the latest hardware and tech
for mobile media makers
in the field.

Firmware release 2.4.2 has added a number of new modems and phones that are now tested and compatible with both the CradlePoint CTR350 Mobile Travel Router and the CradlePoint PHS300 Personal WiFi Hotspot.

They include: the Huawei UMG-181 on T-Mobile and AT&T, the Novatel MiFi 2200 on Sprint and Verizon and RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9000/AT&T.

The current PHS300 does not work with the new WiMAX and 4G modems. With upgraded hardware, the new version of the PHS300 allows for the special requirements of these new technologies.

In an effort to support customers, CradlePoint has set up a special
rebate offer for any current CradlePoint PHS300 owner.

1. purchase a new PHS300 with version 2.0 hardware
2. You will receive a rebate form with your new PHS300
3. Mail the form along with your old model PHS300 back to CradlePoint
4. Receive a check in the mail for $75

This offer is for CradlePoint customers residing in the US and Canada only. Offer is good thru September 30, 2009. Hmm, I do hope the phs300 we are getting for the new ammoboxes are the latest version!

Whoa.  it’s small (what she said)

The Tekcharge MP1800 from the get go has surprised me, you see.  i already own the tekkeon mp3450i i was almost expecting it to be the same sort of size but compared it is ultra small – just a little bit smaller than the iphone that i’ll be mainly charging with it.   It comes with a lanyard and the other surprise was the built in ultra bright led light at the top.   It is perfect for using at an event or conference and you have the backup of charging your phone a few times on the move without having to worry about looking through your bag.   I was a bit concerned that there there is no power meter on the unit but for £35 what can you really expect.

One other thing i need to find out is if the tekkeon unit is still a polymer based battery – the mp3450i is awesome in that no matter how hot it got in my backpack in austin during sxsw it lasted a few days with no problems powering the phs300 cradlepoint wifi router.   It is a little bit more pricy that some units but after i have given it a test out i think i’ll be proven that i have made the right choice.  I have some cheaper made units for ten pounds buy they come with little to no warrenty and I always think that buy cheap then buy twice.  I was that impressed at sxsw that it make the tekkeon units the first choice to check up for the USB charger for my iPhone.  I could have looked at the more powerful mp3700 but for just charging an iPhone it is overkill.

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We just got a really uplifting email from cradlepoint.

You see for a few weeks while i have had my head down pulling together all these blogposts and getting a pipeline setup for posting regular information to the ammobox project i had left a few of the sponsors on hold while i worked on the content.    Today, outta the blue i just got a great email from the new head of social media at cradlepoint that they were up for sponsoring the first 10 ammoboxes with phs300 wifi routers.  we are absolutely made up (initial tear in the eye and everything) – i feel like we just broke through that initial barrier of taking social media from just blog reports and people talking about the products to actually starting back and forth dialog to the people that ‘build the product‘ – it has to be a win win situation for both parties.

Just a few details about the units

The PHS300 Personal WiFi Hotspot is a true plug ‘n’ play solution that creates a powerful WiFi network almost anywhere. Connect all your WiFi enabled devices by simply plugging in your activated USB data modem* and turning on the PHS300. No more searching for a hotspot, you are one! – the PHS300 comes standard with a Li Ion battery providing hours of access when no power outlets are in sight. At just under 3” x 5” it’s a perfect solution for those on the go. Take the PHS300 everywhere you need Internet access.  This high-performance router platform, powered by WiPipe™ technology, supports multiple and concurrent VPN pass-through sessions, plus encryption modes including WEP, WPA and WPA2.  Now you can confidently access the Internet and share your connection with friends, family or colleagues on the road, in the office and at home.

We just want to say a big thank you to the new social media division (you know who you are!) and we look forward to receiving the units which will go into each of the first 10 ammoboxes.   Now i gotta make the call to tekkeon to hook us up with some portable juice for these badboys!

38 iphone applications that every socialmedia mobile mediamaker should own to get your message out there. I have broken them down into five groups – i thought about making this into lots of seperate posts but in the end decided on the mega post. i hope you’ll find something in here that you can use in your daily mobile social media making!

communication

skype
when i first purchased my iphone3g it never even entered my mind that skype might actually make an iphone application for their service. i mean it makes perfect sense to make one but i just never saw apple allowing it to happen what with them being very closed provider/operator breaking into this phone space with their second version of the iphone. luckily thou it did happen and it is great to get hold of people for an interview with ubercaster – being able to call people on skype via their iphones while they are at a cybercafe and pull them into a live podcast interview is fantastic and very interactive.

im+
i personally spend very little time using instant messaging these days – there is just too many things i like to be engaged in around the internet that is a little bit more lightweight, twittering or firing a response to a friendfeed/facebook link is more my bag but when i am mobile for any length of time i tend to talk to back home via gtalk – for this i use IM+ All-in-One Messenger. It’s not cheap mind but i do like the fact that the full version (you can get a lite version for free) keeps your connections going when you break out of the app to load up other applications or take a phone call.

SHOUTcast
if you are not sure what shoutcasts are let me give you a little bit of education on them. back in the day shoutcasting was the method of streaming audiostreams and music out onto the net – a lot of the radio streams you find in itunes are based on either icecast or shoutcasting protocols. we use a 64kps backup audiostream to a dedicated serverhost called tidyhosts as they have a reasonable 50 slot server for £10 a month which works perfectly for a backup to streaming video out from the ammobox if the connection at the venue is poor.   great if your running out of space for music too.

tweetdeck
if your a twitter user chances are at some point you have tried tweetdeck or heard from someone who uses it. for a long time i ran tweetdeck on my desktop mac and loved it until it started to take up too much of my time watching, sifting and watching the constant conversations go by. now like the evil timesuck ninjas they are they go and release an iphone application which is actually really nifty and creative in the approach to show these columns. the interface is snappy and clean and will enable you to keep up your desktop with the really nice sync feature of your searchs and custom columns.

tweetie
the application that changed me from using tweetdeck. period. ultra clean interface, native mac osx support and written in cocoa (not some memory bloating air application – not tweetdecks fault per say btw) – the fad with air applications for me died very quickly when it was obvious that some work needs to be done on the way that air works. i’m sure something newer is in the mix but for now tweetie on my mac desktop and the mobile are the way forward for fast communication. the multiple accounts features of both are both super fast and easy to use.

information, blogging & distribution

tumblr
tumblr is a fantastic microblogging platform that has many different themes and the ability to use a custom theme for free. the iphone application is super easy to use once you have registered a name for your site – you have to do this initially from the web. i currently use the tumblr app for updating projectswebmedia.com (oh i forgot to say tumblr allow you to point your own domain names at the sites too. it is a very fast way when you are mobile to send micro sized twitter style content to your website.  make sure you check out our uber horizontal infinite scroller!

Ego
even wanted to check your stats in a clean, fast loading interface – with support for Feedburner, Google Analytics, Google PageRank™, Mint, Squarespace and Twitter the tracking interface reminds me of the widgets of mint in that you can click them to get daily, weekly and all time. a really nice light stats client that at a glance can keep you in the loop – the ability to see feedburner feeds is a big plus for me because you can see the + and – increase on them.    This is one of those applications that i hope that when apple build in the ability to be notified on the frontscreen that egoapps builds in support for it! – realtime stats ftw.

Byline
a fantastic rss reader based on google reader but with the ability to sync items directly to the iphone so you can download and take them with you. perfect for the plane or the subway or when you have no access to a data connection but you want to catch up on your google reader feeds. again, perfect for mobile and travelling to have access to your feeds or even syncing up rss status updates from your website registrations maybe – either way a better way to consume rss feeds if you ask me, sitting on a pc burning watts to browse websites has always been a bit overkill right?

SkyNews
whenever i am out on the road or travelling by train i always like to keep up with the news and while skynews might not be the fastest in the world i find their iphone application to be fast and display videos and news stories in a nice lightweight fashion. it would be good if there was an application that had most of the major news services on it with a twitter feed of searched stuff as well that updated dynamically in a twitterfall sort of fashion. that would be very useful. also maybe geo news for your location maybe – i can imagine a lot of local media producers putting out content too!

SugarSync
after looking for a decent complete system backup tool i stumbled upon sugarsync. the first thing that really attracted me to sugarsync was the pricing – for 250gb it worked out just under $20 a month (since then however i have installed carbonite for a year at $52 for unlimited transfer and storage) – what i do like about sugarsync however is that it has an iphone application where you can get to your content you have stored on their services. i do hope carbonite do something similar – i’m still looking for that ultimate application that will allow me to stream music from my backed up itunes folder!

iRail
how many times have you been at an event and your clock watching wondering if you should stay around and have another drink or risk catching a later train? – i seem to do it all the time. what is nice about iRail thou is not only does it work in the uk but all across europe which is very handle if you have a last minute job that you have been called up to do and your literally just having to rush to grab a plane – not having to look up at foreign traffic information signs in a blind panic would definately be one of the reasons to purchase this iphone application.   a worthwhile addition for the traveller in europe.

Birdhouse
such a simple idea but often the best – how many times have you been wanting to tweet something you heard or saw or an idea that popped into your mind but you just could not tweet it because of no data connection or maybe your flying. if this is you then birdhouse is for you. an offline draft twitter app that you can store a message for later and post when you have access. i actually use it for generic messages for when i do live streaming so it is quick to push out the message.  i should add that it supports multiple twitter accounts too which makes it that little bit more awesome.

evernote
the weird thing about evernote is that i always felt there was something missing with it. i started using on windows and found the application to be to complicated just to be able to store notes. i really love the sync feature however and that was one thing that made me change back to it from the ‘things’ application after it would not sync one day. the web version of evernote is dire and i still think the mac app is the best. the iphone app is ok, needs work but make sure you have data connection to sync your latest notes – i once got caught in berlin needing the address of the stop i needed to get off and could not retrieve it!

iBlogger
after finally biting the bullet and spending $5.99 on this app i hoped it would do what i needed because all the other blogging apps seem flaky and unreliable. Not so with iblogger – for a start it supports a massive list of blogging systems so your pretty much covered there. i use it for updating my moveabletype installations and wordpress. you can even add photos from the camera for quick updates for maybe a launch party when you just have to get the message out there. a worthwhile addition for any blogger on the road.   do remember thou, $5.99 – only buy if your going to use it!

MobileMinute
how many times have you really wanted to know just how many minutes or data you have used up on your iphone3g with o2 – i’ve nearly had my iphone for 18 months now and although it has been for repair once (for the microphone) i have never really know how much data tariff i have used on it – this can be crucial when your roaming. i heard about this app and was keen to try it. i’m still trying thou because for some reason i get a message saying that it cannot access my traffic stats from the web. update soon on this!

ftponthego
as a website developer you know that the moment you think you’ll have a steady few days out of the woodwork and while your on vacation on the beach somewhere one of you clients has either uploaded something wrong or messed up a .htaccess file – you know the situation. ftp on the go is a great little iphone application to allow you to ftp into your servers to correct things from wherever you can get a data connection. a very useful app – also allows you to save files locally. has tons of features i have not even touched yet.   remember, just because your on vacation does’nt mean you cannot ftp in and fix it!

dopplr
i have been using dopplr via it’s website since it launched and i always like the idea, very similar to brightkite in some aspects but with a heavy lean towards letting you know about reviews of hotels and restaurants in the area by updates from the people you trust in your social grid. i like that. the iphone app is brand new and although basic in operation right now shows potential as to where this application is going to. it will be fantastic while travelling to test it out and i look forward to playing around with it when it matures a bit more – be interesting to see what dopplr does next actually.

currency
how many times have you been abroad, even flew between two countries with lots of different currencys and been completely lost about how much your actually spending – on a recent ‘ontheground’ in denmark i had that situation when i just could not work out how much things were. having to have krona as well as euros just about finished me off – having a currency converter on the iphone is an absolute requirement for ultimate geekery so you do not over spend on those iffy foreign beers you just bought.  can be a bit iffy to use first time but you soon get the hang of it.

RSSplayer
pretty much everything the ipod player should be on the iphone – the video part of the ipod on the iphone is awful. the interface has been made to work around video when really it is designed for music only. another problem is that you often have to sync to your machine to get videos over 10 meg even if your on wifi. with rssplayer all that goes away, in fact any size can be downloaded and it has an intergrated search function and schedule guide so it can download while your on the move. a brilliant application for catching up with media on the go that simply makes itunes look inferior.

Locly
stuck in the middle of nowhere and need food, maybe transport or even just want to touch base with the local twitter users in the area – the super lightweight (no graphics) locly is a fantastic super quick applications for pulling back a bunch of information based on your geo location – find local flickr images, twitters, wikipedia, local events, restaurants, pubs, cafes, shops and supermarkets, taxi firms, films and movies, museums, hotels, banks/atm and gas stations. the locality in your pocket – if this moved towards doing live updates as well in a twitterfall display that would rock.

London Tube
i’m not a local to london (even thou most of my friends in america think that london is england) far from it i live over two and half hours away from london in the midlands, derbyshire and although i’m getting more confident using the tube i do have trouble getting around and working out what is the best tube station to – luckily we have applications like this now to help out route prep – this app does not require a data connection to work out the routes which makes it that extra bit special that the rest.  also, high resolution images and routes compared to some others.

Pixelpipe
Pixelpipe is a media gateway that allows users to publish text and upload photos, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 95 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and other online destinations. They provide free mobile & desktop applications. For instance if you have a picture you want to distribute you can send it to pixelpipe and have it sent to a batch of other picture sites at the same time. very useful for getting attention to something very quickly around the interwebz.

audio recording

audioboo
for saying that i started out videoblogging and switched to podcasting seems a bit of a weird thing to say but for the moment that is exactly what i have done. audioboo is a fantastic iphone application that allows you to rapidly recording high quality snippits of audio and post them directly to the internet. you can also setup destinations that you wish to post an update too when you do this. i have recently been using xlr mics with the iphone and it works very well indeed.  out of all the other audio recording applications this is my current favorite because it has great embed options too (oh and recently released api!)

12seconds
one of the first video (from a series of  pictures) and audio posting applications i had seen that approached the low bandwidth quick upload route in a really creative way – quick post requirement of getting a 12 seconds video snippit on an iphone. utilizing the three pictures you have the ability to post those which in turn display in an animation on 12 seconds with an attached 12 second audio clip. a great little application for rapidly updating people without actually recording a video.  just take three shots, add them to the app and record a little bit of audio.   quick and simple.  and free!

tweetmic
following in the same vein as the audioboo application this iphone app is pretty much a backup application just in case something horrible happens with audioboo and i want to get a live audio podcast recording done and sent out to the internet. in testing i found the playback of the tweetmic clips jumpy and not as good quality as the audioboo application – also you have less embed options when i last checked and no api, that said tweetmic is 99 cents so they are bringing in a little bit of money to cover a little bit of their overheads for the development of new revisions  – not seen it updated yet thou – also the interface could do with a make over!

FiRe
touted as the ‘field recorder in your hand’ this brilliant application is ideal for those wanting to experiment with the latest and greatest gadgets for the iphone – utilizing the blue mikey, an addon block for the bottom of the iphone you can get some really amazing recordings and the application works very much like a true hardware field recorder with a proper vu meter and the ability to save your high quality recordings to soundcloud. one to check out if you want to save lots of audio recordings on the phone as well – audioboo only allows you currently to record one boo at a time before you have to upload it – this is where FiRe comes in.

voxie
a recent new addition to my iphone purely for ‘testing purposes’ – another audio recorder but with a nicer interface – not sure i really like the web interface things to send audio snippits back and forth but the addition of the webserver is at least something to getting to your audio – an app without the ability to post it to the web always worries me. i do however like the categorize features and the ability to flag media with different status. The friends element so you can send audio to friends is also quite useful – i presume that is how it works.   I would probably use voxie more if it functioned more similar to audioboo regarding uploading.

video recording

bambuser
one of the first video applications for the iphone3g that i used that did not require jailbreaking. slowly the application is gaining more features and I’m very keen to try the application again now that we have the xlr to iphone connector working – should be no reason why the application will not use the new mic input which for quick interviews as a backup will work perfectly. bambuser are based in stockholm, sweden and are a great backup to the qik application if your nokia (you have a backup right) mobile phone goes down.

twitvid
not had chance to properly use this yet as it is designed for the iphone3gs – i’m quite excited about the advent of video production on the iphone but i think it has a long way to go before it can make it up to the high standards of quick video capture of the nokias. saying that the ability to quickly record a video and post to twitter is very useful if you have a lot of followers and you want to update them quickly.   It is also pretty cool to roll into a new town or new place on the train and open up brightkite over a coffee and see who is in the locality or who passed through in recent days.

geolocation & camera

NightCamera
so we all know that the iphone3g has a pretty naff 2 megapixel camera for taking photos compared to some of the camera phones on the market – the iphone3g in lowlight is pretty dire still.  what night camera does thou is actually pretty simple but very clever – it actually checks to see if the camera is stable by using the inbuilt accelerometer to see if the shot is steady or not before taking it.   also you can take smaller size pictures which makes for faster picture taking than normal which is good for a bunch of pictures.   my favorite mode has to be the sepia.

Sparrow
a very simple geo location application to update your status to the yahoo fireeagle location service.  lots of geo apps can be updated by the fireeagle service – one of them is the brightkite service – you can update with sparrow and it will also alert your brightkite geo service also if you allow it access.   you can also set the level of privacy of your update by restricting the range of the geo update for area, region or down to street level.   always remember that walking around with a bag full of tech worth a lot of money will be quite attractive to geo thieves in the future.  be sensible with it.

iNap
not sure if your anything like me when it comes to events but i always seem to be mentally drained by the end of night from all the conversations i end up having about this social space and the interesting things that go on within it. this app has on a few occasions given me the chance to catch some sleep on the way home on the train.  super simple – set a distance range from your destination you want the alarm to go off and it will play an alarm when your near.   Do make sure however you have a gps signal – nothing worse that hoping technology will help you for it to fail badly!

flickit
one of my new top favorite apps for taking photos with and geotagging them.  mainly because it really has a good system for tagging photos that you can setup in batch mode to apply to every photo that you take in the app.   you can also attach geotag each image with geo date from the onboard gps on your iphone.   the interface is very light weight and speedy in which you can upload photos to flickr make it perfect for batch shots on a location.   setting up your tags, description and comments ahead of time can make the process of distributing picture content to flickr for an ammobox event very easy indeed – all the user has to do is shoot the photos and upload.

brightkite
the first real geo tagging application that i started using on the iphone.  a really slick and well thought out application that allows you to update your geo location, add a note or photo or all three.  what is neat about brightkite is that you have a social grid of people that follow your updates exactly like twitter and you can see people in your locality and chat between you.   brightkite could be really clever here if they started adding features similar to dopplr in recommending places nearby to your location and showing special offers for restaurants at certain times with money off codes.  do it brightkite!

camerabag
camerabag is a little bit quirky from the norm, it takes a photo just like any other app (i think you can even bring a photo in from your photo library) but you can then apply different filters/lens like it was taken on a retro camera or from a certain film quality year.   the program has about six different settings and can make a bland photo quite interesting.   filters are – magazine, helga, lolo, 1962, 1974, instant, fisheye, infrared, cinema, mono and of course the original – to switch between each of the effects you simply swipe your finger right to left to see the effect.

autostitch
i have tried a number of panoramic iphoto applications and this one seems to be the most simple and power.   the others just took too much messing around trying to get things right – this one is a bit more sensible in the approach in how to use it.  it can take really wide landscape pic.  i’m looking forward to giving this a try out with boinxtv at some point with the 360 layer.   ideally i need to find some kind of iphone bracket system for a tripod to get the best effect.  zacuto make the zgrip junior and pro units which look pretty neat.  we would LOVE to play with the pro version!

shakeitphoto
another of my top fav applications right now for graphics/photo processing on the iphone is shakeitphoto and the best of all it is only 99 cents.  a bargain! – in classic/retro polaroid camera styli when you have taken a snap you have to shake the iphone to develop the picture – a bit of a gimmick for sure but the quality of the processed images are really nice.   one thing i should mention is that they have a really awesome iphone site where you can view other peoples that have been added to the flickr group and it has a nice star rating system.  for the price of 99 cents you really cannot go wrong.  grab it!

comictouch
a personal favorite also of mine for really surprise shots that you might have got by accident or when you have two people talking to each other but need to put a caption on before you post it – this is for you.   a really slick interface and to be honest i love everything the guys at plasq do (skitch anyone?) – very cool app.

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Live Blogging for Ammobox from pcmcreative Qik 01

Finding myself at the most westerly point of the UK mainland with an invitation to do some blogging out and about how could I resist? Sadly I couldn’t embed the Qik player in to my post here so here is a link.

Live blogged to Qik this was streamed to my blog and embedded Qik players across the web. Any networks I have an aggregated RSS feed in to of  my activity received it too.

The most exciting thing for me about social media is the tools I discover to document and update projects and events on the move.  With a smart phone, 3g signal, wifi hub app and EeePC notebook I can connect to the Interweb on demand and share my experiences with a network. The conversations and collaboration that have come from the online communities I frequent have been a joyous bonus. I’m looking forward to writing about my mobile adventure, the processes, creative journey and upload tactics. I have reached a point where creating the content is happening nicely now its the polishing and the getting it online and live on the move that challenges me.

Any questions or any tips please speak up.

broadcasting your twitter name as the ssid - let people know you arrived at the event!

Hey folks! – before i get into writing some epic blogposts about each device (i’m going to provide a series of videos for each device that goes into the ammoboxes as well by the way) i thought i would tell you a few tricks that i do with devices i do as well.   These will normally just be a few paragraphs of rapid fire ideas and concepts that you can build on.   So, with that in mind i present the first one – ’setting your ssid to your twitter name’ – seems like a simple thing to do right? – sure but here some reasons why it is really effective!

broadcast and go (even without your dongle attached!)
dont panic! – i can hear people say why would i want to share my mobile (expensive!) internet with anybody else.  well, you do not have to – if you want you can simply just broadcast your mobile ssid so when people are searching for wifi they see you @twittername displayed – a lot of people are nosey and will check you out if they can get on another wifi signal at the event or even sending/shout you a message asking you to open up your wifi via their mobile capable twitter account.

become your own mobile promotion engine
often times with my additional tekkeon battery pack feeding juice to my phs300 i can run the mobile hotspot for a few days.  this means i can drop it in the bag and forget about it.   only allowing internet access to my mac address range.   the phs300 does have a ‘landing’ page that people trying to connect can get too and it has a simple chat box for people to talk you to ask for access.   it is a pity that you cannot customize this part of the cradlepoint router however – having all your social feeds, rss and recent work in one place served up from the router or a computer on the ‘mobile’ network would be a great way of making new connections in the airport – even selling access for those that do not want to pay out $8.95 or more on 24hrs of airport access.  think about it! – mobile social media working for you from your backpack!

an absolute lifesaver at large tech events
at sxsw 2009 i was lucky to give the tekkeon power supply and cradlepoint phs300 a good workout and ran it combined with an evdo card in my bag all day – the only unit that was actually hot after any length of time was the evdo card with the mobile router and power supply running cool.   the tekkeon is polymer so heat is not an issue anyway – remember this was a lot of walking about in and outside in the hot and sunny austin climate.   running your own portable hotspot is useful for touching base and if you have an unlimited bandwidth package can be useful to share with your mates around conference centers.

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As we sailed out on the ferry leaving Poole Harbour, the first thing I noticed was how far the O2 signal stretched. It seemed I could still twitpic at no extra cost (on the iPhone data bolt on) quite a long way away from land.

The second thing worth noting was that when the signal did die, the boat’s own GSM mast kicked in and (voice) roaming was available during the full 4 hour crossing.

As I have Twitter setup to use the free SMS service, I was still receiving txt updates from the people I had selected to monitor (plus any DM’s) I could also tweet by sending a reply to the SMS number – though I assume the cost of sending will be on roaming charges.

Although I have been informed that I would be paying for a proportion of the cost of any incomming calls when abroad, I have not read or been informed of any charges for incomming SMS?

Once we landed I got SMS messages from O2 detailing 35p for outgoing calls, 18p for incomming, 11p to send SMS and £3 per MB for data.

As most of you will know, the key thing is to turn roaming data off on the iPhone. There have been loads of stories of massive data bills when returning from holidays. The iPhone eats data and even does it without you knowing – so turn roaming data off when not in use.

When I fired up the netbook with the Three dongle I got a message that roaming data would be charged at £1.25 per mb. Much better than O2 but still pricey – especially if some application decides it needs to perform a background update!

You can buy a roaming data bolt on with O2 before you leave and this brings the price down. I think 50mb with O2 was £42. You need to reset your useage monitor and keep checking it to ensure you don’t go over. I would also turn roaming off and on as required to ensure it’s not left downloading upates or voicemail (you can get voicemail by dialing instead)

That being said, the iPhone is actually brilliant at conserving data once in an app. For example, the Facebook app is very light weight with no downloading of adverts or full pages of crap. You just get the important data. Twitter apps can be set to store avatars locally and only update the latest tweets rather than a full page refresh. Even Google maps has been excellent on data use – and being in an unknown location is a perfect opportunity to fully use the Local Search features. On the other hand I’ve found that using Safari on the iPhone is ripping through data as it loads full res pages for zooming into. Maybe there is a text only browsing app?

One thing I will say, is that I’m actually impressed with the ammount of notification and messages I’m getting about costs. Once apon a time you would be totally in the dark and just cross all fingers that it wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg when you got home (and it always did)

The other thing I was looking out for was WiFi hotspots. I found two signals on the site I’m on and have purchased 120 minutes for 6 Euros – the 120 minutes never expire so you just log off and come back on later. I think this is pretty good as some want a load of money for a 24hr slot when in reality, I can work offline and only login to post data or download email.

But for now, I’m writing this offline on the iPhone in landscape mode and will connect to roaming data and publish this with a minimum amount of data used. OK, it won’t look fancy, but it may just be slightly informative?

Au Revoir

– Post from my iPhone using BlogPress
– Oh, and by the way, I’m writing these on an iPhone – if I had a spell checker I’d use it