xseries

“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.

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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.

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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!

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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! :-^

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!

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Everywhere...

:-)

Or try:

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.

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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.

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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".

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It's almost here!

It's a stretch but we think we can get away with writing about the new Transformers movie - which will finally be here next week - simply because the cinema is one of the few places in the world where you have to have your mobile turned off.

Whew! It took us hours to work out what the connection to Transformers and mobiles was, but we did it!

It you want to see the trailer, go here, and if you want to see when we last mentioned the Transformers on the X-Series blog, go here.

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