xseries

.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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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…

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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 :-(

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3next arrives!

Well, as promised we have launched a new web site called 3neXt. You can find the big screen version at next.three.com and our brand spanking and quite wonderful mobile version at 3next.mobi.

The sites are designed to help you find the best mobile software and web sites. Best of all we've included review and rating features that let you decide whether you agree or otherwise with us. It's a no-holds-barred discussion (a bit like the comments we get on the X-Series blog!) so get along, join and let us know what you think.

Apart from the discussion that goes on around the stuff we post, you can also suggest your favourite software or mobile sites for our team of mobile internet gurus to check out and review.

The site follows a beta test program where readers of the X-Series blog were invited to take part and run the site through its paces. More than 100 people were involved in the test so many of the reviews you see on the site from today are from that period. For those who helped a big THANK YOU!

Feel free to let us know what you think, especially of the .mobi version of the site (click here to find out more about how .mobi is working to make the internet mobile), of which we are particularly proud. It has all the features of the big screen version, but has been re-purposed to make it easier to read and interact with when you are on the go.

As always...enjoy!

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