xseries

Hello, I must be going ...

Hello all, well the time has come for the X-Series blog to close its doors for a while. We are going to re-ignite a new blog later in the year, but in the meantime there's plenty of places for you to say hi, including:

3 neXt
3 neXt on Facebook
3 Skypephone Forum

And of course, for links to all 3 countries, go to

www.three.com

And don't forget our .mobi sites

three.mobi
3next.mobi
3skype.mobi

In the meantime, I just want to thank everyone who contributed to the X-Series blog over the past 18 months or so. It's been a great experience and hopefully along the way we've helped out a few folk. I'll be turning off the comments ability in the blog but you can still read everything that's gone before, and if you want to get in touch we will still be here on email: blog.xseries@three.com!

:-)

de

3 mobile buzz

The launch of 3 Skypephone is getting a lot of press at the moment. If you want to follow what's being said, check out the following:

http://www.3mobilebuzz.com

Or if you want to pump up your RSS feeds, try this instead ... http://feeds.feedburner.com/3mobilebuzz.

Enjoy.

//de

ps: to prove what an uber geek I am, this was posted from my Mac on a highway heading to 3's Milan office using my new 3G dongle (er...)

Introducing the 3 Skypephone

Hi all :-)

Today Skype and 3 have announced the 3 Skypephone.

You can find out how to purchase one from 3's UK and Italian web sites, and once you've got one you can get all the tips, hints and FAQs you need from our brand spanking new essentials site www.3skypephone.com (or, if you're mobile you can check out the made for mobile version at 3skype.mobi).

To quote the official release: "The 3 Skypephone is a fully-featured 3G Internet phone with Skype built-in. In addition to Skype calls the phone makes conventional calls and can be used to access 3’s broad range of other internet services.

"3 customers using the 3 Skypephone will be able to make Skype calls and send instant messages on the move with the push of a button. This is the first time an operator has offered a mass market device which is tailor-made for free calling over the internet from a mobile. Now, all of Skype’s 246 million registered can be reached for free with the 3 Skypephone."

For more information get along to www.three.co.uk and www.tre.it.

A new 3 Skypephone Forum: we've also created a forum which is part of www.3skypephone.com which you can visit to discuss all things 3 Skypephone. You'll find it here ...

http://3skypephone.com/forum/index.php

//de

Your blog: what next?

Hello everyone. Well we're a month or so away from our first birthday (yes, can you believe it was only in November last year we launched!).

Since then we've seen a pretty radical change in lots of the industry, especially around the cost of data access, the opening up of walled gardens and the proliferation of great mobile applications -- not to mention some excellent made for mobile .mobi sites.

Over the past few months we've launched 3next on both PC and mobile, we've appeared on Facebook, we're run a few beta tests and invited some of you to tell us what you think either via email, face to face or in more private focus groups.

So, with all that going on my question to you, dear reader, is what do you think the future of the X-Series blog should be? The balance to date has been to focus on lifestyle stories, new software or gadgets, and less on support or Q&As as we feel this is very much the realm of the 3 business in your country.

But now is the time for a simple question: if you were running this blog, what would you focus on?

Just post a comment on this post with your ideas! I look forward to it.

//de

“Honey, there’s a Neil Armstrong on the phone for you…”

Forget the search for alien life forms while you’re in space – American phone company, younevercall.com has signalled the start of a (moon-walking?!) race by offering up a small fortune for the first call made to Earth from the Moon, says textually.org.

The firm has announced it will stump up $10,000 if a device or a person on the Moon phones home using a handset.

So if the lure of landing on the Moon doesn’t persuade you to try out some space travel, becoming the first person to make a mobile phone call from the Earth’s night light (and winning some dosh for your trouble) may be just the motivation you’re looking for.

Image source: Luc Viatour.

//ml

Response from 3 in Ireland

While not strictly an X-Series related topic, there has been quite a bit of commentary going on our blog recently relating to 3 Ireland (offset only by an enthusiastic series of post-birthday wishes from many people to Google!). As such, our colleagues there have provided the following responses relating to some of the issues being raised:

Reference: Third-party applications that use port 80

These have not been blocked, we are investigating why applications mentioned may not be working.

Reference: X-Series Orb registration process and UK phone number

This is being addressed.  In the interim, our support staff are aware of this and will activate Orb on behalf of the customer in the meantime.

Reference: RTSP stream query

This is not something we are aware, we are however investigating following your complaint

Reference: Skype client

The current client supports Skype to Skype calling and we are looking to Skype messaging in the next release of software towards the end of the year.  Skype is a service available on 3's 3G network.

Reference: MSN

MSN is available on 3's 3G network, we are looking to further enhance the functionality and we are looking to work with a new partner to bring even more features to MSN users on 3.

Reference: unlimited data

We have packages designed to ensure that users have unlimited access to the x-series services, of course with any service like this a fair usage limit applies to prevent abuse or fraud and this is accessible via
three.ie and the x-series website.

We hope the above helps answer some of the questions being asked.

3neXt on Facebook

We've set up a 3neXt group over on Facebook for those who are on the social networking site. If you want to join, just follow the link to it now.

Our Facebook expert, Elmer, says: "The 3neXt group is here for you to share and discuss the best and latest mobile applications and websites. If you have any tips, tricks or otherwise interesting things you do with your internet enabled mobile phone... show it here!"

I'm not sure if my obsession of taking endless photographs of Big Ben or what I eat counts as an "interesting thing" I do with the phone. I do however spend a lot of time on .mobi sites. Here's some of my current favourites for your visiting pleasure: 3next.mobi, businessweek.mobi, and time.mobi.

//de

.mobi premium name auction kicks off

dotMobi, the company behind the made for mobile domain suffix - .mobi - is selling some more of its Premium Names in a series of online auctions. This is your chance to bid on some simple, easy to remember and, dotMobi hopes, valuable names.

Among those for sale are:

• ask.mobi
• bank.mobi
• chat.mobi
• download.mobi
• e-mail.mobi
• forum.mobi; and
• webcam.mobi

According to dotMobi's web site, "the first of three auctions commences on 26 September 2007 to coincide with the anniversary of dotMobi’s public launch. The auction will begin at 12 p.m. U.S. Eastern and will last for seven (7) days. 100 premium names will be auctioned during that time".

The full list of names is in a downloadable PDF. To download, click here.

//de

Get your own IT department – at home!

We all know how it is – the home computer has shut down and no amount of restarting it is working and everything that needs to be plugged in is in the right socket. Who do you turn to since you’re not a company with a tech department?

Well Geek Squad, a company set up 12 years ago in the USA, have now landed in the UK and, as smstextnews.com reports, launched MyGeek, a subscription service for home computer-owners.

The service costs £7 per month with a three-month minimum contract and the company is on call, via a freephone number, around the clock. A geek will then fix your problems remotely by taking control of your mouse through your internet connection, or they’ll make a home visit - although this costs extra. It's just like having an IT expert at work…

Extremely handy whether you work from home or simply have a computer at home.

//ml

Mobiles shed light on operating table

Reading a book after lights out by the glow of your mobile phone is one thing – but having your appendix out by the lights of several phones is a great improvisation. And that’s exactly what happened in a hospital in San Luis in Argentina, according to intomobile.com.

The lights went out during a blackout at the hospital in the middle of an emergency operation on patient Leonardo Molina, which obviously presented something of a predicament. However, it seems that the man’s relatives had a flash of inspiration and rounded up mobiles from everyone in the hospital and brought them into the operating theatre to act as the surgeon’s guiding light.

So mobile phones saved the day although presumably when Mr Molina came round from the anaesthetic, he was rather thankful that he was unconscious throughout!

//ml

Many happy returns to :-)

:-)

The smiley emoticon has just turned the grand old age of 25.

It was invented by US university Professor Scott E. Fahlman who suggested combining the colon, hyphen and parenthesis to combat the limits of online communication and convey humour. It quickly spread and is now used by people all over the world, to express tone and emotions in email and text messages that may otherwise be misinterpreted.

Since its birth the sign has spawned many different variations including :-( (sad), :-D (laughing) and ;-) (winking), all of which help to relay the meaning of certain messages.

Blow out those candles smiley! :-^

Don't do this when driving!

Our X-Series moblog contains lots of great posts and hints and tips for those trying to get the most out of their X-Series mobile. While it's UK-centric it's useful for everyone.

To check it out go here: 3 X-Series Moblog. You're free to post whatever you'd like - pics, comments, helpful hints. And, of course, you can set up your very own moblog.

It caught our eye this morning with a couple of posts from 540air and gerrymouth who have been catching their fav football games while on the move or unable to find a pub showing it. -- de

----------------
Fav sites: 3next.mobi and next.three.com.

Happy birthday Google!

Break out the bubbly and raise a toast to Google because the search engine has reached the grand old age of nine.

The mammoth search engine was born on 7th September 1998 and in its nine years of internet life it has become a global phenomenon, typically delivering hundreds of millions of results on anything you wish to find online.

The word “google” has even become a common euphemism for the word “search” -- as in, "I'll just google that" and has even made it into the American and English dictionary.

Many happy returns to Google!

//ml

MyStrands reviewed on 3next

The folk over at our sister site, 3neXt, have just reviewed the popular mobile music solution, MyStrands.

"It's the site for all you music lovers out there, bringing all your favourite tracks and albums to your ears whenever and wherever you want it, complete with blog lists and recommendations based on your listening habits," reports 3next.mobi.

To vote on how much you like/love/hate it, or even write your own short review, click here. Or get along to 3next.mobi where you can do all that and more when you are on the move (you can also have a look at it on your PC if you want to check out what a good, solid made for mobile site looks like).

//de

Health checks go mobile

Ever wanted to go to your doctor with a diagnosis already done? According to engadget.com a prototype device that hooks up to your mobile has been developed by the Berkeley Institute of Design.

The health monitoring system “talks” to your mobile and records heart rhythms, muscle tension and body temperature. It works with a micro-controller, a Bluetooth interface, an audio amplifier and three low power “instrumentation amplifiers” to communicate wirelessly with Windows Mobile handsets.

The new-fangled gadget could be a hypochondriac’s dream come true. And quite possibly a doctor’s nightmare.

//ml

Yahoo!'s SMS by email

It’s one of the dilemmas of the internet/mobile age – do you send someone a text or an email about that party at the weekend? According to news.com, Yahoo! has come up with the answer – send an SMS through their web email service. The company now gives users a choice between sending a good old fashioned email, chatting through instant messenger or sending a text message.

The new feature is free. To use it simply select “Text message”, enter the name and mobile number of your "textee" and send it off. The message will appear in a speech bubble in the mail window and the person receiving it can reply back by text too, which will also appear in a speech bubble. Handy for sending a quick message to someone you know isn’t online at that moment but has a mobile.

//ml

Beep beep – step away from the cigarette!

Still puffing away two months after the big ban in England? If you’ve run out of areas to apply the patches onto and you’re fed up with chewing the gum – how about packing the cigarettes in by text message? According to cnet.com.au a new service, QuiText, has been launched in Australia to help antipodean nicotine addicts, as well as those in the UK, fight the evil weed.

For a sign up fee of AU$20 an SMS message of support will be sent to your phone every day for six weeks to help you conquer the cravings – the texts will contain advice on dealing with the problems a smoker may face on the path to a tobacco-free life. All you need to do when you register is tell the service what date you want to quit and which time of day you want to receive a text message.

A Quit Meter is available to add to your own blog or web page to watch the smoke-free days and the pennies saved go up and there’s even some downloadable desktop wallpaper, one of which bears the legend “I need to stop smoking because it’s stupid”…

It’s time to look that cigarette in the eye…

Everywhere...

:-)

Or try:

Bad luck kids - Truancy Call has arrived…

Mobile phones may be a student’s best friend and a teacher’s nightmare, but the tables have been turned in Sydney, Australia, says smstextnews.com. Burwood Girls’ High School have introduced an automatic system to tackle truants which makes an automated phone-call, followed by sending a text to parents' mobiles at the start of the day if the child hasn’t shown up for school. The said parent must then contact the school for more information. If they don't respond, further phone calls are made to home phones after regular office hours.

Obviously it’s also a great safety tool that makes the previous system (a letter was sent to the parents within three days of a student being absent) look positively archaic  and is sure to delight nagging parents and frustrated teachers alike.  The Australian Board of Education has made informing parents promptly compulsory and there has already been a marked improvement in the number of girls showing up for their lessons.

However, it does spell the beginning of the end of an easy life for school skivers everywhere…

//ml

X-Series reviewed

Very detailed review of X-Series by someone who has used it for over six months both in the UK and overseas (well, abroad if you must) on SMS Text News site has just appeared.

To read it go here.

//de

“Excuse me, it’s my plant calling…”

Your plants could soon be able to call you if they’re feeling a bit parched or over-drenched. Yes, you read that right. According to mobhappy.com, some New York post-grad students are creating a way for plants in peril to make an SOS call to their perhaps not so green-fingered owners.

How? By placing moisture sensors in the plant soil that are able to send a wireless signal to a gateway that calls, using an assigned recorded voice, if the greenery is suffering. Rebecca Bray, an interactive communications student who is one of the group developing the project, called Botanicalls, says, “They will call and tell you they are thirsty and need a lot of water,” adding that, "They are also really polite."

So polite in fact that they also call to say thank you after watering them. As Rebecca explained, "We wanted to make sure that you weren’t just getting phone calls that were really needy."

And if the plant calls you during a dull conversation, it’s a great way to excuse yourself and look mad at the same time.

Original story from Reuters.

//ml

A little bit of green

In a report published last year, we found that most of you believe downloading music will help save the planet. But beyond Gen-E (Earbud) getting their low-carbon guilt-free fix of D'n'B, or R'n'B, or whatever, are there any other upsides to this wonderful wireless stuff?

A 2004 UCLA Berkeley study found that if you cancel your daily paper and read it on your mobile instead, you will save about 500kg of CO2, and about 10-20,000 litres of water. Of course, don't try swatting a fly with your mobile. Unless it's one of these ones. The same study calculated that making a two hour mobile phone call instead of flying three hours to meet face-to-face will save 600kg of CO2 - or about enough to download 120 years worth of newspapers.

Which got us thinking: surely there must be lots of other ways 3G is saving the planet?

Maybe using your 3G-connected SatNav to avoid that traffic jam or to take the most direct route saves a few litres of petrol? Or getting that SMS travel alert means you take the train instead? Or, you use your 3G modem / mobile to work from home (and save soap as well).

We're keen to hear about how having 3G lets you live more eco-nicely, so email us on your Olive oil laptop from your carbon-neutral wind-powered lifepod. We'll do an eco-compendium post of the best ones, with some sort of PRIZE for the best one. In the best spirit of recycling, we'll dig out something cool from the bottom of the X-Series office toy drawer.

//ms

Talking to the X-Series blogger

Morgo posted the following: This blog seems to be all one way...how can we pose questions of you and your team to get answers and info without the need to reply to posts? That would be a much more effective way of working with your customers.

de replied: Hi. Although we've been a bit slow posting new items recently due to work load (I was told things slowed down in summer in Europe when I moved here 3 years ago!!), we try our best to reply to all emails we receive via the blog. We answer all the questions we can, usually within a few days and mostly to people's general satisfaction -- although as someone famous once said, you can't please all the people all the time, etc!

Areas we have trouble is helping on unannounced stuff, like handsets or software. This information is usually kept quiet until an official announcement or release for competitive and, sometimes, other reasons.

As always, however, we remain an open channel of communication so ask away and we'll always try to answer you asap. Email us at: blog.xseries@three.com

//de

ps: I've answered your two other questions in reply to your post ;-)

Most read post on SMS Text News

Most read.

No business model?

News just in from SMS Text News is that one of our fav "can't work out what it's for or how anyone will make money from it" things, Twitter, has just picked up some more funding.

The funding comes from New York-based Union Square Ventures.

Union Square Ventures (which invested in delicious before it hit the big time, states SMS Text News)  joins a list of impressive investors who must think there's something up, including long ago web uber child, Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame.

To try Twitter, get along to www.twitter.com, or check out the review of it on 3 neXt's PC or .mobi site.

//de

Last Ever Transformers Post on X-Series Blog

This is a short a sweet blog entry this morning and our very last Transformers entry. Don't want you thinking that we're obsessed. Watches that transform into Transformers. Enough said.

From 3gms.

For a more modern version, check this out.

//de

Shirts that text back - I'm hot (or...)!

Great post from MobHappy about a company in the US that has developed an interactive, SMS-activated t-shirt.

No doubt the result of a heavy ideation session at reactee (geddit?), according to MobHappy: "The idea is that you order a personalised message printed on a T-Shirt ('Hot or Not?' or 'Ruff or Buff?' are obvious applications). People then text your keyword to 41411 in the same way and get back your pre-programmed message."

MobHappy speculates on such usage as politicians and charities using it to raise awareness.

Being of a more artistic bent we have already ordered a t-shirt which states simply, "Je ne suis pas un t-shirt". Suggestions for the no doubt witty response that we would send out if someone sent us a text to that tee are most welcome.

Note: This service only works in the US :-(

//de

Create a comic, win some cash

This one from SMS Text News: "Recently launched ROK Comics - the UK-based online and mobile phone comic publisher has announced a competition aimed at budding comic artists.

"As well as a prize of $10,000 for the best original comic strip of cartoon published, ROK are also offering the winner of the prize the opportunity to feature front-and-centre online under a new section of the ROK Comics website to be called ‘HOT TALENT.’"

The competition runs until September 1 and to enter all you have to do is create a comic and upload it to the ROK web site (wow, easy!).

Not only will you have a chance to win some £££$$$€€€ but you'll also get read on mobiles alongside such comic classics as Garfield, Doonesbury, Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles and Too Much Coffee Man.

//de

What's Happening

In the first of a regular series of quick links, here's what's happening at X-Series Towers right now: listening to some Aussie Rules football, updating Jaiku, feeling depressed we don't have more posts on our Flickr Group, scanning 3 neXt posts, doing some random Wikipedia surfing, wondering what's up on the Tour, and thinking about going to the cinema later today. Feel free to let us know what you're up to, too :-)

//de

Man writes book on mobile

Well, it's early Sunday morning and as usual we're scanning the web for the latest and greatest things you can do on your mobile. The first story we came across is certainly one of the strangest  we've seen at X-Series towers of late.

MoCoNews writes: "In a sign of how mobile phones are improving in terms of computing power and usefulness an Italian man has written a 384-page science fiction novel while commuting to and from work over the course of 17 weeks."

The book's author reports: "Only a few years ago I would have struggled to find both the time and the publisher to enable me to create this book. Thanks to my Nokia and Lulu, I am now proud to be a published author."

Oh dear. If you dare, you can read the book on self-publishing site lulu.com. Meanwhile, we're planning to spend this Sunday putting the finishing touches to our soon to be released 842 page epic, "X-Series Unlimited".

//de