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PRODUCTS AND PRICING
á Attack of the
Android phones
Android is in from the Fringe.
Canadian actor Joshua Jackson – star
of TV series Fringe and road-trip movie
One Week – joined Rogers Wireless
senior vice-president John Boynton to
launch HTC Corp.’s Dream and Magic
smart phones, the first in Canada to
operate on Google Inc.’s Android mobile
platform.
Jackson had spent the previous day
touring secret locations in Toronto, trackable on Rogers’ rogersrevolution.com,
giving away free Rogers merchandise.
The HTC Dream has a slide-out
QWERT Y keyboard; 256 MB of flash
memory and up to 192 MB of RAM; a
3.2-inch, 320x480 backlit LCD touchscreen; UMT S dual band, GSM, GPRS
and EDGE connectivity; Wi-Fi (802.11b/
g), Bluetooth and global positioning
system (GPS); and a 3. 2 megapixel
camera.
The HTC Magic is touchscreen only,
with 512 MB of ROM and up to 288
MB of RAM, but otherwise similarly
specified.
Jackson called it the only handheld
he’d used with the full power of a
computer. “Which brings me to: can I
keep one?” he asked Boynton at the press
conference.
But the real appeal for phones on the
open source Android platform will be
the downloadable applications.
“There are apps in the Android
Market for everything,” said Boynton. So
far, there are 3,200 in the Market, and
Boynton says that number will take off.
“They’re easy to access, easy to develop,”
he said.
The phone ships with Google applications including Google Maps, Lattitude
(a GPS-based friend-locator service) and
YouTube.
Boynton said that between the announcement of the phones and Tuesday’s
launch, there were more than 30,000
visits to the rogersrevolution.com Web
site, suggesting a big market for the
device in Canada.
IDC Canada Ltd. analyst Kevin
Restivo isn’t so confident. While the
prosumer smart phone market may
just be taking off, it’s getting crowded
quickly.
“It will appeal to a certain group of
people who are tech-savvy,” who will
buy the phone for its open source hook,
“but the runway on that community
will run out.”
Restivo said others will be attracted to
the phone based on the Web experience
and the Google connection, too. And it’s
attractively priced at $149 with a three
year data plan of at least $45, he said.
“Having said all that, it’s not the next
Jesus phone,” Restivo said.
“HTC and Android will create a niche,
but I wouldn’t expect a tidal wave of
adoption.”
: the demo
Technology features and functionality explained
I’m OnCall gets
Mac compatibility
By Rafael Ruffolo
Mississauga-based 01 Communique Laboratory Inc. has
released the latest version of its I’m OnCall support tool, which
allows IT administrators to remotely provide technical help
desk support to a customer or employee’s personal computer.
Version 1.1 offers full support for 64-bit Windows systems
and is also fully compatible with Mac computers. It can be
embedded into other services offered by resellers and includes
a customized branding option. Other notable upgrades include
improved multi-monitor support and enhanced auto-scrolling
and screen resizing features.
The company said it designed the product for internal
help desk use, support organizations and managed service
providers.
Technicians can also use the Web-based tool to view customer’s incident history and take advantage of a drag and drop file
transfer window for delivering software patches or updates.
Pricing per license is $100 monthly or $1,000 annually with
multiple license discounts available.
in this latest offering, it technicians
can now use the tool on their Windows-based Pc and assist a client using
a mac. A tool that would make both
Justin long and John Hodgman (from
the “i’m A mac” ads) proud.
01 communique strived to make file
transfer functionality as simple as
possible in i’m oncall. Here we see
administrators can easily drag and
drop between the two Pcs.
