Jan 13
Mobile News David
3g, app, application, joikusoft, joikuspot, mobile, modem, phone, relay, store, symbian, tethering, wifi, windows
Joikuspot
Quick update to say I’ve had a review of Joikuspot Premium published on CNET UK.
“What on earth is Joiku … what what?” I hear you say? Well it’s a little application which runs on your Symbian or Windows Mobile smart phone, and turns it into a WiFi hotspot. It does this by allowing any WiFi devices in range to open a connection with your phone, and then relays all their internet bound traffic from the WiFi connection to the 3G internet connection of your phone.
Yes, it does have the potential to wind up being expensive if you don’t have a flat rate data plan, but it’s an excellent tool to have in an emergency, e.g. if your home internet goes down.
I’m also pleased to say this is my second publication with CNET UK, and I have a few more in the pipeline too. This one, like all the rest, is now linked to on my publications page.
Dec 16
Mobile News David
3g, cloud, data, discovery, driving, explore, good things, google, gps, landmarks, layers, location, maps, mobile, navigation, nokia, ovi, ovi prime, phones, photos, poi, points of interest, road, s60, satellite, series 60, services, share, symbian, sync, tavel, walking, wifi
Mobile Map Applications
I recently wrote an article in which I compared Nokia’s Ovi Maps application to Google’s mobile Google Maps application, for Series 60 phones. I’m pleased to say it’s just been published on Allaboutsymbian.com.
When it comes to S60, we are fortunate to have a choice of which mapping application we use, but which is best? Is it Ovi Maps (née Nokia Maps), with its worldwide pre-loaded maps, voice navigation and PC integration, or is it Google Maps with the power of Google search, high-res satellite imagery and the perfect price? David Gilson has been testing both, and here reports on his findings.
Click here to read it. Comments are welcome here and at AAS.
Aug 3
Personal David
3g, charges, data, expenses, mobile, tariffs, vodafone
Vodafone
Last week I wrote about my week without broadband, and I mentioned that I had used a Vodafone mobile data connection. Well, I’m sad to say, this lead to quite a drama.
The 3G modem I used was a free gift with my current laptop, over three years ago. It wasn’t a proper retail pack so there wasn’t proper documentation. All I knew, by word of mouth, was that you paid by the megabyte, but I didn’t have a document stating the charge. I’m also having a mass clear out of my house at the moment, so having gone through all my paper work, I can definitely say there wasn’t an old letter put away and forgotten about! I didn’t use the card at all, I just kept it as a back up for if my home internet ever went down.
Therefore, on Saturday the 11th of July, I had to start using the modem. But it wouldn’t work, so I called Vodafone and found out it had been deactivated due to age. The account was in credit too, deactivated with over £40 of credit! Anyway, the modem started working after the phone call. However, soon after the call had ended, I had a d’oh moment. I hadn’t asked the data charge, and I certainly had not been told the charge.
I called Vodafone, but was asked to call back on Monday as their computer systems had gone down. Well, I called back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, it took until Thursday evening to get through to someone. The other days I kept getting a recorded message telling me my call couldn’t be taken and to call again later. The Vodafone website was no good as they neither show real-time usage or tariff information for old accounts.
Money Grab
When I spoke to Vodafone, not only was I told I’d only used approximately 250MB, but I was also told my bill was going to be £526+VAT !!! This was based on a charge of a whopping £2.37+VAT per Megabyte. If you’re reading from outside the UK, VAT is Value Added Tax, our version of sales tax and is currently 15%.
The woman I spoke to at the time spoke to a colleague and said the best they could do for me would be to write off that charge and transfer me onto an upto date data plan which would cost me £15 per month, for a minimum of 12 months! That would be £180, just because I transferred 250MB data across their network.
We’ll fast forward the story a few days. Suffice to say that I didn’t agree, and I subsequently was bounced around several unhelpful call centre people. So I submitted a letter of complaint via their “Contact Us” page, twice, and had no response either time. I eventually mentioned my case to people I know at CNET UK, who were able to get me in touch with Vodafone via their PR firm. At first I was contacted by someone from Vodafone Web Relations, who looked to be as helpful as the call centre people.
A few more days later, just when it seemed like I couldn’t get anywhere, I got a phone call from the director’s office. Where the gentleman I spoke to apologised for the situation, stated that I had not been dealt with satisfactorily, and that he would write off the charge (of course with the caveat “this time only”). That was a great relief, it still is.
Now, why am I telling you about this unfortunate episode? Because I’d like you to be more aware than I was at the time. In this situation, I believe Vodafone were at fault for a number of things.
- There is no automatic upgrade review cycle for old legacy accounts (i.e. no house-keeping of old accounts).
- There was no alert that my tariff was not economical at the time of my reconnection.
- There is no way of checking your real-time usage on their website.
All that said, they did do the right thing in the end, so credit to them there, but I had to go to the press before my case was brought to the attention of someone with sufficient authority to rectify the matter.
So please, if you have an old mobile account, be very careful before you start using it after a long time, and if circumstances allow, consider getting a whole new deal rather than insisting on using your old account.
Jul 29
Personal David
3g, bandwidth, internet, mobile, vodafone, wireless
Ethernet unplugged
Recently, my home router broke down, and for reasons that don’t need going into here, it would be a week before I could replace it. This left me with the prospect of only having internet access via a Vodafone PCMCIA 3G data card which I had as a free gift when I bought my laptop in December 2005. It’s a fairly slow modem, and I was paying by the megabyte (although finding out how much per megabyte I’d be paying became a whole other problem for another blog post).
I received this free 3G modem with my laptop.
This meant I had to use all those bits of bandwidth carefully. My data rationing was unplanned, and required some quick thinking about all the things I use and have running automatically. The interesting thing was to see what I immediately went without, and the things I felt I couldn’t do without.
First of all, most obvious, no more media. Primarily, this addressed streaming media Spotify and Youtube, but it also meant I had to go without my podcasts too. Many audio podcasts are easily 40MB or more, and video podcasts can easily eat up 500MB. The next thing to do was all my internet dependant back ups. Most importantly my off-site backup to Jungledisk had to be stopped. Then I had to cancel my background tasks that would download backup copies of my PIM data and this very website.
The things I found I couldn’t do without were E-mail, Twitter and Facebook. These represent just about all of my communication and social interaction on-line. Although, compromises were available. For e-mail, using my e-mail application rather than web-mail cut down on some precious bits. Then, both Twitter and Facebook have mobile sites, which are available to desktop browsers, they helped a lot. The only full-blown best-on-broadband sites I needed were for things like ordering my groceries for the week.
In the end, I called Vodafone, and in all the time I’d been on their connection, I’d only consumed approximately 250MB, for the whole week. I could have done better, but I didn’t think it was bad at all. There is more to tell about my Vodafone mobile connection, but that’s for another post!
It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a dial up connection, and since I’ve been on broadband, I’ve never had to ration myself to only using so much data. The expereince of limiting everything I did really showed me how important high-speed/broadband internet is. Without high speed, and unmetered access, almost everything we do would be impractical. Never mind the luxury of streaming Youtube and the like, but even the ability to download new software and updates would really limit all of us, and would make the internet a more dangerous place by virtue of less security updates getting where they need to go.
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