Remember that old commercial, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” That’s a question we will soon be asking about what we see, not just what we hear, thanks to the development of a technology called Augmented Reality. Using a device’s camera, GPS, Bluetooth, digital compass, wifi, and other networking and input capabilities, you can turn reality into a video game, run through “what if” scenarios, or get a text or video overlay on something that they are looking at.

Example: You’re checking out what movie to see at the multiplex, and you forgot to check out the reviews. With an AR app on your phone, you could point your phone at a movie poster, and then get reviews displayed on the screen, without having to press any buttons! More sophisticated versions would let you see a trailer, or even buy tickets. It’s not at all science fiction – actually, an application like this exists for some Nokia smartphones, and there are already a slew of AR apps for Androids and cellphones (I could have used this one when I installed my non-YES satellite dish a couple of months ago!)

As it turns out, an Israeli company called Ogmento, is deeply involved in developing AR applications, especially for the iPhone. If you want to try it on the web, check out the application they developed for Vampire Academy. Scary!

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Tags: Augmented reality, Bluetooth, Global Positioning System, iPhone, Mobile phone, Nokia, Smartphone, Video game

After I outed Tunewiki as an Israeli company, I came across another great music phone application made by an Israeli startup – MeCanto!

The truth is I downloaded both Tunewiki and MeCanto from the Nokia app store at the same time, but I just realized a couple of days ago that MeCanto was made here too. As opposed to Tunewiki’s social music app, MeCanto is a personal music app – letting you connect your phone directly to your home music collection. You install the MeCanto application on your phone (Nokia, iPhone, Windows Smartphone, Android) and on your Windows computer, and you can create an instant streaming connection between your PC and phone. In other words, you can play all the music in your home computer on your phone. The application works immediately, opening a private network between computer and phone, but it will also upload your collection to the MeCanto servers, which provide a faster and smoother connection than the phone-PC VPN. And, you can log into your MeCanto account from any computer and listen to your music on-line.

MeCanto turns your phone into a true MP3 player – but it’s better because you can upload ALL of your music, without limitations! “Our goal is to enable users to store their entire music collection online and imposing some limit on storage will defeat that purpose,” says the company FAQ.

Here’s an email I got from MeCanto CEO Uri Keren the other day: “We are pleased to inform you that MeCanto made it to the top 10 finalists of the Nokia Developer Contest. Now we are asking for your vote by becoming a fan on MeCanto’s Facebook fanpage. On February 4th all votes will be counted and weighted together with the judges’ votes and the winner will be announced. Your support will allow us to improve MeCanto and provide you with a better product and service.”

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• The Plethora of Playback Options (bombtune.com)

Tags: App Store, Digital audio player, facebook, Microsoft Windows, Nokia, Personal computer, Virtual private network, Windows

Image via CrunchBase

One of the great things about a smartphone is the ability it gives you to connect to the wider world – through its data connection. And now, with relatively fast 3G internet networks, you can really hook into lots of great services. While the iPhone usually gets most of the glory, plain old Symbian or Windows devices can do most of us just fine.

For instance, I like having the option of hooking up internet phone calls on my cellphone using Skype. Skype has an application, called Skype Lite, which lets Java phone users dial into Skype via a regular cell phone call, with the call forwarded from the local connection to your Skype contact anywhere in the world. That’s a great way to save on international phone calls, but if you want to avoid the phone call charge itself, you can make a free Skype call using your smartphone, if you’re using a wifi connection. What if there’s no wifi? A smartphone lets you easily switch between the different connection options, such as WAP or 3G.

My Nokia 5800 phone is a Symbian device, and as of now Skype doesn’t have a native application for Symbians. So, I use an app called Nimbuzz, which very neatly lets you connect with your Skype account and call your contacts – as well as your the contacts in your phone book (I used Fring for awhile, but found Nimbuzz to be much neater in its approach).

Other notable apps that let you hook up with the rest of the world: Qik, a great app that lets you broadcast (via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook) whatever is happening around your phone live to the rest of the world; vTap, a video sharing site for mobiles; and Waze (http://www.waze.co.il or http://www.waze.com), which uses your phone’s GPS settings to determine where you are, and informs you of traffic problems or speed traps in your area.

As I wrote in the Jerusalem Post, you can connect to services like these via wifi, or 3G. But when using cellular internet, you are being charged by the kilobyte for all data you transfer on the network. For Orange customers, for example, the basic surfing package gives you almost unlimited surfing within the Orange site network, but once you try and connect to the rest of the world, you find that the 30 MB in data transfer you get with the basic NIS 21 package just isn’t enough.

Unfortunately, the concept of unlimited data connection is unknown in Israel, unlike in the rest of the world. On the other hand, the commensurate cost of the data connection is cheaper, because you get to choose from one of four data connection packages, so you can decide how much or how little you want to spend. Fortunately for me, I’m able to do a lot of my work in wifi-friendly environments, so I use my phone’s wifi connection to connect to most of the cool services I use. But having that 3G backup “insurance policy” is essential; for example, I was able to use soft modem Joikuspot to get my work done while helping my wife keep vigil recently at the hospital for a sick relative.

Having already received a warning that I was running out of allocated data time, I decided to upgrade from the 30 MB to the 150 MB package, which costs NIS 41 a month (to fund it, I dropped the GPS, which was NIS 21 a month, so my bill is essentially the same). The next package in the series, 5GB of data connection time, should put paid to any concerns I would have about going over the transfer limit; but that package is NIS 81 a month.

Since I don’t want to pay any more on my monthly bill than I already do, I didn’t upgrade to the 5GB plan – but if I could drop another NIS 40 in existing services that I don’t need as much, I would. Unfortunately, since most of my bill consists of set charges (for minutes and SMS usage), there’s almost nothing I can cut out without going to a different call package. But if I could shave off some of that cost – maybe take a package that doesn’t include 200 free SMS messages (I don’t use nearly that many), I could cut down the talk package and apply that money to the data package.

So here’s what I’m planning to do: I’d like to call Orange and figure out what the absolute cheapest package they offer is, and figure out whether signing up for that, along with the 5 GB data package (or even the 20 GB package, for NIS 80), comes out cheaper. My wife, for example, pays a basic charge of NIS 8.57 per month, and then by the minute (about 60 agurot). Which sounds expensive, and would be if I used it to talk the 200 plus minutes a month I usually use my cellphone. But – what if I were to make all my calls using Nimbuzz/Skype? I’d still have to pay SkypeOut minutes if I call non-Skype customers, but maybe that would be cheaper than paying for the cell phone minutes.

And even if it cost the same (I suspect it would), I would have the greater flexibility of being able to use the data package anyway I wanted, which is much more efficient than having services I don’t really need or want (extra SMS messages, which Orange is always giving away for free anyway – their latest promo was 1,000 free messages in honor of Ramadan!). With 5GB (or 20GB!) of data connection, I wouldn’t even have to use Skype; I could contact everyone directly on Facebook, Messenger, or e-mail, with actual talking over Skype taking place only when necessary (how many times do we just need to convey information, as opposed to getting into a conversation, when calling colleagues, customers, etc.? That’s why SMS messages are so popular!). If nothing else, this would be a cool topic to write about. I figure I could get three columns out of it!

Tags: facebook, fring, iPhone, Mobile phone, Nimbuzz, Nokia, Orange, Skype

I’m always on the outlook for cheap cellphones, considering how much I (and my wife and three teenagers who have lost a coule over the years) depend on them. But I got tired of getting ripped off by Orange, Pelephone, et al, not so much for the service, but for the old phones they try to pawn off on us, selling them for twice the price they retail for when new! As I wrote a couple of years ago, all you had to do was compare the web stores for the Israeli phone companies where they list the prices for their devices, and compare them to the prices you can buy them for unlocked on Amazon.

I even proved that it could pay for Israelis to order the phone; even after you pay the customs and the sales tax and shipping, the “full price” devices the Israeli companies are selling can be had from sites like Amazon for a third of the price! And when it comes to the “kosher” phones they market to the Chareid public, the Israeli cellphone companies outdo themselves; for their “mehadrin” lines, they take TEN year old analog phones (probably purchased for 2 cents on the dollar!) and sell them for even MORE than they charge for the latest 3G phones!

So, I took a conscious decision a couple of years ago – never again would I buy a phone from Orange (with whom I currently have my account). Instead, I order unlocked tri- or quad-band GSM phones from Amazon, to be brought back either by me or by friends. Comparing the prices, it made sense.

And, I was about to do the same thing this year, too. Finding myself in need of a cellphone, I checked out my favorite department on Amazon, and found that they were selling the wonderful Nokia 5800 MusicExpress for $299 – a bargain, considering its capabilities. Nokia fans had been touting this model as an “iPhone killer” (a title that now seems to have transferred to the N97), because it has a touch screen, plus all sorts of extra features even the iPhone 3G doesn’t have (video recording, expandable storage, and as many Symbian apps as the iPhone has for its platform).

Somehow, though, this week I found myself in an Orange store – where I saw their latest ads for the latest “deals” they were offering. Like a dog that’s been whipped one too many times, I of course looked the other way – but the salesperson was available and I had to wait around for something anyway. One of the deals showed a tiered pricing system on some devices – like, if you speak a certain number of minutes a month, you pay less for the device. Maybe there was a deal to be had. Who knew?

So I asked. I explained to the salesperson what my strategy was, and how I was going to save a ton of money buying a top of the line, relatively new phone directly and unlocked. He checked his computer and told me, “well, you speak about 200 minutes a month and pay X amount per month on that phone. So you’re a good candidate for a deal.” Yeah, but how good?

“How about this: I’ll give you the Nokia for 499, and a package for 18 months that will give you 200 minutes, 200 SMS messages,  3G internet (the device has wifi too), and I’ll even throw in two months of GPS free.” 499!?! But I told him I was paying 299.

It took me a couple of seconds (yes, I can be “slow”), but then it hit me. This is Israel! And he’s offering me a $299 phone for NIS 499 (in six interest-free payments) – which is about $140 at current exchange rates! Not to mention the 35% I am now saving on my actual phone use! And, to top it off, he threw four Orange painter caps into the bag with the phone (and we all know that we die for the cute “freebies” the cellphone companies give out!).

I’ve been checking the phone out, and it seems to work. I’ve also been searching all over for a “refurbished” sticker and I can’t find one. I mean, there must be a catch! Why would Orange be selling this phone so cheap (of course, they should really be giving these things away, like companies in the rest of the world do). The only issue I could find is that phones manufactured before February 2009 may have an issue with the earpiece getting loose. I haven’t been able to determine the manufacture date of this unit (logic would say that these discounted phones are leftover stock that had problems, but equal logic would say that it’s unlikely Orange or any retailer would have had such a large stock of phones left over from more than six months ago). However, if this is one of the problem phones, I’ve got a one year manufacturer’s warranty, so I’m covered there. Still scratching my head, though – what’s come over Orange to make them so “generous?”

(P.S.: This happy occurence does not make me more optimistic about the pricing structure for the iPhone when it finally comes out in Israel. I explain why here).

Tags: Android, GSM, iPhone, israel, Mobile phone, Nokia, Symbian, Touchscreen