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T-Mobile SMS jumps to $0.10
Ok, so T-Mobile's cost for sending individual text messages just jumped from a nickel to a dime. Yeah, we know, a 100% increase is a lot less impacting when you're talking low figures to start with, and yes, 10c is the same as Verizon is charging, for example. But if you're gonna be the budget player than you have to play along with people on a budget, and a buck for ten text messages isn't that great a deal if you ask us, especially when you can't easo;y prevent inbound SMSs. Ah well, at least one no longer receives a text every time they have a voice mail like days of yore on T-Mo.
RIM shows details of BlackBerry workaround plans
With the possibility of a court-ordered shutdown looming large, RIM has provided more details about the long-discussed workaround the company has come up with to keep the BlackBerry service up and running. According to the company, the workaround is a software update called BlackBerry MultiMode Edition, which can be downloaded and activated if service is suspended later this month. RIM says that MultiMode involves "significant underlying changes to the message delivery system" but that the switch should be transparent to customers. Which, of course, leads to at least one inevitable question: If RIM has a working solution that doesn't raise any patent issues, why not just roll it out now and be done with the whole matter?[Via BBHub]
Funambol v3, the open source push email alternative
RIM has had their fair share of troubles with push email technology -- in the legal realm, that is -- and Microsoft just added push email capability for Windows Mobile last year, but now we've got another player pushing the email crack to its addicted users, this time an open source solution. Funambol v3 server can push to Windows Mobile, RIM, SyncML-compliant, and "any" WAP-enabled phone. If it sounds like they're promising a lot, they are, including attachments, on and offline email, and a slew of PIM features, all of which can be synchronized with an Exchange, Domino, IMAP, or POP server, as their feature sets allow. They claim compatibility with 500 million devices, so it shouldn't be hard to find a way to get up and running, and they even offer a test drive from their online portal.[Via Smartphone Thoughts]
Kryptext for encrypted SMS, naturally
We don't know the last time you had to send around some passwords, nuclear launch codes, or otherwise valuable and volatile information, but if you're the type who worries about encrypting your transmissions you may want to catch a gander at Kryptext, a Symbian Series 60 app that stores, reads, and transmits encrypted text messages -- presumably only to other Kryptext installs. Just don't rely on it too heavily, a lot solutions that promise complete security can really be complete snake oil, and if you've got important world-shattering confidential information to send this may not be the method for you. Then again, perhaps you should just lighten up a little and let the fraction of a fraction of a percent chance that you'll get cracked or have your phone stolen and analyzed fall to the wayside. We mean, seriously, if you're only spending £6.99 to lock down those secrets, you're probably not losing sleep over how secure they really are against, say, the NSA.[Via Textually]
PayPal to rival TextPayMe for SMS payments?
We ran TextPayMe by you last year, a service that allows you to make PayPal-like payments over SMS. Well now it looks like PayPal is hoping to make those SMS payments a little more PayPal-like, since they're advertising for a business manager and senior product manager for their "PayPal Mobile" group, "a new mobile payments 'start-up' unit" in the company. So it looks like we might have some friendly competition in the mobile payment space sooner rather than later, which sounds fine by us.[Via textually.org]
