What is Haptic technology?

By using this technology the user can sense the touch, that is when we touch the touch screen we will get feedback from the touch screen either as a vibration or motion. The word “haptic” derived from Greek word “Haphe” which means sense of touch. When we hit a key in the touch screen we will get a feedback in your finger that key is working.

Nokia unveiled there first touch sensitive phone last week, 5800 XPress Music phone. It come with 3.2 inch diagonal screen. It has 3.2 Mp camera that uses professional Carl Zeiss optics and is good enough to shoot professional video clips for Web use a web browser that supports the Flash format used by most Internet pages to display video.

This device will be available here in India by the end of year 2008 for a cost around 20K. I guess its competent price with the features available.

Funambol is an open source push email and mobile sync for the mass market. Funambol v7’s new capabilities include open source software for BlackBerry push email and PIM sync, an iPhone plug-in for contacts sync, an enhanced Java ME push email client for hundreds of millions of feature phones, Yahoo! and Gmail contact import into the Funambol Portal, server syncing of tasks and notes via native SyncML clients, an enhanced SDK and greater scalability.

Download your Funambol application here.

Serious security flaws in latest iPhone software even expose email, text and voice messages to whomever get the device in hand. Clicking emergency call and double-clicking the ‘home’ button brings up the favourites on iPhone 2.0.2, which opens up the address book, the dial keypad and voicemail. Then clicking the blue arrows next to the names give you the access of private information, clicking in the email address will open the mail application. Clicking on the URL in the contact information will open up safari browser and clicking the send text messages can get the whole access to text messaging.

This is a serious security threat that should be avoided by Apple. Engadget says this will be resolved in the next firmware upgrade. iPhone released in India last week but the initial sales was not much promising.

In my earlier post I mentioned about iPhone clones. Here is the popular clone for iPhone, Meizo M8. The phone is feature rich which is packed with tweaked Windows CE OS.

• quad-band GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• 802.11b/g WiFi
• 3.4-inch 720 x 480 capacitive touch LTPS TFT-LCD
• 3 megapixel autofocus camera
• 667MHz ARM11 processor
• WinCE 6.0 based Meizu OS
• H/W encoder/decoder
• 107 x 59 x 11.9-mm
• 8GB of 16GB of flash NAND
• TV-out
• phone, music, video, camera, internet browser
• automatic backlight and display orientation adjustment

Meizu upgrades till now.

The price is very much attractive $310 for 4GB version and $399 for 8GB version. This phone can definitely tap some market of iPhone where the cost affordability is major factor. On a single look we can’t even distinguish iPhone and Meizu.

iPhone is going to roll out in India from Friday(22/08/2008) onwards. Leading telecom majors Airtel and Vodafone are distributing iPhone in India. Both companies announced their price which are identical. The rates start from 31K INR for 8GB model with GPS and 36.1INR for 16GB version. The current price of iPhone 3G is 8.5K in US. So the price is surprising.

Even today I got an SMS from Airtel saying book your iPhone from nearby Airtel store by paying an 5KINR, exploiting consumers .

iPhone even lacks a lot in its features. So I don’t know how Indian consumers are going to treat iPhone. The price is little bit high when we compare its features with high end other phones. Here is the list iPhone lacks.

> MP3/AAC ringtones
> Video recording
> MMS

These all are main features that lacks with other phones, moreover lot of applications are missing in iPhone. Considering the price tag of iPhone, I guess this is the right time for iPhone clones to capture Indian markets. Phones like P168, meizu iphone, LG PRADA, Hi Phone, HTC touch dual etc. I will write about the iPhone clones soon in my blog. Keep watching my blog.

Its shame that iPhone doesn’t support functionality of copy and paste to clipboard (copy and paste between different applications). But the solution is here using Openclip. This application is open source, that support cross application copy paste (copy and paste between different applications).

Openclip make use of shared space on the iPhone that is accessible to developers to make the clipboard feature working that doesn’t break the SDK agreement. But I don’t think application will be live in Apple store. Check out this video to understand how openclip works?

Cut and Paste for iPhone from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

All of us are using SMS in our day to day life for communication. Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) is high speed interactive communication service available in GSM network. This is similar to SMS but with the absence of store and forward mechanism(that is no SMSC involved for transaction). The USSD can even maintain a interactive session, which is the major advantage of USSD with SMS.

An example of service is bill status on your mobile. In Airtel mobile when we dial *121# the balance or bill will be displayed as a flash sms.

We can develop lots of applications using USSD. Lot of companies already developed application using USSD. Mobile payment solutions are one among them. Another application is availability checking of varies service like railway tickets, air tickets etc. The main advantage of using USSD is it will work in all GSM phones.

Technology has moved forward a lot. We are very much used with online payment solutions for wide variety of daily purpose which varies from online money transfer to e-commerce solutions. For instance now a days we are booking our air tickets, train tickets, movie tickets etc through online payment solution. Those with a few technology knowledge are used with all kind of online payment systems. By the advent of mobile phones which created another platform for payment, which are going to be more popular than online payment solutions,The mobile payment system.

Yes mchek has made it possible, the mobile payment system which enable online payment system into mobile, the mobile as an e-purse (electronic purse). The solution is currently live in India. mChek already identified their potential markets. The company is based in Bangalore. Company had already tied with banks like ICICI bank, city bank, corporation bank, HDFC etc. The application works with GSM currently the application is live with AIRTEL customers only but I guess soon this solution will be live with other providers too. They are selling their USP via AIRTEL which add more attention to providers. They had tied up with VISA and MasterCard for payment system. They are targeting both merchants and end users. mcheck is just an enabler they provide solution that make payment system mobile enabled. Currently they are backing payment via mobile for AIRTEL, transfer money via Airtel, ticket booking in Yatra etc.

How does application works?

To avail this facility you have to signup with mchek first(currently Airtel customers only). The registration is pretty simple just enter your mobile number and after that you will receive a USSD push from mchek. USSD push is a simple session oriented SMS push(similar to session oriented login in online). You will receive a j2me application on your mobile if your mobile is j2me enabled. Either you can use j2me application to add you mchek PIN or you can use online interface to add a PIN. The PIN is 6 digit numeric code which can be used later for transaction(s). This PIN should be kept secret don’t divulge this number to anyone. After adding PIN you need to register either your debit card or credit card for future transaction(s). You don’t need to carry your debit / credit card for money transfer afterwards. Suppose you need to pay your Airtel bill once you register your credit / debit card you pay bill from mobile itself. You can send query like “PAY BILL” to a particular number you will receive a USSD PUSH which will ask for mchek PIN and amount to transfer. If the PIN is correct the mchek will communicate with payment gateway and will process the payment. So simple as sending an SMS you can pay your monthly bills.
We can also power our existing payment solution to be mobile powered by registering mchek as a merchant. Now I am in house for developing one of our solution to be mchek enabled.They are providing libraries for platforms like php, java.

The solution is payment so be careful while developing solutions. A simple loophole may burn a lot.

I know this age is all about SaaS based products, now I am going to introduce you a desktop application but that create a real value for money and time. We can develop both desktop and mobile application using this RAD tool. One major feature that makes LyteRAD different from other RAD tools is we don’t even need to code a single line code for building database applications. The application was developed by a company based in Bangalore called LyteCube.

LyteRAD is developed using Java platform we don’t need to care about database administration configuration etc. So a normal user without enough knowledge in coding can build CRM tools, financial marketing tools etc. The application store database in binary files so the database can be export to other databases like Oracle, MySQL, Postgres. There are 2 version available for download LyteRAD CE and LyteRAD Pro in which LyteRAD CE is free of cost while LyteRAD pro cost $149.

The company is merchandising the product to Indian markets who want to build there own application without investing much money. They are mainly concentrating on small business companies who hesitate to use SaaS based hosted solutions because of security, privacy & reliability issues.

LyteRAD also allow us to develop mobile applications. In the Pro version we can develop applications called RADlets. This application can be deployed to any J2me enabled mobile devices. We can even develop the application in mobile phone itself. Just look at this video. A good documentation is available for LyteRAD.

Good news Skype users!!!, they have recently introduced a unlimited plan for just $9.95. User can call internationally to 34 countries world wide. I am sure this will spurn all providers in this arena. You can now call to your relatives all over the world by spending $9.95.

Hold on, like all other providers, Skype also have some hidden things in the unlimited plan. It is not actually unlimited, restricted around to 10000 minutes. I think its more than enough for international calls for a month. Actually the cost is $12.25/month, but if you purchase a package for 3 or 12 months you will offered a 33% discount. The offer is valid till June 1’st 2008. So hurry up and grab this offer.

Skype already merchandised their products all over US and Canada. How ever still lagging very much behind in Indian markets, where the real tech geeks and internet enthusiast resides. Yes this plan is not applicable for Indians .