Mobile / Cell Phone Thoughts & Reviews » mwc

Amsterdam Travel by Julie

Jeb Brilliant — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:17:20 +0000

A friend of mine is doing a project and asked if she could post about it here and I said yes so here it is, enjoy and welcome Julie as my first guest poster.

The Great and Wonderful Mobile Conference in Barcelona was in some ways a make believe world of gadgets and devices that will do everything except make the coffee. Movies, TV, emails (of course), travel info, friends all while you are on the go, disconnected as were from your home base.

But lets see how it works in real life – does it match expectations?

Let’s say you are traveling to Amsterdam – lucky you have an iPhone as you can read the Lonely Planet guide to Amsterdam right on your phone, including recommendations for an accommodation Amsterdam (in case you hadn’t already booked).

Did you know there are over 50 museums in Amsterdam? Worried that the free navigators don’t have all of them mapped (though I’m guessing they do!) try the citynavigtor. Choose any site and the device will guide you from where you are directly to where you want to be.

But that’s just a start. You get to Amsterdam and have your pick of free navigation to choose from including Ovi maps (thank you Navteq), Cloudmade maps (check them out – cool company) and yes, the ubiquitous Google. Just start driving, search for the closest petrol station and voila, you will be guided there for free. Navteq’s introduce free walking maps, so that not only can you get to your favorite restaurant, it will find you the shortcuts through the lovely parks and across the canals.

Introduce augmented reality into the mix and you’ve got an overlay on the map of the closest canal dock with arrows, or rent pedal boats and get an overlay of the canal route to take.

Then there are the cool apps that help you around the city. One of my favorites is Foursquare. You can check in with your friends in the city (you’d be surprised who might be there), get tips on where to go (and where not to go) and even get ideas for good accommodations. Yelp also helps you find hotspots like great restaurants and bars.

There’s Twitee where you can post your travel pictures to your twitter account, countless weather apps that will tell you the weather (in case you can’t tell by standing outside) and really useful ones like Tripit that will let you know if a flight is cancelled (well not very useful when there is volcanic ash all over Europe and ALL the flights are cancelled). Iamhere will send a link to your friends that will open a Google map, accurate to 100 feet. Now that is a new age of travel!

I interview Waze at MWC

Jeb Brilliant — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:02:03 +0000

I had a great chat with Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze back at Mobile World Congress over a month ago then we got to hang at CTIA and I’m just now getting around to putting up my content from the trip. I really like what Waze is doing and if you haven’t checked them out be sure to do so. It’s an amazing social mapping program that creates the maps from the trips it’s users take.

Thanks for your time Di-Ann and best of luck with Waze.

Skype on Symbian at MWC

Jeb Brilliant — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:11:50 +0000

Here’s a video I took at MWC showing the new Skype client working Symbian. It was a huge scoop when I took this video.

Use Ovi Maps with NO Data at all after SideLoading

Jeb Brilliant — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:38:47 +0000

Spending time in the Nokia suite at MWC in Barcelona I got to chatting with the maps guys and I learned something interesting thanks to Rita alerting me to the data usage issue. Ovi Maps can be used out in the field entirely without a data connection. Yes you read that right, no data necessary to run Ovi Maps. The key is sideloading, meaning you load the maps before you head out the door onto your phone. By doing this your handset is fully loaded with the maps and anything that you would search the map for, including directions and services like restaurants and movie theaters.

I got a chance to get a few words from Dan Marinescu-Gava of Nokia who told me a few very interesting facts.
1. Nokia can put all of Ovi Maps, being most of the world (but not all) on about a 5gig memory card.
2. The entire United States is only about 1.4gig
3. All of Spain is only 194mb

Here is Dan talking a little about Ovi Maps

Do you need a sim for MWC? I suggest Yoigo prepaid!

Jeb Brilliant — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:00:59 +0000

Being my second trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress I have a bit of advice. If you or your company needs access to 3G or needs to make phone calls/sms, I suggest Yoigo. I got my Yoigo sim last year at a store called OpenCor. It is just a few hundred yards/meters from the entrance to MWC. If you walk out of the congress and make a right on Gran Via it’s about 2 blocks up. The address is Gran Via de les Corts 407-409 and it’s on the left side. You will need ID to purchase the sims, I used my US drivers license. One thing to note, MAKE SURE TO SET THE PREFERED LANGUAGE ON YOUR PHONE BEFORE YOU PUT IN THE YOIGO SIM. Otherwise it will switch it to Spanish, I learned the hard way.

Anyways, I got mine last year for 10Euro and it came with 10Euro on it already. I also added 10 more and was set for the entire week. The rates as of last year, to the best of my understanding are as follows
1.20Euro/day gives you unlimited 3G
.12Euro to all Spanish numbers
.30Euro for all international calls
.00 for Yoigo to Yoigo calls
.10 SMS to anywhere including Spain
.30 MMS to anywhere including Spain

This seems like a very good deal to me at least. Last year most of us had some call and 3G quality issues on the first day of MWC but after that it was fine. It seemed like they had to catch up to the influx of all the new subscribers.

I highly recommend Yoigo. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.

UPDATE: OpenCor along with MANY other establishments in Spain are closed on Sundays. So don’t plan on picking up a sim or top up cards from them on Sunday.