Samsung is jumping onto the band wagon of providing some good viral marketing for us to spread around, the elephants look a little fake but its still pretty funny. Think I prefer the flash mob adverts…

View specs on the phone here.

The iPhone has been so successful mostly to its brilliant Apple App Store that has already racked up over 1 and a 1/2 billion downloads generating lots and lots of money for developers (the iPhone is also a really nice phone!)

So far I’ve resisted getting one but I’m more and more tempted to get one, now Sports Illustrated may have hit a new mini goldmine in their ‘Worlds Sexiest App‘ they’ve just released at $2.99!

I’m not sure how well the print magazine is doing but there are going to be lots of people around the world downloading this App that is for sure! The App provides photo’s of 20 models in bikinis and body paint plus videos of them. It also has a sports calendar for sports fans to keep track of up to 6 different pro and college teams.

Apparently this is also coming to the Blackberry but only in August, dam us Nokia users! Info via TechCrunch.

Projectors have been around for a couple of years now with some people even substituting your normal TV/LCD Monitor for a projector. In the earlier years the pixel quality wasn’t too high and if you were watching a movie on it there would be scenes when everything would blur together. Since then its improved alot but not here comes a major breakthrough that will be great for meetings and people with very mobile offices.

This device has been developed by Light Blue Optics, orginated from Cambridge University, and its basically a tiny projector with sensors that allow it to cast an image onto a flat surface but also measure when the image is been touched. With this it can measure when buttons are pushed, move objects around the screen and have totally interactive meetings.

I’m sure these devices will at first connect with your mobile phone/PC but soon be built into your phone/PC – and why not? The Economist has written quite an indepth article on these device, more indepth than I could write so take a read.

While, now I am more bleak I failed to win one of these 2 weeks ago when Nokia ran a global competition called ‘Search for N’ and they gave away 10 N97′s here in South Africa.

One of the main features of the phone besides the touch screen and qwerty keyboard is its new ability to display widgets on its home screen, with the launch of the phone and the recent Ovi store for Nokia there is a Facebook App to display the power of the widget and what the N97 can do. Take a look at this video

And here is another video of its ‘comeback’

The N97 launched just before the Palm Pre came out and the new Apple iPhone 3G S, its going to be interesting to see which phone does the best as all 3 are looking pretty good.

In the last couple of weeks there have been quite a few reports leading up to the release of the Palm Pre, some saying that it was the iPhone killer and others not agreeing. Yesterday morning in the USA the Pre was released on the Sprint network and some people were queuing up from the night before for it (not more than 50 so not too big)

So at the moment reading comments and articles about the Pre its going to be at least the 2nd coolest Touch phone out there and whether or not its the iPhone killer remains to be seen. Remember that Apple may have some announcements this next week regarding the new iPhone.

My list for phones I want keeps growing – iPhone / HTC Magic / Nokia N97 and now the Pre…

Here is a video of how the software on the phone works, looks freakin awesome.

On Techcrunch there have been quite a few people envious of people who managed to receive the Pre to review before the launch and looks like it even got a bit heated, check out the video below of Leo Laporte having a good go at Michael Arrington from Techcrunch who wasn’t sure until the end if Leo was been serious or not.

So yesterday I received my new Nokia E75 I originally thought about getting the iPhone but thought I’d rather wait for the new iPhones to come out and so I got a nice E75.

Its very nice andcomes with the following:

3.2MP Camera (which is close to my digital camera which has 4MP and is 4/5 years old…)

4GB memory disc that comes with it (about as big as my pinky nail)

Seamless integration with my Gmail account (though struggling to sync with Google Calender)

A QWERTY keyboard which is great for emails

Ability to install Apps from the new Ovi store, though there aren’t that many just yet

At the mo I’m using Twitix as my Twitter App but will see as its only a demo version

I think I can now throw out my old Nokia 6280 (see alongside) plus possibly my 5 year old digital camera.
I love technology!

The one thing that sucks for now is no integration with Google Calender, in this day and age this all needs to happen seamlessly and all phones need to come with Facbook and Twitter apps built in.

So Wired.com broke a story about the possible new specs for the Next-Gen iPhone. Apparently its a source closely connected to Apple’s hardware team… I wonder why this person is getting this information from someone within the hardware team?

Apparently the launch date is the 17th July according to this source who told iPhone fan blog Apple iPhone Apps – this is sounding more and more dodge to me, maybe we all should just stop speculating and wait for Apple to make the announcement. They usually don’t disappoint when they make these announcements.

Anyway, here are the specs according to this source:

* 32GB and 16GB storage (up from the current 16GB and 8GB models)
* $199 and $299 price points to be maintained
* 3.2-megapixel camera (up from the current 2-megapixel camera)
* Video-recording and editing capabilities
* Ability to send a picture & video via MMS
* Discontinuation of the metal band surrounding the edge of the device
* OLED screen
* 1.5 times the battery life of the current models
* Double the RAM and processing power
* Built-in FM transmitter
* Apple logo on back will glow
* Rubber-tread backing
* Sleeker design
* Built-in compass
* The camera, GPS, compass and Google map combined will identify photo and inform about photo locations
* Turn-by-turn directions

According to Wired.com these are small upgrades, not sure what they were expecting – I think the built in FM Transmitter is awesome! Just think you won’t have to plug in that bulky iTrip anymore and all those car manufacturers who were building iPhone connectors will only have to build a recharger into their cars now!

Gees, this has been quite a breaking story from Friday when Cosatu filed an application with the courts to get the sale of 15% of Vodacom to Vodaphone from the UK. The Rand dropped 3% and people were pretty nervous as they thought the new Zuma government was backing Cosatu’s interdict with the courts.

But the new Zuma government didn’t back Cosatu which is going to make people feel a lot more confident in the new Government Zuma is putting into place.

The Cosatu argument was based on the idea that its better for ownership of Vodacom to remain within South Africa and that this deal is just benefiting the wealthy. I don’t quite agree with this… I mean at first I thought it would be better if Vodacom remained South African but some big companies you just can’t keep out. The message that would be sent to foreign companies if this deal had been blocked would have been ridiculously bad.

Even this brief attempt by Cosatu would make me scared if I was a foreign company contemplating investing in a South African company. We need foreign investment badly to help develop South Africa and to block this is foolhardy.

Now only if I had a couple of spare bucks lying around so I could buy myself some Vodacom stock. Cosatu says its going to keep opposing this deal and try mobilise its members to boycott Vodacom… Cosatu and Icasa have been ordered to cover the legal costs, there goes the members fees of Cosatu… feel sorry for the members.

Currently I’ve had the same Nokia 6280 for a long long time now, almost 2 and a 1/2 years I think and the reason in the delay in getting a new one is because of my new baby I’m trying to release to the world – AllThingsMobile.co.za a site that compares cellphone contracts and broadband prices from South African providers.

Currently I’ve always followed the hype about the iPhone and the massive amount of Applications available to download from its App Center but I’ve always been unsure.

This iPhone is a phone that came out a long time ago, granted the iPhone 3G is a bit newer but still it only has a 2MP camera – my dam brick of Nokia has that. When ever I get a new phone I always wonder about what my next phone will be like and what cool features it will have, I don’t want to move sideways… though moving from a Nokia 6280 to an iPhone is not quite sideways.

Mean while Nokia released the 5800 XpressMusic at the beginning of this year I think and boomed with over a million orders for in the UK pretty quickly, the key for me with this phone is that its a lot cheaper than the iPhone with very similar features

I was going to go with the iPhone but then back in March the 8GB version ran out after the prices had dropped drastically on it… good news its now back in stock if you want it. In the mean time the Nokia 5800 has launched and is currently the most popular phone on AllThingsMobile which must mean something if thats what everyone is looking for.

The Nokia 5800 has 8GB of memory which matches the 8GB iPhone and also this year Nokia has released the Ovi store which is Nokia’s own little App Store. I think with the amount of Nokia users in the world there are going to be some pretty nifty apps soon, maybe I should start developing some apps and make some quick cash – who said you couldn’t make quick cash anyway!

I remember sending my first sms/text message way back in the beginning of 2000 well actually I first received a message. You see there was this girl… all stories seem to start this way! Anyway she had told me about it but I was unsure as back then phones weren’t quite geared towards SMS’ing peeps.

Anyway again back to this girl I was minding my time at a shopping center when my phone made a noise at first as you did in the beginning I didn’t realise it was my phone or thought it was something near by. Eventually when no-one else did anything I thought maybe me phone was dying or the alarm was going off so I brought out the brick. And there waiting for me was my first sms from this girl wanting to know if i wanted to go out for drinks or something.

At first I was quite intrigued by this SMS and a bit worried that she could get hold of me so easily and personally so I did the best thing and ignored it only to find her later that day with bit of a chip on her shoulder for not replying. And from that day on I was caught by the little 160character message you could send to your friends, come the first Christmas and BAM I was there trying to SMS all 100 of my friends only to get ‘Network busy try again later’

So back to the main story of why its limited to 160 characters and amazingly enough some guy, Friedhelm Hillebrand, back in 1985 say typing on his type writer trying to work out what the average length for a short message. He’d type something out with punctuations and numbers etc and then count out each character.

He came out with 160 characters as the average and declared that “This is perfectly sufficient”, as he was the chairman for the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) which is a group that sets standards for the majority of the global market he pushed his plan ahead and in 1986 it became the standard for mobile phones.

You can read more about it here.

I can’t believe that all of this was done while I was still 5 years old… and he doesn’t even get a couple of cents from each SMS sent!