Astute Labs is an exciting Belfast-based software start-up in the mobile app building space with a particular emphasis on large communities such as schools. They have only been going about 12 months but have already secured a large number of customers globally and just raised their first round of private investment.

In early December 2011 I upgraded from an iphone 3G to iphone 4s on the Orange UK network. Since upgrading, a month ago, the iphone 4s has been losing the mobile signal at least 10-15 times per day for periods ranging from a few minutes to one hour. During this time it is not possible to make or receive phone calls or texts. In my view there is an unacknowledged issue with the iphone 4s - my advice would be NOT to purchase one until it is resolved - watch this space!

I was part of a fascinating panel session "Mobility, Teams, The Cloud and Collaboration" at the recent Mobile Cloud Summit (London: 21 September). The summit and the session was chaired by Jeffrey Peel of Quadriga Consulting and my co-panelists were Brian Caulfield of DFJ Esprit and Chris Horn of Movirtu.

I have always been a great fan of the Blackberry from RIM with its mobile email and its full QWERTY keyboard but it was always so bulky. So when I got the chance to upgrade to the sleek and slim Blackberry Pearl I thought it was worth a go. I read some great reviews of the product too. But the slim style comes at a price – a new style QWERTY keyboard with two alpha letters on each key instead of one. But for me in terms of usability it’s a disaster.

Christian Kreutz pulls together 4 examples of highly creative use of mobile phones in Africa in News Reporting, Financing, Health Care and Trading showing that necessity really is the mother of invention!

A fascinating research report (April 2006) by Hans Geser of Zurich University on the use of mobile phones by pre-teens suggesting that they make a bigger impact on behaviour than previously thought and some surprising male-female usage differences.

In a competitive and crowded market for mobile devices and collaboration software a trap for new entrants is to try to do all things well: this goes against the timeless design principle of cohesion.

Always-on mobile devices need supporting etiquette. A few years back The Economist ran a short article “Think before you talk” on how Ideo (the designers behind the Palm Pilot and Microsoft Mouse) developed 5 prototype “social mobiles”.....

For the mobile industry, waiting for people to use the net via their phone has been like waiting for a bus that never comes. That’s according to Dan Simmons reporting for BBC Click Online (15 Sept 2006).

I am the proud owner of a 3G mobile smartphone which does everything imaginable except make good phone calls.