TowerOne.com

Over 900million people use a Nokia device every day.

OK so after a couple of years I have had enough of my BlackBerry and have retired my Pearl 8100 to its box. It’s not a problem with the Pearl. I loved that phone - small, light, looks great, does the job without complaint. The tracker ball went on me a couple of times but my service provider sent a new handset round the next day. Great phone. And its not the service. Despite some problems in the USA, here in the UK its been there for me when I needed it. Nope, after a couple of years I have accepted the fact that I have become a BlackBerry junkie.

Every ring, every chime, every vibration I drop whatever it is I am doing and attend to its needs. Given that I get a hundred or so emails a day I find that it is totally disruptive. It interrupts my train of thought and it seriously interferes with my social life as I now work 7 days a week.

So a week into my cold-turky routine I think I am over the worst. I still grab for my Pearl when I am sat on the train, thinking I will fire off a quick email. I still feel it vibrating in my jacket, even though it is no longer there.

I am now coming to terms with a Nokia N95. Love it. Not bothered trying to connect it with my Exchange account. Heaven. Back to the old days where I can use the phone for phone calls (although my web browsing has significantly increased!).

A British firm is set to steal a march on Apple and Nokia by launching a mobile phone offering unlimited music downloads direct to the handset.

According to The Sunday Times, Omnifone will load the phone with its MusicStation service, which has agreements in place  to supply songs from all the big music labels including EMI.

The handset differs from Apple’s iPhone because tracks can be downloaded wirelessly over HSDPA and 3G networks, according to music-industry sources.

The Omnifone’s software is already available to UK Vodafone subscribers and has been sold in Hong Kong, Sweden and South Africa. The subscription fee is £1.99 per week.

Ah, I see a crap of marketeers have screwed up another ‘launch’. NEXAGE, a mobile video white label solutions provider have whacked out a press release announcing the availability of their second generation solution, PhoneCast Pro 2. Trouble is they forgot to update their website with the details! For those of you who cannot wait for the marketing department to catch up with their own releases here it is (warning - it is written in marketing speak)…

PhoneCast Pro 2.0 reduces the complexity of ingestion, management, publication and distribution of video content, thus enabling media companies and content providers to offer mobile video services directly to mobile users. PhoneCast Pro 2.0 offers a complete end-to-end hosted solution that meets all the rich media content delivery and social networking needs of media companies. The expanded PhoneCast Pro 2.0 platform enables clients to quickly and cost-effectively “go mobile” with a solution that is highly attractive to their customers. The streamlined efficiency of the platform enables clients to simply give NEXAGE a link to their content and NEXAGE manages the rest.

PhoneCast Pro 2.0 now incorporates enhanced features that bring the full range of Internet social networking services to the mobile web. It enables media companies and others to increase “stickiness” by developing a community around their content, including rating, commenting, sharing with others, buddy lists, online chatting, blogs, and much more.

PhoneCast Pro 2.0 provides full support for the insertion of text, banner, and video advertisements and promotions for mobile video and live TV programming, and is fully integrated with mobile ad networks such as Millennial Media, Third Screen Media (AOL / Advertising.com division), Nokia Ad Services, Admob, and various video Ad providers to be announced. The PhoneCast Pro 2.0 Ad Network Optimization Engine ensures that media companies will see high Ad fill rates and high monetization rates for their mobile entertainment services launched with PhoneCast Pro 2.0.

So hot on the heels that WAYN, the social network site for travellers, may be cooking a stew with vegetables from AOL, there are reports that Facebook may be adding to their already simmering cooking pot. It appears that mobile phone giant Nokia may be ready to invest in the company. Such a move could open up a potentially massive and lucrative mobile phone user market to Facebook in a way they never dared imagine. For Nokia the move, should it happen, would spell the end for its own mobile social network, Mosh, launched last year.