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 British Airways have confirmed they will be offering limited mobile communication services from Autumn this year, initially only aboard the London City to New York JFK flight in business class.  They join the test runs completed by BMI and a commitment from Ryanair on the subject of in-flight mobile phone calls, but all seem still to be waiting for approval by European regulators.

Interestingly, BA will not be allowing you to actually make a phone call, instead users will rely on (more…)

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

After the success of the flatulence apps in the iPhone App Store and Android Market, it was bound to happen: soundboards of a less disgusting variety are being developed, published, and are gaining popularity. I'm happy to report that, while equally novel, these new programs deserve a longer shelf-life and prove to be functional at a higher intellectual level and in a wider variety of situations than their eye-roll-inducing predecessors.

Why not spice up your next business meeting with the Governator? "Affirmative, Who's your Daddy?" and the inevitable "I'll be back," are a few of the sixteen Schwarzenegger sound bites that an app called Arnold Sounds puts at your fingertips. Memorize the button locations and you don't even need to look down before launching an Austrian assault from beneath the table. Join the boss and look around with contempt for the cowardly soul who would dare to indulge in such childish antics at this crucial time.

Mr. T Soundboard offers only ten clips. And while less useful for prank phone calls, the Mr. T library annihilates Arnold's board for the purposes of random public hijinks. Lady in the twenty-items-or-less lane trying to get through with fifty? A simple "Get out my way suckah!" blasting from your pocket as you innocently browse the candy bars will show her that at least one person has recognized her infraction.

Farm Animals offers twelve clips. As polished as the app is, I don't think I need to write more about it than I already have. By the time I post this, there will probably be another soundboard available for download. If the Android market follows the same trends as the browser-based boards from a few years back, we're sure to see Joe Pesci, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, and perhaps Al Pacino make appearances. Maybe some celebs of more contemporary notoriety will turn up. Bush Button, anyone? Please, just don't.

As a personal request to Android developers, I'd like some samples from the 1976 film, Network. And while the most obvious quote is requisite, there are many others I'd love to have on tap. Also, a George Carlin board would be great. Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, and Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth round out my short list.

A Nintendo on my telephone? Yeah, kid. You read that right. What may seem like tragically hip kitsch to some a few years ahead of me (and probably like ancient, pathetic history to those a few years behind) is recognized by many as the 8-bit babysitter who raised them. Taught them. Loved them.

The name NesEmu, for those that haven't spent much time illegally trading the copyrighted property of Japanese companies from the 80s, is a combination of the acronym for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the commonly used abbreviation for an emulator.

Video game platform systems are emulated, usually on a computer, and run ROMs; Read-Only Memory chips. Only in this case, ROM refers to a digital copy of the chip that was originally housed in a cartridge and run on your real, physical Nintendo. So, now that I've gotten the background out of the way and lost all of the people who consider this stuff common knowledge and would care enough to download the app, why not get to the review?

NesEmu comes with fourteen games (titled as in the program):

• Super Mario
• Contra
• Circus Charlie
• Bomber Man
• Pac Man
• Muscle
• B-Wings
• Battle City
• Ice Climber
• Antarctic Adventure
• Golf
• Lode Runner
• Binary.Land
• Donkey Kong
  
  

The controls are simple and intuitive enough, after five minutes or so of play.

• w=up
• s=down
• a=left
• d=right
• Enter=start
• Space=select
  
  

For your A and B buttons, you have two choices:

• k=B1
• l=A1
• m=B2
• ,=A2
  
  

The most appealing to the masses in this collection of games, Super Mario, is pretty buggy and often non-responsive. Contra needs more horsepower. Others function perfectly. The app as available at the time of this writing is an early version.

The dev, Rainbow-Ming, states in the about menu selection that sound, save, load, and snapshot will turn up in the next version. This one is also referred to as a demo, so perhaps a priced version will appear. It would be great if the end-user could load one of the thousands of NES ROMs that are freely available online. Then, you'd really have a Nintendo in your pocket.

As I alluded to earlier, intellectual copyright infringement is at work here, so I can't see this getting approved in a pay-per-download situation. We'll see. Reports of malware in the Market are turning up, so maybe the gatekeepers are looking the other way. If that's the case, you can bet it's a temporary circumstance.

G1 Psycho and The Schwartz Unsheathed induce all the silly joy of a Dungeons & Dragons convention.

I'm as much of a RIM supporter as any BlackBerry addict is, however according to their playbook, when your flagship device is launched with numerous software and hardware flaws, it's okay to tell the general public that software bugs are a "new reality" with high volume handset production.  Company CEO Jim Balsillie told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that the Black Friday launch was reached "by the skin of their teeth," and when pressed about the software bugs, said they were a normal part of wide-spread device launches.  Regardless of the bugs, Mr. Balsillie says that RIM considers the Storm "an overwhelming success," and stated that the company is making 250,000 of the devices on a weekly basis.

Forth-quarter results are due on Thursday for Verizon Wireless, and as the sole U.S. provider of the device, investors will certainly be interested as to the success of the phone.  Sources close to the company said that approximately 500,000 devices were sold in the first month; a solid starting number - but no match to the 2.4 million iPhones sold in the first quarter after its launch.

After the launch and subsequent pandemonium surrounding the iPhone, Verizon Wireless sought a partner to create a device with similar intentions, and RIM was the ideal match.  However, due to the incredibly fast growth of the smartphone maker - 6.9 percent of the smartphone market share in 2006 to 15.9 percent today - partner relationships were strained as RIM sought to produce devices for each of the respective carriers.

All in all, new things are released, and bugs are bound to be found in a first-version release.  I get it.  But it is interesting to think about RIM's statement; openly admitting that software bugs are a normal (and presumably, acceptable) part of a mass release doesn't seem like a comment that would come from the maker of the BlackBerry.  But then again, innovation isn't always coupled with perfection.

Source: MobileBurn

If you've ever had friends ask to play with your iPhone, then you might appreciate this fun little prank, courtesy of the Cracked LCD app.



Yup, the name says it all. Cracked LCD — which is still pending approval in the App Store — freaks out unsuspecting pals by displaying virtual, yet lifelike cracks in the screen when they try to repeatedly hit the "stuck" app thumbnails. (Check the vid below for a look at how it works.)

I hope Apple approves this soon; April 1 is only a couple of months away, and I have tons of friends who love playing with my phone like it's a toy and not the center of my universe.



Via iPhone Blog