If you live in London (or just visit on a regular basis), you’ll know all about Oyster, and more importantly for those occasional visitors, the ability to save money on those underground / bus journeys.  However, what’s not always so easy to know is where’s the nearest TopUp location for the Oyster scheme.  Well, if you are an Android user, then the new OysterCatcher app from LongTap may well help you out.

OysterCatcher will display the nearest shops to you at the tap of a button. Using the phone’s GPS it will work out your location and using Google Maps it will clearly display where you are and where the nearest 10 top up shops are.

There’s nothing particular special about the application from one point of view (the data is available on the TfL website), but as the TfL website is not particularly mobile friendly, then offering this native application helps provide the integration between the data and useful access to that data.

If you want to try out the application (and it’s free after all), then head off to the Android Market Place and search for OysterCatcher.

Screenshot courtesy of AppBrain.

The iPad is coming to the UK on Friday.  Earlier this week we covered the iPad SIM Only deals from Vodafone (here), and today’s we’re looking at 3UK’s similar offering:

• £7.50 per month (1 month rolling contract), 1GB of data per month, no calls
• £15 per month (1 month rolling contract), 10GB of data per month, no calls

Now, let’s just compare those to Vodafone for a second; to get 1GB of data, Vodafone will charge £10 per month, whereas as 3UK are charging £7.50 per month; it’s clear to see which one is better there.

Equally, for £15 per month, 3UK are offering 10GB of data, whereas Vodafone are only offering 3GB of data; in fact, taking this comparison a stage further; the maximum data you can buy from Vodafone is 5GB per month at £25 per month, whereas 3UK will give you 10GB of data for just £15 per month.

Something tells me this £15 per month 3UK option is going to be quite popular…

Of course, not everyone can afford the 3G version; if you select the Wi-Fi only version, then it’s well worth considering the 3UK MiFi option, which will allow you to connect a number of devices to a 3G connection at the same time, and still offers similar options:

• Purchase the device for £54.99 (includes 1GB of data), and then you can purchase 5GB of data per month for £15 per month (1 month rolling contract).
• Purchase the device for £49.99 on PAYG, and then you can purchase 3GB of data for £15 or 5GB of data for £25.

Given that the PAYG data rates are higher than the iPad rates, it’s well worth considering whether or not the savings that can be made with the cheaper data actually offset the higher upfront purchase cost of the iPad 3G, or whether the benefit of the 3UK MiFi and it’s ability to connect multiple devices is more important.

Finally, and on a completely different topic, 3UK informed me this week that the Nokia E72 is now available from 3UK on contract (in both Black and White).  As a result of this change, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is no longer available, although refurbished handsets are still currently on sale.  The Nokia E72 is a very nice QWERTY device and well worth a look, especially with the free SatNav that Nokia are offering as part of their Ovi Maps strategy.

For a while now, I have been a big fan of SpinVox, who offer a voicemail to text conversion service and then SMS you the message.  This functionality allows me to not take calls when in meetings / busy, but still see very quickly the details of the message (and without the time and hassle factor of dialling into the voicemail).  In fact, with little things like not having to write down numbers (which are transcribed into the SMS and accessible directly from the phone), it’s very useful, and a service that once you’ve tried is often worth the small monthly outlay.

However, SpinVox is slowly cancelling all personal subscriptions, so for many people SpinVox is no longer an option open to them.  Well, in the UK, Pibbix have stepped into this market, and are now offering their service along similar lines.

Pibbix have 3 charging rates, which are:

• £7.50 for 20 messages converted to text
• £16 for 50 messages converted to text
• £30 for 100 messages converted to text

These are good rates, and depending on how many voicemail messages you get a month will determine which tariff will suit you best; for many the lowest tariff will suffice.

There are nice little touches with Pibbix which is why I’m even keener to promote them; if the message goes beyond 1 SMS message, you aren’t charged more; the cost is per message converted, not per SMS sent to you.  You can choose whether to be notified by SMS and/or email, and the email can also have an mp3 attachment of the original message.  If you need to change your mobile number where the messages are sent, that’s easily changed too (something that required a chat with SpinVox Customer Services).  Even better, as part of the web management interface they offer, you can elect to not have messages from withheld / blocked caller ID numbers transcribed; this means although you’ll still get an email with the attachment, but you won’t be disturbed with an SMS (and because the message is not converted, it does not come out of your conversion allowance either).

The number you are allocated to divert your mobile to works can be used on multiple phones (and even landlines) to being all of your voicemails into one single location.

You can also configure a custom greeting, and you can control what greeting is used via the web interface too.

Payment is via PayPal, and you can cancel at any time.

I’ve been using the service for over a month now, and have had no problems with the service; I’ve had one voicemail where the transcription was not good, but given the amount of background noise, I struggled to understand parts of the message, and I knew what the caller was talking about!  SpinVox suffers from similar problems, so this is not unique, but on other messages the message has been spot on, and at times more accurate than I would have expected from SpinVox.

If you go to the Pibbix website, you can request an invite; the service is still in beta at the moment, so you may have to wait a small while to get into the service, although generally people aren’t having to wait too long.

Despite the shortages of stocks of the HTC Desire across most networks, and most High Street Stores, 3UK inform me that they have secured a large number of devices for sale online only, and hence (at the time of writing) were saying that they will have no problems in fulfilling online orders.  The HTC Desire is proving to be a very popular Android phone this year, and (until the next generation of Apple iPhone gets announced) seems to be the phone to have this year.

The HTC Desire is available from 3UK on two tariffs (at the moment), which are:

• Internet Texter 500 (24-month contract), £30 per month, 500 minutes of cross network calls, “unlimited” 3,000 3UK-3UK minutes per month, “unlimited” 500MB of Internet data per month, and “unlimited” 3,000 texts per month.
• Internet Texter 900 (24-month contract), £33 per month, 900 minutes of cross network calls, “unlimited” 3,000 3UK-3UK minutes per month, “unlimited” 500MB of Internet data per month, and “unlimited” 3,000 texts per month.

As always, these tariffs seem to offer good value (although we would prefer 3UK offered more than 500MB of data per month with such a device), and you need to sign up to a 24 month contract, which is putting a number of people off 3UK at the moment from what I am hearing.

Head off to the 3Store for more information about the HTC Desire and to place an order whilst they still have stocks.

In the last few weeks Google announced that after resolving a trademark dispute, they are now able to use the GMail name (and domain) in the UK, as opposed to the googlemail.com that they were forced to use.  As a result of this, they are now offering all UK users the ability to move from you@googlemail.com to you@gmail.com (interestingly, both have always work, and will route to your account).  However, before you jump ahead and blindly click to change, just step back and think for a second.

Any website for which you use your email account to login to as a username will still work, but over time will you be able to remember which use googlemail.com and which use gmail.com?

Any website which uses the facility to login directly via your Google (GMail) account should continue to work without problem, but it’s worth checking here as well.

Finally, and probably the biggest issue; we’ve heard a number of people having problems with their Android devices after changing their email address, with elements of some Android phone stopping functioning until either a full hard reset is performed (and then only the new email domain used from that point onwards), or the user reverts to their googlemail.com address.

So, if you are thinking about changing (and it’s worth considering), don’t forget that it may not be plain sailing, and you may need to deal with other smaller issues down the line…

In time for Friday’s launch of the Apple iPad, Vodafone have announced that they have produced some iPad SIM Only tariffs, allowing you to purchase your Apple iPad from Apple and then use it on Vodafone.  With the Apple iPad needing the new micro-SIM format (which is the same design as the current popular SIM, but with less card around the edges of the contacts, so although it’s possible to cut an existing SIM down to size, it’s then no use in normal devices) this is a good move by Vodafone to pick up more customers who are after, what is after all, a data only device.

So, the iPad SIM Only tariff options are:

• £10 per month (30-day rolling contract), 1GB of data per month
• £15 per month (30-day rolling contract), 3GB of data per month
• £25 per month (30-day rolling contract), 5GB of data per month

For those who want to use Vodafone and want the benefit of a 30-day rolling contract, these look very good tariffs, although I believe the O2 iPad tariffs additionally come with some Wi-Fi allowance too, so they may be worth a look as well.

Having already announced and released the iPhone Kindle application, Amazon have now confirmed that they will be releasing their Android version at some point during the Summer.  The application itself will be free, but will give access to the whole Kindle catalogue of over 540,000 books.  It will also give them access to their purchase books, and will sync bookmarks across the whole range of software (Kindle device, PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry) giving a true integrated experience.  Also, unlike some other platforms, the Android version will also allow in-app purchases of new books.  The only downside to this application is you need at least Android v1.6 OS, which (at the time of writing) was not what, for example, the HTC Hero has available in the UK, leaving a lot of UK devices unable to even consider this application.  We hear, however, that the HTC Hero Android v2.1 OS update might be available before the end of the month, and may be as early as Wednesday this week…

In other Kindle news, it appears that the v2.5 firmware update will start rolling out to users shortly as a wireless update.  Personally, I think you’ll need to already be on the 2.3.3 firmware to even have a chance of getting this new firmware, and even then it’s not 100% clear whether this will be made available wirelessly to Kindle Glocal users.  More news over the coming weeks as the situation becomes clearer…

Last week there were two options with Spotify; you could either go for Spotify Free (although you needed an invite in the UK, since it became so popular again when they released their mobile clients), or you paid £10 per month for Spotify Premium.  Spotify have now made things a little easier, and are offering 4 options, depending on exactly what you are after.

Firstly, there is a new Spotify Open option.  This does not need an invite (and in fact the Spotify Free option remains invite only, but is still available); and has one other key difference with Spotify Free – there is no Spotify Radio Mode, which was very useful if you didn’t know what exactly you wanted to listen to, but need know what sort of music you wanted.  Also, you are limited to 20 hours per month.

Also, there is a new option, Spotify Unlimited, which sites between Spotify Free and Spotify Premium, yet only costs £5 per month (a price that many said they would be willing to pay when the Spotify Premium originally came out).  It does support the Spotify Radio Mode, and like Spotify Premium is ad-free, and does not have a 14 day limit of accessing Spotify from abroad that the Spotify Free and Spotify Open options have.

However, if you want to have access to Spotify music when offline, or play Spotify music on your mobile (whether online or offline), listen to Spotify’s exclusive content, or benefit from enhanced music quality, then you’ll still need to take out the Spotify Premium subscription.

Having a greater range of options is a good thing, and many people may decide the £5 per month is a price worth paying for online access to a very large (though not yet complete) catalogue of music.

Some useful pieces of information;

• If you have Spotify Free, and you buy a subscription to Spotify Unlimited or Spotify Premium, then if you let your subscription lapse, you will return to Spotify Free, not the newer Spotify Open.
• You can no longer buy a day-pass, but for just a little more you can now get a whole month worth of Spotify Unlimited.  Technically you’ll sign up to recurring payments, but if you cancel before the end of that month, you’ll only pay for the single month, as there is no long term tie-in contract.  You will obviously continue to get the higher level of service until the end of the month; so you could pay and cancel the next day, but still benefit from a months’ worth of service.

After a few months in beta, Nokia have now released Ovi Maps v3.04, which adds better positioning with the use of Wi-Fi and Cell ID positioning directly into the product.  They’ve also improved the graphics handling to make everything that bit smoother.  Something that has been added since the beta phase is that they are also providing Qype user reviews (similar to the User Reviews available in Google Maps).  It’s nice to see continued innovation from Nokia on their SatNav product, although it would also be nicer if they could provide better information over what version of maps are installed, and to notify you when new maps are released.

Finally, if you haven’t already bought a Nokia phone recently, and are in the market, you’ll be glad to know that for some models, Nokia are now including a car holder and a car charger in the box (Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 6710 Navigator, Nokia X6), whilst others will at least have the car holder without the charger (Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia 5230, Nokia E52, Nokia E72).  Obviously these accessories will only exist in the latest SIM free stock from Nokia, whereas most UK stock will already be sat on the shelf, or be via the network operator (who will have bought stock in advance), so don’t be surprised if your new purchase doesn’t come with these; in which case, head to somewhere like Mobile Fun and pick up accessories from them.

If you are fed up with having your phone car charger cable getting in the way in the car, then the retractable car charger that’s available from Mobile Fun may well be the answer.  Available in Nokia (both sizes), Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, iPhone, miniUSB and microUSB formats, it will happily charge your device when needed, yet retract the cable into the body of the charger when you don’t need it.

Best of all, it costs less than a tenner!  See here for more details.