I know we don’t have many wallpaper blog entries here, so thought it was time to talk some more about cell phone wallpapers. The majority of wallpapers used today are downloaded and not edited to suit your own tastes. That is, you can have a cool soccer wallpaper on your cell phone, but the majority of users don’t go any further than just downloading these wallpapers.
Have you ever considered manipulating the image to suit both your phone’s colour and your own interests in life? There is a cool little website over at Red Dodo which allows you to do just that. Best of all you can download these wallpapers for free. Catch though is that it will have RedDodo.com as a water image on your wallpaper. You can see a demo below.
Wallpaper Sizes
Red Dodo support the following animated wallpaper sizes: 240×320, 176×220, 176×144, 128×160, 128×128.
And so it seems in Colombia, the kidnapping capital of the world, the mobile is being used for bogus kidnappings.
The game plan is simple.
Bogus kidnappers pose as phone operators instructing mobile phone users to turn off their handsets for 2 hours whilst they test the network connections. During this time, the criminals contact family members of the victim, claiming they have been held hostage and will be handed back in return for a ransom. Families have no way of contacting the users whilst their mobiles are turned off, and so are directed where to leave the money before the 2 hours is up.
Scams Galore
A lot of scam artists work by claiming they are an authority from somewhere. So unless you are shown an ID card or can verify who it is you are talking to, BEWARE!
And with this, time to sign off for the week. Enjoy the weekend!
It seems Alert Ringtones is increasingly talking about the iPhone. Whilst we are not an iPhones blog, it’s just that it’s been a huge shift in the mobile phone industry, hence we find ourselves commenting a lot on the iPhone. Hope no-one minds.
Anyway, the good news is out for iPhone users. The blog I made at “how to hack an iPhone has been patched by Apple. Updates are now available on the iTunes website. Users no longer have to be worried about others hacking into their phone at doctored websites or insecure Wi-Fi hotspot areas.
Apple made this quite a priority hack just two days before the full details were going to be released at the Black Hat USA hacker conference on August 2nd.
The iPhone hack was only theoretical, and there had been no reports of anyone using it.
There seems no letting up on the hacking attempts of the iPhone. Next on the casualty list was Australia. Steve Jobs, c’mon… it’s time to release patches if you don’t wanna lose too many millions.
The iPhone, not yet released in Australia, can now be used to make phone calls on the national telephone network Telstra. However the hack hasn’t yet allowed Australian users to receive calls, use the iPod features or internet access. All they can do is make calls on it. It’s the furthest anyone has come to hacking the iPhone outside of the US. The user, who goes by the name “ozbimmer”, uploaded a “how-to” on YouTube, but has since removed it. We don’t know if it was removed due to threats by Apple or AT&T. He first posted his announcement on a hack forum.
The hack is not simple. It involves modifying the SIM card that comes with the phone to also hold data from a Telstra SIM card. You will need a SIM card reader and writer and some software applications.
If you’re a web designer, or just want to create a homepage that can display nicely on the iPhone, then you will need to consider the pixel limitations of the iPhone - 320 by 480-pixel canvas. Will your homepage look stretched or go off the screen on the iPhone? Well now there’s a way to tell. Welcome to the iPhone simulator, aka iPhoney, powered by the Safari browser.
This is a free downloadable simulator that can be used to view your website and how it looks on an iPhone. It’s also now open source, meaning anyone can improve on the code and functionality. Some of the best software around is open source (yes, WordPress as well), and encourages product updates and cool features to be developed.
Technology - fast paced and especially so in the mobile phone industry. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with it all…
Mobile Phone Trend
Recently the iPhone started a new drive in smart phones. Now we see another causality of technology - SMS, or text messaging on mobile phones. Sending SMS messages to friends was a big thing, and all you needed was their phone number in order to send. However, the SMS days are now numbered according to research group Gartner. Within 3 years, 1 in 5 users will be accessing their email via mobile phone rather than PC.
Mobile phones, once designed for telephone conversation, are increasingly being designed now for wireless internet connection and as application friendly gadgets.
Powerful Gadgets
Today there are just under 20 million wireless email users, but this will grow to 350 million, or 20 per cent of all email accounts within 3 years. Traditionally, email enabled mobile phones lacked other features such as camera, mp3 player, GPS systems and video players. Noticed how I mentioned the word “traditionally”? This is no longer the case, and our mobile phones have become one mean and powerful device that we can’t leave home without.
The BlackBerry, once chunky and bland, now offers all these features in the BlackBerry 8800. Motorola MOTO Q 9h, the Palm Treo 750 and the Samsung BlackJack have also been designed to offer email functionality along with fun features and good looking aesthetics.
It’s interesting to note that the price of SMS per the amount of data sent is rather expensive. Where we’re heading now is free email accounts when signing up on a plan.
Ah the iPhone, a $500 gadget that in the hands of the average technophile will expand his or her ability to log onto the Internet for work or play on the go. Users have full Internet access whenever the urge strikes them. There have already been hundreds of articles written about the best features, worst features, and what to expect functionally from the iPhone, but I don’t want to talk about all that. What I want to discuss is the effect that the ability to log onto the Internet wherever you are, will have on mobile marketing in the United States.
Are these new phones going to be a revolution or just a reason to own a bigger, newer phone? Does it signify the next chapter in the big book of marketing, or will the numerous functionalities lie dormant?
What the iPhone will do is give Americans the ability to catch up with the rest of the world on the mobile capability front and finally help us start seeing the cell phone as a mobile computer, rather than simply a way to make calls away from home.
So how will all this be good for marketing?
Will it be harder to see banner ads on the smaller screen? Will users be able to see text ads at all? Is geocentric marketing (ads designed to change with the users position) going to create technical challenges for web developers? Do these types of devices fall under the laws of mobile phone use, or under the laws of the Internet? As users leave the comfort of the 19 inch computer screen and start using more compact smart devices with information collected more frequently, what role will advertising play? Finally, and most importantly, is there revenue out there to be earned?
This article is a beginning point, not an end. The nature of advertising is determined by the images we convey, and ultimately the effectiveness of the tools we use. In a world where we are moving from consumers sitting down at a computer for two hours a night and surfing the Internet, to having the ability to get online 24/7, how do marketers best utilize those sources to increase revenue? Where on that tiny screen is there room for the ads we love and rely on so much? I post these questions without knowing all of the answers, but as they say in the film Jurassic Park, “life always finds a way”. So does advertising.
The iPhone has such a beautiful screen, so there are no excuses for showing it off with different wallpapers.
Today I’ve just stumbled upon a very cool set of free iPhone wallpapers. These weren’t created by me, so credit is due to Mauricio. Anyway, with the download you get 199 free iPhone wallpapers. The download pack is 5MB.
Make the most of your beautiful screen and download today.
Charlie Miller and a group of security experts have given the nod, that it’s now possible to hack an iPhone. The post I wrote earlier on the iPhone Activation Hack, shows just how a Norwegian hacker did it. I would have thought with all the resources and experts Apple has working for them, they would have designed a more hack-proof phone.
It’s theoretically possible for hackers to overtake a user’s iPhone when they are using it in a hotspot or visiting a doctored site. We’re still in the early days, so obviously there have been no reports of criminals making use of this vulnerability. But if hackers were to exploit this hack, then it’s possible that we can see the same gangs overtaking a user’s iPhone to disseminate spam, as they do when taking over a user’s PC.
How the iPhone Hack Works
How to Prevent Hacker’s Taking Over Your iPhone
Only visit sites you trust
Don’t open websites from emails
Don’t visit unfamiliar Wi-Fi hotspots
Unfortunately the iPhone doesn’t offer the same high security as the Mac desktop, but hopefully things will change considering it’s only Apple’s first ever mobile phone venture.
Miller will be presenting full details of the hack at the Black Hat USA hacker conference on August 2nd. Whilst it’s an opportunity for hackers to learn the ways, it will also be an opportunity for Apple to release a patch to its users.
It has been suggested that cellular phones will be the tobacco of the 21st century. It appears that their use is almost as addictive as cigarettes, with psychologists’ reports claiming that there is evidence that users display withdrawal symptoms if deprived of their mobiles for more than 24 hours.
There is certainly no doubt that mobile phone use in public is just as annoying as smoking. Mobile-free zones are already being set up in cinemas and restaurants and it would seem that trains will soon be following suit with “mobile” and “non-mobile” carriages available on all the commuter serves to London. In fact, this has already occurred in Tokyo and Osaka.
How do you feel about mobile phone use? Personally I get irritated if dining with a friend and they accept a phone call and leave me dangling for more than a minute.
The iPhone has such a beautiful screen, so there are no excuses for showing it off with different wallpapers.
