Wind Mobile Ready to Launch New Cellphone Company in Canada!

Alex Tretrop Dec 12, 2009 Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Us Mobile

Every time I stop into my local Blockbuster (here in the Toronto area) I always see a small section dedicated to a new phone company called Wind Mobile. However, because of a ruling by the Canadian Government stating that the company "didn't meet Canadian ownership and control requirements" they couldn't start selling their phones to the public ... until now.

After a few months of appealing, the Canadian government finally approved the request and Wind Mobile (owned by Globalive Wireless) is now officially a new competitor in the Canadian market with a new cellphone network that could launch as early as Monday! CEO Ken Campbell stated that "The objective is to have quite a few Wind mobiles under Christmas trees".

It looks like Bell, Rogers and Telus finally have some new competition! Wind Mobile will be offering smartphones from HTC, Samsung and Blackberry. Since they already have national and international roaming agreements, as well as lots of cellphones, It looks like Wind Mobile is all set to enter the market! If you live in Calgary or Toronto, they already have a small list of Blockbusters where you will be able to find a selection of phones.

See the list of Blockbusters as well as a small post from the Chief Customer Officer here

See the official statement by the Government of Canada here

[CBC News]

[Forbes]

Google's One Stop Shop Results

Ricardo Trejo Dec 12, 2009 Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Us Google

Y'know what's funny? Just yesterday night I asked myself why hadn't Google come up with this idea yet. Kinda creepy to be honest. But yeah, this is pretty self explanatory: type in something that would get this sorta thing and you'll find what you're searching for before you even hit GO.

So if you need a definition to the word, just type in the word then define or definition and you'll have it right there in your suggestions. A one stop shop indeed.

[Google Blog]

AT&T 3G outage in San Francisco | Dec 11

Brandon Davenport Dec 12, 2009 Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Us Internet, Mobile, News, iPhone

Yesterday, AT&T had yet another outage, and reports were flying in (via WiFi) of the loss of data coverage in the San Francisco area. According to a tweet found by TechCrunch yesterday, "customer service is saying it'll take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to fix" the service was indeed out-of-order for thousands of people, but fortunately, it is now back online.

This outage came just a couple days after AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega made comments that the company was improving the service in cities like San Francisco and New York. This was a little on the "Bad Timing" side.

[via TechCrunch]

Spotify Skips out on Le Web - Google Eying them?

Ricardo Trejo Dec 12, 2009 Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Us Music

 

I've talked about Spotify before and it always baffles me how great of a service it is. I tried it back when the region work-around was still doable and it rivals, and even bests, iTunes in many departments. This little engine that could is picking up steam; enough steam that it decided to skip out on Le Web; an up and coming tech conference hosted in Paris, France.

Is Spotify already too big for this sort of thing? Doubt it. What it needs is more backing, not in-dependency. Its popularity is mostly made up  from the demand of music lovers, but it's having trouble getting started in the US by the people who really matter. They can have Apple and iTunes to thank for that. I mean when you consider the fact that Spotify is offering their entire catalog via online streaming it's hard to compete - especially when the goal is to make money. And it appears as if Apple is already making itself a blockage as they begin to move forward with their own streaming services of their own; their latest acquisition of Lala.com can attest to that.

But don't count Spotify out of it just yet; a potential investor could be just around the corner in the form of Google. From recent reports it appears that Google was interested in Lala before Apple was, and after they were sniped you can imagine that they're still itching for a way to get into the music biz. So let's just say that if Google were to snatch up Spotify, hypothetically speaking, iTunes (the biggest success story of the decade) could be pitted against Spotify in an all out war for possession of the music game going into the '010's. 

[GigaOM]

PC and Xbox 360 Review: Dragon Age: Origins

When I first heard about Bioware making a "mature dark fantasy game" I was intrigued. Could one of my favorite developers make a game like this? While they are known for their excellent storytelling (Mass Effect, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic) the trailers I saw didn't make me super excited. They seemed to be advertising an extremely bloody game with lots of sex and not much else. And because Bioware kept pushing a ton of ads for this game I just kept losing  my interest in it. The combat looked lackluster and while the story seemed interesting I didn't think it would be on par with Mass Effect or KOTOR's level of detail. But I am very happy to report that after giving it a shot and playing the game extensively I have to admit that I was very, very wrong about many things in the game - and that's a good thing.

Eldar Murtazin - Foxconn received order for next generation iPhone

Brandon Davenport Dec 11, 2009 Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Us Apple, Gadgets, Hardware, Mobile, News, iPhone

Those crafty guys at Apple have done it again, they have made our phones obsolete, in record time! You have heard of Eldar Murtazin, right? Editor in chief of Mobile Review and the ultimate insider when it come to all things mobile he is a trustworthy source. Here is a little tweet done by him:

"Foxconn received order for next generation iphone"

So we should give him more credit that a random blogger, and trust that actually Foxconn has recieved an order for iPhone guts. Besides, if Apple's going to keep up the mid-year iPhone refresh cycle then the timing's just about right, eh?

[via Engadget]

Chart: Microsoft users click more ads than any other platform

This is why technology blogs are not making as much money as other sites, like game sites, or vacation sites. Think about it, you have the chart, you are scratching your head and looking for an answer. Look at it this way, what is the default browser on Windows? Internet Explorer. Now lets look at three types of people. The first type are people like Grandma and your rockin' Mom. They use whatever "gets them from point A to point B" -- speed, security and logic is not a concern. They cant tell the difference between an advert and an email. Click click click, BAM free vacation.