Well, after the Google Talk announcement for the iPhone and iPod Touch Mobile Safari browsers yesterday, Gizmo Project - which until my Nokia N810 I had rarely used since all of my contacts were either on Skype or other IM protocols (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ) - announced the ability to use IM via your cellphone. Gizmo Project had added the ability to IM AIM, MSN and Yahoo sometime last year or sometime on the PC, so you could still talk to your Gizmo Project contacts, as well as your AIM, MSN, and Yahoo contacts with Google Talk coming very soon.

Well, now they’re doing it for any cellphone, including the iPhone - just tried it and it works. But here’s a warning… it’s sorta spartan in it’s look and doesn’t seem quite yet ready for primetime.

I normally don’t tend to cover video games too often, I’m just too busy playing them with my work and all… yeah… work. Well, along comes the oddly named, ZzangOnline by Korean gaming company, MuhanGame.

By their own accord, it’s a “casual MMORPG” easy enough for most anybody to pick up, get into, play, kick butt, and have fun… ok, I’m interested. And for once, a cool looking game that didn’t originate from either Europe, the USA or Japan will finally be made available to the gaming populace worldwide.

In an interview with MuhanGames…

Read the rest of this entry »

They even sent out a certificate if you signed up a pledge. Hey, it made me feel speshul all warm and fuzzy…

In the end, 8,002,530 downloads in total. Congrats Mozilla Foundation.

We want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. With the backing of our community and your help we know we can make it. What else can you do?

Yep… this means that Firefox 3.0 (final) is quickly approaching. It also means that Mozilla wants to set a download record.

You heard it here… download it folks. It’s tons faster and uses less memory than Firefox 2.

Remember how I was trying to raise awareness in this post about “Disaster Fatigue”? Enter Rebtel…

People are in desperate need of help in China and Myanmar (Burma). Rebtel wants to help. We make this offer with no strings attached. Until May 28 you may use Rebtel completely free of charge to contact your friends, family and colleagues in China and Myanmar to make sure they’re okay and offer your help

What:
Free calls to China and Myanmar

When:
Through May 28, 2008

How:
1. Sign up at http://www.rebtel.com/callforhelp
2. Enter your mobile number and your friend’s mobile number in China or Myanmar
3. Rebtel will give you a local number where you live to reach your friend
4. Dial the local phone number to speak with your friend in China or Myanmar

Who:
Available to anyone in 47 countries
http://www.rebtel.com/en/Rates/Rebtel-countries/

I’ve actually used Rebtel in the past when I was looking for a suitable VoIP complement to whenever I was traveling and wanted to call back to the US or allow others in the US to call me. The directions on how to do so aren’t hard at all, and I kept a balance with them for almost a year or so. To me, they had provided a good service… and now they’ve proven themselves to be good people as well.

If your company and/or service is also offering ways to allow others to contact friends, families and colleagues in those countries, feel free to contact me directly: removethelabels [at] gmail [dot] com.

Students taking a class at MIT this year have been working on developing different applications for Google s Android. Using little-to-no funding, they managed to create a series of seven apps that have the potential to be of interest to the wireless market (or so it would seem considering that representatives from Google, Sprint, Verizon and HTC all showed up at the class presentations to find out what was going on). One of the applications, Locale, was a Top 50 winner in the Android project competition; it s a dynamic settings manager that lets you program the phone to forward calls, go silent or show different screens at specific times throughout the day. Other applications included social networking and geo-location apps as well as an application that lets you control your car from your phone.
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What’s Fido Uno, you ask? Besides probably having one of the coolest entrance pages in internet history - seriously, where else do you see a dog with an afro? I dare you to find a corporate site an afro sporting dog as part of their corporate identity… I might move up to Canada just for the dog mascot alone… c’mon. It’s too cool…

Oh yeah. Fido UNO. Back to the business at hand…

Fido recently launched a Canadian first for the wireless industry with its new service, Fido UNO. Fido UNO works by connecting calls from a specially-enabled handset to a high-speed Internet connection when at home and through the Fido network when on the go. Customers now have the freedom to talk as much as they want on their Fido phone while at home without using up their wireless plan minutes and all the benefits of a mobile when they’re not.

Fido UNO offers plans for $15 / month (unlimited local calling) or $20 / month (unlimited local and Canadian long distance) for wireless calling at home, in addition to the regular wireless voice plan. Existing customers can add the service to a current voice plan with the purchase of a UNO-enabled handset and receive the voice-optimizing wireless router free of charge.

Ok, if you’re in the US, this probably sounds a lot like T-Mobile’s Hotspot@Home, doesn’t it? Well, it is invariably powered by the UMA powered phones that seamlessly switch between cellphone to wireless (VoIP) in order to save on those package minutes. The cool thing, the people on the phone will not know when it happens.

Did I forget to mention that this is the first it was done in Canada? Yep… the company named after a dog, with the coolest afro dog mascot ever (for now) brings this new offering to you… in Canada.

Find out more about Fido UNO right here or if you’re looking for a visual way to learn about it, hit up the YouTube video here.

Qwest Communications and Verizon Wireless just announced that they’ve signed a 5-year agreement for Qwest to market and sell Verizon Wireless service beginning this summer. Qwest customers will have access to the full line of Verizon Wireless handsets and devices, as well as high-speed broadband wireless services for e-mail, Internet access and multimedia services.

Read more about the Qwest and Verizon Wireless partnership right here.

If you’ve ever been in a proper network/IT/server room, you will invariably know the SMC Network brand name. Looks like they’re thinking ahead with two new technologies for faster speeds and for greener products. Nice to know that companies are taking this environment issues seriously.

SMC Networks will announce two new initiatives at the Interop IT Conference in Las Vegas this week.

More on this as it develops.

Earlier, this post explained about Qwest’s fiber to the neighborhood (FTTN) network is expanding to a few select cities.

After some digging around, the 23 select markets are listed below for your perusal:

Arizona: Phoenix, Tucson
Colorado: Denver, Colorado Springs, Ft. Collins
Idaho: Boise
Iowa: Des Moines, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids
Minnesota: Minneapolis/St. Paul
Nebraska: Omaha
New Mexico: Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Cruces
Oregon: Portland, Salem, Bend, Eugene
Utah: Salt Lake City, Provo, St. George
Washington: Seattle, Vancouver

For the first time in my life, and for faster downloads and internet speeds, I actually have Boise, Idaho on my list of possible places I’d live. Guess it’s the 12mb and 20mb speeds that has me considering a move.

Read more about Qwest’s FTTN network offerings here.