Before I left for London, I used to use my laptop or WiFi on my E61. That resulted in me getting my laptop out in Airports, Cafés and nearly any other place. Some would call it an addiction

Having left for London more than a year ago, I finally had the possibility of getting more or less unlimited internet on my phone, without having to sell my soul. That was a huge game changer. I could now check my E-mails, track support tickets – do anything really!, anywhere without having to get out my laptop. Great!

Then there were those weeks I had to head back to Belgium for family festivities etc.. I quickly realized that my 3 UK contract gave me way better rates for data in Belgium than my Belgian Proximus Pay&Go card. It wasn’t really cheap, it was just the lesser of two evils.

But now there’s a solution!

Mobile Vikings, a Belgian “next gen” MVNO finally saw what’s missing in Belgium. In the age of Twitter and hyper-connectivity, people want to be connected at all times. Either with their E71, BlackCherry or iPod Touch with phone capabilities. Pushed E-mails, Twitter streams and of course XMPP are just a few of the things people will start to use more. Just look at any other country where there’s contracts for mobile internet that are affordable.

Anyways, I immediately ordered my free SIM and ported my number. The SIM arrived 3 days after having ordered it, in a very nicely designed envelope (kudos to Mobile Vikings for that!). The accompanying letter told me to send a text from my old SIM in order to initiate the number porting process. That took about 2 hours, and I was ready to go! Topped up €15 and got my 1000 texts and 1GB of data. Worked like a charm.

Seeing as I was driving round the country quite a bit the next few days, I decided to put the Network to a test. Unlike the UK, Belgium has a mobile network that’s worth a fuck, so I was pretty optimistic. From experience, I never had any low coverage with Proximus. Never. Always good signal, and 99% even 3G (Three could learn something from them)!

Mobile Vikings use the BASE Network. First disappointment was that BASE has no 3G, but only EDGE. Having done a bit of research, it looks like BASE wants to enable the 3G network in the next few weeks, so keep your fingers crossed for that. Having said that, I was quite surprised how fast the EDGE network is. I could play Spotify tracks with only short buffering times (2-3 seconds) without any major issues. That’s really the beauty of Belgium. No one uses the data network, because it’s so damn expensive, hence it’s extremely fast! So I can’t wait until BASE fires up their 3G Network. That should be amazing.

Having spent 5 days with Mobile Vikings, I have to say, the network isn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I had issues getting signal in the Cinema (Proximus worked fine), and in some parts of Mol. But for the rest, it’s all good.

The only thing I still don’t get: How is the traffic accounted? On the site it says:

€2,50 per MB consumed,
starting from the first byte of each megabyte started.

That translates for me into: I use 1 byte, I pay 2,50€ for it, and my signal drops then, so I just paid 2,50€ for a byte. Right?! One thing I would urge every operator: charge per byte. Yes, indicate the price per MB, but the charging should occur per byte.

It’s nice to see that a group of people are getting Belgium prepped for the 21st century! So definitely get your Mobile Vikings SIM card today and join us! Just head over to: mobilevikings.com

PS: It is a great name for a Mobile Network!

As you may have expected, Flosoft.biz has been working over the last few months on their new VPS offers. After nearly 2 months of work, they are ready, and have launched their offer. Their plan to revolutionize the VPS market has succeeded.

Their VPS08 beats the competition on all levels. For comparison we will use Rimu Hosting, VPS Link (Spry) and Media Temple.

RAM:

RAM is often the main problem with VPS. The VPS08 offers 256MB Ram in it’s base model, and it can be extended to up to 8GB at a price of 4€ / 256MB. The 256MB model costs 9,99€.

The competition is a lot more expensive: Rimu Hosting’s machine Miro VPS2 has 256MB Ram too, and costs 29,95$; VPS Link’s Link 3 costs 24,95$; Media Temple, at 50$ for (dv) Base, is the most expensive of the 4 VPS options.

Storage:

Harddisk storage is also often very limited on the VPS. The VPS08 comes with 20GB by default, which can be extended to up to 1TB at the price of 2,50€ / 5GB. Again, the machine costs 9,99€.

Rimu Hosting offers up to 16GB of storage on it’s Miro VPS4 at the price of 49,95$. VPS Link’s Link 4 comes with a 20GB Harddisk too, but at the price of 39,95$. Last, but definitely not least, Media Temple, it’s (dv) Base comes with 20GB at the price of 50,00$. Again, a clear advantage for the VPS08 of Flosoft.biz.

Connection & allowed traffic:

Don’t you hate when your machine gets shut down because you exceeded your traffic? Or that when you get your monthly invoice, you see that you have to pay a lot more than you thought because you exceeded your traffic limit? Well, Flosoft.biz doesn’t believe in them, and thus offers it’s VPS without any traffic limit. Again we are talking about 9,99€. This is not some fair use policy, or anything else, but real unlimited traffic.

Do we still have to look at the competition? Quickly said, no other ISP offers unlimited traffic. If you want more than 1TB, you are paying at least 150$ a month.

Result:

The VPS08 is a lot cheaper than any offers from Flosoft.biz’s competition. Get one today while they’re still available!

DIGG IT!

It all started on paper, well actually no. That would be old-fashioned. So let’s try this again: It all started on a glass table. That’s something you haven’t seen before. And before you don’t believe me, here’s a picture of that table.

The new Last.fm Service comes with many new features, which improve the usability and speed of the Last.fm Website, and also give you a lot of new features.

So I thought, I might as well share some information about it with you guys. So here goes.

The library. Your entire Last.fm music profile made visible, down to every last artist and track. Add to it by scrobbling or with the click of a button. Browse it, play it, and get new music recommendations based on it.

Real-time charts. Yes, finally! Every track you scrobble gets added to all of your charts. Instantly. No more waiting for Sunday and praying to the chart gods…

Plus… Activity feeds, all-new visual styles, an improved music player, sharing, podcasts, and more.

We’re only getting started, but feel free to have a play, give us your feedback, and help spot bugs.

We’ll be expanding the beta and opening it up to more users in the coming weeks. In the meantime, subscribers can find out how to access the beta site now at the Last.fm Beta Group.

In short. It rocks!

But I can tell you a lot. Just look at these screenshots, and you’ll be convinced!

If you are interested in other Last.fm stuff, check out their Last.fm Build and their Playground.