Today Sagem Orga made a press release that raised my eyebrows. They have a new SIM card (the identification chip in your GSM cell phone) that has WiFi capability right on the chip. This is exciting, because it would enable otherwise ordinary cell phones to be used as WiFi internet gateways, running both WiFi and 3G data connections at the same time.

This is something that most phones simply can not do. The ones that can do it require that a software program must be running on the phone to make it into a router that can relay WiFi signals over the web through a 3G data connection over the cell phone network. Getting this on a Blackberry, for example is a huge nuisance, if your service provider supports it at all.

Well, that nuisance may be a thing of the past once the new “SIMFi” technology hits the market. Imagine just plugging in the snazzy new card into your phone, joining its WiFi network from your laptop, and accessing the internet from practically anywhere. How cool is that!?!

There has been a discussion on Slashdot about this. One of the interesting commentary was about the need for a 2.4 GHz antenna, which can actually fit fine on the SIM card itself, as long as it’s bent around a bit. An obvious question with any WiFi product is “what’s the implication on battery life?”. It will definitely be shorter. Hopefully this device will have some sort of a tunable transmit power adjustment for the WiFi signal so power consumption can be kept to a minimum. After all, your laptop and your cell phone will only be an arm’s length apart when you are using this setup anyway, so range is not a major concern.

Yes, I do love technical gadgets. The thought of where this could go is very exciting. I’ll be the first on the waiting list for this!

Cloud Mobile lets you manage your files stored on Cloud Files from the palm of your hand using your iPhone. It’s exciting to see software companies like Proactive Apps, LLC using Rackspace’s public REST API’s to build useful tools like this one. Founder of Proactive Apps, Marc Jones, quotes:

“We made the decision to support The Rackspace Cloud, and specifically Cloud Files, in the first version of Cloud Mobile based on their open, easy-to-use API and their support of open cloud standards. The combination of Cloud Files strong feature set and the open API allowed us to create an iPhone app that leveraged both platforms.”

Check out the Features:

Features

• Supports multiple Rackspace Cloud accounts
• Container count and disk space for account
• List containers
• Icons designate container status: empty, not empty, CDN status
• Create new containers
• Delete containers
• View container details: object count, disk space, and CDN info
• CDN enable or disable containers; set TTLs; view CDN URL
• Upload photos and movies (direct capture / library) from your iPhone to a container
• List objects in a container
• Delete objects
• View object details: size, etag, content type, last modified
• View / add / edit / delete object metadata
• View or play objects supported on the iPhone: images, audio, video
• Built-in links to Cloud Files and Rackspace Cloud status pages

Screenshots

“What’s so cool?” – The coolest things you can do with this app are:

1. Take a photo or video on your iPhone, upload it to Cloud Files, enable the CDN feature, and share the link.

2. Once you have photos, audio, and video on Cloud Files, you can stream them directly to your iPhone and view them in the native player at the click of a button.

3. This is the easiest possible way to change the TTL of a CDN enabled item we’ve seen so far.

Marc Jones:

“…Snap a pic or grab some video, upload it to Cloud Files, CDN enable your container with one touch, and share the link – it’s that easy.”

A future revision of this app will include support for management of other cloud services from The Rackspace Cloud including Cloud Servers. This app might just be the perfect companion for your iPhone.