Truphone adds eleven new Nokia devices to its portfolio

26 Nokia devices now Truphone-compatible

Truphone has added 11 additional Nokia handsets to the list of devices compatible with Truphone, whose owners can now ring up big savings by taking advantage of Truphone’s broad range of calling plans and services.

“We first introduced Truphone on a Nokia device, so we are pleased to be able to increase the range of compatible Nokia devices and extend our loyal Nokia customer base further,” said Truphone's CEO, Geraldine Wilson. “Nokia is still the largest mobile handset manufacturer in the world, so ensuring that we’re on as many of these devices as possible means more and more people can take advantage of Truphone’s fantastic rates to make international calls.”

With the addition of the 11 new handsets, Truphone is now compatible on 26 Nokia devices. Of those, software for 14 of the Truphone-compatible devices can now be downloaded from Nokia’s new Ovi store, with the software for 11 of the remaining 12 new devices to be added to the Ovi store soon.

In addition to the Ovi Store the Truphone application is also available for all 26 Nokia devices as an SMS over the air (OTA) download from the Truphone web site, www.truphone.com, and will always parallel the applications available via the Ovi store. The Truphone website will also include applications for other Nokia devices not currently available via Ovi, as well as the other supported mobile platforms.

The new Truphone-enabled Nokia devices are:

• N96
• N78
• N85 (also VoIP enabled)
• N79 (also VoIP enabled)
• 5630 (also VoIP enabled)
• 5800
• 5320
• 6210
• 6220
• 6650
• E63

After downloading and installing the Truphone application to their handsets, Nokia device owners will be able to take advantage of two calling plan options:

• Truphone Anywhere: Calls made when customers are connected to local wireless networks are handled as local calls and then passed on to the Truphone network, from where they are routed at Truphone’s fantastic rates to landline and mobile phones worldwide. This service is intended for use in the user’s home country as savings cannot be guaranteed abroad.
• Truphone Wi-Fi calling: Calls made when customers are in accesible Wi-Fi hotspots anywhere in the world, can be made for free to other Truphone users and at Truphone’s fantastic rates to landline and mobile phones worldwide.

All the new handsets are Truphone Anywhere-capable and, in addition, three of the handsets - the N85, N79 and 5630 - are also compatible with the original Truphone Wi-Fi calling service, hailing back to Truphone’s origin as the first Mobile VoIP service available on Nokia N- and E-series devices.

This means that when customers are connected to a Wi-Fi network, a call to another Truphone customer is completely free and also means they can use a Nokia handset as an alternative, inexpensive roaming solution if they choose to only make calls when connected to a Wi-Fi network when abroad or anywhere.

With Truphone Anywhere, everyone can save money when making international calls. It’s simple: international calls dialled on a Truphone Anywhere enabled handset are connected as local calls to the Truphone network, then routed to their destinations at Truphone’s low rates. This means that for the price of local calls, which are often bundled in an operator’s monthly package, customers can make calls to other Truphone users for free or to landlines and mobiles around the world for as little as 1.5p per minute.

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The full list of Nokia devices that are Truphone-compatible is:

• E51
• E60
• E61
• E61i
• E63
• E65
• E66
• E70
• E71
• E90
• N80ie
• N81
• N81 8GB
• N82
• N95
• N95 8GB
• N96
• N78
• N85
• N79
• 5630
• 5800
• 5320
• 6210
• 6220
• 6650

Resources

• Truphone press office
• Truphone web site
• Truphone screenshots (Nokia handsets)
  
• Truphone videos

Important information
Nokia, E50-E99, Eseries and N70-N99 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nokia Corporation. Wi-Fi is a registered trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Truphone is a trademark of Software Cellular Network Ltd. All other brands, product names, company names, trademarks and service marks are the properties of their respective owners.

SIM4travel partners with Data Select to increase distribution

SIM4travel, a Truphone company and a leading supplier of global travel SIM cards, has appointed Data Select, one of the UK’s leading distributors of mobile phones, accessories and airtime, to extend the distribution channels for SIM4travel.

The partnership will allow SIM4travel to benefit from the extensive relations Data Select has with retailers and businesses, while Data Select benefits from the addition of the SIM4travel product to its portfolio.

A pre-paid top-up service with free inbound calls in major destinations and great roaming rates, SIM4travel is easy to set up and offers savings of up to 80% on standard network charges while people are abroad on holiday or business around the world.

“Data Select was an obvious choice as a distribution partner for SIM4travel”, said Geraldine Wilson, CEO Truphone. “SIM4travel is a compelling high quality global travel SIM and with Data Select’s heritage in distributing tech products, we look forward to extending our distribution channel.”

“Roaming charges are one of the biggest issues still affecting mobile users. Whether for business or pleasure, the worry of international call rates is now a thing of the past, thanks to SIM4travel. This is a great product for Data Select to offer our customers – and just in time for summer”, commented George McPherson, Chief Executive of Data Select.

SIM4travel SIM cards are currently available on Easyjet, British Airways and Phones4U as well as e-pay Independent Retailers around the UK.

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Links

• SIM4travel website
• SIM4travel press office
• Truphone website
• Truphone press office
  

About SIM4travel
SIM4travel is a trading name of, and Truphone is a trademark of, Software Cellular Network Limited. SIM4travel operates its own Pay As You Go global network. Using a SIM4travel international SIM card there are no charges for inbound calls in the EU, and calls home are just 25p per minute. Worldwide, savings of up to 80% are possible in most countries worldwide.

How it works
SIM4travel is a GSM SIM card service designed to be used while roaming. No contract is required so there are no tie-ins. It’s a prepaid service, and it’s easy to top-up with a credit card. Customers simply purchase a SIM4travel pack, pop the SIM card in to their mobile phone, then activate the prepaid account by registering their credit card and loading cash credit. Customers can then start making calls from the moment they land, all at a massive discount compared to standard network charges, in over 100 countries around the world.

By using the exclusive SIM4travel mobile number (+44 UK) calls are also free to receive in 36 countries. SIM4travel will save money for anyone who uses their mobile while abroad: business people, holiday makers... everyone can benefit.

Data Select - overview
Data Select is the UK’s leading distributor of mobile phones and accessories. Part of The Phones International Group, Data Select is owned by Peter Jones of BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den fame. In 2009 Data Select won both the Mobile News and Mobile awards for 'Best Distributor'. This repeated the achievements of 2008.

Since its formation in 1998, Data Select has consistently grown each year. The company has direct distribution agreements with all major UK manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung and airtime distribution agreements with all networks.

Data Select supplies to a range of customers including specialist retailers including Phones 4u and Carphone Warehouse and non-specialist retailers including Tesco, WHSmith and Argos.
www.dataselect.co.uk

Stordis and FalconStor partner to create an InfiniBand-based storage appliance for the high-performance computing market

FalconStor and STORDIS GmbH, a European distributor for high performance computing, today announced a partnership to create an InfiniBand-based storage appliance for the high performance computing market. The appliance, running FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS), will be demonstrated for the first time today, at STORDIS and FalconStor’s shared booth (#705) at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), Europe’s leading conference and exhibition for high performance computing, networking and storage.

The new appliance is based on high quality InfiniBand Director switches, which enable high performance applications to run on distributed server, storage and network resources. Multiple Director switches can be interconnected to form very large, high-performance clusters and grids that can grow into the thousands of nodes with 'pay as you grow' scalability and bandwidth.

Customers can leverage FalconStor NSS with these clusters and grids to implement an ultra-high performance storage network with storage virtualization, provisioning and management across multiple disk arrays, operating at speeds far in excess of anything achievable with Fibre Channel, and at significantly lower costs.

“FalconStor solutions in conjunction with InfiniBand-based switching can reduce the overall complexities and costs associated with a dynamic storage environment, providing customers with new levels of performance at a price point they might have believed it impossible to make,” said Guillaume Imberti, FalconStor president and general manager EMEA Operations.

“We expect this innovative combination to be very attractive to our mutual customers, many of whom demand the fastest possible performance from their storage environments in order to give themselves the greatest possible competitive advantage in their own business sector,” said Alexander Jeffries, managing director of STORDIS.

See the appliance at booth #705, International Supercomputing Conference, Hamburg, Germany, June 23rd-26th 2009.

[ends]

About FalconStor NSS
FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) delivers TOTALLY Open™ SAN storage virtualization, provisioning, and heterogeneous storage management that works across disk vendor and storage protocol boundaries to optimize storage utilization, reduce costs, and increase IT productivity in enterprise organizations.

About STORDIS GmbH
STORDIS, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, is the European Distributor for High Performance Computing (HPC) with focus on High Performance Networking and Storage solutions. Our HPC and Storage portfolio includes InfiniBand, 10Gbit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, HPC storage, general purpose storage and storage virtualization products. Additional to our product portfolio, we are providing a wide range of high quality pre- and post-sales services and support options.

FalconStor® VTL delivers the fastest backup processes in the industry – including backup, deduplication, replication, tape export, and data restore

FalconStor Software today announced that it delivers the fastest backup and deduplication time in the industry, through the FalconStor® Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication solution. Its latest performance exceeds all current published metrics from competing vendors.

In addition to reducing backup, deduplication and restore time through optimization, the FalconStor VTL solution’s ability to use Fibre Channel for replicating deduplicated data further reduces the total time to DR. A critical metric for assessing enterprise readiness for full recovery from data center failure, total time to DR is measured by the time required to back up a given amount of data, write it to tape, deduplicate it, replicate it to a remote DR site, and restore the data to full availability.

FalconStor staged a test of its latest version of FalconStor VTL with deduplication in order to validate the performance of FalconStor VTL in a real data center configuration and to demonstrate a best-practice scenario. Measured were key performance criteria, including ingest rate, tape production, deduplication throughput, replication and recovery time.

“Total time to DR is critical to the resilience of any business that relies on 24-hour access to important applications,” said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. “A high-performance backup infrastructure is critical to reducing a business’s exposure to downtime by ensuring data recovery and full return to operability in a timely manner. FalconStor has clearly taken the entire process from backup to recovery into consideration to achieve optimal efficiency in terms of both time and cost.”

“Other data protection vendors with deduplication focus on reduction ratios and backup speeds but fail to take into consideration all the processes needed to complete the DR-readiness cycle, including replication off site and restoration of data into an application-ready state at the DR facility,” said Wayne Lam, FalconStor co-founder and vice president. “FalconStor considered the whole picture in designing FalconStor VTL to integrate with any backup system and to enable and optimize the entire sequence of events within a data protection system. In addition, the FalconStor VTL system can scale without disruption or complexity as the business grows.”

In the test bed of 100 terabytes of production data, the performance measured was achieved with a single cluster of two FalconStor VTL nodes supported by four deduplication nodes. Running the backup and deduplication processes concurrently, the total time to backup and deduplicate the 100 terabytes of data was under 14 hours, yielding an average of 2.0 gigabytes per second. In the case where minimizing the total backup time is the major goal, the two-node VTL cluster delivered 2.8 gigabytes per second of backup speed, requiring a backup window of under 10 hours for the 100 terabytes. Physical tape production can be achieved directly through 4 gigabit Fibre Channel links by exporting tapes from FalconStor VTL to the physical tape library without using a separate media server. All hardware components used for the performance test are commonly available standard parts, including standard Linux-based servers and low-cost SATA-based storage subsystems with 4 gigabit Fibre Channel ports.

FalconStor VTL can scale up to an eight-node cluster with an additional eight-node deduplication cluster managing a global, shared data repository that can hold more than two petabytes of physical capacity or 40 petabytes of logical (deduplicated) capacity. This massive scalability allows for consolidated management of a large enterprise’s data and data protection processes, reducing complexity, time, cost and risk related to managing a collection of discrete repositories, as required by other deduplication solutions. The solution’s clustered architecture ensures maximum availability and reduced downtime and its associated cost.

Beyond backup data processing, FalconStor VTL features high-performance IP and Fibre Channel replication designed to minimize the replication window and thus reduce the risk of associated data loss. In addition to replicating backup data, FalconStor VTL includes a backup media server catalogue replication feature that guarantees continuous consistency of the backup media catalogue at the primary and the DR site to accelerate restoration of data to full operation. Once data is replicated to the DR site, FalconStor VTL enables high-speed restore of deduplicated data at a sustained rate that exceeds 1.2 gigabytes per second per node, demonstrating the fastest restore performance in the industry from a deduplicated repository; at this speed a 100 TB data set can be restored in less than 12 hours.

[ends]

About FalconStor Software, Inc.
FalconStor Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC) is the market leader in disk-based data protection. FalconStor delivers proven, comprehensive data protection solutions that facilitate the continuous availability of business-critical data with speed, integrity, and simplicity. The Company's TOTALLY Open™ technology solutions, built upon the award-winning IPStor® platform, include the industry leading Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication, Continuous Data Protector (CDP), File-interface Deduplication System (FDS), and Network Storage Server (NSS), each enabled with WAN-optimized replication for disaster recovery and remote office protection. FalconStor products are available from major OEMs and solution providers including 3Com, Acer, COPAN Systems, Data Direct Networks, Dynamic Solutions International, EMC, IBM, Pillar Data Systems, Spectra Logic and Sun and are deployed by thousands of customers worldwide, from small businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises.
FalconStor is headquartered in Melville, N.Y., with offices throughout Europe and the Asia Pacific region. FalconStor is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information, visit www.falconstor.com.

FalconStor, FalconStor Software and IPStor are registered trademarks and TOTALLY Open is a trademark of FalconStor Software, Inc., in the US and other countries. All other company and product names contained herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.

Truphone launches 3.0 for the iPod touch

New architecture delivers improved user experience, simplified management and performance boost

• User experience now slicker and more intuitive than ever before
• Account management outpaces anything else available
• Application faster than ever before – now native on the handset
• Radically improved call quality

Following hot on the heels of the launch of Truphone 3.0 for the Apple® iPhone™, Truphone today launched Truphone 3.0, a major new upgrade to its mobile VoIP application for the Apple® iPod™ touch.

The new version dramatically builds on the success of previous versions of the VoIP application for the iPod, enhancing the instant messaging and account management experience, making Truphone faster than ever before and delivering a new standard for call quality.

Among the many improvements in Truphone 3.0 are increased ease of use, speed of function response, intuitiveness and simplicity – all designed to enhance the user experience. Truphone has also improved voice quality making the app for the iPod better than it’s ever been before.

Using Truphone’s integrated messaging tool that unifies all IM communities in a single place, users can now simply manage all their IM communication from a single page within the application, eliminating the need to constantly jockey between different applications or even different pages within an application. IM services currently supported include Skype, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk.

“Following the successful launch of Truphone 3.0 for the iPhone we were keen to follow-up as quickly as possible for all our iPod touch customers. That’s what we’ve done to ensure that they can take advantage of all our new improvements: improved UI, account management and call quality. We believe Truphone 3.0 sets a new benchmark in terms of quality and performance”, said Geraldine Wilson, CEO Truphone.

“With these improvements, we believe Truphone 3.0 is the best application to turn your iPod touch into a Wi-Fi phone and staying in touch with all of your IM communities.”

[ends]

Resources

• Additional screenshots: Truphone for iPod touch, v3.0
• Truphone press office
  
• Truphone web site

Truphone already enables...

Free calls when in Wi-Fi to:

• Other Truphone users
• Skype and Google Talk users

Free Instant Messages when in Wi-Fi to:

• Skype
• MSN Messenger
• Google Talk
• Yahoo! Messenger
• AIM

Incredible savings on calls to:

• Call landlines and mobiles around the world at cheap rates

Great account management:

• See rates for calls before initiating a call
• Display recent call history, showing the Truphone customer exactly how much a call just cost and how long it lasted with the ability to see a summary of calls made month by month
• Top-up from within the application, without the need for web windows to open separately
• Top-up in a variety of ways: credit card or PayPal
• Change calling tariffs within the application

About Truphone
Founded in 2006, Truphone is a global mobile communications provider in the business of innovating how people converse in our globally connected world. As the industry’s first mobile Internet operator, the company makes it easy and affordable for users all over the world to keep in touch with friends, family and business contacts overseas or whilst roaming. Truphone is the trading name of Software Cellular Network (SCN). SCN is privately owned, funded by both venture capital investment and angel investors.

Apple and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc, registered in the United States and other countries. Google is a trademark of Google Inc. Wi-Fi is a registered trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Google and Android are trademarks of Google, Inc. Truphone is a trademark of Software Cellular Network Ltd. All other brands, product names, company names, trademarks and service marks are the properties of their respective owners.

Palringo adds Groups Gallery, enabling anyone to find and join the Palringo community through groups more easily

Key information

1. Palringo’s Groups Gallery is a browsable directory that makes it easy for people to find Palringo groups they’d like to join and participate in.
2. The addition of Groups Gallery means that Palringo groups are significantly more useful than before: until today there was no way to find out about specific groups other than by word of mouth or guesswork.
3. Now, the Groups Gallery enables people to meet others who share similar interests, all in the same virtual place.
4. Groups are also a useful way for groups of friends or colleagues to stay in touch. Businesses are using Palringo groups as well as the location functionality to enable better communications between staff and to respond more quickly to customer needs.
5. Using a Palringo group for messaging enables voice, text and photos to be shared simultaneously with everyone in the group.
6. Statistics: there are more than 21,000 groups on Palringo, and 50,000 Palringo users are members of at least one group. More than 4 million group messages were sent last month. The largest group has 1,995 members.
7. Group owners manage how their group is seen in the Groups Gallery by editing the description, adding a photo and selecting the most appropriate category for the group. For privacy, group owners may designate their group as ‘ex-directory’, ensuring their group is excluded from the Groups Gallery.
8. Group owners also have tools to manage their community of group members, by promoting other members to help them administer the group or removing rowdy group members.

Quotes
Martin Rosinski, CTO of Palringo, said:

“The number and variety of groups in existence on Palringo is fabulous. Because it’s easy and free to create a group, if you can’t find what you’re looking for you can simply create your own group. Then you can promote your group in the gallery to attract new members.”
“The versatility of Palringo, the way it works across all sorts of mobile phones and operating systems, means it’s extremely inclusive – no-one is excluded because they’ve got the wrong handset, for example. The group functionality takes that a step further because everyone in a group can communicate with everyone else yet only needs to send one actual message. Now, by adding the Groups Gallery, Palringo has just made it a million times easier for new members to find and join any group.”

Links and resources

• Palringo Groups Gallery
• Screenshots
• Palringo press office
  

About Palringo
The Palringo service combines walkie-talkie style voice (vocal instant messaging), the real-time text chat functionality of instant messaging, the ability to share pictures, location and presence - all within the context of a discussion. Supporting connections to other popular instant messaging services, it enables both one-on-one and group discussions, and enables real-time dialogue, for users from across the globe, on any mobile network or connected PC. Palringo is a privately-held company based in Newcastle, UK.

SIM4travel offers United Mobile customers a way forward

Free replacement SIM, £5 free credit when you top up £10, free P&P

SIM4travel, a Truphone company and the leading supplier of global travel SIM cards, is offering United Mobile customers affected by the termination of the United Mobile service a free SIM4travel SIM with free £5 credit when they top-up £10.

United Mobile customers have been left without service just as many are preparing to go away for Bank Holiday weekends or as they prepare for their summer holidays.

SIM4travel is able to offer a continuation of service for those customers affected by what has happened recently with United Mobile to ensure that, as much as possible, they are not left out of pocket and out of service. Customers interested in the offer should visit www.sim4travel.com/replace for more information.

SIM4travel and Truphone are committed to helping consumers manage the costs of using their mobiles abroad - by offering great call rates back home and the ability to receive calls for free in most countries. SIM4travel prides itself on the call quality, reliability of service and the value for money its SIM card offers, and is committed to maintaining its position as the premier global network.

SIM4travel guarantees:

• Customers will receive calls for FREE in 36 countries
• Great rates in 100+ countries
• Customers get a UK number starting +44 7509
• No tie-ins or lengthy contracts, just pay as you go
• 24/7 customer support from anywhere in the world, 365 days of the year

“It’s never a nice thing to see a business struggle, particularly in these tough economic times, but we’re keen to ensure that as many customers as possible continue to make great savings on their roaming charges – and with SIM4travel quality offering that’s what they’ll get”, said Geraldine Wilson, CEO of Truphone.

[ends]

How it works
SIM4travel is a GSM SIM card service designed to be used whilst roaming. There’s no contract required so there are no tie-ins. It’s a prepaid service, and it’s easy to top-up with a credit card. Customers simply purchase a SIM4travel pack, pop the SIM card in to their mobile phone, then activate the prepaid account by registering their credit card and loading cash credit. Customers can then start making calls from the moment they land, all at a massive discount compared to standard network charges, in over 100 countries around the world. What’s more, by using the exclusive SIM4travel mobile number (+44 UK) calls are free to receive in most major destinations around the world. SIM4travel will save money for anyone who uses their mobile whilst abroad – business people, holiday makers, everyone can benefit.

About SIM4travel
SIM4travel is a trading name of, and Truphone is a trademark of, Software Cellular Network Limited. SIM4travel operates its own Pay As You Go global network. Using a SIM4travel international SIM card there are no charges for inbound calls in the EU, and calls home are just 25p per minute. Worldwide, savings of up to 80% are possible in most countries worldwide.

For more information visit www.sim4travel.com and www.sim4travel.blogspot.com.