All posts in Mobile

Parking Douche Application

by Chris M on May 17, 2012 in Cars, Mobile with No comments

The Village is a Russian newspaper that has decided to dive more into digital by launching a brilliant new application. The Parking Douche application is an application that allows people to name and shame douche bag drivers! The application uses image recognition where possible to read the number plate and find out who the driver is and then names and shames the driver along with the photograph.

At the rate at which people are driving worse and worse on the roads, I think an application like this could be launched in many cities around the world. I would have used it several times this week already!

Your status as an action movie!

by Chris M on May 17, 2012 in Mobile, Networking with No comments

The final week of the BlackBerry Touch Awesomeness challenge has arrived and boy oh boy has it been a wicked journey. I can’t believe that someone’s going to win themself a gorgeous Audi A1!

This week’s challenge involves you typing a status update into the Touch Awesomeness machine and if it’s awesome enough, they’ll take your update and turn it into an action-packed movie and send it back to you to use!

Here’s my one:

If you want to hear some examples, check this link: http://www.touchawesomeness.com/campaigns/status-update-of-awesomeness

Increased use of Blackberry devices in SA

by Chris M on May 10, 2012 in Mobile with No comments

Recent research conducted by InMobi into its South African network revealed steady growth of 14% in advertising impressions for the first quarter of 2012. As the largest independent mobile advertising network, InMobi already enjoys a significant presence in sub-Saharan Africa, and with total advertising impressions recorded on its South African network for the first three months of 2012 growing to over 5,4 billion from the 4,7 billion recorded in the last quarter of 2011, the evidence would appear to point to the fact that mobile advertising is clearly growing as an effective marketing channel in this country.

Of particular interest in the South African context, however, is the apparent swing in consumer preference towards RIM (Blackberry) handsets. Advertising impressions recorded from Blackberry 8520 mobile phones grew substantially from 9,8% of all impressions recorded in the last quarter of 2011 to 32,6% of total impressions in the first three months of 2012.

According to Isis Nyong’o, Vice President and Managing Director of InMobi Africa, handsets running RIM operating software now account for 44% of all advertising impressions on the South African InMobi network, followed by Nokia with 16,7%. This represents a stellar shift in consumer mobile usage from the end of 2011, when Nokia dominated with 41% of all impressions and Blackberry RIM accounted for only 15%.
“This widespread conversion to Blackberry by South Africans has not been unexpected given the appeal of the Blackberry flat rate data structure,” explains Nyong’o,” but the speed with which consumers in this country appear to be migrating to Blackberry has come as something of a surprise.”

Nyong’o also points to the rapid growth in smartphone advertising impressions as highly relevant to the mobile strategies of South African marketing buyers and strategists. “The fact that smartphones now account for more than half (55%) of the total advertising impressions on the InMobi South Africa network,” she says, “means that mobile advertisers in this country have an excellent opportunity to maximise their sales and brand building efforts through the use of rich mobile media.”

According to Nyong’o, the growth in mobile advertising impressions in South Africa mirrors a similar trend across much of Africa. “In the first three months of 2012, there were over 34,4 billion advertising impressions on the InMobi networks across the continent, “she explains, “which is a significant increase of almost 4,5 billion or 15% on the last quarter of 2011 and is indicative of the rapidly increasing appeal of mobile media as a means of delivering and accessing marketing and advertising messaging,”

Between January and March 2012, impressions via smartphones grew by 19% across all InMobi Africa networks and accounted for 24% of the total number of impressions recorded. In terms of the numbers of impressions recorded via individual handsets across all InMobi Africa networks, the Blackberry 8520 overtook Nokia for the first time since the research began. However, this is largely due to the growth in Blackberry usage in South Africa, and Nokia remains the dominant cellphone brand overall, with 60% of all InMobi Africa network impressions recorded on this brand of handset.

Riaan Cruywagen can make you awesome!

by Chris M on May 8, 2012 in Humour, Mobile with 1 Comment

As we come to the second last challenge of the Touch Awesomeness campaign by BlackBerry we run into non other than Riaan Cruywagen and he’s here to teach us awesomeness! For those of you who don’t know Riaan (shame on you), he’s a South African television news reader and voice artist who has been associated with the South African Broadcasting Corporation since its first television broadcasts in 1975.

This really is brilliant, take a look, you’ll laugh, guaranteed!

GET GOING!!!

GET GOING!!!

Touch me on my awesomeness

by Chris M on May 5, 2012 in Humour, Mobile with No comments

Haha, boy did I have fun with this week’s BlackBerry Touch Awesomeness campaign, upload a photo, add some graphics and add a voice to your photograph, check this out:

The BlackBerry Touch Awesomeness campaign is almost at the end and someone’s going to win that gorgeous Audi A1, if you’re involved, keep pushing, if you aren’t, do yourself a favour and click through here and get going!

A hands-on review of the iPad 3

by on April 30, 2012 in Gadget of the Week, Mobile with 9 Comments

So, on Friday last week, on a public holiday (Freedom Day), I went and ticked off another of those annoying, I’ve-never-done-that-before, items.

I went to a iStore (actually Digicape Claremont) with m’mate Chris M who you might know :) on a launch day, and bought a brand new iDevice. A new iPad. A black, 64GB, wifi-only iPad, to be precise. Yay me!

I’ve been using a first-gen 32GB wifi model for a while now, and it has slowly (mostly as apps improved) become the mainstay of my photo-editing workflow. Now quickly, before the zealots start throwing Molotov cocktails at my obvious stupidity and blatant heresy, let me say… No, I’m not a pro photographer. No, I don’t shoot a gajillion pics every shoot. No, I don’t shoot a Nikon D10million with 87MP uncompressed RAW images. I shoot a combo of iPhone and Nikon P300/P500 images, all JPG, all 12MP or under. And the iPad (even the first-gen), works just fine for ME. Thank you. Now settle down.

So, you may be asking, if the first-gen worked so great, why upgrade, right? Well I’m glad to respond, that the three major reasons I had, have all been very nicely addressed, and my experience with the device has improved hugely, because of them. So let me tell you about the reasons in a bit more detail. Full disclosure. I’m a visual artist (photographer). My metaphors lean in that direction.

DISPLAY:
This is actually quite simple. It really can’t be conveyed in words, without doing a Steve and just blathering on and on in superlatives. It does exactly the same as the iPhone Retina display did, when it launched. It makes everything else look like crap. It gives the rich feeling of really high-quality printing. Illuminated. Sharp edges. Velvia (deep rich, saturated) colours. Surf with SuperBlue whites. Viewing the same image on the two devices, side-by-side, makes you feel like you NAILED the focus on the new one, and the other, you JUST missed it. It’s still a great image, but dammit, it’s just … soft. Huge win for the Retina display.

SPEED:
The new iPad is faster than my first-gen. Duh. But, it’s not faster in a blow-your-hair-back kinda way. It’s faster in a never-keep-you-waiting kinda way. It’s like they had a got an Apple Genius to find all the pauses and hesitations, the ones that first-gen iPad users have become resigned to (and just lived around), and simply deleted them. All meat, no potatos. This is most apparent (to me) in photo-editing apps, which open files, apply filters, and generally go about their business with a very zippy, very pleasing, haste. Even Photoshop Touch (with it’s built-on-Air innards) runs very smoothly. Win.

DESIGN:
I absolutely ADORE the curved back of the first-gen iPad. How it hints at the same radius curve on the iMac. Sensuous. Gorgeous. To look at. To hold? Not.So.Much. I never completely feel like I have hold of all of it. It’s just a glimmer of doubt, but it simmers all the time I have the damn thing in my hand. “Don’t drop it…careful”. I felt the same way about the iPhone 3G I owned. Gorgeous. Felt WONDERFUL in the hand. Until I dropped it. Twice. The second time, the water did it in, proper. The new iPad is FAR less graceful. It’s thinner, with nicely radiused edges, with a flat back. It’s apparently put on a few grams since the second-gen, as well, but that doesn’t matter to me. It’s skinnier, lighter, and better shaped to hold onto, than the first-gen. Win, win, win.

ODDS and SODS:
- Why not a 3G (4G, LTE) model? The blindingly simple iPhone personal hotspot (which I have already) versus almost a grand an a half more. Boom.
- Why the 64GB model? Couple of reasons. Retina display means apps need Retina-ready graphics. Apps get bigger. Logarithmically bigger. Also, I want my whole iTunes librbary on the thing, and some movies and video podcasts. Oh, and did I mention? I take PICTURES! That.

Right. That’s enough from me. Hope I helped clear up some questions around the new iPad. If I didn’t address yours, sound off in the comments. k? Thanks for your time.

Santam bites back at Nando’s

by Chris M on April 24, 2012 in Cuisine and Beverages, Mobile with 11 Comments

Oh man, I love marketing, especially when it goes down as elegantly as this!

So Santam have this advert, you’ve probably all seen it already:

Awesome advert, awesome enough to have Nando’s spoof it:

lol, pretty classic, well, sort of, then Santam fought back, get a load of this:

Santam.. respect, I have no words for how brilliant that was!

And Nando’s final response:

Do celebrities follow you on Twitter?

by Chris M on April 24, 2012 in Mobile with No comments

To measure true awesomeness it’s all about who you know! Have thousands of Twitter followers? But how many are celebrities? Well, that’s the real test and that’s how you’re going to earn mega points towards winning an Audi A1!

This week’s Touch Awesomeness requires you to be, well, awesome on Twitter. For every celebrity that you can get to tweet and include the #touchawesomeness, you’ll be rewarded 100 points! That’s high stakes stuff, a couple of those and you’ll be sure to bounce right up to the top with the cool folk.

It’s easy to get going, head on over here and hit the GET STARTED button and let’s see how awesome you are!

Go, go, go!

Samsung big announcement in 20 minutes!

by Chris M on April 23, 2012 in Mobile with 2 Comments

So Samsung’s announcing something in roughly twenty minutes, you gota love these count down timers:

A Whole New Universe: http://www.tgeltaayehxnx.com/

New iPad Pricing South Africa

by Chris M on April 23, 2012 in Gadget of the Week, Mobile with 3 Comments

The new iPad is being released in South Africa on April 27th and the prices have been announced:

The new iPad has the following features:

  • 9.7-inch Retina display with Multi-Touch
  • Dual-core A5X chip with quad-core graphics
  • 5MP iSight camera and FaceTime camera1
  • 1080p HD video recording
  • Up to 10 hours of battery life2
  • Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n)
  • Mobile data service on Wi-Fi + 4G models (sold separately)3
  • Available in black or white
  • iOS 5 and iCloud4

It will be available at DigiCape’s, iStores and FFWD in Fourways.

Who’s getting one?

← Older Entries