Not many people take the time to realize how much of their life is stored on their mobile phone. In most cases, your phone contains all your contacts, email, social media accounts, notes and more. Lose your phone, and you may be giving away access to things like your bank account and more.
This is where mobile security applications can help – and one of the newest on the market is BullGuard Mobile Security 10. This Swiss Army knife of security suites provides all the tools you need to keep your data safe. Inside BullGuard Mobile Security, you get anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, including protection against rogue files coming in over Bluetooth, SMS, email, MMS and more. The anti-theft feature lets you lock down your device, track it over GPS and remotely wipe everything stored on your phone and storage card.
Parental control provides a web based interface for monitoring text messages and photos. On Windows and Symbian phones, the package also installs a firewall to protect your data from rogue apps or hotspots. A spam filter can block and manage unwanted text messages and phone calls, and a backup option makes secure online backups of your contacts and calendar.
BullGuard Mobile Security 10 costs $29.95/year and is available for Android (2.0 and higher), Windows Mobile (6.0/6.1/6.5) and Blackberry (4.2 and higher). To learn more about the product, or to place an order, head on over to BullGuard.com.
Being stuck at an airport for any length of time is never an entertaining experience – and when winter weather forces you to spend more than a day inside the terminal building, things get really boring. There are only so many ways you can keep yourself busy with CNN Airport edition and a stale bagel.
Thankfully, technology can once again come to the rescue – we’ve collected ten gadgets and accessories that can help make the experience of being stranded a little less horrible. None of them can magically make flights appear and delays vanish, but every hour you can spend doing something fun is one hour closer to getting the heck out of the airport.Monster Outlets To Go
If you have ever spent any time at the airport, you’ll know that there is usually just one outlet for the entire terminal building. Do yourself (and your fellow strandees) a favor, and travel with a compact power strip. The Monster Outlets To Go Laptop is the perfect solution for this – it features a built in surge protector, folding prongs, 2 USB charger ports, and packs away nice and compact.
This is a pretty broad recommendation, but a smartphone can mean the difference between reading the terminal monitors for two days, or actually having something to do. A decent phone can also help pick alternative flights, book hotels, and look up phone numbers of a cab service.
Price: from free (on contract)
Battery pack
That shiny new smartphone won’t be much use when it runs out of power. And since most phones have trouble making it past a day, you will eventually run out of power. You can of course travel with your phone charger, but chances are outlets will be rare, all occupied or worse.
Battery packs come in a variety of sizes – some are powerful enough to charge a laptop, others can only power a small device. Prices start around $15 for an iPhone battery, up to $200 for a powerful laptop pack.
You Bars
Not battery operated, and completely without any lights, buttons or touchscreens – You Bars are custom made energy bars and trail mix that are designed by you. Pick all the ingredients you want, and this company will create your very own bar. Prices are obviously higher than store bought bars. but you’ll never run into another lousy bar again (unless you pick ingredients you don’t care for!).
When an airport terminal is full of stranded passengers, chances are your 3G mobile phone speeds will grind to a halt. Thankfully, most decent airports offer Wi-Fi, and one of the most affordable ways to get on that Wi-Fi is with Boingo. With plans starting at $7.95, Boingo Wi-Fi covers thousands of airports, hotels, restaurants and more.
Before leaving, make sure to fill your iPod, Windows Phone, Android, Blackberry or other device with a good assortment of entertainment. If you are lucky enough to be stuck at an airport with Wi-Fi, get online and use Netflix to stream movies to your laptop or mobile device. With a massive assortment of decent movies, Netflix has what it takes to get through a whole day at the airport (and I speak from experience here).
Product page: Netflix Price: from $7.95/month (streaming only)
Headphones + splitters
Keeping a pair of cheap headphones in your ears for a day is going to hurt – so consider a decent pair of on-ear headphones, and if needed, carry a splitter so you can share a movie with your travel partner. If the terminal is full of crying kids (or grown ups), you’ll appreciate a pair of noise canceling headphones. If your budget allows for it, we recommend the new Denon AH-NC800.
If you think it is hard entertaining an adult when stranded at the airport, then you’ve never tried entertaining a toddler. With an attention span of just over 2 minutes, keeping kids entertained on the road is a real challenge – but a challenge that can be conquered with technology.
Sure, in the old days, we had to settle for a coloring book, but unless it beeps, kids are just not interested in it nowadays. The iPod touch is a great option – it serves parents and kids, can be loaded with free and cheap games, and it does movies and videos. For a sturdier option designed for pre-K and K kids, consider the Leapfrog Leapster Explorer.
While the rest of the terminal tries to get comfortable on the most uncomfortable seats in the world, you could be resting peacefully with your inflatable pillow and blanket. The Lugsac was picked as one of the best travel products of 2009, and is an innovative blanket/pillow in a single product.
If you travel with the usual assortment of gadgets, you’ll most likely have a laptop and at least one mobile phone. Instead of dragging along several chargers, consider a single laptop charger with USB charger port.
When it comes to buying gear for our various outdoor adventures, most of us are restricted to making purchases from speciality retailers such as REI or big box sporting good stores like Sports Authority. But if you happen to live in a town with a locally owned gear shop, you probably have witnessed first hand just how different the experience can be. Often those shops create a sense of community with their clientele and deliver a different level of customer service than you get with the larger retail stores. Such is the case with a great little gear shop located in West Yellowstone, Montana called Freeheel & Wheel.
West Yellowstone is a sleepy little town of about 1200 residents that sits on the edge of Yellowstone National Park. You wouldn’t typcially think that such a small place would be home to a good gear shop, but then again, West Yellowstone isn’t like most towns its size. Its location puts it smack dab in the middle of some of the best outdoor environments on the planet, with plenty of rivers to paddle, mountains to climb, and forests to hike, all within a short distance. The town bills itself as the “snowmobile capital of the world,” but it also offers great cross country skiing and mountain biking along the Rendezvous Ski Trails, and it is home to one of the few biathlon courses in the entire country.
Located right on Yellowstone Avenue (where else?), Freeheel & Wheel isn’t an especially large shop, but that doesn’t stop them from offering plenty of services. You’ll find a nice selection of outdoor clothing from companies like Patagonia and Prana, not to mention a variety of mountain biking and nordic skiing gear as well. There is also a full service bicycle repair and ski tuning shop inside too, and a fantastic coffee bar that has enough options for any caffeine fiend.In the summer months, the shop rents bikes and has plenty of recommendations for rides throughout the area, including into Yellowstone Park as well as the Gallatin National Forest. Similarly, in the winter months, cross country ski rentals are also available and the staff has even more suggestions on where to go. They’ll even provide ski lessons if necessary. Vistors can drop by seven days a week to grab a bike and hit the trail.
The story behind Freeheel & Wheel is just as good as the store itself. The shop was founded by Kelli Sanders and Melissa Alder, who met as college freshmen at the University of Montana at Missoula more than twenty years ago. The two became fast friends and have been nearly inseperable ever since. After college, Kelli and Melissa knew that they wanted to go into business together, but weren’t sure exaclty what that business would entail. A visit to the Outdoor Retailer show, a bi-annual convention for gear companies, gave them the direction and inspiration they were looking for, and the rest is, as they say, history.
West Yellowstone is great little community with plenty of things to do all year round. The town, located a couple of hours drive south of Bozeman, is a hub for outdoor adventure activities and serves as a gateway to the national park right next door. If you’re in the area, and looking for something to do, be sure to drop by Freeheel & Wheel and ask for suggestions. The girls will be more than happy to help out, and even if you’re not up for an adventurous day in the surrounding wilderness, they’ll serve you up a mean cup of coffee before sending you on your way.
It isn’t often that we post rants here on Gadling (unless it involves airport security), but recent developments in mobile broadband have annoyed me enough that the time has come to post an angry rant.
Mobile broadband is in many ways a travelers best friend – it replaced dial-up on the road, it powers the data hungry appetite of our smartphones, and it makes it possible for bloggers to post rants no matter where they are.
Mobile data has been around since the mid 90’s – when it launched as a wireless way to get dial-up like speeds.
You had to bring your own ISP, and had to invest in a pricey mobile modem card. In 1997, I handed over $1400 to get my hands on a Nokia phone and PCMCIA modem card.
It quickly became my best friend on the road (and a sure way to burn through my minutes). Then, in the early parts the new millennium, mobile operators began to act as the ISP, selling data packages as add-ons to your mobile subscription.At first, these were used to access mini web sites using WAP or I-MODE. Then, when technology evolved, it allowed mobile phones to connect to laptops using Infra-Red, Serial and then Bluetooth. Speeds increased from 9.6kbit/s to a more reasonable 54kbit/s. Then EDGE and 1x (on CDMA networks) came along, and we sped things up to 144kbit/s. After that, 3G became the new buzzword, and speeds have been increasing ever since.
The latest buzzword is of course 4G, and if you believe the commercials, every one of the mobile operators offers the absolute fastest 4G network in the country. Some have hired attractive women to promote their speeds, others simply point out how they are better than anyone else and how you can “rule the air” with their lightning fast service.
Thing is, even though speeds have increased by almost 4500x, the amount of data your mobile operator lets you use each month has not.
The fraud that is “unlimited mobile broadband data”
Almost every operator in the country offers unlimited mobile broadband data. And at the same time, none of them actually do. When you start going through the fine print of your contract, you’ll come across the “acceptable usage policy” or AUP. The AUP says you can use all the data you want, as long as you keep it under a specific limit. On an unlimited plan, the limit is usually 5GB. Go over this, and you’ll either be cut off, charged more see your data speeds getting throttled.
The throttle of uselessness.
Throttling is the motoring equivalent of driving your supercharged Italian sports car without any wheels. Sure, you still have an impressive engine, and it’ll make plenty of noise, but you won’t really go anywhere.
On T-Mobile for example – once you hit their “unlimited” limit of 5GB, your speeds drop down to “EDGE speeds” – the same speeds you got back in 2002, or about 144kbit/s. At these speeds, anything other than basic web content or email is unusable. Forget streaming music or video – and forget loading a large web site in under a minute.
Speeds have increased, but guess what has not…
As I mentioned earlier – compared to 1998 speeds, the latest technology (HSDPA+ at 42mbit/s on T-Mobile) is 4500x faster. But guess what – even though the Internet has evolved, mobile broadband has been stuck on the 5GB/month limit for over 7 years.
Seven years ago, we didn’t have streaming Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Slacker or even YouTube. In other words – the entire world has changed, but the mobile operators haven’t realized this.
The limit with no options
This part is the most annoying – once you hit that miserable 5GB limit and get hit with the throttle hammer, you have no options. No matter how much money you offer your operator, you are stuck on the slow train until your new billing month begins.
Sprint and Verizon Wireless are examples of mobile operators that understand how the Internet works – once you go over on their plans, you can pay to stay at full speed. You can do this by switching to a higher plan (up to 10GB) or by paying overages. AT&T Wireless limits you to 5GB, then charges $0.05/MB. Good luck working out the math on that one.
T-Mobile shows how to annoy customers – hit their 5GB limit, and you get a text message with the bad news. Worst of all – their original data transfer limit on Android phones used to be 10GB, but they silently reduced that in 2009.
The mobile operator giveth and the mobile operator taketh away…
This one annoys me more than anything – the operator that lures customers with their promises of limitless data without throttling, only then to change the rules once enough people have signed up.
Virgin Mobile is the clear winner here – when we reviewed their MiFi mobile hotspot, they were the only 3G operator in the country with absolutely no limits on their data. Their terms and conditions didn’t even mention a fair use policy. Then, out of the blue, they decided that 5GB was plenty for everyone, and implemented the dreaded throttling. To top it all off, they even changed those rules on existing customers and keep the service at the same price. Less for the same – that is how mobile operators make their money.
The best way to hide bad changes to your plans? Confuse the heck out of people with your legalese…
T-Mobile in the U.K. shows how to really screw with your customers – they recently told customers that their current 5GB package would drop to 500MB. The message was simple: deal with it, and download your larger stuff at home. After an intense social media outcry, the operator backed down, and changed the new rules so they’d only apply to new customers. Still – the message was clear: you and your downloads suck.
Bottom line – everyone that invested in the product at the time, got screwed by their mobile operator. With the possible exception of banks, no business can pull stunts like that.
Time to burn through your alloted data package will surprise you…
When downloading at top speeds back in 2002, it would take you 64 hours of non stop downloading to burn through your EDGE powered mobile broadband allotment of 5GB. Do the same thing on the newest HSDPA+ networks in 2011 and it’ll be gone in 43 minutes. Speed really does come at a price.
On my cable internet service, I get 250GB/month, and pay $45 for that luxury. On one of my stand-alone mobile broadband subscriptions, I pay $59.99, and get 1/50th of that amount. And while I agree that the technology behind mobile broadband and cable Internet is inherently different, once the networks are in place, there is no good reason to offer one fiftieth of data without a good reason. If this doesn’t show how backwards the operators are, nothing will.
What operators need to do is take a close look at the phones they sell…
In 2002, the average smartphone was a pretty dumb terminal compared to current devices. There was almost no streaming video, no Google Maps, no Qik, no Skype. In fact, the only app that could really downoad a lot of data was the browser – and back then, browsers sucked so much, that you’d have a hard time downloading anything.
As phones improved, we added maps with navigation, video calls and customizable streaming radio stations.
We all know what our phones are capable of – and even though the operators are the ones touting their newest speeds and features – they have apparently failed to realize that people might actually use the speed.
What we really need is for operators to wake up and start offering the speeds that match the Internet. If 5GB was enough in 2007, we really should be offered 10GB or 15GB in 2011.
Here at the Gadling headquarters, we get a lot of email – but we still read every single one of them, which explains how we came across a pitch for Sculpteo, who are in the business of making mini 3D sculptures.
Not just any old sculpture either – these mini-me models are designed using your own photo, and the end result is a small statue of yourself (or someone you love/hate). The travel angle for these seemed extremely limited to us – until the company told us that they use sculptures of themselves for the dashboard of their car, making it a funny roadtrip accessory.
The combination of this creative pitch and funny product earned them a mention here on Gadling.
If the idea of your own face on a sculpture interests you, head on over to Sculpteo and start the process of creating your mini-me. Not interested in seeing your own face all day long? The company also makes 3D necklaces, key-chains and bracelets based off your own design.