T-Mobile wants to block Skype on the iPhone

In Germany and Austria, iPhone user won’t profit for a long time from the Skype release for the iPhone. The network operator T-Mobile wants to block the VoIP service. The official press release says that the operator wants to secure his own network performance. The more obvious reason might be something else: T-Mobile doesn’t make profit with phone calls by Skype. Also users of different smartphones will be affected by the block.

According to  Wirtschaftswoche there are two major reasons why Skype will be blocked: First of all there’s the protection of the network performance and secondly T-mobile fears complaints of Skype users about a minor speech quality. It seems that the block will also be established for T-Mobile WLAN hotspots. “The conditions of contract that allow T-Mobile to block Voice-Over-IP services are also applied to our hotspots”, so T-Mobile spokesman Alexander von Schmettow.

As far as possible also BlackBerry and other smartphones should be hindered using Skype.

Network operators vs. internet telephony

For today, it has been announced that Skype is now officially available for download on the iPhone. The internet telephony software is available for free and can be download using the AppStore. Regarding Skype CEO Scott Durchslag, Skype has been developed for iPhone because customers simply wanted it. Because of the high customer demands, Skype was redesigned especially for the iPhone. Skype makes it possible to make calls for free to other Skype users using WLAN connections, default networks are not supported. Here, only text chat is available. Skype can also be used for the iPod Touch if there is an headset available. Within a certain period of time also a conference call feature will be implemented. Pictures may be used for avatars or caller pictures, therefore the camera can be used. Up to now, it was only possible to access Skype via third pary products like Fring.

The fact that iPhone user are able to call their friends for free will certainly piss off some network operators since they won’t profit from the instant messaging software.

Skype Splash Screen

Skype Contact List

Skype Contact List

Skype Caller Picture

Skype History

Asus Eee Keyboard is a sexy bit of kit

With a five inch 800 x 480 touch pad to the right, a built in N270 Atom with 16-32GB SSD, 802.11n wireless, Ethernet, VGA and HDMI into something no fatter than a normal keyboard, maybe the desktop PC is a thing of the past. All this lacks is some decent graphics from Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M, but that’s another story entirely.

Eee Interfaces

Eee Touchscreen

ASUS Eee Keyboard

The brushed aluminium keyboard looks fantastic and we’ll be sure to get one in-house to have a play. The battery inside means it’s entirely portable but the Asus rep could only elude to a rough battery life after I took a wild stab in the dark at three hours. There’s not really much more to say other than it’s an Atom shoehorned into a keyboard!

The Eee Keyboard, which has been presented at the CEBIT, provides a complete QWERTY keyboard featuring a five inch touchscreen on the right side of it. There either the Windows Desktop or additional features like volume can be displayed.

The computer weighs less than a kilogram and includes besides USB and audio interfaces also a wireless HDMI interface. Network port and WLAN are also available. Prize and exact release date are not known up to now. Hower, Johnny Shih, CEO of Asus, announced a possible launch in three to six months.

• Display: 5′ touch screen
• OS: Windows XP Home Edition
• CPU: 1,6 GHz Intel Atom Prozessor
• RAM: 1 GByte DDR2 DRAM
• Harddrive: 16 oder 32 GByte SSD
• Wireless: 802.11 b/g/n und Bluetooth 2.0
• Interfaces: Wireless HDMI, HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports, VGA, Audio Out, Audio In
• Weigtht: about 0.9 kg

Mobile Phones – My thoughts on the whole thing (NSFW possibly)

Mobile Phones

These are my thoughts about mobile phone plattforms. Possibly this is not safe for work but actually this fits the image of the plattforms pretty well.

A very “attractive” Ad

A colleague of mine came up with a new marketing concept for Mobile Computing to recruit new students. I think this would have a certain effect on 18 year old male teens.

Mobile Computing Recruitment

Blogger Special

United-Domains started a special for bloggers. The company released a domain world map which is shipped for free to bloggers. The map lists all toplevel domains all over the world and might be fun for your office or conference room.

DomainWorldMap

So if you run a blog, feel free to contact United-Domains.de and they will send you a map.

Mobile Life Guard Prototype

Hi folks! Recently, I added the prototype of the MLG software to Netdays. The software can be downloaded and applied to a Windows Mobile 6.0 capable smartphone. To install the application, just extract the archive and copy the inline-service IT-solutions folder onto your storage card. The software is available in English and German, you just need to set the setting in the “Einstellungen” tab if you want to change. A database with some GPS positions already exists, so you can try the application without an external GPS module. For privacy issues we just left the name tab in the tool, so if you send us an emergency call just the name and phone number is transmitted. Incoming emergency calls will be protocoled at Netdays (eg. John Doe – +436641212*** – 26.03.2009 – 22:12:32) so you can check whether your emergency call has been transmitted successfully.

Internet Explorer 8 is ready for download

Since March 19th, Internet Explorer 8 is available. According to the guys in the Internet Explorer Developer Center, IE8 is faster, provides enhanced security policies, easier navigation and various product helpers as well as search engines. Highlight for the developers is that current and future standards, new programming tools as well as quickinfo and web slices for your own online services are available. Also IT-professionals will profit from the permanently available support, central installation and administration as well as from the improvement regarding security policies. The application is available here.

Mobile Life Guard Wiki

In addition to the new blog, there is also a Wiki now available featuring our last project. The Wiki can be reached here. Also the server is now up and running, so in a few days you may test the Life Guard on your own. Because it is a prototype, it is still a bit buggy, but all in all the application works fine. So hope some of you guys will download it and send me some emergency calls

Windows Mobile and the G-Sonsor SDKs

It seems that for any reason it is extremely difficult to access the G-Sensor of a HTC or Samsung smart phone. I did some reverse engineering and figured out how to get access to the acceleration sensor and with some help, I managed to implement a SDK featuring the HTC and the Samsung G-Sensor. I will publish the SDK in a few days with some examples how to use it. For easier use, I used a factory pattern to automatically detect which sensor to use. Hope some of you guys can use the assembly.