Random Guy Archive

  • Iran bans Gmail, tells citizens to use homegrown e-mail service

    Iran bans Gmail, tells citizens to use homegrown e-mail service

    Posted on February 11, 2010 | No Comments
    Today may look like February 11 to you and I, but to Iranians it's 22 Bahman, the anniversary of the declaration of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's sorta analagous to the 4th of July here in the U.S., in that it commemorates the "birth," so to speak, of the country. As such, there's massive pro- and anti-government demonstrations going on in Tehran. Fun stuff to observe from a safe distance away. The country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who's really more of a figurehead than anything else, declared, among other things, that the country is now a "nuclear state," and that it will treble its production of enriched uranium. The country's telecommunication agency has also used the event to announce the banning of Gmail, while simultaneously encouraging citizens to move to its officially supported e-mail service, mail.ir.

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  • Netflix might still be coming to the Wii

    Netflix might still be coming to the Wii

    Posted on January 11, 2010 | No Comments
    The story here is that Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO of course, said at CES that the chances of Netflix launching on the Wii is “excellent.” That’s what he said. Excellent, not “Yup, it’s coming out on February 28, 2010,” so don’t get your hopes up just yet. But at least time we’re hearing it from [...]

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  • Call without a SIM card with Cherry

    Call without a SIM card with Cherry

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-person audience. The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical. Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

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  • Meet Cherry, the unified Wi-Fi / GSM network operator that introduces automatic handover

    Meet Cherry, the unified Wi-Fi / GSM network operator that introduces automatic handover

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-headed audience. The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical. Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

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