If you need to keep a track of your loved ones, your children, or even I suppose, your spouse, you can now do that with a well established service from EZweb.

The EZnavi service, as mentioned before with the in-car navigation system, comes in a new flavor, this one designed to send out a beacon with your location. Designed for use by worried parents, the system allows the child to broadcast their current position and then displays it on a map on the parent’s cell phone.

This is a perfect usage of a technology that is so popular with children and allows for unobtrusive monitoring of the child’s well being much more discreet than a phone call in front of friends.

ROKR update:

So it seems the first critisms of this new handset are now out into the wild, probably even before anyone has had a real chance to try the phone out in real life.

One of the biggest critisms of the ROKR cell phone concern the DRM ( digital rights management ) system it employs. The DRM is supposed to stop you from playing copywriten tracks that you haven’t paid for or don’t have permission to listen to for free.

So there is a bit of a fuss being kicked up about why the DRM on the ROKR will limit the amount of tracks you can download to the phone to 100, even if you don’t exceed the 512MB storage capacity of the handset.

This does seem very strange, and would be annoying to someone like me who has well over a 100 ‘favorite’ tracks at the moment, even if there is enough space for me to store more music, the DRM software will not allow me to.

One does have to ask ‘why?’.

Today’s breaking news does not come from Japan but instead from the United States, where Motorola have just announced the launch of their new phone which integrates the iTunes service from Apple.

This means that users on the Cingular network in the US will be able to download and listen to music directly on their cell phone.

The catch it seems is that you still need to link your phone up to your Mac or PC to transfer your tunes, you can’t download them directly over the air to the phone itself. But this is probably just a small drawback and has not got in the way, so far, of the extremely successful iPod series, which also requires you to hook up to your computer.

One thing that does amuse me though is the name : ROKR, which in my mind summons up an image of Avril Lavigne chatting to her boyfriend on her Razr phone.

Here is a direct link to the website

Continuing on the theme from the last article about location based services in Japan, I came across a really nice looking service from AU today which allows you to navigate, sat-nav style, on your phone, whilst driving your car.

The service runs on your cell phone and takes your position using the GPS chip in your handset and gives on screen directions and maps to help you navigate yourself around whilst driving.

Well, actually the service is not meant to be used by the driver but by a passenger; the Japanese quite rightly, as in Europe, do not allow you to drive whilst using your mobile.

The system is available as a one off, free, download and costs a monthly fee of 315 yen ( $2.80 )for heavy users and 157 yen ( $1.4 ) for light users ( excluding packet charges ).

It is really easy to use, you just enter in your desired destination and either follow the on-screen map or the directions presented to you, very similar to the in-car navigation systems. The phone does well with its small screen, but really it is not something you can use by yourself - you would definitely need someone riding in the passenger seat shouting instructions.

This image shown above is typical of the types of local search systems available at the moment, on both the 2G / 2.5G and 3G networks in Japan.

The level of detail has been enough to guide the user to the store or attraction of their desire so far, but now things are taking a massive leap now that the bandwidth of 3G is really being taken advantage of.

Check these images:

They show what is now available from your cell phone - real, street level satellite photographs of your surrounding area. Its amazing, this technology has just pounced onto the online world, with Google maps bringing the technology to the mainstream attention a whole host of smaller players are now investing in the feeds available and producing applications for the mobile world.

The services differ in the way they can pinpoint your location, from the simple cell triangulation that works with any phone, up to full GPS location depending on the capabilities of the handset. Surprisingly it was the 2.5G cell phones, the CDMA technology phones, which have the most handsets with GPS chipsets, the 3G phones are only now starting to arrive with the necessary chips.

So from now, with the high bandwidth from 3G paired with the accuracy of GPS positioning and the ready availability of satellite imagery, we are really going to see some action in the market. And with companies like Google and Yahoo rolling out their location based services the established players, like ‘goo navi’ , are going to have to fight hard to hold onto their market share.

NOKIA PRESS RELEASE August 30, 2005

Consumers also want to watch TV programs on their cell phone

Espoo, Finland - Results announced today from one of the world’s first commercial mobile TV pilots in Helsinki, Finland reveal the popularity and willingness to pay for mobile TV services, underlining the potential of this exciting new mobile application. 41% of pilot participants would be willing to purchase mobile TV services and half thought that a fixed monthly fee of 10 euros was a reasonable price to pay. Over half (58%) said that they believed broadcast mobile TV services would be popular.

Digita, Elisa, MTV, Channel Four Finland (Nelonen), Nokia, TeliaSonera Finland and YLE jointly conducted the pilot in Finland between March and June 2005 with 500 users accessing mobile TV using the Nokia 7710 smartphone and DVB-H technology.

Content is king
According to the pilot results, pilot participants not only wanted to watch familiar program offerings, but they would also welcome mobile TV content that is suitable for short and occasional viewing. Familiar programs available through national Finnish television channels proved to be the most popular followed by sports and news channels (CNN, BBC World, Euronews). The Ice Hockey World cup games, the San Marino and Monaco Formula One as well as the UEFA Champions League match between Liverpool and AC Milan were among the top 10 programs viewed during the pilot.

Viewing patterns
In general, mobile TV users spent approximately 20 minutes a day watching mobile TV, although more active users watched between 30 to 40 minutes per session. Participants also watched mobile TV at different times than traditional TV peak hours.

Mobile TV was most popular while traveling on public transport to relax or to keep up to date with the latest news although it also proved popular at home for entertainment and complementing participants’ main TV watching.

Pricing models
The potential commercial benefits of mobile TV are clearly evident from this pilot with 41% willing to pay for the service. Pilot members were charged a monthly fee of 4.90 euros although half of those that took part thought 10 euros per month was a reasonable price to pay. Overall, users preferred a fixed pricing model although many were also interested in a pay per view model - i.e. buying access for specific content such as a football match or racing competition.

The pilot results also reveal the key requirements from consumers in order to use mobile TV services:

- Easy and intuitive service usability
- Good technical functionality and reliability
- Content that is also suitable for short period viewing
- Mobile phone functions must not be compromised by the TV application

“The Helsinki pilot reinforces our belief that mobile broadcast TV is a significant opportunity,” said Richard Sharp, Vice President, Rich Media, Nokia. “The message for the industry is clear: for mobile TV services to succeed we need relevant and compelling content, easy-to-use technology and reasonable and simple pricing plans. With these elements in place, consumer demand for mobile TV will follow.”

DVB-H technology allows television channels to be distributed effectively to mobile devices. It provides the best user experience in the mobile environment with excellent, broadcast quality picture, reduced battery consumption and wide range of channels (up to 55 channel are possible).

Additional information:
Finland’s mobile TV project: www.finnishmobiletv.com

This is the ultra-smooth new, ‘Radiden’ handset from SonyEricsson which is set to be released today.

The cell phone features an am / fm radio which can also pick up audio signals from television stations. Unfortunately it can’t display the pictures to go with the audio.

The phone is compact at 11.7cm by 4.9 cm and is only 2cm thick. It features 7 retro style buttons for saving radio frequencies and has a nice classic look. There are also some fancy add-ons like the matching headphones and this desktop charger.

There is a popular role playing strategy game that has been around for ten years in Japan called ‘Front Mission 2089′. Versions of the game have already been ported over to the west by Squaresoft and have proven popular. But the game is really at its prime in Japan and now users here can play the game on their cell phone and battle other users whilst on the move.

The ‘Front mission mobile’ game for Docomo 900i handsets has just been released and lets you build your online, customisable, robot character and then battle them with other players, live and online, using your cell phone. It is a ‘turns’ based game with each opponent having a number of turns to play out their strategies, attacking, defending and retreating as needed and the winner is the one with the most life force left after a battle.



The game costs 525yen ( about $5 ) per month plus packet charges to play which could prove quite expensie for the real heavy user. Every day at 8.00am scores and statistics from the previous day’s battles are shown and at the end of each month the top ten ranking players are announced.

This real-time interaction has proven popular in game play on the big screens, with Xbox live and PC games like the Starwars Galaxies series enjoying massive numbers of subscribers so it will be interesting to see how this works with the new hook up and join in anywhere, anytime freedom that the cell phone gives and whether or not the small screen and limited interface puts players off.

DoCoMo has come up with an interesting an novel way to let its customers pay for everyday items using their cell phone.

A new service in Thailand will allow customers to pay for their online shopping, pay their gas bills, buy drinks at vending machines and more. It doesn’t use anything fancy like the chips in FOMA phones but instead works by issuing the user with a dedicated phone number which the user can call and, via an automated voice system, authorise payments.

The service is provided as a joint venture between DoCoMo, AIS Thailand and mPAY, the online mobile payments system that provides this phone number interface.

Camera enabled cell phones are popular all over the world and Japan, the supposed land of the camera fanatic, is no exception. The latest handsets hitting the market here are now packing 3.2 Mega Pixel cameras so these babies rival some of the dedicated digital cameras out there. Its little wonder then that Japan has a feast of accessories that you can buy to spice up your cell phone picture taking.

The biggest problem with cell phone cameras is that they never have good zoom functions, the physical zooms are limited and the digital zoom that takes over once you reach the max distance of the physical zoom is terrible and distorts the picture beyond all recognition.

So to come to the aid of the needy camera man a few enterprising companies have been producing cheap add-on lenses which you can hold in front of the camera lens or stick over it. These have tended to be toy-like and are easily lost or broken and also the zoom quality you can expect from these cheap bits of plastic is not very good to say the least.

Queue these :

These stylish new lenses look the business and attach to the front of compatible phones using a magnetic rim, they cost 2480 Yen and are currently only available for the AU W21CA and the FOMA F900iT.

They come in three strengths of telephoto for zoom ( 1/2x , 3/4x ) and macro for close up ( 4x ). Apparently they give good results, I have yet to test one myself, but I have heard that there are problems when using the 3/4x telephoto on the W21CA as it shows a black shadow around the rim of the photo.

Of course, anyone who is serious about their photography would probably be better off using a dedicated digital camera with proper lenses, but for those of us with an active lifestyle and a taste for photography these handy accessories would be great to slip into your pocket just in case you find that perfect photo opportunity on your travels.