Just a quick note to wish all of you a very Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us here at MoGo!  Hopefully this post finds you madly in love with someone, and doing all the cutesy things couples do on Valentines.  If it just so happens to find you single, just remember this, there are THOUSANDS of other single people on V-Day this year, go find one!

At any rate, Happy Valentine’s Day! 

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The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has announced this week a plan to let the Bluetooth run over high-bandwidth Wi-Fi radios, in addition to the short-range, 1M to 3Mbps Bluetooth radios in use today.

What does that mean in English?

Primarily, that your Bluetooth devices will get a lot faster next year by taking advantage of the Wi-Fi technology already built into many gadgets.

MSNBC puts it pretty clearly;

Linking Bluetooth and Wi-Fi may make it easier and faster to transfer large amounts of music between computers and cell phones, or send pictures from a camera phone to a printer, or video from a camcorder to a TV.

Michael Foley, director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, said the first devices with the technology could be on the market in the middle of next year. The industry group behind Bluetooth, which has more than 10,000 member companies, plans to announce Monday that it is pursuing the technology and will make it available next year.

(…)

The combination devices will use the regular low-power Bluetooth radios to recognize each other and establish connections. If they need to transfer a large file, they will be able to turn on their Wi-Fi radios, then turn them off to save power after finishing the transfer, Foley said.

A whole new world’s a-coming, folks.

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Every single year that goes by, more and more people are born.  While all these births are taking place, people are growing up, growing older, getting into cars and congesting the crap out of American highways.  Point is, we’re all getting a heck of a lot more mobile, but how mobile we can be also depends a lot on how much we can avoid the pitfalls of all these new people…namely, Traffic.

I just read an awesome article about two giants teaming up to hopefully do something about just this problem.  According to the article, Nokia and UC Berkeley are teaming up to test real-time GPS traffic monitoring to see if the active displaying of where the traffic is, can help people avoid it, and thereby reduce it in general.  Basically what they found out was, if as little as 5% of drivers contributed location data from their cars, the entire thing would be a success and this monitoring could be extremely effective on any particular highway.  Groovy.

So what do we need to do to make this happen?  What do we need to do to get as many cars as possible equipped with this so all of us can eventually completely avoid traffic whenever possible?  You’d think with all the advances in modern technology we’ve already enjoyed, we’d be able to completely avoid traffic altogether.  Guess not, but hey, how awesome is it to have Hannah Montana delivered to every possible mobile device?!  Yeah, no.

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Not sure if you knew, but last night was the Grammy Awards.  The hands-down highlight for me was when some of the cast of Across the Universe got up and sang their rendition of “Let it Be.”  Chills.  That said, I also discovered something pretty cool, Nokia offered up and served the Grammy Award Show for their mobile phone customers.

That’s right folks, the entire Grammy Show was available for download or preloaded.  How cool is that?  Very cool.  That said, some people I wanted to win didn’t, some I didn’t want to win, Did.  What can you do?  The fact is, the fact that award shows, TV shows, movies, and yes even though it’s old already, music on cell phones just blows my mind.  I can’t wait to see what else is available mobile style in the years to come…what’s next, meals delivered through your cell phone?

Don’t laugh, it really could be next.  That said, the article mentions,

“The Grammy Awards are synonymous with the best in entertainment…For the 50th Anniversary of the Awards, we are excited to offer the best of the Awards in exclusive video programming via the Nokia Video Centre, Medeo and other entertainment channels to millions of Nokia device owners around the world.”

Rock on Nokia…literally.

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You tell me, is this good news?

CBS Mobile, in partnership with a company called Loopt, announced on Wednesday that they will be delivering the country’s first location-based mobile Web site advertisements.

If you’re wondering what that means…

The partners will use GPS and other localization technology to reach consumers at their physical location, enabling them to target users who are near a particular place of business.  These will NOT be Bluejacked messages sent to  cell phones, but appear non-intrusively on mobile Web sites which consumers can access from their cell phones.

The ads will be available on CBS Sports Mobile and CBS Mobile News Web sites, on Loopt properties and its partner’s Web sites.

In other words, you’re checking the scores at CBS Sports on your phone while waiting for your car’s oil to be changed and ‘POP’ there’s an ad for a sale on donuts at the grocery store next door.

All consumer location data, they say, will be privacy protected by Loopt.

According to the press release:

“Location-based advertising is the sweet spot in mobile marketing,” said Cyriac Roeding, Executive Vice President, CBS Mobile.  “We are thrilled for CBS to be the first media company in the country to help our clients realize highly relevant, yet non-intrusive mobile ads using location-based technology. Through our partnership with Loopt, our advertisers will be able to deliver targeted messages to potential customers who, based on their location, might be very likely to click or make a purchase. This makes the ads highly relevant to consumers and advertisers at the same time.”

CBS’s mobile sports and news Web sites  produced close to 75 million page views and 5 million unique users  in the last quarter of 2007 - making it one of the highest-traffic ad-supported mobile Web sites in the U.S.

“We’ve really blurred the line between advertising and content. It’s a win for everyone — consumers, advertisers, Loopt, CBS and our carrier and developer partners.”

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Last year, Tyler and I got our knickers in twists over Bluejacking.

While it has become somehwt common in other countries, as Americans we likened Bluejacked messages right up there with sales calles during dinner and root canals.

And yet, it’s coming.

Bluejacking is become more and more standard in the world, and the US can only hold out so long against this sea of  messages. It’s like covering your eyes and swearing Simon Cowell doesn’t exist. He DOES. And he’s only getting more airtime.

Now the city of Stirling, one of my favorite Scottish cities, has Bluejack-enabled their train station.

Visitors to the station will be given information about the city via Bluetooth posters which activate a text message to phones.

The messages will feature information on events in the city as well as shopping offers.

The town thinks this is a grand way to “keep in touch” with its residents and let them know about sales in local shops and construction of a nearby mall.

Because THAT’S a good reason to be paying $.25 a text?

Or maybe the lads and lasses there have an inclusive plan!

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A couple of new reviews of the X54…

First of all, the intrepid and patient Andy Fertal wrote that he’s received his new MoGo X54. Andy has often commented here, was one of the first to order the new release, and was enthusiastically awaiting delivery as deliveries caught up with the huge backlog of pre-orders.

This is what he wrote;

I got my Mo-Go (X54 Pro) workin!

After a loooooong wait, I received my X54 Pro from Tiger Direct on December 21st… one day after I had left for a two-week trip to Mexico. Sadly, I had to lug around my Microsoft Wireless Presentation Mouse 8000, which works great, but requires batteries and a storage case and weighs at least five to ten times what the X54 Pro weighs.

..but now I’m back and I got my Mo-Go workin’…..

The X54 Pro is great! It protrudes just enough from the X54 slot on my Dell Laptop to allow for easy insertion and removal. Once it is paired, it is recognized by the system (Windows XP) upon startup prior to login so you can slip it out of the slot and begin using it immediately. The scroll function and center (scroll wheel) click functions are a great addition to the original 2-button Mo-Go design.

The overall feel when in ‘mouse’ mode is much more solid than I had expected. It is also quick and responsive and tracks well on a variety of surfaces. The ‘presentation’ mode functions well with PowerPoints and Windows Media player and does everything the Microsoft Presentation Mouse 8000 does except provide volume control.

All in all, the X54 Pro is a great product and has my vote as one of the most useful new computer gadgets to come along in quite a while….

Andy Fertal

Andy - thank you from all of us for that great review, and for being such a great customer!

Over at VNUNET, the reviewers are also impressed with the X54 MoGo.

Although at first a little sceptical of the design; “What at first appears to be an extremely uncomfortable mouse actually turns out to be surprisingly pleasant in use.”

In the end? They give it 4 stars!

Just more evidence of how exiting and revolutionary the mouse is!

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If I’ve said it once I have said it a million times…nothing is better on a Monday morning than waking up and finding in my feed reader a post from someone that is in love with the MoGo Mouse.  Lucky for you and I, today was one of those days!

That’s right my faithful friends, I just so happened to find a post over on John Robbins’ Blog!  John was one of the rad individuals selected as a Microsoft Valuable Professional and as such was awarded a MoGo Mouse BT in his little care package!  That said, he had some pretty darn good things to say about our little product that could.  Here’s a little quote from his post:

“I just needed a mouse for a short time, I popped out the MoGo Mouse. After a painless pairing with my Lenovo X60 Tablet, I got to work. After ten minutes of real use I realized that the MoGo Mouse is far more comfortable than I could have ever imagined. In fact, I haven’t pulled out my Microsoft mouse since.”

First off, congrats on the MVP award, second off, thank you for your kind words.  We couldn’t be happier you enjoy the product and know it will serve you well in the months to come!

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