Recently I have become more and more of a Vodafone fan (so much so, I think last night I was in some bar somewhere trying to convince Arun Sarin to introduce new data plans that gave high data users such as me a guaranteed service level and data priority over other users. He was bemused but wrote down a few notes and promised to sort it out for me.)

I have always been a fan — although for years, in fact, since the inception of SMS Text News, I have generally been a user of another network (T-Mobile or 3, for example). It took quite a lot of confidence to swap over to Vodafone a few months back.. I wasn’t that impressed at the paltry inclusive internet add-on (7.50 pounds per month for 120mb?) but I expected Vodafone to make some upgrades and lo, it was fortold that now I’ve got 500mb inclusive each month. Very useful for a data fiend like me.

So whilst I am a rather big fan of Vodafone, there is just one thing that really, really, REALLY winds me up.

Let’s be clear: This is a triple-A wind up issue for me.

Vodafone Passport.

Why? Well I can’t move in any British Airport for signs, animations, adverts, the whole shebang, advertising Vodafone passport.

It’s only 75p per connection, the advert tells me. Then it’s your bundled minutes. What a cool deal. Yeah…er…

Not in America. America doesn’t count. Forget that Vodafone OWNS a whopping great chunk of Verizon. No, it costs you at least… AT LEAST one hundred and twenty five sodding pence per MINUTE to call home to the UK.

Not only have I been taken in by the Vodafone Passport advertising, but… guess what, so has my brother.

I was on the phone to him a few minutes ago.

“Hi, I’m in Newark,” he tells me.

“Where?”

“NewarK?” he prompts.

“Is that on the south coast somewhere, Devon or something?” I say. A little bit phased.

“No, Newark, New York, you know… AMERICA.”

“Oh. Right!” I forgot. Martin, who blogs big time on servers and blades at his site, Bladewatch, is off to a blade conference in Arizona.

We had a chat about a few things. He’s been on holiday recently. Catch-up conversation, that sort of thing.

Then I thought I’d better ask, “Are you calling on your T-Mobile?”

“No, Vodafone,” he explains innocently. Oh dear. Here it comes.

“Ah, that’s quite expensive Martin, look, catch you soon, you should go,” I say, thinking of his phone bill.

“No, it’s okay!” he says, uh oh, wait for it…, “I’m on Vodafone Passport!”

I grimace to myself.

“No you’re not. It doesn’t apply to America.”

“Oh?” Now Martin is rather annoyed. We cut short our 125p/min conversation and he went about his business sat in the Continental lounge at Newark Airport whilst I put on my blogging hat.

The fact it’s 125p/min is just plain ridiculous. It’s 55p/min on T-Mobile with their little international add-on deal thing. 125p/min is 1990s prices. This issue needs drastic attention from them.

So, if you’re on Vodafone, every time you see a Vodafone Passport advert at the airport, remember America isn’t recognised on that deal.

As a valued customer of Skype, I’ve just got a newsletter in from them offering me unlimited calling to landlines in ONE country for 4.5 EUROs per month. Smart. Or a tenner (EURO) per month for unlimited calls to landlines in 34 countries.

Very smart. Speaking of smart… I’m still smarting from their ‘we’re busy having pizza and coffee‘ note when they had their outage a few months ago.

I think I’m recovering. I am seriously considering buying an unlimited offer.

Now this is a rather interesting statistic — Papa John’s, one of the most popular pizza delivery chains in America transacted over $400m online and by text message (press release).

Unfortunately the release doesn’t break down the text percentage of revenue. I’d estimate maybe 0.5% of that $1 billion was by text. What do you think? I’ve nothing to benchmark and it’s a statistic I’d love to have and I doubt Papa John’s will reveal. 0.5% of a billion is $50m. For a moment, assuming that this is anywhere near accurate, that would be a staggering figure.

I tried calling their PR number for clarity on the online/text split but, alas, it went to voicemail. They should have got Spinvox, eh?

Actually, texting is quite a new thing for Papa Johns:

And in November 2007, Papa John’s took the convenience of online ordering one step further when it became the first national pizza company to offer SMS/text ordering for customers throughout the U.S. Customers who have set up their favorite orders at papajohns.com can text their orders to 4PAPA in just a couple of easy clicks.

Having ordered with Papa John’s in the UK sometime back in 2007, I remember being very impressed at getting text updates from them when they’d received my order and when it was on it’s way. Try’em out if you have time: Papajohns.com or Papajohns.co.uk.

I am absolutely seething after finding out that the Nokia Software Updater has stopped working with Vista.

They turned off support for this yesterday.

Yesterday.

What?

So what do I do now?

Sit and stare at my now, by default, piece of shit handset?

Where is the button to order a Windows XP computer on Nokia’s site?

I mean, if they can’t get their shit working, why bother? What is this software architecture team busy doing with itself? Fingers stuck up buttocks? Pissing into the wind smiling whilst singing their very best Leona Lewis tracks at full volume?

WHY did they turn off Windows Vista support?

I’m not using Vista because I love it. It came preinstalled on my computer. YEARS ago, Vista came out. SODDING YEARS.

What, Mr Brain Surgeon, am I supposed to do about upgrading my phone now? Whilst you sod about taking fingers out arses?

Sit and stare at the wall?

“It’ll be ok,” I’m sure one of the suits in Finland explains during the software strategy meeting, “We’ll just turn off Vista support in the new upgrade. So when they log in and update their Nokia Update Software, then heh, we’ll just turn off support.”

I wonder, was there a brain cell in the meeting who pipped up, “Er, right but those who DON’T have Windows XP or anything OLDER than that?”

“Screw’em.”

That was the effective decision.

It’s not as if Vista came out yesterday. Or 20 minutes ago. There are EIGHTY EIGHT MILLION COPIES of Vista on the planet (So reckons ZDnet in October last year).

What?

I really have to climb down off the desks at SMS Text News Towers and stop feeling like I want to pull out my hair.

What PLONKER authorised this?

You just.. wake up morning and revoke support for the PRIMARY operating system of MILLIONS?

Oh, and it doesn’t work on Apples either.

This is BASIC. ULTRA BASIC stuff.

No wonder the sodding N81 is such an absolute nightmare (the upcoming podcast will explain all). Nokia have absolutely lost the plot.

Lost it.

You have to be a pretty rubbish software chief to allow this sort of ridiculous behaviour.

WHY isn’t there an explanation?

Why wasn’t there a personal note from the head of Nokia’s software on the SODDING SOFTWARE MESSAGE? TELLING ME WHY? AT LEAST EXPLAINING?

Set my expectations?

Anything?

Hello………?

I’ll get my coat…

As a reminder, here’s the screen I got:

This what it should say:

There is nothing worse than standing next to someone who’s phone is running faster than yours.

It just isn’t cricket and it’s nigh on unbearable for me.

With fellow SMS Text News contributors, James Whatley and Ben Smith this evening, I was the pauper in the corner.

With a top of the range E90 handset.

I was trying to download a game on my phone — a few meg — and unfortunately, it was crawling along at some annoying 10k/second style ‘3G’ speed. Useless.

So I just tried to see if I could upgrade the phone (and maybe flash the Vodafone firmware to support 3.5G?)…

Here’s what I got from the Nokia Software Updater:

Well that’s a piece of shit, isn’t it.

A month ago it worked perfectly fine. THIS (He says, pointing at the computer) is the SAME computer I used to upgrade my Nokia and find out that the backup didn’t backup properly.

Who is in charge of this NONSENSE?

They need a slap.

It’s simply not good enough.

One minute it works. Next minute it’s hobbled. What the hell am I meant to do now? Now that some pencil pusher in Finland has decided to disable the sodding updater? What the ……..

Absolutely TIP TOP STUPID.

124 billion dollar company and they keep.On.FALLING over their sodding shoelaces.

Well screw that.

Sony Ercisson, anybody?

If you can’t get enough of Prince William blowing rasperries at 9 year olds, a special on Peter and Autumn (The Queen’s eldest grandchild and his Canadian love) or Mariah’s new husband and you’re on the go, then Hello Magazine’s mobile updates are for you.

Yes! You can now get a daily MMS (or SMS) update from Hello Magazine to feed your lust of (mostly irrelevant?) conversation regarding celebrity love lives and soft furnishings.

I’d have actually liked to have seen this sort of thing go live years ago but still, it’s good that they’re doing it. Incentivated are putting on their pearls and getting to know the critical Kings Road venues intimately — i.e. they’re providing the back-end for Hello Magazine’s mobile services.

This is good news. The more mainstream media adopt the medium of MMS, well, the better. It’s always been the poor second cousin to SMS and I suspect that the Hello Magazine readership will snap up the offerings.

Now.

Guess how much the MMS alerts service costs?

25p an alert? 5 quid for the month?

No.

Keep guessing.

Higher.

Yeah, it’s a quid a message. Yes! ONE POUND per MMS! Butter me in caramel and call me Shirely!

I KID ye not:

You will not be billed more than 23 pounds in a given month because they’ve made a shitload out of you by that point.

Text messages are 25p a go and you won’t be billed more than £10 in a given month.

Steep, isn’t it?

But then I wonder if the Hello readers have that sort of thirst for gossip? Or you could just buy a 3-month subscription to the real magazine for £21.

Good news and a pat on the back for Viigo, the chaps behind the rather wicked Blackberry RSS reading application. They’ve just got $1.5m in funding (so, $8m between friends, yes?) from RBC Venture Partners.

I’ve been using their news reader on my Blackberry for quite a while and I’m very much looking forward to ‘Project Tango’ which is heading into public beta in 38 days (June, basically).

In case you need a quick Viigo primer, here we go:

Viigo Inc. develops and markets one of the world’s most popular mobile content and services applications for smartphones. With over 5,000 channels and information services, Viigo customers around the world enjoy up-to-the-minute access to news, weather, sports, market performance, entertainment, and blogs in one intuitive, simple, freely downloadable application.

Right on. Bring on Tango!

It’s national Work-From-Home-Day next Thursday. So reckons this press release I’ve just got. Ergo, next Thurdsay, take the day off and do some email from the back garden with your USB modem and laptop.

If anyone asks, tell’em I said it was fine and it’s part of an international mobile working study you’re doing for SMS Text News…

After Intel and Google’s WiMax antics earlier this week it looks like Sweden is next in the chipamker’s sights. The Scandinavian country awarded four “mobile broadband licences” this week - and Intel is confirmed as one of the lucky winners.

According to AP, it paid around $26 million for its WiMax licence which will go for 15 years. Intel apparently plans to rent the licence to another network operator, according to AP.

While it’s good news for the WiMax lobby to see Intel putting its stake in the ground and ringfencing some spectrum for future WiMax networks, I can’t help but feel Intel should be shouting about its network operator partner as soon as it’s got the licence in its hand, rather than securing the licence and then hunting down someone to run the network at some point in the future.

Interesting post by someone on the Lastminute.com Labs blog (i.e. a nameless person, the blog post doesn’t have a name on it) about location based services… or lack of, on the mobile web.

Obviously location is rather important when you’re a travel site creating mobile based services. You want to, for example, know if the customer is roaming or if they’re at home.

What to do? Get ShopQwik…

Link: Where’s this phone? « travel innovation

If anyone has any further light to shed on this topic, feel free to chime in - we’d love to hear if there are better solutions!

Have a read…

I wasn’t much of a fan of the Channel4 documentary last week, ‘the great mobile phone rip-off’. Neither were many of the readers here at SMS Text News — much of the coverage was either irrelevant (would have been useful 2-3 years ago) or not really a problem any more. However the one thing I do have a bit of an issue with is termination fees — the charge one mobile provider makes to another to connect a call to one of its subscribers. In some cases they’re abnormally high — 3UK, for example, is at the wrong end of the charging stick, because it has markedly lower subscriber numbers, it — obviously — ends up paying out more to the other mobile companies. Is it fair? Well. Depends on your view. Are termination fees too high? On balance, I think so. But then… 2.5bn a year in combined revenues for the mobile operators (so reports the Dispatches documentary), that’s a big hole to cover in next year’s accounts if fees are lowered, disbanded or changed.

Here’s a Youtube of the termination fees section from the broadcast last week featuring Steve Weller from Uswitch.

A very useful service, this. They don’t have The Couch on Dean Street yet but I’m sure that will be coming soon.

Stick it in your bookmarks at http://londonist.com/2007/05/free_wifi_in_lo.php.

CNET UK has, if the news story from Netimperative is to be taken at face value, just realised that there’s a mobile internet audience out there.

Further, they’ve also recognised that their audience of TECHIES might just be interested in checking out their services via their mobile handsets.

What’s interesting to me is that CNET didn’t build their own mobile sites. Nah. They know nuffink. Or so it seems. They got the MoMac experts in to sort it out and use their GoMedia platform to build and manage the mobile services. Fair enough.

It isn’t that difficult, surely, to dynamically repurpose your content for a mobile device?

Everything you could possibly want is at the strangely ugly looking (domain name wise) cnetuk.mobi.

Bluetooth-tagging is a key mobile application for the future — a quote directly from Anthony Nystrom, CTO of Next2Friends.

I’m not entirely sure I agree.

Ok, bluetooth the technology, yes — that’s smart. There’s a lot of possibilities. But when my sodding Blackberry bluetooth doesn’t speak to my Apple iPhone bluetooth that is on a totally different planet from my LG Secret bluetooth… there ain’t much going to be a-happening soon. Big fan of the concept of bluetooth tagging though.

Anthony believes otherwise as Next2Friends just snapped up BluetoothMeet (does what it says on the tin).

So reports Netimperative.

I’ll do a bit on Next2Friends shortly.

So, after a ton of demand — thank you everyone who has emailed and berated us, here is the first, draft version of the SMS Text News podcast featuring me and contributor James Whatley and some rather comical ’sweeper’ jingles. Listen out for them in the middle too.

Here’s the streaming audio link, courtesy of Nokia’s Ovi:

SMS Text News contributor James Whatley was less than impressed to find himself staring at this ad from 3 the other day. It specifically says ‘no wires’ in the ad

You can actually use these dongles without the wire though — I do!

Replug launches in the UK this month and I think it’s a smart idea. It’s a small adapter that you use with any audio device — MP3 player, laptop, that sort of thing — and it prevents you from ripping out your headphones or, as I have done repeatedly, slam my laptop on the floor every time I get up and forget I’m wearing headphones.

Even the fancy I-know-when-you-are-going-to-be-stupid hard disk on the Apple Mac doesn’t like it.

So when I heard of Replug, I talked to Jo at their UK PR and asked her to send out one to look at. Here’s the vid of it arriving:

We’ll do some demos and test it out shortly.

How does it work? Well… here’s the science bit:
Using a reilient elastomeric ring that grips between the plug tip of the audio device and the user’s headphones, the adapter enables any audio cable to breakaway from your music player with no damage to the socket.

The one we’ve got is for standard audio devices but they do a version for your iPhone too. Rock up to LBS Accessories for UK supplies or TwistedCarbon for elsewhere. The range starts at around a tenner for your standard one (the one in the vid) plus you can get a special mini-iPhone adapter for just under four quid. Done!

The rumours were true: BT has gone for another bite of the dual mode cherry, using an HTC smartphone, pictured here, called the BT ToGo. The dual-mode device will come bundled as part of BT’s Total Broadband Anywhere package - which covers home broadband, as well as mobile minutes, texts and 10 MB of mobile data. The phone itself will be free, and depending on how many minutes the customer signs up to, and the mobile subscription will cost between £5 and £35 extra on top of a standalone broadband option.

The problem with this, as far as I can see, is that this sort of thing screams enterprise, rather than consumer. For companies with large campuses and a lot of mobile workers, this could easily be a good fit. For consumers, however, I’m not so sure: after all, broadband tends to be bought by a household, and mobile phone contracts by the individual. There doesn’t seem to be any interesting new services being offered, so presumably the inclusion of VoIP capability is just being pitched as a cost-saving service: but with very generous mobile packages - up to 600 inclusive minutes - you could go without using the VoIP part of the service altogether.

Adam Bird, co-founder at Esendex set himself a rather big today — that is, try and work via mobile without any of his colleagues noticing he wasn’t using a fixed internet connection.

So armed with a my Sony Vaio, Vodafone USB Modem and BlackBerry I attempted to spend the day travelling but so that no one would notice.

3 trains required (if you ignore 2 stop on the RER in Paris):

1. Nottingham to London St Pancras
2. London St Pancras to Paris Gare de Lyon
3. Paris Gare de Lyon to Cannes

Heh. How did he get on….? Read on and find out!

(You can also, incidentally, appear completely connected at all times across continents with a Blackberry running Google Talk or a mobile running Nimbuzz!)

Found this on the 3UK front page. Voice and TEXT coverage?

I suppose it does pay to be accurate. Consumers might not ‘get’ that if you’ve got a signal, you can send a text…

I had a note in about new SMS-based social networking service, RMBRME (”remember me”). I took a look. Very interesting. Essentially the service uses the medium of text that we all know and love as the front-end for social connectivity.

You meet someone, you want to add them to your social consciousness… so you simply text their phone number to RMBRME. The service then, with a bit of jiggery pokery, enables you to connect the person or persons into your various social networks — Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.

Here’s how they describe it:

Breakthrough SMS-based social networking service rmbrME (”remember me”) launched today, giving consumers the revolutionary ability to instantly add real-world friends to any social network using any phone or mobile carrier; no subscription or download is required. By sending a quick SMS to 762763 (RMBRME), users instantly share a personalized card with direct links to their Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, address book or blog profiles, and can be readily added to the network of their choice. rmbrME is fun, instantaneous, socially networked and environmentally conscious.

And how do you make it work?

Consumers sign up for an account at http://rmbrme.com/ and enter the contact information that they’d like to share, including profile links to their chosen social networks, blogs, photos, and address/phone contacts. After meeting someone in real-life, users simply send an SMS with the recipient’s mobile or email address to 762763 (RMBRME) and a profile unlock is delivered directly to their new friend’s phone. The receiver follows the links provided, adding their new contact to the social network of their choice.

Gabe Zichermann, the CEO, has this to say:

“With the advent of social networking, the paper business card is completely obsolete, we need a digital, socially aware personal card that works anytime on any phone and with any social network; rmbrME is the answer.”

I’m a bit hesitant about whether this will take off. At least, I was. Then I checked out their site and their wicked flash animation and, you know what, it does make a lot of sense — particularly the end-to-end nature of it and how they connect (quickly) to Facebook.

What d’ya reckon?

Ars Technica (I’m sure I am pronouncing that wrong when I say it out lout) has more information on Brightkite, a service that’s been making a bit of a stir.

Ars Technica sat down with Martin May, Brightkite’s founder, to learn more about the service and what’s coming down the road.

The bad news is that the service appears to require users to have to manually update their locations. A total arse. There’s no other way around it, unfortunately. If you *want* these features and you’re a Joe Public (which most of the planet is) then it needs to work on a RAZR. So texting is the way ahead. MAYBE mobile web, at a push.

The good news is that, given half a chance and the ability for your device to update your location independently, now you’re talking and the Brightkite concept really starts to make a lot of sense.

But right now, when you have to think and update your own location, it’s only going to ever be the geeks enjoying that connected goodness…

We’ll keep an eye on’em!

The race to zero continues.

3 are, to my knowledge, the first network in the UK to launch 6-month contracts. Ricky, who runs our BlykWatch column, spotted this yesterday.

If you talk to 3 about a pay monthly contract, they’ll want to put you on an 18-month deal. But they MIGHT (will, probably) offer you a 6-month break clause, thus (from their site terms and conditions):

6 month minimum term contract offer available for a limited period to new approved customers registering on either Mix & match 300 or 500 with either the LG U300, Nokia 6151, Nokia 6288, Sony Ericsson Z610iR, Sony Ericsson K610iR or 3 Skypephone. Free calls and chat are for Skype-to-Skype calls and chat messages made in the UK or while roaming on a participating sister network. Fair use policy and terms apply.

Do check the contract terms and conditions — but apparently Ricky was told he could then upgrade (to a new handset?!) or cancel with no penalty after 6 months.

Smart.

It does make sense. I reckon a ton of SMS Text News readers would (like me) go out tomorrow and buy a 3UK contract to get a nice new Nokia N95 8GB on, say 25 quid a month, with an unlimited data add-on. The 6-month option is a nice assurance… but the reality is, if you’re happy, you’ll keep it for longer. 3 might as well have your money for that period of time.

I’ll see if I can find out more about this. Could be useful when I come to get my rumoured N82…

Case in point:

15 quid a month and a free Nokia N95 8GB AND 300 mins/texts a month? If you could get that on a 6 month deal (now, I know it’s only for Mix/Match/Sony and some Nokia handsets) you’d take it, right?

In fact even on an 18 month deal, that’s a minimum of 270 pounds spend and a hot rockin’ deal for an N95 8GB… although you’d need to stump up another fiver for unlimited data but even at 360 quid it’s still a better deal than buying the handset in your Nokia store of choice for at least 500 pounds.

I got an email through from SkyFire, makers of the utter genius uber-fast mobile web browser, principally for Windows Mobile (Symbian shortly).

Alas I fear I am Windows Mobile deficient. I can’t remember where I put the HTC Touch. And I’m not sure if the Samsung works in the UK. Anyway I’m looking forward to being able to actually use it.

Here’s a vid of it in action:

That’s it.

I just canny do it, captinnnnnn.

I’ve had it up to here with Tweeterish — that is, Twitter rubbish. Now and again, I get absolute gold in via Twitter.

But people keep on interrupting my day with tosh about their cat looking pretty. Perfectly fine but entirely irrelevant to me.

I was talking about this with Adam Bird of Esendex earlier today. He reckons we need a lot more work done in semantics to help us deal with information flow. For example if it’s a good friend Tweeting, then it’s not rubbish to me. It’s relevant, but in a different context.

I don’t care what your cat did, or whether it is coughing up grapes in a cute fashion, I really don’t. But if your cat is typing on a Nokia N95, I will be the first to blog the QIK footage.

But until we get more semantic on your ass, we’ll need to grin and deal with it.

My strategy is this: Move Twitter to update my AOL instant messenger account name. No one talks to me on that so I can easily switch off Twitter updates.

I’ve long given up using little pop-up programs. LONG ago I gave up on SMS updates (I’m sure Twitter’s accountant is pleased to hear that) after my Nokia N73 had it’s inbox stuffed with 250 messages in half a day.

It’s far too distracting and it certainly isn’t a live ‘community conversation’ when 95% of traffic is about your cat and how it can’t swallow grapes.

I must admit though, I’d like to see that on video…