Technomaly » Mobile

This is Clearly the Best Phone Charger Ever

J. Matthew Zoss — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:55:42 +0000

I’m really not sure how that headline can be argued. It’s a phone charger and a giant robot model! Actually, for those of you who aren’t genuine nerds, the robot is actually a Gundam – a mechanized character from a long-running Japanese toy line and anime series. Obviously, this phone charger is a Japanese-only type of deal, as it’s for the Softbank network and includes a Gunpla phone. Heard of them? I didn’t think so.

The kit includes a 1:100 scale Gundam model, the phone crandle, decals and a 12.1 OLED phone. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t live in Japan.

Via Gizmodo

Starbucks Offering Coupons Via Foursquare

J. Matthew Zoss — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:42:36 +0000

You probably have one or two reactions when you hear a news story about Foursquare. You might be like “Huh? What are you talking about, you crazy person?” Or you may be like “Yep, I use it. Tell me more, good sir!”

For those of you in the latter camp, you won’t need too much explanation for this story. Starting today, if you become the mayor of a Starbucks location, they’ll give you a $1 off coupon. Not bad, eh? It’s a one time deal and only available until 6/28, but still pretty slick.

Now, if you were part of the former camp, you may need some of that interpreted for you. Foursquare is a mobile app that lets you “check in” at the various places you visit and earn points. The lucky individual with the most points at a certain location is the “mayor,” a title that means nothing other than that person spends too much time at Starbucks.

Via Gizmodo

Search Android Phones With Gestures

J. Matthew Zoss — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:00:46 +0000

There seems to be an obsession with developing new ways to search for content on your phone. There are search suggestions, voice searches, and now even gesture searches. Thanks to a new app available on the Android Market, all phones running Android 2.0 or higher are now searchable by drawing on the screen. Drawing an “A” will bring up content and contacts that start with that letter, and drawing another letter will further narrow your search. Here’s how it works according to the Google Mobile Blog:

Say you want to call your friend Anne. Just open Gesture Search and draw letter “A”, and Gesture Search returns a list of items that have words starting with “A”. If your handwriting isn’t all that neat, that’s okay. If the “A” you draw looks a bit like an “H”, as seen in the bottom left corner of the screenshot, “H” results will be brought up as well. If needed, you can also erase a query by crossing it horizontally: left to right erases the entire query, and right to left removes the last letter or space in the query. Now you can either scroll down the list to find Anne or write more letters to refine the search.

Sounds like a cool feature to me, although I’m unconvinced that it’s anything more than a neat trick at for the time being. Still, I plan on checking it out as soon as I upgrade to an Android phone. I’m still carrying around one of those early 1990’s car phones that’s attached by a phone cord to a briefcase.

Source: Google Mobile Blog Via Lifehacker

Firefox’s Mobile Browser “Fennec” For Android

Asterios Kokkinos — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:17 +0000

Hey, I’m using Firefox right now. I like Firefox. I think Firefox is pretty great. So it only stands to reason that I’ll also be into “Fennec,” which is Firefox’s mobile version of its veritable, hard charging browser.

Better news? It was recently spotted running on Android, my current favorite mobile operating system. This wasn’t always going to be the case – for a while, it looked like Mozilla wouldn’t put Fennec on Android because Google was going to force the program to run on the Dalvik virtual platform instead of natively on Android, a sentence which is gobbeldygook to me but will likely make sense to you, the reading public. Google relented, allowing Fennec to run natively.

At the time, Mozilla was only working on Fennec for Nokia & Windows Mobile.

Looking forward to Fennec on your iPhone? Well don’t! Mozilla’s not bothering, as they believe it’d be blocked by Apple, who would probably block it faster than a photo of a girl in a bikini. God knows they’re protective and fickle about what can or can’t run on their precious iPhone.

Source & Photo Source: PCWorld

Texting While Driving: The Most Melodramatic PSA Ever?

Geoffrey Golden — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:17:36 +0000

This bloody, gruesome PSA about texting while driving is as ridiculously violent as a Tarantino film. In the video, a young girl is chatting with her friends and text messaging on her phone, instead of watching the road. What results is :20 seconds of gory, slow motion car crashes, followed by 3:30 minutes of hysterical crying and a little girl asking why her parents aren’t waking up.

I understand that the filmmakers were striving for “realism,” but too much melodrama makes the video feel like an awkward exaggeration. I think you’ve got to decide between the teenager constantly crying, the newly orphaned little girl and the lifeless baby. Put in all three, and you might as well add a school bus crashing into a zoo, killing all the children and several sneezing panda cubs.

Google Android’s Super Sucky Tech Support

Geoffrey Golden — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:29:14 +0000

Google Android is the most buzzed about tech today, but not all the buzz is good. Reports say that customer service for the smart phone is abysmal. Slow response to consumer problems may be because the search engine giant doesn’t have adequate tech support in-house for dealing with hardware issues. Until this point, Google was never in the hardware business.

Google insists that the complaints about their service are coming from only a small number of customers. Still, reports of consumers having to email their technical support questions to Google, and getting a response 2 days later, does not speak well of Google’s support strategy. Hopefully, T-Mobile can pick up the slack while Google gets its groove back.

[Image via]

Google Launches “Near Me Now” Button, Delights Millions

Asterios Kokkinos — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:45:52 +0000

Google’s mobile suite has been nothing short of fantastic. Mobile Gmail is simple and powerful, and Mobile Google Reader keeps you in touch with your RSS feeds on the road. Now, Google raises the stakes with “Near Me Now,” which replaces the need for an separate GPS app to tell you what’s near you with the click of a link.

It just launched today for iPhone and Android models. What makes this particularly exciting is that it’ll tap into Google’s pre-existing review database – everything on Google Local has the ability to be reviewed & rated (much like Yelp), and “Near Me Now” will pull up those reviews when it tells you what’s around you.

I can’t wait to see what this feature looks like on the Nexus One. It’ll probably straight-up teleport you to your next location or something.

Source & Photo Source: FastCompany.