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Etisalat has this new service called PushMail. And it’s like it says a push mail service for (compatible) mobile phones.

I just tried it tonight and it works pretty well. Going from Blackberry I can say so far it works pretty much as well as Blackberry. One difference is that with the Blackberry you can have many separate accounts, all being pushed to your mobile device, and you can also send email from all those accounts. With Etisalat’s pushmail it seems you can have one account, which means you can only send from that one account. For most people that’s not really much of an issue.

I use GMail as my email central. I have all my other emails either redirected to GMail or they’re checked with GMail. Which means in GMail I can send email from all the other accounts, but not from my Nokia phone. But it seems like a pretty good deal. For AED45 you get “unlimited e-mails including attachments” (so unlimited email traffic I would guess), compared to the AED185 you pay for Personal Blackberry.

For Etisalat’s PushMail you have to install a small application on your mobile device. At least for my Nokia E61i it was 1.3MB. That application then runs in the background, checking your emails all the time.

We just collected Betsy (our car) from the shop where she’s been for a few weeks after our car accident. She’s looking good We got hit on the right side on the rear, smashing out all the lights and the back window. It also deformed the back door so it couldn’t be closed. I’m glad to have our car back, and I’m glad we bought a safe car.

Mustafa Mohamed, or “Musse” as he’s called, set a new Swedish record by running 3000m steeple chase on 8:05:75, breaking a 31 year old record. You may be interested to know that Mickey Mouse is called “Musse Pigg” in Swedish.

Mustafa has a Wikipedia entry which reveals he was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, but he’s now a Swedish citizen. He also has a web site.

What is up with people not being able to park within a market spot? I can perhaps understand it if you drive a giant Hummer, but regular cars fit within market parking spots, so why take up more than one? I don’t get it… Two examples from today at the mall:

I can hear “I told you so!” from everywhere. Pepsi has admitted that the water for Aquafina products come from the same place as tap water. Bottles are now going to be labeled “P.W.S.” for Public Water Source. I’m under no illusion that most of the bottled water I drink is coming from some special, idyllic, spring, where the water has been filtered over hundreds of years through natural sand and stuff, but I also don’t really want to think about paying a lot of money for “purified” tap water. What about you?

A headline on AME Info can easily be misinterpreted. It say “Sharjah fakes crackdown”. Does that mean that Sharjah has faked a crackdown on something, or that they’ve cracked down on fakes of something? It turns out that “The Sharjah Municipality has seized and destroyed more than 300 counterfeit TV sets, packs of fake cosmetics as well as other items including photo copiers, laser printers and ink cartridge cases.”

I just checked on my Google Reader statistics and it says: “From your 459 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 19,881 items, starred 19 items, and shared 29 items.”

I’m a bit weak on the sharing, don’t you think? 29 items shared out of almost 20,000 items read. That’s got to improve You can check my shared items here. Starring is only for my own use. If I read my feeds on my mobile phone and I find a story I want to follow up on, I add a star to it, then I follow up when I’m back at a computer. After that I take off the star so things don’t typically stay very long in my starred list.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said on Thursday he had subpoenaed two more White House aides, including political adviser Karl Rove, in the probe of fired federal prosecutors.

“This is not a step I take lightly,” Sen. Patrick Leahy declared in a Senate speech.

[source]

Does this mean things are really moving?

IKEA in Sweden is breaking records again with total sales of 11.5SEK billion (AED6.3 billion) for 2006-2007. As a comparison they did 10.4 billion Euros (AED52 billion) in worldwide sales in 2001. They’re also expanding by opening their seventeenth store in Sweden. Remember this is on a population on around 9 million. Also interesting is that they say that since 1998 they’ve lowered their prices with 22.5 per cent.

Sweden’s AB Volvo yesterday said its second-quarter net profit fell 14 per cent as the waning North American truck market continued to weigh on otherwise strong demand from Europe and Asia and as new acquisitions weighed on margins.

Volvo said there were “considerable disturbances” to its North American production as it scales back production in the region. The falling dollar also hurt profits from the region.

Volvo, the world’s secondlargest truck maker behind DaimlerChrysler AG, said net profit decreased to four billion Swedish kronor (Dh2.20 billion) compared with SEK4.67bn (Dh2.57bn) in the year-earlier quarter.

US truck demand has plummeted since 2006 when customers rushed to buy vehicles ahead of tighter emission standards that began at the start of this year.

Group sales are still being supported by strong global growth, especially from Eastern Europe, but marketwatchers are eager to see US sales rebound. Volvo said it expects between 200,000 and 220,000 heavy-duty trucks sold in North America in 2007.

Figures from newly acquired Japanese truck manufacturer Nissan Diesel and Ingersoll Rand’s road development unit were both included in the quarter, adding extra costs and weighing on profit margins. The truck division’s operating margin fell to 8.3 per cent from 9.2 per cent. Excluding Nissan Diesel, the margin would have been 9.5 per cent.

Exchange rates, particularly the weaker US dollar, hurt profits, affecting income by SEK700m (Dh386.3m) in the quarter compared with 2006.

Revenue grew 5.1 per cent to SEK71.45bn (Dh39.41bn) from SEK67.9bn (Dh37.5bn), meeting expectations of SEK71.46bn (Dh39.43bn). Pretax profit fell 7.5 per cent to SEK5.97bn (Dh3.22bn) from SEK6.4bn (Dh3.45bn), missing analysts’ expectations of SEK6.21bn (Dh3.35bn), while operating profit decreased 6.4 per cent to SEK6.12bn (Dh3.30bn) from SEK6.5bn (Dh3.53bn), missing expectations of SEK6.25bn (Dh3.37bn). (Dow Jones)

[From Emirates Today]