Mobile Number Portability in India. Finally.

While mobile number portability (MNP) has been in use for the last several years in many parts of the world, India was still lagging. The Department of Telecommunications (or DoT) finally mandated the provisioning of the MNP service. Officially, the department defines the MNP service as follows:

Mobile Number Portability Service means a service which allows subscribers to retain their existing telephone number when they switch from one access provider to another irrespective of mobile technology or from one technology to another of the same or any other access service provider (sic).

This is good news!

Nokia E71x Cell Phone Appears on AT&T

Just came across this bit of news that AT&T will carry the Nokia E71x (no doubt a North American version of the E71). I decided to look it up on the AT&T website. Here’s what I saw.

Nokia E71x on AT&T

Looks like somebody wanted to play with the HTML title tag.

Anyway, at 0.39″ thickness, this is a sleek, full QWERTY phone that I wouldn’t mind owning. The phone’s got a 2.4″ display which is a bummer, but hey, I can connect to the Internet directly using either the data cable or Bluetooth – assuming AT&T hasn’t disabled it. Oh wait, there’s no mention of it on AT&T’s website about this feature, which leads me to believe that they have, in fact, disabled it.

SMS and Twitter

The first SMS is sent out way back in 1992. Fast forward to 17 years later, and Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomena of the first decade of this century.

Gmail Mobile Enhancements with New Engine for iPhone/Android

According to this post on the Google Mobile blog, there have been improvements made to Gmail for mobile, but only if you are an iPhone/Android phone user. Now, I have both phones. When I opened Gmail on the Android (T-Mobile HTC G-1), it prompted me with a “Faster Gmail available! Update Now” message. Clicking on the link produced the above popup. So basically, I had to install Gears on my “computer” (nevermind that this is actually a phone). Before I could check the “I trust this site…” box (while in reality I don’t ;-)), the popup disappeared.

And now when I click on the Update Now link, nothing happens. No popup, no gears, nothing. When I opened Gmail on the iPhone, the Update Now link was not even shown. Welcome to the improved version.