Business technology news for Feb 13, 2008

Dell to Buy E-Mail Service to Better Compete With Rivals; Yahoo paid $160 million to acquire Maven Networks; Nokia Dominates, but its Rivals Insist That Could Change.

Read at http://www.unitedBIT.com

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Nokia reveals glimpses of the mobile future

Nokia today shared its vision for technologies which will impact the future of the convergence of Internet and mobility at The Way We Live Next, an exclusive briefing at the Nokia Research Center in Oulu, Finland’s northern technology hub.

Presentations and demonstrations at the event highlighted areas of advanced research being undertaken by the company, many of which are in cooperation with individuals, companies and research organizations around the world, reflecting the company’s drive for open innovation and establishing a strong “beta culture” –trialing and evaluating new applications and services quickly – around the company’s products and
services.

During the briefing, Nokia delivered presentations on topics including:

• Web technologies driving innovation in mobile,
• Nanotechnology and solutions for the environment
• The evolution of the Internet user experience
• Mobile payments and banking using Near Field Communications
• Future energy sources
• Smart Connectivity and the future of wireless broadband

Nokia also demonstrated a range of breakthrough technologies, including

• MOSH: a one-to-many distribution platform – a targeted channel for developers and technology eaders to publish applications and other content, for mobile devices, to a global audience.
• Widsets: a mobile Internet service with more than 3 million registered users and over 2000 widgets, hich allows people to enjoy and share their favorite Internet content and to create and publish their own widgets in the spirit of Web 2.0.
• Point & Find: an exciting new way to discover more about your surroundings, using the camera on our mobile device. The mobile device then displays relevant information about what you are looking t, fetching real-time information from the Internet.
• Shoot to Translate: a demonstration using software that translates written characters into another anguage; the original text is captured with the camera on the Nokia multimedia computer and translation happens in real time.
• Virtual worlds: in addition to previewing the first ever photographic exhibition taking place imultaneously in Second Life and the real world, Nokia showed how 3D virtual environments could be mplemented on mobile devices to create an immersive user experience.

Nokia also announced a re-launch of its Beta Labs site at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs, with more interactive features. Beta Labs shares some of the exciting new ideas that Nokia is working on and let users help shape heir future development. A strong online community has developed around Beta Labs, attracting especially technology savvy, early adopter mobile enthusiasts.

Nokia demonstrated Mobile Web Server, a beta lab application running on S60 smartphones. It allows the mobile device to function as an Internet server, making it possible for people to access content on their mobile remotely from a web browser on another device, or to allow other people to do so. Mobile Web server takes the development of Web 2.0 communities to another level as, rather than centralizing content from many people on a single site, it emphasizes decentralization as a way of creating another kind of community.

Source: Nokia

Nokia Launches ‘Context-Aware’ Internet Tablet

By Richard Martin

Seeking to maintain its leadership in an increasingly competitive smartphone market, Nokia on Wednesday announced the N810 Internet tablet, the latest addition to its high-end N-series of smartphones.

The new tablet operates over Wi-Fi networks, and via a Bluetooth wireless connection to a cellular device that it uses as a wireless modem. Last week, Nokia said it would include the Devicescape Connect application, which allows users to connect automatically to Wi-Fi networks in range, as a default option on its N-series and E-series devices.

The pricey N95 device was released in September of 2006 and was brought to the U.S. six months later. On Monday, Nokia said it would begin shipping an 8-Gbyte version of the N95, calling it “the memory-packed big brother” to the original phone. The new N95 can store up to 20 hours of video or up to 6,000 songs, according to Nokia.

The N810 — which will offer support for Nokia’s new “Ovi” Web services platform — the third milestone in a five-phase journey toward a fully connected, mobile Web 2.0 computer. The first step in this scheme was the N770 Internet tablet and the second was the release of the N800, one year ago. The N810 is the first of these devices targeted at a ‘normal’ consumer group, beyond the geeks “It’s a fairly small entity of technology leaders, but it’s a very important step No. 3 for us.

This is an important product in defining what the context-sensitive Web can actually be.

Based on the open-source Linux operating system, the new device offers a Mozilla-based Web browser with the Adobe Flash 9 plug-in, a 4.13-inch screen, support for IM, mobile e-mail, and voice-over-IP. It also has an integrated GPS receiver with a built-in maps application.

The new Net tablet, however, also will remind some observers of the ill-fated Foleo from Palm, a wireless Internet tablet designed to connect to mobile devices and provide a richer and fuller browsing experience. Palm announced recently it will not release the Foleo, announced with some fanfare earlier this year. The next milestone for Nokia will be incorporating full-connectivity options in an N810-like device, but when that might happen is unclear.

While Nokia still dominating the overall mobile phone market, the company faces increasing challenges in the market for more advanced devices such as smartphones and handheld multimedia computers. Besides Apple’s wildly popular iPhone, now expected to sell as many as 10 million units in its first year of shipping, Nokia’s other rival vendors, including Samsung and Taiwanese handset-maker HTC, are bringing more and more innovative devices to market (Sprint Nextel said Wednesday it will sell HTC’s Touch, a touch-screen smartphone previously released overseas, in the U.S. beginning in November).

Also on Wednesday, Boingo Wireless said that its Wi-Fi connectivity program is now available on select Nokia devices, including the N810. Boingo Mobile automatically connects to the company’s worldwide network of Wi-Fi hotspots.

Source: Information Week