Omio News Blog

Texting Whilst Driving Makes (Autotune) The News

We have made it no secret on Omio that we think audio pitch-shifting software Autotune is one of the biggest blights on society alongside locusts and the unexplained popularity of reality TV, but in the right hands it can liven up even the worst of singers (see: Cher, T-Pain, Cher again).

The beautiful marriage of breaking stories and synthesised voices by musician Michael Gregory and co. on YouTube hit ‘AutoTune The News‘ are nothing short of a revelation, making R&B stars out of such unlikely warblers as vice-president Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

The funniest part is neither the unlikely topics nor the spot-on pastiche of the tired musical crutch Autotune has become, but the fact that the songs actually stand up on their own and are rather catchy! It should come as no surprise that MP3s and merchandise are available…

The latest in the long-running series deals with such weighty issues as racism and government funding in their inimitable style, but the crowning glory arrives in the final segment about the dangers of texting whilst driving.

CBS anchor and AutoTune veteran Katie Couric takes TXTspeak to the next level as she performs a haunting piece on the increase in accidents involving mobile phones (from 2 mins 15 secs in).

Our favourite part? You’ll know when you hear it. LOL!

Nokia’s N-Gage Gaming Network Reaches 1 Million Users

The N-Gage gaming service has been a big success since moving to a software-based platform, available across a wide range of Nokia handsets over the last year.

Considering only 400,000 users were signed up in October 2008, the move to pre-install N-Gage on Nokia phones like the N96 has paid off as people are actually using it now. Currently there are over one million registered accounts and N-Gage is far closer to becoming a legit gaming network.

People who were once indifferent to the service might have changed, but Nokia still did not disclose how many people are actively using N-Gage on a daily basis.

With news that motion control gaming is coming to Nokia’s line-up on compatible phones, titles comparable to the runaway success of the App Store could be coming to an N95 near you soon.

Source: Reuters

Nokia On The Apps Wagon: Finalists In ‘Calling All Innovators’ Competition Announced

As Nokia joined the rest of the mobile industry in seeing the power of the apps, back in 2008 they launched a competition offering $150,000 in cash to clever developers who could come up with programs to ‘help build a better world’. And sell more phones, I suppose.

The ‘Calling All Innovators’ drive received more than 12,000 developers from around the world and over 1,000 applications to Forum Nokia, the world’s largest mobile developer community, in the hopes of becoming the next breakout application.

Now the 11 finalists have been announced, and all have the potential to be pretty revolutionary in their own way. They are separated into 3 distinct categories:

ECO-Challenge – applications or solutions that can minimize mobility’s global environmental impact and enable consumers to make sustainable lifestyle choices that reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint.

- GreenDrive (Europe/Middle East/Africa) - An application promoting fuel efficiency by sensing road conditions that influence fuel consumption, providing real-time driving directions for the shortest route in the fastest time allowable.

- Ticketek Mobile Ticketing (Americas) – An event-ticketing application that reduces paper consumption by allowing consumers to use a barcode stored on their phone to gain admission to events.

- Green Phone (Australia/India) – An application maximizing battery life through improved regulation of a phone’s backlight, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and charger power consumption.

- TigerMap (China) - An eco-friendly city guide application that makes public transportation easier, combining up-to-the-minute information with recommendations of the best restaurants, entertainment, hotels and shopping in more than 150 cities throughout China.

The other two categories follow!

Read more…

Vodafone Sticks Babelgum Onto Phones, Offers 6 Month Mobile TV Trial

Vodafone is aiming to make your daily commute a lot less boring by offering a six month trial of streaming TV service Babelgum on compatible Nokia handsets. The site offers thousands of videos from a variety of genres including independent cinema and music, as well as hours of original and unique content.

Babelgum is hardly the digital television revolution we have been waiting for, more of a clips site in the vein of YouTube or Current rather than fully fledged channels. Having said that, the quality and breadth of content is what sets the service apart, whilst the ability to transfer such a intensive site to a mobile device whilst retaining the majority of functionality is also an impressive feat.

Using the 3G connection, Babelgum TV streaming will not be charged to Vodafone customers (already in possession of a data bundle) using multimedia handsets like the Nokia N95, Nokia N96, and hybrids like the Nokia 6210 Navigator.

Babelgum is also available as an App to UK and Italian iPhone owners, giving them a cool ‘stacked’ interface where the various videos are placed on top of each other like a bunch of Polaroids (ask your dad), getting the user to sift through and discover new content. However, UK iPhone users not on wi-fi will be subject to all of the data charges that streaming TV will incur.

With plans to extend the range of compatible handsets in the future, perhaps the ‘on demand’ nature of viewing on Babelgum is the future of mobile content as opposed to digital TV. With Apple TV, TiVo and torrent downloads showing that consumers are no longer willing to shape their lives around programming schedules, the instant gratification of watching an few gags on the journey into work may succeed where vanilla television on a phone did not.

Go to the Vodafone site to see how to get your hands on Babelgum.

Source: Mobile Choice

Vodafone Brings Last.fm Service To Nokia Mobiles

Vodafone has inked a deal with Last.fm, bringing all of the site’s innovative social music features to a range of mobile phones.

Initially for Nokia handsets including the 6210 Navigator, N78, N95 and N96, the Last.fm service will enable free internet radio for all genres of music, as well as recommending stuff you might enjoy!

Also, musical show-offs will be able to ‘scrobble’, broadcasting information on what they are listening to and their tastes, allowing those with similar interests to hook up discuss the merits of John Coltrane over the web!

Customers in Germany will even be able to purchase tunes via the Vodafone Music Store, making Last.fm a digital successor to trying out vinyl with those mangy headphones in the corner of HMV!

Head of Branded Content at Vodafone Group, Javier Foncillas, said, “Music continues to be a major passion for our customers and that’s why Vodafone consistently delivers a superior music experience in a number of different ways to ensure people get the music they want, how and when they want it. With Last.fm, Vodafone continues to pioneer social networking on mobiles, delivering a new, relevant and unique music experience, to millions of customers, across our high speed, reliable network.”

The Official Last.fm Scrobbler will be available on Vodafone in th next few weeks, after all the kinks are taken out. All the better for it, as when the iPhone app went wonky after the 2.1 update, previously docile musos went insane! Well, they spilled their lattes and blogged about it.

Source: Tech Digest

The Nokia N96 Reviews Are In!

Arguably one of the most exciting handsets from Nokia in a long time (until they went and unveiled the 5800!), the N96 with it’s focus on multimedia playback and digital TV awesomeness has got a lot of websites excited, but some are underwhelmed…

GSM Arena is impressed by the phone in general, but have a few minus points including the battery life, a lack of USB charging and the hefty price tag. Having said that, they loved the camera and extra memory the N96 provides…

An excellent point which they raised was the DVB-H digital TV functionality. As awesome as it is, if you aren’t in the big universites of Oxford and Cambridge then no TV for you! Check out this list for which places in the globe currently support it. Lucky Nigerians.

Stuff.tv have a glowing 5 star review of the phone, stating that it picks up the mantle from the Nokia N95 in impressive fashion, and bar an 8 megapixel camera it provides to be everything a smartphone should.

If only it could cut down on the pies a bit and had a more svelte, Samsung i8510-esque look, the N96 would have torn the industry asunder! As it is, features like the vibrant 2.6 inch screen and BBC iPlayer will be more than enough to convert mobile phone fans to pray at the altar of the N-Series.

As soon as we can have a sneaky peek at one, we’ll let you know our take on it…

Nokia N96 Out Today! New Firmware Update Messing With It?

Good news for those who didn’t win the Euromillions this weekend, as the N96 is now a little cheaper having been released on Pay Monthly at the major retailers!

I’m slightly biased, but Omio have some really great Nokia N96 deals which went live today.

£35 a month for 600 minutes and unlimited texts on Orange with the phone costing only £29.99 from Dial-A-Phone is our most popular one, and it’s not hard to see why!

Quite the bargain for the super multimedia successor to the N95, complete with digital TV, BBC iPlayer and a whopping 16GB of storage for all your music and movies! If you’re in two minds about taking the plunge, get an in-depth rundown on the Nokia N96 features page!

Slightly less happy news from some early adopters is that the newest firmware update released by Nokia is making their gorgeous new handsets play up a little. The v11.018 update seems to wonkify call quality and speaker output a little bit, but this is the opinion of big time Nokiaholics in the official forums so we’ll wait and see whether these problems are widespread…

Source: Pocket Picks

Music Video Shot With Nokia Handsets, Not Awful

It is definitely Nokia who are the most inventive with their marketing ideas at the moment. The al fresco Nokia N96 unboxing shot with an N96 was a breath of fresh air, and the next logical step was to shoot an entire video on an N-Series handset.

So they did.

Eskimohunter’s hot new video ‘Surfing at 32ºF’ (me neither…) was shot only using a Nokia N93, a Nokia N93i and an N95, and it doesn’t look too bad for it!

A little on the avant-garde side, the video was filmed by maverick director Mike Hodgkinson using guerilla tactics like fishing line rails for tracking shots and chocolate bar wrappers for lens filters.

See the making of the video below… This may be a subtle marketing ploy, but am all for marketing ploys with a little ingenuity involved!

Source: Podcasting News

EISA Awards, Gongs For HTC And Sony Ericsson

A European Imaging and Sound Association Award is recognised amongst the mobile phone community as an impressive plaudit, recognising those handsets which break new ground in the field of multimedia functionality. This year was no different with very deserving winners, although not necessarily those one might expect…

The best music phone went to the Sony Ericsson W980, a justifiable winner through being the perfect combination of looks, functionality and audio support. 8GB of storage with that Walkman touch that Sony gives the W-series phone makes for a handset offering a better aural experience than even the iPhone 3G.

Read more…

Is Reset Generation THE N-Gage Title?

It is very easy to mock Nokia’s first real foray into gaming, the N-Gage, with derision and references to the visual similarity of the handset to a traditional Mexican dish. However, their efforts were very committed, their heart was in the right place and the N-Gage has gone from strength to strength as a platform as soon as they ditched the hardware route.

Despite these improvements, there has not yet been a single title to maximise the potential of the N-Gage 2.0, until Reset Generation. Word in mobile gaming circles was that Reset Generation is the big one, the game which brings online gaming, persistent Xbox Live-style accounts, and cross platform multiplayer, and will get Nokia recognised amongst the gaming fraternity for once.

Read more…