Usenet-o-matic for your mobile

"Usenet indexer Newzbin has lost its MPA court case."
Maybe that doesn't ring a bell but anyone who's been digging into to "downloading stuff from the net" will soon find out that Usenet is the place where it's at: your one stop shop for all the movies, TV shows, music and apps you can chew.
The only problem: it's too much and as is the case with the torrent trackers - Usenet is also flooded with crap: virus infested apps, password protected files, DRM loaded pay-movies,... 
Not very easy to find the good stuff.

That's where Newzbin came in: their system of user-generated and verified reports made it a no-brainer to find clean and high quality releases - nicely packaged in so called nzb files,which are a list of all the binary chunks you need to download from a Usenet server in order to rebuild the files you want.
AND they have a very nice API for developers like me so they can script and automate their download flow.
Not anymore: starting from March 31, no new reports are being added. The service is not broken, but without updates it's pretty darn useless.
So there i was: sitting in my bathtub, sipping my red wine and hitting the play button, only to find the latest episode of Lost wasn't there.
No fun!
Especially since I was not in the position to jump up, run to the keyboard and quickly find another source.

As these things go, it's a classic case of  "the King is dead, long live the King".
NZB sites are not hard to find and I quickly updated my scripts to use NZBMAtrix as an alternate source.

One of those scripts is a mobile optimised search tool to quickly find a TV-show (or whatever it is you're looking for) and tell your homePC to download it.
The idea is that you use your mobile phone to initiate a download, your homePC downloads the file using a fast internet connection and streams it back to your mobile phone. Very easy and very fast: e.g. downloading a TV episode takes a minute or 2 after which you can use Relocally - or something like Air Video - to stream it to your device.

The script is called Usenet-o-matic.  It will be part of Relocally, but if you want you can use it yourself.

It's available  at http://usenetomatic.codeplex.com.
In this first release it supports Newzbin and NZBmatrix as index sources and SABnzbd as download server.

This means that in order to get it working, you need a Newzbin premium account or a NZBmatrix VIP account and a SABnzbd installation. (and a decent Usenet provider obviously - like Giganews)
I admit: those are a lot of things to set up (and are not free) so probably the target group of a script like this is pretty narrow, but once you get everything inline, download Walhalla is yours :-)

Sorry, no live demo but here are some screenshots: (Yeah yeah, I know: it looks like crap, I left the design part for you to add :-) )

The best Spy phone in the world

Well, here's something you don't see often: the very "sexy" Windows Mobile being used for its coolness factor.
Ahem:
What's more: without even knowing it, I seem to have the most bad-ass Spy phone in the world.
Woohoo!
The HTC Touch pro and other HTC phone models are the weapon of choice of the super candoall robinhood good/bad guys of Leverage.

See there?


That's my phone, man, and you know what's he doing there?
He's hacking into the main server room of a multi billion dollar company, from where he relay-hacks into the cellphone of the bad guy (sitting in the server room), activates the camera of that phone and streams it live to his screen, so he can see what password is typed on the keyboard.

WOW! that's insane, some serious skillzzz there.
(one question though: if you can do all that, why would you need his password to get into his PC?) 

But there's more- of course there is, moments ago his beautiful accomplice Sophie Devereaux made smalltalk with the CEO of the company, while sneakily duplicating the RFID tag of his security badge and sending it to Alec's phone. OMG: That HTC Touch has a RFID reader AND writer. That�s so cool.

But that was not enough, nooooo, with an innocent "Can you hold this for me please", she scanned the CEO fingerprint, transferred it to Alec's phone who prints it out on a Dymo label printer to fool the biometric fingerprint scanner. WOOOOOOOW! Who said that touchscreens are fingerprint magnets? you're damn right they are!

As you guessed it: that's not half of it.
To find the spot where the safe is hidden, just swoop uit your phone and start the "metaldetector" app. (Yes, on WinMo there's an app for that, although I believe @emich once wrote an app for that too)

Man, They're so cool ... no a wait, I'm so cool, cause I have the same frakkin phone, yeah!
Something has got to rub off, no?

I already knew this but give a man a smartphone and there's no limit to what he can do :-)

 
"Een man, een telefoon, geen grenzen" That's my motto.

So, show me yours, eh!

That show is going to be so much fun rewatching in 2030 ...

Do you want Flash on your mobile?

I really don't understand the aversion that some iPhone users have against the prospect of having Flash on their wonderphone.
Why is that?
Why wouldn't you want another development choice for your device?
Yes, there are a lot of crappy uses for Flash, lot's of crappy games, crappy ads, crappy sites ... but nobody is forcing you to watch them, do they?
Nobody is forcing you to even install it, do they?
Arguably there are even more crappy HTML sites, so should you also want to ban HTML from your phone?
Of course not.
So why do some think that opening their Jesusphone to the hordes of Flash developers would degrade it?
Because it would be less exclusive?
Because the ivory tower would get muddled by all those mediocre designers/developers?
hmmm ... it's not like all those iPhone apps are that shiny
And yet ... they do have a point: Last week I was at Brussels Girl Geek dinner #23 where Christoph Rooms was talking about Flash on mobile. "Flash is great for mobile video because you could create video files with embed commercials that would be impossible to skip! Hooray!"
Err .... that must be the worst possible "feature" to underline in such a geek audience :-) Bad points ...
Oh, but in fact, It still can get worse: Adobe is showing of their Flash player for the Nexus One Google phone: nice ...
First a crappy game is shown, that a topbanner flash ad, then a sidebanner flash ad, then an embedded video player.
Err ... WTF? If this is the future of flash then indeed: please get rid of it.
What was Adobe thinking producing a demo video like that?

Nevertheless: Flash for Mobile is coming, even for iPhone (somewhat)
Even after 2 years of little evolution in the Flash mobile area, I still see it as one of the best ways for cross platform development.
Apart from plain HTML/javascript, Flash still is the platform that is closest to the "Write once, run anywhere" paradigm.
Adobe's Open Screen project is very commercial, yes, but it DOES aim to unify a fragmented market, and that's hardly a bad thing.

So: of course you don't "need" flash on any phone but let's make a deal: give me Flash 10 for mobile already, and I'll build you a kick ass demo that shows how great a cross platform app for mobile can be ...

Barcamp Gent 3

Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Dit weekend was het weer Barcamp.
In Gent deze keer.
Topdagen - echt waar: verbazend hoeveel interessante informatie (en mensen) je in 1 dag kunt proppen.
Het is zoals TED, maar dan zonder de pretentie.
Fijn deze editie dat er zoveel non-Geek onderwerpen aan bod kwamen.
Een overzicht van veel sessies vind je op hier op de twikilist.
de groepsfoto hierboven is gemaakt door @bunker van Pitslamp

Het meest genoten heb ik van de presentatie van @karen18 Zij vertelde over een Chinees dorp/stad van 12.000 kunstenaars die niets anders doen dan kunst kopieren.
Ze nam de Mona Lisa als voorbeeld en kaderde het "kopieren van kunst" in het groter geheel van de kunstvormen, vergeleek ze doorheen de tijd en paste het toe op moderne media als het web.
Een interessante invalshoek en ik was er door verrast.
Verder luisterde ik naar @elisehuard die haar sleutels kwijt was en een oplosing zocht, @emich over Android Development, @sasvangent over Copywriting, @berttimmermans over "Going the extra mile" , @thomasjoos over mobile, @sart68 over hoe de fotoredactie van de Standaard werkt.
Jammer dat ik zoveel anderen moest missen.
De perfecte afsluiter kwam van @studiomuscle - hij vertelde over zijn leven met procrastinatie.
Deze biecht van Hendrik was pijnlijk herkenbaar en  waarlijk grappig :-)

Ikzelf gaf een presentatie over 1 van mijn hobbyprojectjes: "hacking your house"
Wat er  mis is met hoe je vandaag de dag je muziek, tv en films bedient en - als oplossing - hoe je heel je muziek, videoarchief, tv en domotica thuis in een webapplicatie giet, zodat je dat van eender waar met eender welk device kunt bedienen en bekijken.
Het was geen goede presentatie - vond ik zelf. Ik wilde er weer veeeeeeeeel te veel inproppen, en vermits een barcamp presentatie maar 20 minuten mocht duren moest ik veel stappen overslaan zodat mijn verhaal (en demo) niet echt uit de verf kwam. Ik denk dat ik het beter kan spreiden over een paar blogposts.
Het is wel op video opgenomen - ik ben benieuwd.
In ieder geval: Hieronder mijn "slides" en een paar screenshots van de demo - Als zeggen ze niet veel zonder de uitleg.

(Klikken om verder te gaan, in de linker onderhoek klikken om terug te gaan)

 Een paar screenshots van de demo

Spotify Premium

Streaming music is the way to go - it's as simple as that.
Replace your multigigabyte storage with a decent mobile always-on internet connection and suddenly the entire world fits inside your pocket.
I totally adore Spotify and it was driving me crazy I couldn't get it on my mobile because as Spotify isn't available in Belgium yet, you can't buy a premium account here to unlock the mobile application.
Of course the desktop app works fine on my Viliv s5 - which is also pretty mobile, but still ...
My own attempts to stream Spotify using my Spotify lib as remote control and VLC to stream my desktop audio to my mobile worked as proof of concept but the experience was less then ideal.
Sooo: today I finally managed to get myself a Spotify premium account and the key was Spotify's addition of Paypal as a method of payment.

Here are the steps to get your very own. 

• You can only use a paypal account from the same country as you're buying a premium account so go to http://www.paypal.co.uk and create a new paypal account.
• Fill in some bogus but valid UK address and bank details
• You can't use your Paypal balance to pay for Spotify as this is a monthly subscription, so you'll have to add a credit card. If you already used your credit card for your main paypal account, you'll have to use a second one or remove the card from your main account (that's quite a hassle, no ... probably the biggest hurdle?)
• You'll have to validate your card: paypal will charge it with 1.5 euro and you have to enter the transaction code which will appear on your credit card transcripts from your bank. The good (but weird) part is that Paypal will validate your card, even if you entered a fake name an UK address.
  After validation, you get a refund for the 1.5 euro.
• Once your card is validated, log into your Spotify account - using a UK proxy if needed - and buy a premium account with your UK paypal.

That's it, you now have an add-free high-quality-streaming Spotify that you can use on your mobile too.
Their mobile app for Android (which you can download from m.spotify.com) is pretty sweet!
Their 14-days limit to use Spotify from "abroad" is now lifted too, so you can shelve your UK proxy tricks for the next UK only app.

Gosh, that must be the most trouble I ever went through to be able to BUY something ... jeez ...
If Spotify or Paypal ever decide I'm a fraud and cancel my account ... oh well, so be it - at least I had the fun and satisfaction to get what i wanted :-)

Archos5 Android tablet with keyboard,mouse and RDP

I'm showing (off) the Archos 5 Android tablet with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, running remote desktop.

I really REALLY love this device.
It still is a bit unstable but let's hope some firmware update will fix that.

The only thing missing is - maybe - integrated 3G - or maybe not: tethering with your phone works fine and swapping sim-cards all the time is not something you want to keep on doing.

It doesn't have the Android Market but there are heaps of other places you can find software for it.
(unlike certain other devices you have a choice)
You can browse the web for .apk files of course, but there are also these dedicated Android open appstores running on your device

• AndAppStore (very slick)
• Appslib (from Archos itself)
• SlideME's SAM

Besides those you have the web based stores like handango and Mobihand
On Cyrket you can browser the Android market through any webbrowser and the fabulous xda-developers also has a very interesting android section, mainly targeted towards the HTC models
(And if you happen to have a usenet account, you already know you can have all you can eat there too)

Next up for me: firing-up eclipse and start poking around with the Android SDK

A new spotlight on your Windows Phone

Sooo! Today is the day that Microsoft presented it's new(ish) mobile OS: Windows mobile 6.5.
It's about time Microsoft is putting some effort into it's mobile OS: Windows Mobile is trashed like mad the past years and even Steve Ballmer seems to admit they dropped the ball big time.
And again: most people seems to think of today's release as whip cream on a turd (it's still a turd) - but that's too harsh ...
I happen to love Windows Mobile.
To put it simply - you can do whatever you want on it and the very mature development tools of Microsoft make it very easy to create your own software for it.
Don't like the how it looks? Install some software that makes it pretty!
If you don't find it finger friendly enough? Install some software that makes it finger friendly!
Even more important: it runs on whatever type of device you choose: want a keyboard? no keyboard but a touchscreen? both? flip-phone? slide-phone? candybar-phone? small to fit in any pocket or rather a huge screen for quality internet browsing? Take your pick
That's called freedom of choice, something other mobile operating systems severely lack ...

That also means that the successful windows mobile phones like the HTC Touch series are not successful because of Windows Mobile, but because companies like HTC are doing an incredible job of creating slick and highly functional hardware AND software user interfaces on top of it.
Have you seen the new TouchFlo 3D interface of the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the HTC HD2?
Naaaaaaaissss!! And the standard windows interface is nowhere to be seen if you choose it not to be.
The next person who claims you still need a stylus to operate a windows phone clearly doesn't know what he's talking about and has never tried this phone (but again, if you choose to use a stylus, you can :-) )

Windows mobile is also rebranded to "Windows phone" and a slew of new models were announced.
Is it just me or is the mobile phone business STILL the fastest growing sector in tech?
It's unbelievable how the specs of the newly announced models evolve: Fast processor, big touchscreens, multimegapixel camera's, some even with optical zoom, fast internet access...
I had some hands-on with the Toshiba TG01 (picture above) and man ... what an amazingly cool device!
The gap between smartphones and small netbooks is getting smaller as most smartphones now can do about anything a notebook can.
That's why in my opinion the "Windows Phone" rebrand doesn't make sense ... does this mean it will only run on phones?
One might argue that the gap between small PC's and mobile phones doesn't even exist anymore (e.g. the viliv s5 or an oqo running a full windows has about the same screen then the HTC HD2, which is running windows phone) so why not running a mobile OS on a non-phone mobile device? (or running windows XP on a phone?)

And now for the best news: You don't have to wait or buy a new phone to try out all these cool new features: you can have them right now, for free, on your current windows mobile device.
That magic is made possible by the extra-ordinary people at XDA-developers

Let's say it with me "X.D.A D.E.V.E.L.O.P.E.R.S I.S. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G" :

It's a forum of mobile tech enthusiasts who really push the limits of your device by porting the new features of the future phones to current models, and who integrate the latest beta builds of OS and interface software into 1 gorgeous package.
Windows mobile 6.5 roms are floating around there for several months now, and it seems that new HTC Touchflo interfaces are backported on a daily basis.
My favourite one is the "Energy rom" - I use the one from this thread. (It's running winmo 6.5 with Manilla 2.1)
It's a bit hard to tell what feature is WinMo6.5 and what is added the Touchflo interface, but the device is running much much faster and smoother then before and it looks absolutely gorgeous!

Is it legal to install a custom windows rom on your phone you download for free?
Probably not, but it's my guess that Microsoft is pretty damn happy with the existence of xda-developers: it's thanks to them that the "powerusers" find what they're looking for on a phone, so in a sense they do as much to keep the windows mobile OS relevant then handset manufacturers like HTC.
One word of warning though: if you decide to install a custom build on your phone, make sure you read and READ AGAIN all guides and warnings - especially if you flash a phone for the first time.
If you're not careful you risk trashing your phone beyond repair, but if you follow the steps you'll end up with the best (or at least most feature rich) mobile experience available today.

HD TV op je GSM (or not)

Mobistar heeft een mooie aankondiging: Mobistar lanceert mobiele tv met HD-technologie op de iPhone. Klanten betalen voor deze mobiele tv-ervaring slechts 49 cent per dag met een maximum van 1uur/etmaal.

... leuk, maar eh ... How, wacht effe! Die zin is zo fout dat even nodig heeft om door te dringen, maar het omschrijft precies wat er mis met het mobiele telecom landschap in Belgie.
De telecom operatoren EN de handset manufacturers blijven proberen om hun klanten in een wurggreep te houden om hen voor elke eurocent te kunnen uitwringen in een absolute tegenpool van een "vrije en open markt"

1. met HD-technologie? de TV-stream waarover het gaat is maximaal 320x480 punten - dat werd 25 jaar geleden al lage resolutie genoemd, laat staan dat het vandaag zelfs maar in de buurt komt van de minimaal 1,280x720 punten van HD - pure marketing nonsense!
2. het is enkel beschikbaar op iPhone, waarom? Er zijn massa's mobiele telefoons die minstens evengoed geschikt zijn om video weer te geven, het is niet meer dan je klanten vastketenen aan een bepaald merk. Stel dat Microsoft een nieuwe service lanceert die enkel werkt als je een laptop van Dell hebt ... het kot zou te klein zijn.
3. slechts 49 cent per dag voor maximaal 1 uur ... wauw! Vergeleken met hun vorige aanbod: 49 cent per MB voor mobiele TV lijkt dat peanuts, maar waarom zou het uitmaken voor welke inhoudelijke toepassing ik hun communicatiediensten gebruik? Als ik al voor een mobiel data-abonnement van bijvoorbeeld 2GB per maand betaal, waarom zou mijn provider dan moeten bepalen wat ik daarmee kan doen? Stel dat Telenet plotst zou zeggen dat je maar 1 uur per dag naar Youtube video's mag kijken en daar plots 49 cent per dag extra voor zou gaan vragen?

Mobistar: u bent een telecomprovider en dat doet u goed: u maakt het mogelijk dat ik met mijn gsm kan bellen en het internet kan benaderen. Ik wil graag een stevige duit betalen voor stabiel en snel mobiel internet en begrijp dat er ergens limieten moeten zijn hoeveel data ik mag verbruiken ...
Maar: moei u alstublieft niet HOE ik die dataverbinding wil gebruiken. Als ik dat voor videostreaming wil gebruiken moet ik dat toch begot zelf weten zeker?

Apple: u bent onder andere een bedrijf dat een mobiele telefoon maakt, en dat doet u goed. Maar alsjeblief zeg: Moei u niet HOE ik die telefoon wil gebruiken, als ik daar streaming video mee wil doen over 3G, waarom blokkeert u dat dan?

Ok ok, het is een beetje uitvergroot (en die "uitzending gemist" app is na wat druk van T-mobile toch toegelaten tot de Appstore) maar mijn punt is: Hardware fabrikanten moeten zich niet moeien met welke software ik kan gebruiken, en internet leveranciers moeten zich niet moeien met hoe ik het internet kan gebruiken.

Dit gezegd zijnde: uiteraard zijn er ook manieren waarop je wel gewoon "vrij" naar TV kunt kijken op je telefoon.
het doelpubliek dat dat ook effectief wil doen is waarschijnlijk ook geeky genoeg om dat zelf op te zetten:

• koop een telefoon die DVB ondersteunt en je kunt volledig gratis en ongelimiteerd naar de publieke omroepen kijken
• koop een Slingbox en je kunt naar alle zenders kijken die op je (analoge) kabel zitten thuis - hoe lang je kunt kijken is afhankelijk van welk data-abo je hebt.
• hang een DVB ontvanger of TV-kaart aan je PC thuis en mits je de juiste poorten openzet kun je dat TV-kanaal via bijvoorbeeld VLC streamen naar eender welke ontvanger - ook naar je gsm. Volledig gratis en je hebt zelf de volledige controle over beeldkwaliteit. Het verbruikt alleen een hele kwak bandbreedte, waarvoor je uiteindelijk ook moet betalen.

Mobile podcatcher

As the tv-season is on hold during the summer months, I had to switch to another type of "media" to consume during longish train/bus rides, so I picked up some podcasts again I like to listen to.
These days mobile devices are also more and more "connected" to the web and downloading music and/or podcasts to your mobile device seems so tiresomely old ... so: streaming audio for the win !
There are several really good streaming audio clients on the various mobile platforms, but heck, I found it was really frustrating to get the updates from your favourite podcast and get your device to play the darn thing.
Most annoying, especially as it was not a technical issue but an "ease of use" and "interface" issue.
Conduits Pocketplayer does a semi-decent job, but that thing is bloated and painfully slow to load as it tries to rescan your local music library AND your feeds at every move you make. (besides that, it's not free)

As always, the "If you want it done better, do it yourself!" mantra made me tinker to create a very simple and fast way to reach my favourite podcasts. no need to reinvent the weel and create a player; a small web application would do to fetch the latest mp3 url's and feed it to a player.

tadaaa!:  http://m.stef.be/pod (works in every browser but it's optimised for your mobile device)

Keeping track of various RSS feeds yourself in any application is a bit a pain in the behind: you have to scan, validate and cache each feed at regular intervals which can quickly cause some major strain on your server.
This time i took the smarter route and created a connection to a system that does RSS aggregation better then anyone else in the world: Google Reader.

in Google Reader I label the podcasts i want with a tag "mobilepodcast" , then my podcatcher script simply fetches the 20 latest items of all feeds with that label.
I'll post the code for the Google Reader connection later, it's really an easy way to get a feed and you still get to process them the way you want.

Depending on your mobile device and the software your prefer, the application presents the audio files as a PLS playlist, a ASX playlist or a direct link to the mp3 file.
You can modify this by clicking the "settings" button to choose your preference.
On my mobile, I've setup Coreplayer to open .pls files automatically. It's hands down the best media player for windows mobile.

Future improvements might be to connect this with my mp3 library at home, allowing for streaming audio from the home pc, or with this collection, but we'll see about that ...
In the mean time: http://m.stef.be/pod it is.

There's no such thing as the best phone

Congratulations to MG Siegler for writing absolutely the worst phone review ever.
What's makes it so bad is that's on Techcrunch, the worlds most read tech blog and honestly, one can expect a bit more insight from writers of this blog ...
MG rants on how it's such a good move HTC killed the physical Keyboard of this supposedly next "iPhone killer"
*sigh*
maybe tech-writers should replace the word "phone" with 'car' in their minds ...
Do you ever see an article boosting the new Mercedes as the "BMW-killer" ?
Of course not: all car brands have their place, it's up to the buyer to pick the right one, depending on his needs, budget and personal preferences.
There's no such thing as "the best car" as everybody will agree to.
Phones are no different.
There's no such thing as the best phone, it's just depends on your needs, personal preferences and budget.
Some might find it hard to believe but the iPhone is not the device that everybody reflects there phone-needs to.
so MG doesn't like physical keyboards? For gods sake, let him buy a phone without one and stop whining.
In contrary, I find a physical full qwerty keyboard a must have feature and will never buy a phone without one.
It's quite simple actually

• If you mainly want to use your phone to read and write emails, manage your contacts and manage your calendar, get yourselves a Blackberry
• If you want a decent and easy phone which main function is a .. erm .. phone, get yourselves a Nokia
• if you want the top in user experience and ease of use, and if you don't mind spending to much money, and if you don't care about things like "open platform", "freedom of choice" or "vendor lock-in", get yourself an iPhone
• if you want an internet device, get yourselves a Nokia N900 or other internet tablet
• if you want a device that does it all, and you can get used to  the resulting added complexity, get yourself a windows mobile device.
• if you're a true geek, go Android

Or if you have some other criteria like low price, or insanely large buttons, or being compatible with your car-kit or whatever ... pick another: you have gazillion of equally good choices.

The term "iPhone killer" was stale 2 years ago, if anybody still cares to use it present day, in my book they will loose all journalistic credibility in a flash ...

Hier komen de Mobile Vikings !

Tweakers.net bericht dat 1 op 10 Nederlanders onbeperkt mobile internet hebben.
Poe! daar viel ik even van mijn stoel - en dat moest ik uiteraard even twitteren.


Met dit als reacties

De datatarieven liggen in Belgie dan ook 2 tot 3 keer hoger dan in de buurlanden - en dat is niet eens het hoofdprobleem: Om echt nuttig gebruik te kunnen maken van mobiel internet heb je een goed uitgeruste telefoon nodig en - wegens het geweldige wettelijk verbod op koppelverkoop in België - mag je daar als klant netjes de volle prijs voor betalen.
Een stevige smartphone waarmee je goed gebruik kunt maken van mobiel internet krijg je in Nederland gewoon bij je abonnement, terwijl je daar in Belgie gemakkelijk tussen de 400 en 650 euro voor op tafel legt.
Slechts de meest fanatieke mobielers hebben dat ervoor over, waardoor de adoptie van het mobiele web wordt afgeremd, terwijl het in de buurlanden boomed

Het mobiele internet in Belgie ... het blijft een zeer dure zaak.
Maar daar komen de Mobile Vikings!
Vandaag werd om 17:17 uur stipt een nieuwe mobiele GSM operator in België gelanceerd: Mobile Vikings.
Persoonlijk had ik liever die andere naam gehoord- maar soit: Mobile vikings it is.
Hun grootste troef: GRATIS MOBIEL INTERNET ! en dat ZONDER ABONNEMENTSKOSTEN !
Jawadde ... dat zijn nog al eens patatten om mee te smijten.
Het is een initiatief van CityLive en ze denken de rekening van al dat moois te kunnen betalen door het aanbieden van "gepersonaliseerde diensten" - te beginnen met 1 commercieel productaanbod per dag.
Het valt nog een beetje af te wachten hoe dat gaat uitdraaien want ze lanceren pas echt op 1 februari 2009, maar voor gratis "fair use" internet mogen ze mij best wat spammen met hun commerciële partners, vooral omdat - als ze hun aanbod naadloos afstemmen op mijn interesseprofiel - ik daar zeker vatbaar voor ben. Perfect gerichte reclame is immers geen spam maar informatie.
Laat maar komen dus !
Het achterliggende netwerk schijnt dat van Base te zijn, dat momenteel helaas nog niet het snellere 3G ondersteunt, maar kom ... elk initiatief dat de mobiele markt in Belgie wakker wil schudden kan ik alleen maar toejuichen.
Naar goede marketing-hype gewoonte is lid worden in deze opstartperiode enkel mogelijk met een uitnodigingscode.
Heb je interesse, hier zijn 5 codes die ik kreeg toegestuurd:

     Go Go Vikings!

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