I have been using the new Brightkite location-aware social network (invite-only at this point) a lot over the last few days, and one of the very common questions I hear is how I do check-ins from my mobile phone, since at this point only U.S. carriers are supported for their SMS service. The (not so) secret is you can send MMS messages to email addresses with most Australian carriers (Vodafone seems to be only exception here), and Brightkite gives a personal email address for every account to send commands to.

Once you have an MMS compatible handset, simply:

1. Log in to Brightkite and select Account settings from the left of the screen
2. Click the Mobile tab
3. Scroll to the bottom and find your unique account email address, program this into your phone or remember it
4. On your mobile phone, create a new MMS message
5. In the To field, instead of putting in a phone number, put your Brightkite email address
6. Put the standard SMS commands into the body of the message. These can be found in the Brightkite help, but the basic ones are:
   • @placemark or @full address to check-in
   • !message to post a message and attach it to your current location

Using this method also means you can post photos to Brightkite from your phone. To do so, just add the photo in the body of the MMS message, and the text you want to go with it in the Subject field.

Enjoy, and feel free to add me as a friend over on Brightkite.

This review was originally slated to be published on MobileBurn, but scheduling difficulties meant we had to pass it over. It could be of use for some though, and it is a pretty great device, so I thought I would publish it here. Read on for all the details. Note: Click on the photos to enlarge. When I get a chance, I will add a few more live shots. Continue Reading »

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The Nokia N73 has been a bit of a roller coaster for me. When it was originally announced and I wrote the story for MobileBurn, I didn’t like it. It just looked funny to me, and I wasn’t really interested. Here we are though, five months later, the N73 has been released and I have one in my hand – and I love it. Read on for my initial impressions/mini review of this powerful multimedia handset.

Continue Reading »

One of the hardest parts of my job is remembering model numbers of handsets. For a long time, confusing numbering has been the norm, but finally some of the marketing folk that work with handset manufacturers are waking up to the fact that model names, rather than numbers, are the way to go. Samsung are by far the worst when it comes to naming schemes, followed by Nokia, but the later has recently announced (in a very informal way) that it will be moving to a meaningful naming scheme.

Unlike Barry Allwood at MobileScraper (like the name), I think this is a great idea – with a caveat. Like Barry, I hate Motorola’s confusing naming. Why are vowels so bad, Motorola? What I do like, however, are names like LG’s Chocolate. Think about the auto industry, manufacturers do not name their vehicles with long, confusing numbers, but instead give them names that are memorable, which increases model awareness and encourages word of mouth marketing.

I don’t think a pure name based system is the answer, though; Too many names will get just as confusing as the numbers. What I would love to see is manufacturers using names for ranges of products, which are then broken down with short, easy to remember numbers. Samsung, which I previously called the worst offender, has actually begun introducing this method (though only on a very small range of handsets currently). Samsung has its ‘Ultra’ range, which is then broken down into numbers based on the thickness of the handset (Ultra 9.9, Ultra 6.9), and while I don’t particularly like the decimal point in there, I think this is the way of the future.

Imagine it, the Ford SMAD-1901 – pretty memorable…

To begin, I’m not one to bad mouth convergence. While I have no real use for a music phone, I certainly don’t have a problem with manufacturers combining an audio player and a phone – it does seem like a good match. What I do have a problem with, is the fact that many are trying to take the interface of one very popular music player and make it work on a mobile handset.

Of course, the device I’m referring to is the iPod, and the interface is the click (or scroll) wheel. This input device is great in the audio player space, but it was not designed as, and will never work as, an input device for a phone.

Two recent handsets that come to mind are the Samsung i300/i310 and the LG KV2400. Both are respectable devices in their own right, especially with Samsung’s 4GB/8GB hard drives, yet both spoil functionality by using a click wheel.

One of the biggest problems with adding a click wheel to a phone is the space constraints. While the iPod’s wheel is very easy to use, when you reduce its size and place it with a myriad of other buttons, usability is severally compromised. Nokia, for once, have actually taken the right step on this issue – their N91 music phone still uses traditional phone navigation, and modifies the music player to accommodate this – the addition of non-click wheel music control keys is the icing on the cake.

I do hope that the trend I’m seeing of adding a click wheel to a phone does not continue, and that manufacturers wake up to the face that the usability of the handset should not be compromised to add a ‘cool factor’ to the music side of things.