Google 411 No More

Posted by BA on Nov 14, 2010 in Android, Google, Google Voice | 0 comments

Google 411 was a local service in US to search local businesses and places by just dialing 1800-Goog411. Google has recently pulled the plug on the service and it is not available for the users anymore. Quite interestingly it has been the tool not only to provide free POI, people and telephone number searching for general public, but it has also been a great way of training Google’s voice recognition engine.

I believe not many people are using this tool now as everyone is now moving on to the smarter phones like iPhone, Android, BlackBerries or Windows 7 phones. Google has also found better ways of training it’s voice engine to further perfection.

Google Voice transcribes users’ calls that end up in the voice mail and sends it as emails etc. Android phones are also doing lots of searching and other commands based voice commands and all these tools are helping Google’s engine to learn how it can take voice recognition to the next level.

As a result, Google Mobile has announced support for African languages like Zulu and Afrikaans. They will also support voice recognition for South African accented English language as well. Read more about it here.

PSP Phone on its way

Posted by BA on Oct 29, 2010 in Android, Games, Mobile | 0 comments

PSP Android Phone by Sony Ericsson

PSP gamers can now rejoice as they do not have to carry a cellphone as well as a PSP. SonyEricssson’s android based gaming console mobile phone has been spotted as posted by this Mobile Crunch post.

The device clearly runs on Android OS and has a slide out controller. I really like the idea as I always hated the slide out keyboard on droid, while the on-screen keyboard is a breeze. PSP phone is expected to download the games that run on this device off an independent game-store, which possibly means that this device will have two different app-stores. PSP (whatever) store for games and android market for normal android apps and games.

I’m sure these early shots are showing just an early version and the keypad etc will get better with time and the actual release will have a better game-pad section. No release dates, model numbers or other information is available except the fact that it will have a 1Ghz Qualcomm processor, 512 MB ram, 1GB Rom and a Micro SD slot.

Read the original post here.

Android Apps Sellers welcome from 20 more countries

Posted by BA on Oct 2, 2010 in Android, Android Apps, Android Market, Mobile, Mobile Apps | 1 comment

Android Market has announced addition of another 20 countries from where you can sell your Android apps. Free apps distribution was already available in all these countries. Here’s the announcement:

Effective today, developers from 20 additional countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan) can now sell paid apps on Android Market. Over the next 2 weeks, users from 18 new countries (Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan) will be able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

Mobilink Milestone Launch and a free phone :)

Posted by BA on Aug 3, 2010 in Android, Google, Handsets, Mobile, Motorola, Smartphones, Telecommunication | 3 comments

What a day in the life of a blogger!

It all started when the whole local blogger community was invited to the launch event by Mobilink and Google to join hands and make good use of the social media and blogger community to create a stir in the online world and announce the launch of the Motorola Milestone. The launch event was quite a happening event right from the beginning with free giveaway key chain with a 50 year calendar, red bull servings and a cool setting altogether.

I thought I’m the last person to reach as I got quite late though I found out the event is yet to start when I finally reached the venue. The event was all about Mobilink, its new handset Motorola Milestone and obviously the Android 2.1 OS by Google. The session was really interactive with not only speeches but discussions, interaction with the audience, several interesting competitions including sms speed typing test but the biggest of them all was a free Motorola Milestone Giveaway.

And guess what? Yours truly (yeah that’s me) ended up winning the big prize. What was the competition? Well it was “Post a Facebook status about the launch event and get most comments on it“. I’m highly grateful to my friends and fellows who commented on my status and by the time the comments counting began, I had more than 800 comments on  my status. Woohooo!! While there were many close competitors, the phone lands in my hands and now I’m the first proud user of Mobilink Motorola Milestone. My free gift pack comes with a Mobilink Motorola Milestone  handset with an 8 GB of Micro SD card and a beautiful charging doc that I use more for watching videos now   . Thank you very much Mobilink for a great free phone and an amazing evening.

More about the phone

Motorola Milestone is an Android 2.1 smart phone with a 3.7 inch multi touch TFT screen with a slide keyboard. This is the same phone that is known as Motorola Droid out there in US. The black colored device has a 5 megapixel camera and features a ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz processor for normal processing and PowerVR SGX530 for graphics. You can find more details about the phone here.

The phone has been introduced in Pakistan by Mobilink exclusively and the latest 2.1 version of Android OS is the biggest attraction for me. When you  buy this phone from Mobilink, you get 3 months of GPRS/EDGE free and I’m waiting for a referral code that Mobilink promised. Once I have the referral link, I’ll update this post and you’ll get some discount on your purchase. So if you are looking for an Android phone locally, why buy used T-Mobile Androids? Go for a Motorola Milestone.

T-Mobile retires HTC G1 today :(

Posted by BA on Jul 28, 2010 in Android, Handsets, Mobile, Smartphones, Technology, Telecommunication | 0 comments

G1 is the first phone to be launched on Android OS and it becomes a very valueable “first” pioneering the Android revolution. I’ve been using this handset for a long time now and this post at Mobile Crunch proved to be emotionally touching for me. The post says:

Today saw T-Mobile finally retiring the venerable G1, forerunner to the ongoing Android revolution. I’ve been using a G1 since launch, so this is an emotional moment for me. Let’s just take a quick trip down memory lane out of respect for a solid phone.

The HTC G1 had its first peek in technical drawings back in August of 2008. Its pricing and availability was rumored a few days later, and it was spotted in the wild and leaked by T-Mobile a few days before the official launch. We philosophized, we tested, and eventually we reviewed.

Technology moves fast and leaves behind you a lot of memories and obsolete, marvelous pieces of engineering and design that you once loved and may keep loving forever.

See original post here.

BlindType for TouchScreen Phones

Posted by BA on Jul 23, 2010 in Android, Apple, iPhone 4, Mobile, Mobile Apps, Technology, User Interface | 0 comments

We’ve seen several variants of touchscreen typing mechanisms but BlindType is too good to be true. Watch this video how they use this virtual keyboard, once mastered will not require any keys shown on screen, saving valuable screen space for you. See BlindType in action in this video:

Smartphones in Battlefield

Posted by BA on Jul 22, 2010 in Android, Handsets, Mobile, Mobile Apps, Smartphones, Technology | 1 comment

Soldiers will be using smartphones in the battlefied. Here’s what this latest Reuters article says:

Raytheon, which makes the Patriot missile defense system, is developing software which could enable a soldier to find enemies in his or her surrounding terrain using a mobile phone running Google’s Android operating system.

The software could potentially be powerful enough to pick up aerial images from an unmanned aircraft or satellite and then focus in on details such as license plates on cars or a person’s facial features.

A typical soldier’s use case:

• Searching for a UAV nearby
• UAV found, Connected!
• Requesting enemy unit locations nearby
• Enemy units and buildings found at these coordinates, touch to view photos
• Incoming orders, move north, keep moving, wait for further orders
• Incoming missile, take shelter
• Your primary weapon is running low on ammo, reload!

And then there can be problems with the software or the handsets:

• Cannot retrieve orders, network not found
• UAV connection lost
• Battery low
• Uh.. the phone software stuck … urgh!
• Waiting for GPS ………………….
• … why dare you touch the phone, it’s an iPhone, remember?

Here’s the whole post.