The progression of the mobile phone has given us so much to look forward to. Keeping in touch with friends and family across the world is so easy and convenient.  Can it be too easy though? Make sure you don’t fall into the trap of one of our mobile dilemmas.

DON’T : Text the wrong Person

This can be highly embarrassing. Texting allows you to send very personal messages to specific friend circles. Texting is so easy, you can write and send your thoughts without even thinking. Red lights and warning sirens should be flashing in your head now.  A message for your girlfriend about “cuddles on the sofa watching Strictly” may just push your lad status off a cliff if it’s read by your best mates. Likewise accidently revealing to your mum about your alcohol fuelled streaking antics, could prove to be an interesting topic over Sunday Dinner.

Tip: Take a moment or two just to check who you’re sending the message to.

DON’T : Run out of battery

Smartphones are multifunctional devices. Who needs a map when you’ve got inbuilt GPS? Who needs their debit card on them with NFC features? Our smartphones are great for holding all this information and removes the need for us to carry the extra baggage and clutter around with us. Not so great if you happen to run out of battery. Imagine trying to drive through a city centre without the aid of a map, or paying for a meal when you’ve forgotten your wallet. Too much reliance on your smartphone could lead you into an awkward situation should your smartphone let you down.

Tip: Make sure your phone is charged before leaving the house on an important trip where you need your phone for important features other than calls. Alternatively, taking  a car charger can be a helpful backup should your smartphone battery go flat.

DON’T: Mix with Alcohol

The countless times I’ve seen students light up their smartphones in nightclubs in order to send “Where are you?” texts or to attempt to get the number of a fitty that captures their eye. When mixing your mobile with alcohol, the problem is that we humans can get clumsy and drop our phone. After losing sight of our cherished device, friends try to help by offering their displays as a flashlight for the search party, but alas it’s too late. A pretty smartphone like yours would soon be prized upon by an equally drunk opportunist.  A night like this can only end in tears.

Tip: If your friends regard you as a notorious drunkard, buy a cheap PAYG handset for nights out. It’s easier to replace a £20 handset than a premium £500 smartphone.

We realise we may be sounding like a nagging mother who moans at you to always wrap up warm or don’t get home too late. The truth is we’re just trying to look out for you. Working with phones, we hear about these stories more often than we’ld like to. As our dependence on smartphones continues to increase, we feel users just need to take that little extra care and thought, so you’ve always got access to your phone when you need it most. Be smart with your smartphone.

Toshiba AT-200

One tablet we just can’t wait to get our hands on is the Toshiba AT200. At just 7.7 mm thin, Toshiba claim this is the thinnest 10.1 inch tablet on the market. With tough built in Gorilla-glass to protect the display, the tablet is far from flimsy and possesses great style with its brushed metal black design. The tablet appears to boast respectable power specs with a 1.2 GHz dual core processor, 1 GB RAM and a battery capable of playing bright, high quality video for up to 8 hours; we just wonder how it all it all manages to fit inside?

Despite its ultra compact size, the Toshiba AT200 still manages to squeeze in some essential pieces of kit for a pleasing multimedia experience. The micro-HDMI port allows you to hook up your tablet to the TV; perfect for streaming your favourite film to an audience. Even though the Toshiba AT200 packs 16 or 32 GB worth of storage space, there’s even room for a USB socket and microSD card slot to let you cram even more files into Toshiba’s latest tablet.

Preloaded with Android Honeycomb OS, the Toshiba AT200 has a sweet tasting interface that we can’t get enough of. With Android currently the most popular OS platform, there’s a mountainous selection of apps available from the Android Market: over 320,000 apps.

Is this Toshiba’s solution to take down the iPad 2? Impressively thin, the Toshiba AT200 looks like a great tablet to play with.

November 2010 saw the Xbox 360 launch the Kinect, a gaming revolution set to change the way we interact with games and the full Xbox 360 experience.  While the first main motion based console release, the Nintendo Wii had the Wii-mote and the Nunchuck controllers, the Kinect allowed Xbox fans to use their entire body as the controller.  Since its launch the Kinect for Xbox has experienced considerable success and has already gathered an impressive portfolio of popular Kinect compatible games.  Xbox went a stage further with integrating voice commands to the Kinect and combined with motion control, this allowed the user to control elements including navigation, selections and searching.  This fluid integration of Kinect ran across both the Xbox dashboard and within games and is extremely effective.    However, Microsoft aren’t finished there and a recent announcement has confirmed that February will now see the launch of a Windows PC version of the Kinect device.

Kinect for Windows has been optimised for the PC environment and changes have been made to the software development package to facilitate a broader range of uses.  These include the new ‘near mode’, an impressive update which will allow the Kinect’s sensor to detect and track smaller movements in comparison to its Xbox equivalent.  One fresh and exciting decision from Microsoft was to allow free access to the Kinect source code (ever since the Kinect for Xbox release).  This has enabled tech enthusiasts, research students, engineers etc to tweak and play with both hardware and software to develop new uses, integration and exciting projects. This active encouragement and support to a developer community will continue to encouraged with Kinect for Windows, with no licensing costs.

So what are some possible uses that we could see in the future for Kinect for Windows?  Well, similar to the Nintendo DS finding its way into classrooms as a teaching and learning tool, one obvious use for Kinect for Windows would be education.  Kinect could easily be integrated into physical activity, fitness, class demonstrations or even as an interactive, virtual chalk board.  Following on from this, we could easily see Kinect for Windows being integrated with a package such as Powerpoint, to take presentations to all new levels.  Use within training, could be another key potential within Kinect, or even implementation within stores for shoppers to be able to interact with to view stock or try on items.

The potential for Kinect for Windows is absolutely huge and looks set to see its uses go well beyond that than a bit of bowling, dancing or golf in the comfort of your living room at home.  Most importantly, the Kinect looks likely to be beneficial to fields such as health care and therapy and examples have already been produced with the technology.

So next time you stick on Kinect Sports or Dance Central, give a thought to how differently someone else, somewhere entirely different in the World could be making use of the exact same technology.

So, as 2011 comes to a close we thought it interesting to leave you all with a quick thought on just how far, how developed and how important smartphones have become.  The mobile phone, what began as a portable solution for the household telephone, followed by a way of rapidly sending text based messages anywhere in the world has evolved in a huge way.  Lets take a quick look at the different uses and devices that are now part of our smartphones and what they can provide :-

- Mobile phone
- MP3 player
- Personal Organiser
- Sat Nav
- Laptop/Netbook
- Portable media/video player
- Ebook reader
- Compass
- Mirror
- Camera
- Video recorder
- Portable games console
- Musical tool
- Dictaphone
- Storage device
- Digital Wallet
- Remote control
- Mouse
- Wi-Fi hotspot
- Portable TV
- Barcode scanner
- And many, many more…

It’s pretty amazing that with the latest smartphones, we literally are carrying most of the above list around with us in a compact, pocket friendly electronic device.  Smartphones have also now earned their well deserved spot in our ‘3 most important possessions’ list next to Wallet and keys.  We now cannot live without our tech-heavy mobile companions and with the gap between high powered PC and smartphone thinner than its ever been at the end of 2011, we at OSPS think that 2012 will bring even more excitement and developments.

On behalf of everyone at OSPS, we would like to wish you all a very happy  New Year.  See you in 2012!

So, here in the OSPS office we love our apps and many of us own iPhones, iPods and iPads.  So we thought we would share 5 fantastic free apps for iOS that we are loving at the moment

1. FAAD (FreeAppADay)

This is the Mother of all free apps, collaborating paid apps which have become free for a limited time only.  A One stop (excuse the pun) location which brings together all the current paid-now-free, special offers etc into one easy to use layout.  They also have their own rating system giving you a heads up on whats hot….and whats not.

2. Onavo

Quite simply, Onavo is a data saving app.  By that, we mean that it compresses the data which is required for everyday tasks such as internet browsing, sending emails and downloading.  This means that whilst connected to 3G, you will use less data and in turn make your data bundle last longer and save more money!

3. Relax

Ever had a really tough day at the office, felt so wound up you can explode? Of course you have, everyone has! The Relax app is here to de-stress, re-focus and put the required chill element into your day or week.  It teaches you along with super relaxing music and the most calm and chilled out narrator since David Attenborough, this app really does work.  So stretch out those muscles, slow down your breathing and drift away.

4. Instagram

This is an absolute must for all photography enthusiast.  Instagram could be referred to as a stripped down version of Photoshop meets facebook – social photography. With dozens and dozens of pre set (and beautiful) filters for your photos, you can easily share and send pictures to social sites and friends.  You can even choose to sign up for updates and new photo notifications from other friends who also use Instagram.

5. My Xbox Live

Yes, we know this one only applies to Xbox 360 users but as a free app we definately think it deserves a mention in our Top 5.  Send messages to your friends and friends list, check recent acheivements and even watch videos from the dashboard.  Easy to use, it works, its handy and even better – its free!