AIRscoot.co.uk

UFO Sighting in Melbourne!

Originally uploaded by Podknox.

Jon caught this while on a “Walkabout”!

Found this video of the kids from a few years back

Their uncle Jon (aka Kosso) knocked it up for them as some fun. Really great!

Could this be the first time someone’s fallen in love in 140 characters or less?



Jon’s using his new mobods.com project to show what can be done with technology available to us now.

Admob soon to break the 4 billions ads served mark!

Originally uploaded by Podknox.

Great stuff! If you have a high volume traffic mobile site and you’re knocking your head wondering how to monetise it, this could certainly cover your server costs! If you want to launch your new mobile internet / WAP site or are looking to generate users quickly for a service or application that you want to target specifically to a particular device or region there is no quicker way to do this, period!

My own little infoad for something I know is a good thing for the mobile internet. Now is the time to be using it to! If you don’t even have a mobile site to advertise your services you can even create mobile pages using Admob’s system to start generating leads like you wouldn’t believe! Far better than Google and tens times cheaper to run your ad campaigns!!

Boat on the Beach

Originally uploaded by Podknox.

Started getting all arty with my N95 at Slapton Sands. It’s one of those beaches that’s my favorite on a really gusty overcast day.

Slightly blurred which strangely adds to the atmosphere of the shot. Didn’t do Monet any harm I guess!

North Sands Night

Originally uploaded by Podknox.

Had to get away to the seaside! This is a test I took using my Nokia N95 to see how good it coped at night under moonlight. Pretty good really. Still not as good as my Mark One Eyeball, once the nightvision’s kicked in!

It’s great to get our Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel back after what seems a relatively short time in captivity. To me the whole affair seems to have been a propaganda exercise played out in Iran by those supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a time when the rest of the government in Iran were on holiday! Once the real politicians got back from holiday it was all sorted! Thank God!

Getting the most vunerable members of the group to appear on TV reading out whatever you tell them to, because you’ve threatened them with whatever, doesn’t strike me as being a particularly clever thing to do if you want to get ahead in World politics really. You may get a few jeers from your bully boy mates, but you’re not going to impress the more intelligent members of your electorate.

Since coming back from Iran the Ministry of Defence gave the hostages full backing to sell their stories. (Now taken back) Presumably to counter any statements that the Iranian government made previously this week after the official news conference from Chivenor where the Iranian government stated it was a “staged press conference”. I would say that all press conferences are staged, if you want to get picky . Somebody, presumably in government ( it’s not MOD policy to let personnel sell stories to the press ), thought it would be a good idea to let them tell their stories to the public independently. I think the question of taking money for stories may not be a good idea. Over the next few weeks we’ll see if it has the desired effect. It’s an attempt to sway public opinion of Iran in this country and around the World.

It would be interesting to know the full extent of any interrogation that went on? From early statements made by the crews, considering they were being threatened as being “spys”, there doesn’t seem to of been much apart from psychological pressure. No doubt we will find out more over the coming days.

As for any intelligence gathered from all this. I would think we have learned alot here. From the moment this all started there will of been all sorts of irregular communications flying about over the airwaves ( there was a holiday on) , telephone calls, flights, military activity, individuals changing plans, loads of stuff to analyse. All being monitored no doubt about it!

It’s seems Iran is hell bent on having a showdown as “GW” would put it!

(19.07.07 - Things seem to have calmed down now on the news front from Iran? I guess it’s a matter of time. The are getting restless, petrol rationing etc. Iran has loads of oil, however they need to refine it in large quantities)

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a former National Security Advisor and probably the most qualified person alive to comment on the situation in the Middle East. Much of what he’s predicted ( or been party to advising the US government on in the past ) has in a rather uncanny way become reality. Strange that?

Also, watch the video below. It’s reporting that there could be possible further terrorist attacks on the United States which will be blamed on Iran to give reason for a pre-emptive defensive strike on Iran! WTF

Former National Security Advisor and founding member of the Trilateral Commission Zbigniew Brzezinski tacitly warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that an attack on Iran could be launched following a staged provocation in Iraq or a false flag terror attack within the U.S…

Zbigniew Brzezinski predicts that a “Staged Provacation” or “False Flag Operation” could be the pre-cursor for a war with Iran!

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.