Pump up the mobile motivation
People who made a get-fit new year’s resolution this year can find motivation to stick with their goals on their cellphones. PumpOne, a company that provides visual personal training programs for handheld devices like iPods, is offering a service called PumpOne Mobile that provides a complete visual personal training workout program on cellular phones. The service includes more than 80 workouts that are geared toward weight loss, strength training or flexibility. Users can access the service by visiting the company’s PumpOne.mobi Web site, sending a text message to the company or e-mailing the company and requesting the service. One workout will cost users $3 for 24 hours, while $5 buys all workouts for seven days and $15 gives customers access to all workouts for 30 days.
Taxis testing deadspots in New York
L.M. Ericsson plans to use New York taxis to help it find network dead spots in the city. New York’s taxi commission is allowing the company to place mobile sensors in the trunks of 50 or more cabs. The sensors will automatically feed information about signal strength to the company’s engineers. Ericsson said it has implemented similar programs in the past, using everything from trains to limousines.
Bluetooth chess cheater
Cheating has gone high-tech. An Indian chess player was banned from competing for 10 years after he was found to be using a Bluetooth headset sewn into his hat to cheat during matches. Umakant Sharma, with the help of accomplices, was receiving moves generated by a computer chess program on the headset during games. Sharma’s secret was discovered during a random check.
Plan to auction mobile startup abandoned
A startup focused on mobile media sharing has aborted plans to auction itself off after receiving zero bids on eBay.
Mojungle.com allows users to record text messages, photos and videos with their mobile phones and post them to the company’s site, a MySpace profile or anywhere else on the Internet. The company reportedly hoped to get an offer of $250,000, but its eBay listing was pulled last month after it failed to secure a $60,000 opening bid.
