps on Map competition.

Let me briefly introduce:

I am one of the founders of Locle, based in Dublin, one of last year’s winners of the Eircom Web innovation awards. We are live on http://m.locle.com and www.locle.com. Locle is a platform and device agnostic LBS platform that lets users find out who’s near based on our proprietary cell-ID apps (works on 70% of handsets in Europe).

Locle works with FB Connect and Netlog gadgets to create an integrated experience for social network users that want to bring the experience to a mobile and find out if their friends on Netlog or Facebook are nearby rather than a standalone LBS service .

We have just launched live SMS updates as a new service and we’ve called it Serendipity. Below is the 100 word submission for the Apps on Maps competition if you were so inclined to post about it:

“Serendipity is a Locle-powered SMS service that updates users of Facebook and Netlog users in their extended network that are within proximity. People add the Locle application on Facebook or Netlog and install the client appication on their handset (only a 14K download). Locle uses Facebook Connect to see who your friends are and who they know and then sends users SMS updates when someone they know or might know is nearby.”

Find Locle here:

http://m.locle.com, here: http://www.locle.com or here: http://apps.facebook.com/locle_wap

I will also send our submission to the Calling All Innovators competition as soon as we’ve done it.

Thanks,

Pieter

I saw the N95 8GB and thought ‘nice, they support Nokia’. I wasn’t quite ready for the ’shit, wow’ reaction when I clicked on the list of supported devices. They’re on almost everything. Sony, Blackberry, Symbian, UIQ, WinMo, Palm OS — and you can get the iPhone/iPod Touch app from this link. Very impressive.

If you’d like to play with it, look me up — I’m username ‘ew4n’.

I’m particularly impressed that roughly 70% of available European mobile handsets are capable of using Locle at the moment. Since it doesn’t strictly rely on GPS — falling back to Cell-ID for most handsets — it means that, theoretically, if you were wanting to deploy a location based social networking service in, say, India (for example), the first thing you should do is call up Pieter at Locle and do a deal with them.

Likewise any mobile operators or dotcoms looking to do interesting things with their users should give Pieter a call.