A drop in the digital ocean.

Is your laptop missing bluetooth? Do you want half a house brick hanging out of your USB port? Neither do we. That’s where MoGo comes. This tiny bluetooth adaptor weighs in at a miniscule 1cm x 1.8cm x 1cm. Pretty small, eh? It’s simplicity. Plug the device into a USB slot and you’re ready to go. You can connect to:

• Mobile phones
• Bluetooth printers
• MP3 players
• PDAs
• …pretty much anything bluetooth related!

Transfer rates are at 3Mbps so it’s not slow either. The device was built with Windows and Apple in mind but, as with many other peripherals, my Ubuntu laptop picked the MoGo up without a problem.

I love this little tool. In particular the low profile. Plug in, leave and forget about it. No worries about snapping the MoGo when you pack up at the end of the day. All this for about £19. What more could you ask for?

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Long distance calls, bargain prices.

Ebay owned Skype, the internet telephone service, has announced unlimited long distance calls to landlines. Ideal if friends and relatives do not have a PC or internet connection (aka the Stone Ages). The call plan will cost between 2.95 and 8.95 eruos per month depending on the country you wan to call. The service is being offered in a total of 34 countries but expect this number to grow.

Hmm, I think it’s time I went and bought myself a Skype handset!

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Popularity: 1% [?]

A shoehorned PDA.

Want to wow your friends with the latest in gadgets? Take a look at the P750. This is a serious consideration for users on the move. Asus have this PDA phone with all the features anyone should ever need (well, at least for this year!).

Take a look at the tech packed into this device:

• 3G HSDPA support (3.6 Mbps)
• front-facing camera for video conferences and…
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• GPS - you can send your position to 5 SMS recipients
• Travelog - record and share routes of interest
• 3 Mega Pixels camera

There’s even more packed into the P750. If you want to read more you can check out the full specifications. The handset comes with Windows Mobile 6 so users of Windows will be familiar with the layout.

A feature I like about the P750 is the password protection facility. This allows you store private information in memory then add a password. Pretty handy. The handset is laid out as a typical, slimline mobile phone. The major issue I had was the keyboard. It’s simply too small for my sausage fingers. Oh, and the silly little joystick - rubbish, in my opinion.

Ok, now forget those last two gripes from me. The P750 is a great piece of kit. Asus really have pushed the boat out on this product and I really do like it.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

Muscling in on the big screen.

Is it me or does every service provider and his dog want you to buy something from them? Every year sees a proliferation of new products. BT is now jumping on the bandwagon with a service called PictureBox. For £5 per month you will be able to watch up to 28 films supplied by Universal. Although BT currently offers VoD the partnership is designed to enhance existing services offering films that have not, as yet, been shown on good old analog TV.

The PictureBox facility is already available via Tiscali and Top Up TV and is proving very popular. I’d say that’s why BT have joined the game.

You can get the service through BT Vision from 5th May onwards, all for just an extra £5 per month. Pretty good value, don’t you think?

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Popularity: 20% [?]

Oldies denied access.

Paypal has announced a new initiative to help prevent phishing attacks where malicious attempts are made to extract information from web users. Browsers that are considered unsafe will be barred from accessing Paypals website. These products include Internet Explorer versions 3 and 4. The company also supports the use of Extended Validation SSL. This feature highlights the address bar in green when the site is deemed to legitimate. EV SSL is an add-on feature of Firefox 2.x and IE 7 but not Safari for the Mac and PC - Oops! I would expect that to be resolved soon.

This is good news from Paypal although not terrible helpful for users viewing through any of the  ‘unsafe browsers’. Some people may complain about the moves but, in the long run, I’d rather be safe than sorry.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Security for all.

Checkpoint does the security thing really well. Their latest offering is no exception. The Power-1 gateways come in two flavours: 5070 and 9070. This offering has been designed to work on anything from relatively inexpensive SOHO product right up to heavyweight enterprise hardware in the data centre.

Administration of the Power-1 can be carried out from a single GUI installed on CheckPoint, Crossbeam, Nokia, Sun, and IBM hardware. An interesting new feature incorporate into Power-1 is SmartDefense. This technology is aimed at UTM (Unified Threat Management) and dealing with emerging threats. I do question this capability. Does any vendor really know the direction of ‘emerging threats’? If you have spare £20,000, or so, then this may well be worth looking at.

Technical specs here.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

“communist” Linux eyes Communist China!

Do you remember Steve Ballmer calling Linux “communist” back in 2000? What about the alleged patent infringements? Well, that doesn’t appear to slowing down the Novell/Microsoft love fest. On Sunday the firms announced that they are to place more focus on China based on the belief that Chinese enterprises will pay for updates and maintenance to their hybrid systems.

Now this is all a long way from Mr. Ballmers comments in 2000 but can you really blame Microsoft for a direction change? Consider the current slowing of the markets. The vendors must maintain market position or face hard times ahead. Novell and Microsoft first announced cooperative work back in 2006. I know many advocates of Open Source were banging the desk over this deal but business is business. Licensees of Novell were relatively happy as the threat of patent infringement receded (note - ‘receded’. Microsoft still stakes a claim to its patents). As a company using Novells software, what would you be happier with? Writs or the sounds of OS’s ‘getting friendly’ on the back seat?

I thee wed.

Don’t forget that Microsoft have also committed to extending support into Novells Linux distribution. SCOM Managements Packs are available for SuSe. Novells eDirectory can talk to Active Directory and Microsoft has issued coupons for the Novell OS. ‘Embrace and extend’ or simply the realisation that times are changing?

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Bicep curls, HP style!

Don’t be fooled. This is definitely not an example the charge to minituarise the world. The iPAQ 214 weighs in at 13.3 cm x 7.5 cm x 1.7 cm and 190g. No tiny bundle of joy by anyones standards. And there’s no SIM card (harldy a weight saving exercise!).

Don’t let these specifications put you off. This device offers some compelling reasons to buy it. For a start, there’s the display. The sheer size of the 214 has allowed HP to pack a 4″ screen featuring 640 x 480 resolution. No more squinting at web pages for me!

Other touches include two slots for flash memory, one SD and one CF, 128 MB SDRAM, 256 MB Flash ROM and a 624 MHz CPU. No slug by any means.

My opinion.

Ok, it’s not small. It’s not ultra-attractive. What the 214 does have going for is the screen size and cost. Take the iPod Touch as a comparison. The 214 has a bigger screen but costs less (about £200).

I have to admit that I’m impressed by this device. It’s not normally what I’d go for but have a look for yourself.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Internet juggernaut applies its brakes.

Do you have broadband? Well, according to AT&T, the good days of high speed internet access will soon come to an end if significant investments aren’t made. Jim Cicconi, vice president of AT&T’s legislative affairs, has warned that the current infrastructure components will not be able to meet user demands imposed on them. The problem resides with us, the users. The sheer volume of user-generated content, video’s, photo’s etc, has had a dramatic effect on internet utilisation. Cicconi suggested that within 3 years households will generate 20 times more traffic than they do today. Ouch!

Wallet moths.

How much will this cost? According to Cicconi, £27 billion ($55 billion) will be needed in the US alone. This rises to $130 billion worldwide. No drop in the ocean by anyones standards. So, who is going to pay for this? Have you guessed already? In the first instance, the service providers will need to inject cash into the adoption of new and existing technologies. Ultimately, this will be passed onto the consumer. The spat between the BBC and the ISPs over iPlayer may prove to become a bone of contention. The basis for this report was the quantity of data piped by the BBC to customers. Ring any bells?

HD video takes a slap in the face as well. The technology is said to be 7 or 8 times more hungry than current internet video distribution methods. Add this to the statement that 8 hours of YouTube content are uploaded every minute and you can see problems ahead.

Farewell to the halcyon days?

I don’t think so. Yes, the big players will have to make some huge investments in the web but can they really do anything else? Bandwidth capping is an option but would ultimately hurt the service providers if they impose draconian limits on customers.

Where to now? The major service providers will make the investment or fall behind the pack. Will it be in time? I don’t think so. I can see improvements being made but the telco’s simply can’t afford to ramp up this quickly. Also, I’m not sure customers would be happy being slapped with a huge rise in their bills to cover the investment costs. I suppose an alternative would be pay-per-use. But do you really want that? Maybe it’s time for a serious look at a consortium of the big players driving change forward.

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Popularity: 2% [?]