Mobile Madness

iPhone insurance, s’mores, and why the numbers 1 and 2 are more important than anything else in your address book.

Call it the iPhone syndrome, call it life, but we’ve all grown increasingly dependent on our mobile devices. Heck, we even have a hard time calling them “phones” — it seems to belittle their pivotal role as irreplaceable lifestyle hubs. And if a fresh mobile service comes along to make keeping it all together even a little bit easier, well, we’re all over.

MOBYKO

If you’ve ever lost a cell phone, you know the connectedness nightmare that ensues — contacts lost, calls missed, photos gone. If only you had backed it all up. Enter Mobyko — a UK-based service that lets you back it all up on your computer and on the web, making all your precious mobile info not only safe but also accessible from anywhere.

The service is completely free, does everything wirelessly with no software to install, works with non-UK cellular providers as well, and even lets you send text messages from your computer. You can view, manage, and save all your texts, photos and videos — and if you get the premium version, you get an extra 250MB of storage.

Smart, simple, shit-happens-resistant.

JOTT FEEDS

Remember Jott?

We slapped our claim of approval on the nifty voice transcription service very early on, and they have more than lived up to it. After their BlackBerry platform a couple of months ago, which was received to great critical acclaim and has probably saved many a relationship by swapping normal sentences for curt one-liners, Jott has just released Jott Feeds: a simple way to stay on top of your web dwellings (Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds)…by listening to them.

Yep, Jott Feeds is part personal assistant, part private broadcast station, and wholly awesome. You simply add your favorite RSS feeds to your Jott account and you’re good to go: Jott converts the feeds into audio using text-to-voice technology and sends them to your phone.

And we think anything that lets us find out about the latest Campfire event while having s’mores around an actual campfire is a winner.

MIZPEE

Listen ye of small bladders: rescue cometh.

We’re serious: we’re huge proponents of hydration, but that goes hand in hand with…um…an exit strategy. Luckily, your trusty cell phone can now help you with two very important numbers not found in your address book: number one and number two.

MizPee is a mobile social network for the small-bladdered city dweller. It finds the coolest, cleanest public restrooms in any area you specify — you can look ‘em up online, or hook up your cell phone for easy access when you need it the most: when you’re on the go and really gotta go.

Not only that, but these guys have also started hooking up with local establishments that offer special deals for MizPee members: like, say, a free truffle at Michael Mischer Chocolates in Oakland when you go in to drop your own…truffle…in their loo.

And if you were to calculate just how much time you spend in the loo over your lifetime, cross-tabulate it with the time you spend roaming the city, and divide that by… You know what? Let’s just say this rocks and leave it at that.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 7:48 am in culture, just weird, retail, software, technology and was tagged iphone, software, technology, weird.