Singtones offer the ultimate ringtone customisation, even more so than Orgasmatones (whatever happened to them?) with the added benefit that you wouldn’t be embarrassed if your Mum heard it.

Singtones offer you the ability to record your very own version of a well known song. Then the software “fixes” those with dodgy or tone deaf voices, so everyone can get a good result. The cost? A mere £1.50 ($3).

Unfortunately, Singtones isn’t available in Germany, so you’re spared my Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the love”, which I’m sure would have been an instant hit. Eat your heart out Justin Timberlake. And if you’re thinking “WTF Justin Timberlake?”, he actually co-wrote and sang on the original, albeit uncredited for technical reasons.

At the risk of a slight digression - To all you PR people out there: Trying to squeeze “iPhone” into your press release or headline doesn’t help and probably prevents the real story getting noticed. Hop off that bandwagon and let the real story be the hero - Singtones being a case in point.

By the way, did you see that you can target the iPhone on AdMob? Heh heh.

Tony Blair, the UK’s recently ex-Prime Minister, is having to get used to living like the rest of us.

As well as being puzzled why his driver (he’s still got one, so no need to feel too sorry for Tone) now stops at red lights, he’s got his first mobile phone. And he’s having to learn how to use it, which must be as strange to him as it is to us to find out that he can’t use one.

His first experimentation with sms apparently led to a “who are you?” response.

Mrs Thatcher had a similar problem getting to grips with normal life. She had to be given lessons on how to use the phone, as her modus operandi as PM had been to pick it up and say “get me Mr Reagan” or whatever.

Tomi Ahonen launches into an inimitable rant today, condemning Sprint Nextel in the US for sacking 1,000 customers. The problem? It seems that the “Sprint 1000″, as they shall no doubt become known in the Blogosphere, are people who call their call centre more than 40 times a month. Read Tomi for the whole shebang.

But it also raises a very interesting point for all of us involved in technology - how are we meant to deal with stupid customers, or at least digitally challenged ones? (I’m not suggesting that all the Sprint 1000 were stupid, by the way - that’s just the angle I want to discuss).

As technology gets more complicated - and it’s going to get harder to use before it starts getting significantly easier - how much of a duty of care do we owe customers to help them make sense of it? Obviously someone who calls a call centre 40 times or more in a month will be unprofitable. So one possible response would be to fire them and I’m sure that Sprint won’t be the first or last to go down this route. Another would be to try to educate them (assuming they’re not calling to enquire on progress about legitimate service issues). But at what point does your duty of care run out and you just have to accept that you don’t want to do business with these people. Or, indeed, is it ever acceptable?

There was an article in New Scientist a few weeks ago (no link as it’s behind a subscription wall - so pretty old science, then) about prejudice towards the stupid. This wasn’t patronising, just pointing out that the average person has an IQ of 100. About 60 - 75% of us range from 85 - 115 IQ and function pretty well in an “intellectually challenging environment”, which is what the developed world has become.

But then there are about 5 - 15% who have IQ’s between 70 and 85 (below 70, people are regarded as having a cognitive disability). The 70 - 85′ers will have problems with language and arithmetic, meaning that they have as much of a chance of understanding a typical Product Manual, as I have understanding a wiring diagram for a space rocket.

Furthermore, these people represent between 2 and 6 million in the UK alone and about 15 to 45 million in the US, as an example. The wide range is caused by the fact that IQ measurement and results is far from being an exact science. But these are big proportions of the population as a whole. In capitalistic terms, this is a significant market. In political terms, it’s a huge number of voters to essentially disenfranchise from technology.

It’s actually even worse that this. Older people, who grew up without ready access to technology, have the potential to become disenfranchised too. While we hear stories of 95 year old grannies embracing technology and IMing and caming with their grandkids, there’s a significant proportion of older folks who can’t do any of these things and probably never will. Denying them access to technology will be tantamount to denying them full citizenship - how, in a few years, will they be able to operate a bank account, use a mobile phone or even, perhaps, drive a car?

Society has moved on from some of yesteryear’s basic prejudices and I certainly hope that we wouldn’t consider denying people access to equal rights as the rest of us on the grounds of colour or gender. So is it acceptable to deny them access on the basis of IQ or that they’re too old to learn new tricks?

And does a public company like Sprint Nextel, accountable primarily to its shareholders, have the right to draw the line somewhere (as they’ve done in this case) and say - “actually, you know - you’re too much hassle to do business with.”? And as they clearly do have that right, as a society, can we afford to let them?

Prompted by our visit to yesteryear with the Notificator, I started browsing last night through some of the other images on Modern Mechanix.

How about the very first ringtone dating back to the 1950’s?

And the first video phone from 1956, which became about as popular as person-to-person video calls are today.

In case you thought that Vertu was a new idea.

And my favourite - the original way of putting the other party on speaker phone

Maybe Apple could use this idea as a cool way for kids to share music - so much sexier than sharing an earbud each.

Interesting thoughts from Gustaf Erikson on the push for people to “unlock” the iPhone, which at this point entails rendering its telephony functions useless rather than making it possible to use on any operator’s network:

What this illustrates is the chasm between Apple’s image and AT&T’s. People are somehow convinced that AT&T subtracts value from the device, sullying the pureness of Apple’s vision. I think AT&T needs to think long and hard about how they got into this position, and what they can do to get out.

Taken a step further, I think it’s interesting to see AT&T become the focus of ire, rather than Apple for doing an exclusive deal and all the baggage its choices bring.

One of the ideas that quite a few companies seem to be looking at is the ability to leave virtual notes, readable via your mobile, for other people to find when they arrive at a defined location.

In other words, you may want to leave a note for a friend (and only discoverable by them alone) that you’ve changed the venue for a meeting from under the clock in the station to a local bar - though you’d probably just send them an sms in real life or call them. Or another use case is attaching a message for all and sundry to discover, that reviews the restaurant you’ve “attached” it to.

I have to say, that I love this whole concept, where people can use their mobiles as a way of linking the real world with digital space. But I haven’t really come across a scenario where it makes a compelling application, let alone a business model. Perhaps a real world Wikipedia is the nearest my thinking has come to a possible scenario.

As far as localised messaging is concerned though, I thought this was interesting, as re-discovered by Pasta and Vinegar - I present to you, the Notificator

This was a coin operated machine from the 1930’s, where (many years before mobiles were dreamed of) you could leave a message for a friend to pick up later. The machines were placed in stations and highly trafficked areas and on leaving your message and paying a small fee, your localised note would be displayed for a few hours. How ingenious.

And no, this didn’t take off either. A case of the wrong technology or a case of an unwanted application? I suspect the latter, but happy to be proved wrong.

Via The Daily Irrelevant

Back in August last year, I wrote about TextMarks, which I described as User Generated Shortcodes. Basically, the idea is that you can set up your own keyword on TextMarks’s shortcode (41411) and whoever sms’s that word in gets back a message of your own composition. So it might be a sort of Twitter like message, a link to today’s blog post or a restaurant could use it to let people find out what the daily special was.

They’ve now developed the idea into an interactive T-Shirt, available at Reactee, which takes the idea to a new level in user generated content. The idea is that you order a personalised message printed on a T-Shirt (”Hot or Not?” or “Ruff or Buff?” are obvious applications). People then text your keyword to 41411 in the same way and get back your pre-programmed message. You also get a copy of the message to your mobile.

Apart from the Ruff or Buff scenario (you’d have to be quite brave to go down this route), I think it could be an interesting way for charities to raise awareness and funds, as well as having useful applications for political parties. The sheer novelty of texting a person (OK their T-Shirt) would mean a higher level of interaction that doing the same thing on say, a billboard or leaflet. Anyone got any other ideas as to how it might be used?

It’s early days for Reactee, but apparently orders are flying out of the door. Only available in the US sadly.

Douglas Adams famously envisaged a fish that you stuck in your ear, which then miraculously allowed you to understand all languages simultaneously, including truly awful Vogon poetry. Cool Gorilla’s new mobile app doesn’t go quite so far, but it is a sign of things to come.

Talking Phrase Books are a downloadable application for mobiles and provide spoken French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Greek - and I’m sure a Vogon version is in the planning stage. Once you’ve downloaded, installed and opened the app, you simply click on the phrase you want to say and the phone says it out loud. In my case (Nokia E61) it uses the loudspeaker setting, so you don’t even have to try to repeat it yourself.

A deal with LastMinute.com means that it’s offered as a free download, so visit www.coolgorilla.com from your PC or Mac (for sideloading) or www.mobilephrasebooks.com directly from your mobile.

One day, I’m sure that the phone will be able to provide the full Babel Fish service, so give this a try and let your imagination do the rest.

Gripe: Not Cool Gorilla’s fault, but why oh why can’t we have some consistency about where applications get installed, so users can find them easily? It’s like buying a car and finding that the manufacturer moves the steering wheel around from seat to seat completely randomly.

For American readers, you might like to know that Adams borrowed the name, Hotblack Desiato (the rock star in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, who was spending a year dead for tax reasons) from a London (Real) Estate Agency.