AIRscoot.co.uk

I’ve been waiting for the N95 to be available on Orange for some time now. I’ve had my existing Nokia N70 for almost 2 years. I normally upgrade my handset once I’m free to do so (ie. once my existing 12 month contract allows me to), so I have up-to-date handsets to test the browsing of mobile sites I create and also to test applications I promote to mobile users Worldwide. I have a fairly large collection of WAP enabled handsets I’ve built up over the years.

When the Nokia N80 was available for upgrade to me I was keen to get this one as I’d heard that it was possible to use the handset’s ability to connect to wifi for any internet browsing and applications that require a data connection. This would be good for users that want to use data hungry stuff like music downloads, mobile video downloads or streaming video applications. When I mentioned this to a client at work ( who also happens to work in Orange’s department that test’s new handsets for compatibility ), I was advised that the N95 may be a better one to wait for.

After researching the handset myself, even though it probably wasn’t going to be the best phone to be using for testing my WAP sites, I decided it would probably reduce the amount of devices I carry around all the time and felt it was a “must have”. It could replace my N70, ipaq hx4700, 4 megapixel digital camera and bluthtooth GPS receiver in one foul swoop!

I’ve phoned Orange customer services countless occasions over the past 6 month’s and every time it’s due in next month. Yesterday after having read my brother’s blog post about how he is having problem’s getting information out of Orange. I was told they would be due in April! Again another month! I’m getting severely p**sed off with Orange especially when I see the handset is available on other networks!

I have been customer of Orange since 1994 and over the years I’ve been fairly happy with the service. I have also been prepared to pay the ridiculous data charges that early adopters of WAP users have had to pay since 1999. I’m lucky that I could justify paying the charges as my mobile sites more than covered the costs. I consider myself to be a loyal Orange customer, I have been for 13 years. I have over the years tried many different brands of mobile phone and I keep coming back to Nokia handsets. Simply because they are the best. I am now a loyal Nokia user and if I have to go elsewhere for the handset I “the customer” want then so be it! Grrgh!!

Since the recent news emerged on Friday of 15 British Navy and Royal Marine personnel being taken at gunpoint by Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats ( some reports suggest Quds special force operators where also involved ).

Given that recently there have been reports of capture or possibly defection of senior Quds force commanders in Iraq. It would make sense for Iran to try and gain some sort of bargaining tool to get these valuable intelligence assets back.

On the 11th Jan US forces raided and arrested several people in the Iranian liaison office in Irbil, Iraq. According to some sources one of the men in custody is Quds Force’s director of operations!

On the 20th Jan, probably one of the most audacious raids by insurgents in over four years was made on the Karbala provincial headquarters in Iraq. Was this a failed operation to take American hostages?

Are we really to believe the surprise shown by Tony Blair when this occured on Friday, given that stories have been around for a while telling us exactly what Iran is intending to do in retaliation for the abduction of it’s personnel.

This stinks. It reminds me a little of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which some say gave the USA a legitamate reason for direct intervention in the Vietnam War. Although they had been carrying out clandestine missions for several years before this throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Just thought I’d put in my two penneth! There’s alot more to this, but these snippets should help nudge any inquiring minds that may like to investigate further….

Not really mobile or geeky but fairly important to anybody that’s getting a little sick of what the UK government is doing at the moment! For the first time in my life I really don’t feel I want to live here any more…

Added : Since we can quite often learn a lot from history, may be we can learn from the sequence of events that occured when US hostages were taken from the US embassy in Iran in November 1979. At the time it’s understood that Khomeini intended it to be a short affair, but due to the weak response from Jimmy Carter this turned into a crisis lasting 444 days!

It’s also worth noting that The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “one of the central players in the group that seized the embassy and held hostages back in 1979.

A nice new site TinyTube.net poppped up on my radar a few days ago and I like it, I like it alot! It essentially let’s you search and watch videos on Break, FileCabi.net, Google video, Grouper, MetaCafe, MySpace and Veoh on your mobile phone. Do the search, get the results, select the video and the service re-encodes it for you to watch on your mobile. A nice feature is you are held on a page while the re-encoding goes on - you just refresh until the page tells you it’s ready for download or if you get a free account by registering you can go in and download the video later. I suggest you register, this should help the developers gain extra info on how to improve the service for us all.