Hasta La Gadget!

Smartphone users are well immersed in a world of contact syncing, media sharing, VoIP and video calls. They’re just not used to finding everything in one place, let alone guaranteeing that any carrier-level features will work with other phones and providers. MetroPCS is hoping to put itself ahead on that front by offering a potentially universal fix. It’s the first carrier anywhere to launch the Rich Communication Services standard on LTE, which provides a perpetually synced contact list that serves as the launching pad for everything else. Early adopters of the Joyn-branded service can chat through text, share media (including during calls) and start up WiFi voice or video calls without needing yet another specialized service and the extra sign-in that goes with it. Right now, the very young state of RCS on LTE leaves it behaving more like the isolated services it’s trying to replace — on MetroPCS, only those with the Galaxy Attain 4G and an after-the-fact Joyn app download can get the experience as intended. As long as more devices and carriers come onboard, though, the technology might be the long-term key to pulling us away from fenced-off conversations in Google Talk or Skype.

Continue reading MetroPCS intros first Rich Communication Services on LTE, touts universal contacts and chat (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

MetroPCS intros first Rich Communication Services on LTE, touts universal contacts and chat (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  MetroPCS  | Email this | Comments

Today’s Apple event was packed with so many announcements that you’re probably left with a few questions. So we’re here to help! More »

One of the more recent features to turn up in IM programs and services is to notify others when they have read your messages. This can be both good and bad. If this is something that annoys you on Facebook Chat, then you should try Chat Undetected.

Chat Undetected is a Chrome/Firefox/IE extension allows you to keep the status of your messages under wraps. This basically cloaks your message viewing and users won’t be notified when you read their messages. Since it’s a browser extension, it’s pretty convenient.

This extension allows you to somewhat nicely ignore annoying people, so they don’t know you’ve seen their messages. Of course, you could simply switch Facebook Chat off, but many people just leave that on by default.

[via The Next Web]

Oh, look, this nice girl lives in Anonymous Proxy! What a coincidence, I live in Anonymous Proxy too! I will love her forever. Oh wait. Nice girl, you are lying. You don’t live in Anonymous Proxy, you stupid online robot. You live in Stupid Robot City. Stupid. [Thanks Karl!] More »

Apparently Google Ttalk is suffering something of an outage right now. It’s working fine for me through Apple’s messages app, but other people are saying it’s still crapped out. If you have it working, what apps are you using? Did you convince every one of your friends to jump ship and start yammering on another service? Let’s share secrets. More »