My San Francisco communications pack
I started off doing these trips to “The Valley” a couple of years ago now and my communications kit is finally at a stage where its really getting quite simple.
This pack started off at multiple phones, multiple laptops, multiple sims a couple of years ago.
Now its quite easy
MAXroam, roaming in the USA now and new USA inbound pricing so if they want me from home they call a local number to them and if they want me from here they call a local number to them, it finds me no matter where I am.
Its like GrandCentral on a sim to be honest.
Iphone 3G, with open wifi everywhere and MAXroam data when it isn’t is now my preferred email device, in fact only for we have a lot of meetings here where I have to do presentations the iPhone would be all I would need for this short trip.
I use Truphone when on free wifi to make my long distance calls and use the fantastic new and top secret MAXroam call-in service from my hotel if I want to completely avoid roaming.
So that’s all I really need for my communications now, one SIM, two phones, Iphone and N95 8gb.
Thats all I really need, Thats progress for me
How to send free SMS from your iPhone
Just discovered a very useful new application on the iPhone APP store designed by an Irish company, is this the first Irish iPhone APP?
EirText designed by Vincent Coyne aggregates your free online SMS from the carriers and allows you to send them from your iPhone.
Works from Vodafone, Meteor and O2
Very clever, well done Mr Coyne whom I have never met but hopefully will remedy that soon.
Toddle-create beautiful email newsletters
With bloggers currently moving to the newsletter format 
I had thought I better take a look at Toddle this weeks beneficiary of the Tues (Thursday) shove.
As a recipient of Jason Calacanis’s wonderful new almost weekly newsletter I would suggest Jason takes a close look at this product.
It does what it says on the tin
“Beautifully simple email newsletters”
More
Jajah and Intel announce first collaboration
Intel took a sizeable investment in Jajah last year and whilst most of us speculated that the final product would be a virtual phone on a PC it appears to have gone a lot further than we had guessed.
JAJAH’s telephony functionality being paired with Intel’s latest Remote Wake Technology which is being announced later today.
“The combination of these technologies enables a PC to make and receive calls over the JAJAH network and critically – to ‘wake up’ from energy efficient sleep mode to receive a call. Currently, the inability for a PC to function as a phone in sleep mode has meant people are actually missing calls while their PC is powered down, or are being forced to leave their PC running all the time, which is clearly not very energy efficient. With this new technology, people are able to conserve power consumption by putting their PC into sleep mode, without the risk of missing a call”
This is nice and would definitely encourage me to add a phone line to the home server.
Twitter cancel SMS delivery in Europe
Twitter have finally done the sensible thing and cancelled SMS delivery outside of Canada, India, or the United States and hurrah for it.
This cost most have been a serious drain on the company and has been mentioned by lots of people including myself as a worrying cost factor in the future development of twitter.
“It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users”
If this secures and safeguards the future of twitter I for one am delighted and congratulate Biz and the guys for making this move sooner rather than latter.
Irish web awards launched
News just in from Damien Mulley that the Moviestar.ie sponsored Irish web awards have now officially launched.
Its a typical Mulley run event, all inclusive with a rockstar feel and having attended the Mulley organized Irish blog awards this year I suggest you grab a ticket while they are available.
More below
“Finally got the press release out the door earlier this morning for the Moviestar.ie Web Awards on October 11th. Nominations open very soon. Like the Blog Awards it’s a two stage affair. Stage 1 will see every nominated (and nominations are free) website get judged using a scorecard. Specific scorecards for each category will then be used in Stage 2 by the judges. An awful lot of work went into making sure that the scorecard was good enough to keep the staunch standardistas and the pragmatists happy and I hope that concentrating on these important areas will help push for better websites in Ireland.
The category list is here and interest in category sponsorship is already strong. Wahey! Not everyone will be happy with the list and will want their own niche included but for year one, we’re content with going with that list. Changes as always will happen the next year. Sponsors cannot be nominated either to ensure transparency. We hope the 11th of October will be a fun night. Leave the tux at home folks, it’s more fun without it”
iPhone 3G cracked
Well today was the day and all went well in the end.
Its a real simple process and you are not interfering with the phone itself in anyway whatsoever. Watch the QIK below and you will see an iPhone 3G running on Vodafone 3G
I have tried every option so far and none of them worked but I got a sample pack a few weeks ago from SIMable and decided to try that, it worked first time and with a little bit of chopping and changing I have the phone running on 3G vodafone.
I have one SIMable to give away, leave a comment if you want it and I will pick one comment
Disclaimer
SIMable tell me they aren’t guaranteeing anything on iPhone, I made now changes except on 3G and it worked first time.
Twitterfone V2 is live
This has been a while coming
The team has been working on this around the clock for a month and we are finally happy with it.
What’s new?
Well you can see a full demo below and here’s another one from Michael Arrington of Techcrunch
well you can now listen to you tweets, send an @ or send a direct
I really like the new features and have been surprising friends with directs for last few weeks.
Lots more to come including one really big piece of news
TwitterFone – Now you can listen too from TwitterFone on Vimeo.
Press Release
Twitterfone becomes more social, outlines expansion plans
Twitterfone, the service that allows you to call/phone in your message to twitter has announced new add-ons to their popular service.
The new additions to Twitterfone now allow people to listen to the last 10 messages from their friends all via their phone and directly respond to these messages or send a private message their followers.
Speaking about the new changes, Twitterfone CEO Pat Phelan said:
“The main feature request from users was the ability to not just speak to Twitter but also to listen to their friends’ Twitter messages via their phone. So I’m very pleased that Twitterfone now enables two and multi-way conversations on Twitter using any phone while you’re on the move.”
Twitterfone doesn’t need to be installed on a phone, does not need to be downloaded from the iTunes Appstore and can be used on any mobile phone on the planet. You don’t even need a screen! It’s the most accessible interface for the Twitter service.
On future expansions Phelan added:
“We’ve received a huge amount of feedback from our hyper-enthused users and we hope to provide them with what they want and we’ll be seeking some outside funding to do this. Twitterfone has become something much more than the proof of concept we initially launched.
We’re really excited about the relationship we have with our users and how we’re building a better product together.
* About *
Twitterfone Inc is privately owned Twitterfone is a US corporation with operations in the USA and Ireland. Its shareholders come from a mix of technological and telecoms background. Pat Phelan of MAXroam, Florian Seroussi of Global Roaming, David Marcus of Echovox (Zong) and Sean O Sullivan/Ivan MacDonald of Dial2Do.
* Using Twitterfone v2*
How the new Twitterfone magic happens:
You dial the TwitterFone number, press 1 and now you’ll hear your friends last 10 tweets from your home page. Simple.
Replies and Private messages? No problem:
While listening to a tweet from a user, you can send an @ to them by just pressing 2 and recording your reply. Likewise you can send them a private d message by pressing 3.
* Twitterfone Statistics: *
Twitterfone is currently available in 18 countries and will expand to many more in coming months.
Over 20,000 people have signed up to Twitterfone since it launched in May
* Contact Details *
Pat Phelan is available for comment on pat@twitterfone.com or +353-87-2049121
In China for Olympics? use Jajah Babel
Jajah have released a very nice translation engine which is available by just dialling a number in USA/UK/Australia.
Jajah Babel
Jason Kincaid over at Techcrunch has given it a test drive and it definitely gets a thumbs up.
“With help from IBM, JAJAH brings down the final barrier to global communications with JAJAH.Babel, a revolutionary real-time translation service that works on any phone.
JAJAH.Babel is the first of many translation services that we will be bringing to market. The vision of JAJAH.Babel with IBM is to offer a global product to enable consumers to unleash the true power of global communications”
Now the only thing missing is a Chinese number
Well your wish is my command
If you need to do translations from China whilst visiting for the games just dial local Chinese number 215-129-4632 this should cost nothing more than a local call.
phweet.com talking on Twitter
I only tweeted it yesterday.
Suddenly I am on a call with a bunch of friends from twitter
Phweet founded by David Beckemeyer of PhoneGnome fame and Stuart Henshall works beautifully
I just entered my sip address recieved the call for free here in Spain and suddenly twitter has become a real chat channel
Well done guys, big kudos due