ViewRanger GPS Now Live On iPhone

Award winning ViewRanger GPS from Augmentra is now available on the iTunes app store with premium map data from 13 countries including the USA, UK and Germany, so iPhone owners can now enjoy the benefits of this high quality, tried and trusted “off-road sat nav”. ViewRanger GPS is designed for anyone looking to optimise their time outdoors, and is already a favourite app of walkers, cyclists, and other outdoors enthusiasts.

By downloading ViewRanger GPS, customers install the benefits of a more-expensive stand-alone GPS navigation system onto their iPhone. The app uses the phone’s GPS capability and comes with inclusive credit to install a large area of premium national survey topographic mapping for the user’s choice of area.

The app is easy to use and the interface will be familiar and intuitive to iPhone users, as it makes full use of the multi-touch, swipe and pinch finger control features. Just a couple of taps are required to download routes or map tiles relevant to your location. Maps are then cached on the handset so that no data connection is required in use, and loading and refresh is extremely fast. Users can even create their own tracks for others to follow, and share routes and points of interest. Its speed and reliability has seen ViewRanger GPS adopted by Search and Rescue teams and other outdoor professionals.

Augmentra has created relationships with in-country mapping agencies and content partners across the world. This includes National Geographic in the USA, Ordnance Survey in Great Britain, Bundesamt fur Kartographie und Geodesie (BKG) in Germany, and partners in a further ten countries.

Dan Ortiz, Vice President, Products, Marketing & Operations for National Geographic Maps, comments that, “We are excited to offer detailed topographic maps of the United States to a growing number of smartphone users. There is a generation of people that have grown up with vehicle sat-navs and internet-based maps who may rarely use topographic maps. ViewRanger GPS captures this audience, and by making it easy to follow a topographic map on their phone, it will allow them to venture into the outdoors with confidence.”

ViewRanger GPS also exploits the connected nature of the iPhone to provide users with mobile access to a growing catalogue of downloadable outdoor route content from well known branded partners, including the AA, Walkingworld, Excellent Books and local tourist boards. It is easy to download routes and map tiles over the air.

David Stewart of Walkingworld, a route content partner in the UK, comments,

“We are delighted to have our walks available on direct download to iPhone through ViewRanger. With over 5000 routes on the Walkingworld site, one of the great advantages of our content is that people can find a walk wherever they happen to be. Being able to follow the route on a map and get instructions and pictures direct to the mobile phone is a real benefit to our members. ViewRanger remains the only mobile mapping app that supports our routes in all their detail. It is even better that the facility is free to those who have paid our modest annual subscription.”

Record 15 Multi-Company Live Demonstrations to take place at Management World 2010

TM Forum’s Catalyst rapid-development program will showcase a record 15 projects at Management World 2010 in Nice, France next month. The Catalyst program, which converts service provider challenges into prototype solutions in less than six months, will present 15 collaboratively developed solutions covering a range of key topics including managing cloud services, customer experience, analytics, mCommerce, and digital service delivery.

Communications Service Providers participating in these projects span the globe, including BT, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Swisscom, Qwest, Telstra, China Telecom, China Unicom, Zain, and many others. More than 40 suppliers are participating, including the biggest names in the business such as Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Ericsson, Huawei, and Amdocs.

Each Catalyst project comprises a multi-company team of suppliers and service providers. The team works to address requirements defined by service provider project champions. With the focus of each Catalyst driven by the service provider champion, the resulting project provides a unique view of the challenges service providers are facing, and demand innovative solutions.

Multi-company Catalyst projects typically run for 3-6 months and utilize TM Forum’s Collaborative R&D methodology, enabling service providers to have prototype solutions to their requirements in a much shorter timeframe than standard RFx and lab testing processes.

DeviceAnywhere Works with BlackBerry Partners Fund for 2010 Developer Challenge

Further building upon its role as a BlackBerry® Alliance Member, DeviceAnywhere is working with the BlackBerry Partners Fund during the newly-announced BlackBerry Partners Fund Super Apps Developer Challenge. The competition, which is open to all developers, aims to spur the development of deeply integrated applications that deliver a compelling user experience leveraging the unique capabilities of the BlackBerry Application Platform.

Developers entering this competition will benefit from a direct link to DeviceAnywhere’s industry standard Test Center™ solution, which provides remote access to networked devices located across the globe. DeviceAnywhere is also supporting this challenge with Proof Center™ to provide a proof-based self-certification solution that gives application developers remote access to DeviceAnywhere’s banks of real networked devices. With Proof Center, users can compile evidence that their application works successfully using handset screenshots and video, which are automatically saved and organized into proofs that can later be viewed or searched for by application and handset. For the purposes of this competition, Proof Center serves as the testing platform for a more in-depth submission process that developers will use to submit a higher-quality version of their application, before they proceed to the final phase in which winners will be selected.

For the finalists, DeviceAnywhere will create free interactive tutorials using DemoAnywhere™, a solution that allows developers to demonstrate the application’s key features and functionality to consumers. DemoAnywhere can be leveraged as a powerful marketing tool on any online medium such as developer websites and blogs, allowing potential buyers to feel comfortable with the app before they go ahead and download it. Winners will also gain prizes of testing time in DeviceAnywhere’s industry-leading Test Center.

“Developer challenges are a breeding ground for application innovation and DeviceAnywhere is pleased to be an enabling partner of the BlackBerry Partners Fund’s ‘Super Apps’ Developer Challenge,” said Faraz Syed, CEO of DeviceAnywhere. “The three DeviceAnywhere technologies that are being leveraged for the competition will demonstrate the breadth of support that we offer for the different stages of application development.”

More Train Operators than Ever Expected at Train Communications Systems 2010

There is no escaping it, 2010 is the year WiFi on trains came of age. As more and more train operators around the world bite the bullet and introduce passenger WiFi services, BWCS is launching its fifth annual Train Communications Systems Conference.

Once again train operators and suppliers from all over the world will converge on central London to discuss the benefits and costs of offering staff and passengers high-speed access to the internet on trains. This year a host of new operators have begun trials or fully-fledged WiFi services. These include Dutch, British, American, Japanese, Indian, German, Swedish, Finnish, Danish and French train companies who have all recently launched WiFi on-board services aimed at delivering benefits to passengers and cutting operating costs for the train companies involved.

According to Graham Wilde CEO of BWCS, “This type of service is fast becoming a must-have for passengers and is helping train companies in their battle against rival modes of transport. Not only do passengers come to expect it as a right, but the actual high-speed wireless connections can offer several handy cost-cutting services which are actually very appealing to the train companies.” Wilde continued, “The rail industry is not known for rapidly embracing new technology, but this is an area where it has shown real leadership.”

Wilde reflected that almost every train operator and supplier involved in, or interested in, this dynamic new sector will be at the conference, either presenting or attending. "This is now established as a truly global event and offers a great platform for train operators and suppliers to share their experiences in this area.”

BWCS, which has worked with many of the leading operators on the development and procurement of WiFi on train services, will host a series of presentations by the leading rail companies on the 2nd and 3rd of June at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in Westminster.

Among those presenting at Train Communications Systems 2010 will be: Amtrak, Indian Railways, MTA Boston, SJ Trains, Virgin Trains, Thalys, National Express Trains, VR Trains Finland, Swiss Trains and many more.

The conference is sponsored by Icomera, Nokia Siemens Networks and EURail Magazine. 21Net is sponsoring a cocktail event at the end of the first day.

Mimecast Launches First Always-On Continuity Service for BlackBerry Smartphone Users

Mimecast, a unified email management company offering SaaS-based email security, continuity, policy control and archiving, has today announced the launch of Mimecast Continuity ServicesTM for the BlackBerry® Wireless Solution. The new service is the first to enable enterprise IT managers to provide uninterrupted email access to BlackBerry smartphone users in the event of a Microsoft Exchange outage, a BlackBerry Enterprise Server failure and Research in Motion infrastructure downtime. Until now, businesses have been limited in their range of continuity choices for the BlackBerry solution, relying on SaaS services that require the availability of BlackBerry Enterprise Server or server replication solutions.

By bypassing the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and communicating directly with the handset from the cloud, Mimecast’s Continuity Service ensures that critical mobile workers can remain connected; sending, receiving and deleting mail as normal, during server downtime. Whether operating in standard or continuity mode, complete integration between Mimecast’s security, continuity and archiving service elements ensures continuous and consistent enforcement of email security, data loss prevention and archiving policies at all times, supporting businesses’ compliance and security needs.

Peter Bauer, founder and CEO of Mimecast, said: “Our own research recently revealed that just 36 percent of UK companies had a proper email continuity strategy, despite 97 percent of written business communication being over email. With the BlackBerry solution established in an ever growing number of IT departments, extending business critical email continuity to BlackBerry devices has become an essential requirement.”

Mimecast has been providing continuity services to hundreds of thousands of email users around the world over the last seven years. Mimecast Continuity Services for the BlackBerry Wireless Solution is the first extension of the company’s existing range of email disaster recovery services to mobile devices. With Mimecast, users are able to send and receive email and access their personal archive through a variety of mail clients including Microsoft Outlook (desktop), Mimecast Personal Portal (web) and BlackBerry smartphones (mobile) in the event of scheduled or unplanned mail server outages or connectivity failures.

In response to the announcement, Tim Hyman, IT Director at prominent UK law firm Taylor Wessing, said: “The Mimecast system has already gone a long way to ensuring the 100% availability of email during times of disruption to internal systems. The development of a genuinely robust BlackBerry solution is the final piece in the jigsaw as it means that our lawyers will be able to access their email from the device they favour, virtually eliminating the inconvenience and productivity loss of email downtime.”

Stephen Drake, Program Vice President, Mobility and Telecom at analyst firm IDC, added: “Solutions such as those from Mimecast address a real issue for IT Managers with large numbers of users depending heavily on their BlackBerry smart-phones. The fact is, Exchange Servers and BlackBerry servers are invariably in the same location, so in the event of a disaster the chances are both will go down. The Mimecast service also ensures users remain connected in the event of a RIM NOC failure, uniquely removing an additional potential point of failure.”

Mimecast Continuity Services for the BlackBerry Wireless Solution is on demonstration for the first time at this week’s Infosecurity Europe conference and exhibition in London, and will be available to customers from July 2010.

Cellcrypt Offers Government-Grade Voice Security for BlackBerry Smartphones on T-Mobile’s Network and Wi-Fi Hotspots

Cellcrypt, the leading provider of secure mobile voice calling, today announced the availability of its high-strength government-grade encryption application for mobile devices, including BlackBerry® smartphones, on both T-Mobile’s secure cellular network and T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi® HotSpots across the globe. With encryption accredited to the FIPS 140-2 standard (approved by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology), a government official or traveling executive can use their T-Mobile Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry smartphone to make classified or confidential calls and be assured that the content of their call is protected to government-level standards.

According to a recent study conducted by the Ponemon Institute entitled, “Security of Voice Data,” it costs U.S. corporations on average $1.3M each time a corporate secret is revealed to unauthorized parties. For more than 60 percent of surveyed organizations, these breaches occur at least once per month.

“Any breach of proprietary enterprise or government information can be incredibly costly,” said Simon Bransfield-Garth, CEO at Cellcrypt. “Now, business and government customers using T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry smartphones with Cellcrypt’s encryption application can add peace of mind to the cost and convenience benefits of Wi-Fi calling. In addition, Cellcrypt provides added security for calls placed over standard mobile networks.”

The Cellcrypt easy-to-use mobile application provides end-to-end voice encryption on smartphones over the entire path between callers. Utilizing an IP data channel, it seamlessly protects and supports both Wi-Fi and 2.5G, 3G and 3.5G cellular networks.

“Across the enterprise, we are seeing as many as 1.6 million calls originated using Wi-Fi calling per month,” David Pepe, Divisional Director, Government Sales at T-Mobile. “T-Mobile has put in place several security safeguards – from security algorithms and encryption keys on our Wi-Fi-enabled devices to an IPSec VPN tunnel to secure voice and data traffic between the core network and the device. For those customers desiring additional levels of security, Cellcrypt’s government-grade encryption application makes secure calling as easy as placing a normal phone call.”

Cellcrypt Launches Secure Mobile-to-Office Voice Calling

Cellcrypt, the leading provider of secure mobile voice calling, today launched Cellcrypt Enterprise Gateway™ which enables business executives to securely call office desk phones from their cell phone. The solution is aimed at senior executives travelling to hostile countries where phone interception is widespread.

In addition, mobile executives can securely access standard office telephony features – such as voicemail, conference calls and calling out to the public telephone network – allowing them to seamlessly continue their normal business routine when abroad assured that confidential corporate and personal information is kept private.

Cellcrypt Enterprise Gateway™ is an enterprise software application that interfaces with office phone systems (Public Branch Exchanges (PBXs)) and provides encrypted voice calling to Blackberry® and Nokia mobile phones running Cellcrypt Mobile™ software. It also passes commands to and from PBXs via keypad tones (DTMF) and interactive commands (IVR) to enable secure remote access to existing PBX telephony features such as conference calling.

Executives increasingly recognise the risk of call interception by foreign states, competitors, journalists and kidnappers, especially when travelling abroad. As recently as April 2010, an unauthorised spy centre was discovered in Latin America containing sophisticated cellular interception equipment used for spying on businesses, politicians and journalists. This is the latest example of illegal phone interception whose breadth and depth is only recently coming to the public stage. A 2005 report to US Congress* showed that far from being restricted to a few rogue nations, state sponsored interception is widespread, stating, for example, that 108 countries are actively engaged in collection efforts against US technology assets.

Another reason for business travellers to secure cell phone calls when abroad is to protect personal information from kidnappers in high-risk regions, such as South America. In 2009, an estimated 9,000 kidnappings took place in Venezuela alone**.

“The issue of phone interception is often thought to be restricted to government agencies but it has recently become clear that the equipment and software required is now available to the general public,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman & Founder, Ponemon Institute. “The widespread availability of both the GSM encryption codebook and a complete basestation software stack has brought mobile interception within reach of any graduate IT student with $2,000 of readily available equipment, substantially increasing the scale of the threat to the enterprise”.

Cellcrypt provides encrypted voice calls on mobile phones such as BlackBerry® and Nokia smartphones delivering government-grade security in an easy-to-use application that makes highly secure calling as easy as making a normal phone call. Utilising the IP data channel it supports all major wireless networks including 2G (GPRS/ EDGE), 3G (HSPA, CDMA/EV-DO), Wi-Fi® and satellite. Cellcrypt's encryption technology is compliant to FIPS 140-2 security standard, approved by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“As business is increasingly conducted over mobile phones and on a global scale, it is a corporate responsibility to both the individual and the organisation to protect private information,” said Simon Bransfield-Garth, CEO at Cellcrypt. “With the threat growing at an alarming rate, organisations need to adequately protect all types of calls ranging from board of director conference calls through to itinerary discussions with personal assistants. Cellcrypt Enterprise Gateway allows important office communications to continue normally even when key executives are out of the office or travelling abroad.”