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Nokia 5330 Mobile TV: the Media-Centric Phone

If you’re a TV addict, the new Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition is the phone for you. The phone will be an ‘entertainment hub that combines mobile broadcast TV (DVB-H), social networking, music and gaming in one compact 3G device’, in the words of the recent press release.

Sure, it’s in a different market from the Dell Mini 3, the N900 and even Motorola's Droid, but this phone still has a unique offering which may make other smartphones jealous!

Here are some main features:

·         DVB-H digital TV tuner, where headset works as an antenna

You can watch TV on the go

·         An EPG (electronic program guide)

Set reminders for favourite shows and create personalized channels

·         2.4 inch QVGA display with 320 x 240 resolution

Small screen but crystal clear quality

·         Many social media widgets (Ovi Store, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, Windows Live, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger,  ICQ, AOL, Flickr, to name a few)

·         Music Experience – Free access to millions of tracks

·         3.5 mm headphones jack

·         3.2 MP camera with LED flash

·         GPS and Nokia Maps

Other standard features:

·         Battery life: 6 hours DVB-H playback

Enough to watch around 4 to 5 movies, or 3 football matches

·         MP3 Radio

·         Bluetooth

·         Expandable memory

·         Priced at $232 (before tax and subsidies)

Not bad with these specs

Where will the Mobile TV Feature Work?

DVB-H technology is currently available in Austria, Finland, Ghana, Kenya, India, Italy, Namibia, Nigeria, Netherland, Philippines and Switzerland, so these will be the first to get the new 5330 Mobile TV Edition. However, about 20 other countries will be targeted within the next two years.

Wrapping it Up

This certainly looks like a ‘highly seducing and compelling device’ for it allows a hassle free mobile TV experience, albeit in limited geographical locations. With the recent launch of the Nokia N900, it seems clear Nokia is set to further penetrate consumer markets in an effort to fuel growth.

Related Posts:
Motorola Droid versus Apple iPhone and others: Review
Maemo 5 Review: It Just Raised The Bar
Nokia N900 Rover – Review of the Phone Itself
Dell’s Mini 3 to Enter Smartphone Market

Sources: Mobile Gazette, Nokia, Uber Gizmo, RoboxPress (Image)

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Dell’s Mini 3 to Enter Smartphone Market

Dell is finally entereing the smartphone market with its Mini 3 in China and Brazil in the upcoming months. The 3G enabled handset is equipped with Android, has a 3.5 inch touchscreen and a 3.2 MP camera. Little is known about the phones features thought. But what we do know is that China Mobile, the world’s largest cell phone carrier, will initially carry the phone.

Will it succeed?

There are plenty of skeptics who wonder if the 3rd largest computer manufacturer can succeed in the highly competitive market where thi likes of iPhone, Droid, BlackBerry and N900 compete fiercely. They claim that Dell’s choice of markets (China and Brazil) is illogical because the markets aren’t ready for smartphones yet. They also say the only reason Dell is moving into these markets is because the Mini 3 simply cannot compete with the impressive features of other smartphones.

However, some experts beg to differ.

Dell may be extremely successful

Granted that other phones have a huge head start, here are some reasons why Dell’s global strategy might just work:

• China Mobile has a total subscriber base that is almost double the market in USA (which is around 300 million customers)
• Chinese and Brazilian markets are not saturated with other smartphones
• Dell can ride on Android OS’s current success as it competes head-on with the iPhone and Windows Mobile OS

Issues like the quality and variety of mobile apps will still be a major concern for Dell

The future

Although no time-line has been disclosed, the Mini 3i will in fact enter other markets including the USA and will use AT&T’s network there. As the Mini 3 spreads globally, the key challenge will be to differentiate themselves from other smartphones. But the immediate term prospects might be bright.

You may find these articles useful:

Nokia 5330 Mobile TV: the Media-Centric Phone

Nokia N900 Rover – Review of the Phone Itself

Maemo 5, The N900 Mobile OS - Review: It Just Raised The Bar

Motorola Droid versus Apple iPhone and others: Review

Sources: PC World, Reuters, Washington Post, AP Photo/Dell Inc. PC World (Image)

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Water Found on Moon: “Unambiguous Evidence”

It’s official. Frozen water has been found on the Moon, NASA confirmed today. The $79 million spacecraft, LCROSS, launched in July, managed to find around a dozen buckets of water in a permanently shadowed crater, Cabeus, in the South pole.



“The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water”, said NASA today. This news comes a couple of months after this ship found ice on the moon.

How much and how did it get there?

A mere 220 pounds of water, which scientists insist is ‘a significant amount’, was found and this would be enough to fill around a dozen buckets of 2-gallons each. We know the lunar surface is hydrated but are not sure about how this happened. Several theories exist:

• The sun did it: interaction between solar winds and moon rocks could have generated the water
• The comets did it: comets carrying ice and water may have impacted with the moon
• The Clouds did it: giant molecular clouds that passed through the solar system may have played a role

Great Discovery? Perhaps

We had always thought the Moon was bone dry so this is potentially a great discovery for mankind, for lunar water can be used:

• As drinking water
• As a source of oxygen
• As a source of rocket fuel in the form of hydrogen
• A window in the past of our solar system’s climate (since the water and ice preserve historical data through minerals and other debris)

However, the fact that $79 million were spent on confirming the presence of water which was already discovered by Indians several years ago, makes one wonder if we’re stretching our ambitions in the wrong direction.

Now what?

Scientists are planning to send more probes to the Moon to find other sources of ice which may be usable for the purpose of drinking or rocket fuel or even for setting up a lunar base for man. That’s more tax-payers money being spent on things that do not directly or positively affect us.

Related Posts
Meteor Shower in November: You may have a front seat

Sources: Space.com, Technorati, MSN, Nat Geo, NASA (Image)

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Game Review

Gaming history has been made. ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is out and has broken all fist-day sales records by earning over $310 million through 4.7 million copies on Wednesday 11th.

If you want to enjoy this game’s stunning graphics, turn up your speakers and get a high definition TV set first first for your X-box, or PlayStation. I shall say no more. Watch this video review.



GTA 4 had previously held this honor by selling 3.6 million copies on the first day. But this is no surprise because it was the most anticipated shooting game of the year, and sales for the game, which sells at $60 a piece, will continue to rise despite the weak economy because hard core gamers make a very loyal target market.

Source: Reuters, Cleveland, ING Enterntainment (Video)

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Nokia N900 Rover – Review of the Phone Itself

‘This phone is going to destroy Apple’s iPhone and Motorola's Droid,' people are already saying. Oh yes, all other smartphones are in big trouble. And here’s why; the N900 isn’t a smartphone, it’s an entire computer in your pocket! The only thing that’ll save other phones is the N900’s whopping price of around $700. But it’s just for now.


Display and Screen

With a 3.5" screen and a high resolution of 800 x 480 pixels (which used for standard internet tablets and is 2.5 times bigger than iPhone's), the N900 present pure viewng pleasure. It uses resistive technology so you can use your nail on the screen, but is still very responsive.

Processor and Connectivity

It uses a 600 MHz processor based on OMAP3430 ARM Cortex-A8, which has also been used in iPhone 3G, Palm Pre and Sony Ericsson Satio, and it also has a really high end 3D accelorator (PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0). Whether you're a gaming fan or not, you have nothing to complain about as you sit back and savor the "raw speed". The phone is also very flexible in terms of connectivity; it has a TV Out feature, micro-USB connector, integrated FM transmitter and integrated GPS with A-GPS.

With a huge memory of 1 GB (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory) and internal storage of 32 GB, as well as external memory of 10 GB, you can expect full functionality and excellent responsiveness from the phone even as you open up a dozen applications at a time.

Size

Dimensions: approx 111 × 60 × 18 mm. The N900 is a great improvement from previous bulky smartphones made by Nokia (recall the E90) and is comparable to the N97, the Ombia HD, iPhone and the Droid. This is pretty good, especially since it has a slider keyboard, but you should expect the 181 kg body to feel noticeably heavier. Despite this, it has a mediocre battery life of 9 hours of talktime.

Keys

Like the Droid, the N900 has two keyboards; a QWERTY slider and an onscreen keyboard. It comes down to a matter of preference which keyboard is convenient; the virtual keys are large hence fewer typos are expected but they cover almost half the display, in which case you can simply disable them.

Email, GPS and Data network

Supported e-mail platforms are Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP and you can check a variety of e-mail addresses at once. It's pretty amazing. Plus, it allows access to networks supported by GPRS, WLAN, EDGE, and WCDMA, making room for extensive reach and flexibility. Apart from this, the N900 is pre-loaded with the Ovi Maps application and allows automatic geotagging as well.

Web browsing

Since it has a web browser powered by Mozilla and supported by Adobe Flash™ 9.4, you can enjoy a complete online experience with a full screen browsing. Whether you wish to view stock market stats, or watch a video on YouTube or play an online game, the N900 will go all the way for you. Moreover, you can view webpages as they appear on your desktop computer, with the ability to zoom in and out as you wish. However, there have been complaints about the browser being slightly less reactive than that in the iPhone and the videos streaming being a little slow.

Camera and other Multimedia

The 5 MP camera is equipped with Carl Zeiss optics and Tessar lens, which come together to provide one of the best picture qualities provided by mobile phones as well as high resolution video recording of 848 × 480 pixels. The Photo Gallery feature is comparable to Android's, but the iPhone 3GS's is much quicker. As far as using the N900 Rover as a music phone is concerned, the experience could be a little better. Although it has two speakers, but again, iPhone 3GS's sound sound quality is slightly better. One thing which is certainly convenient is the built-in FM transmitter.

Operating system & Applications

Because the phone uses Maemo 5 (an open-source software originally developed by Linux for computers), the N900 actually bridges the gap between smartphones and laptops. You can multi-task, create multiple desktops which you can view through a panoramic dashboard at once, drag and drop items as you wish, create shortcuts and a lot more. The software is different from other OS such as Android, iPhone, Symbian and Windows Palm but it's extremely user-friendly, innovative, responsive, visually appealing, adaptable and powerful. To give you an example of the creativity element, if you wish to zoom in, you could either double-tap or simply make a circular motion with your finger.

The N900 comes with a few pre-installed widgets, such as Facebook, Twitter and OVI, but it'll take time before third-party developers launch the N900 into iPhone's arena, and that is an important factor that will determine how successful the N900 is.

Do you want one too?

I'm sure you do! Some call it the Beast, for obvious reasons. It has everything other smartphones have and a whole lot more and that's why this phone will squash it's competitors and push the smartphone industry into the future. While other phones seem pale compared to the N900's capabilities, a lot depends on the applications developed for the phone.

Despite this, it is certain that Nokia will improve its market share among expensive mobile phone models and compete head-on with Apple and RIM. to gain back ground in the coming years.

Related Posts:

Nokia 5330 Mobile TV: the Media-Centric Phone
Maemo 5 Review: It Just Raised The Bar

Motorola Droid versus Apple iPhone and others: Review

Introduction to the Nokia N900

Source: Maemo Nokia, Cell Phone Answers, Conversations Nokia, Nokia Symbian Themes (image), My-Symbian, Ubergizmo, Reuters

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Maemo 5 Review: It Just Raised The Bar

“No introduction necessary; Maemo features speak for themselves.” – Maemo 5 Tagline

Nokia’s confidence about Maemo 5 (Linux based) is admirable and legitimate. Backed by powerful processing abilities and creative developers, the new OS makes the N900 a computer you can put in your pocket (read a brief review here). Watch this browser video to find out why.



Maemo is graceful, very user friendly, innovative, supersonic fast, adaptable and a whole lot of other things that allow it to bring your computer to your hands. This is because Maemo was first designed for computers. It is a step ahead of other mobile OS (such as Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android); and since the N900 has now entered the market, other mobile software firms will have to pull up their socks and meet this new offering, preferably at lower rates, if they want to succeed in terms of innovation.

Related Posts:

Nokia N900 Rover – Review of the Phone Itself

Nokia 5330 Mobile TV: the Media-Centric Phone

Dell’s Mini 3 to Enter Smartphone Market

Introduction to Nokia N900 

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New Nokia N900 – A Mobile Computer and the Ultimate Phone

Nokia’s latest brainchild, the N900, which will beat all other smartphone revolutions, is now being sold and you can read its review here.

The Phone


The new Nokia N900 itself looks much better than previous Nokia smartphones; it’s more compact, has a high-res touch-screen, amazing camera, immense processing power, wireless broadband, to name a few. Nokia is back in the game! Read more about the N900 features here.

The software


It uses a Mozilla browser and the incredible new Maemo (a Linux-based operating software) and is guaranteed to give the N900 an edge which Android and Symbian based phone do not have. Maemo is graceful, very user friendly, innovative, supersonic fast, adaptable and a whole lot of other things. Read more about Maemo here.

Related Posts:
Nokia N900 Rover – Review of the Phone Itself
Maemo 5 Review: It Just Raised The Bar

Source: Maemo Nokia (Image)

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Motorola Droid versus Apple iPhone and others: Review

The long-awaited competitor to iPhone is finally here. Motorola’s Droid, which uses Google’s Android software, and costs $199, is backed by Verizon Wireless, went on sale yesterday. Not only is Droid ready to revolutionize the smartphone market, but it will also improve Motorola’s and Verizon’s positions in the industry.

And here is what people think of it. (Watch the video review here)


Apple’s iPhone is no longer ‘untouchable’

The phone has some nifty hardware and software features which compete head-on with the iPhone, and even surpass it in some areas:

• A slider QWERTY keyboard
• An exclusive software, the new version of Google Android 2.0 which handles numerous applications at super-fast speeds
• Sleek body
• 5 Megapixel camera
• 24-hour battery life
• Built-in Amazon MP3 Store

Now let’s look at the phone in detail.


The exclusive Android 2.0 MOPS software

Behind Droid’s plastic is the latest version of Google’s Android 2.0 MOPS (Mobile Operating System) and this lends exclusivity to the phone, giving it feature not seen in previous Android Phones. Among these are:

• Seamless integration with Google Voice
• The free Google Maps Navigation software
• Voice navigation
• Easy toggling between different programs
• Greater agility in opening and running a wider range of applications, and
• Integration of phone book with Facebook contacts.

Although Android's Marketplace is primitive compared to Apple’s AppStore, which offer ten times the applications offered for Android, it wont be long before both stores compete neck and neck. Google is keen to attract third party developers and current Android apps cover many basic utilities that allow you to view MS Office documents and access Facebook, and so on.

One area the Droid lacks in absolute terms is its gaming utility, whereas the iPhone and Nokia N-Gage phones have firmly established themselves.

As a music phone, there is room for improvement

Although the speakers are pretty loud, using the Droid as a music player is a hassle because there are no media synchronisation features, no smart playlists (that generate almost automatically) and no feature to store and view TV shows and movies. In other words, the Droid cannot replace the iPod, where as iPhone can.

Two Keyboards – that’s a first

Droid has both a touch keyboard (which is smarter than those in previous versions of Android) as well as a physical slide-out keyboard with a brown navigation key. The physical keyboard isn’t hard to get used too but offers no auto-correct option like the touch-pad does. Plus, the physical keyboard makes the phone noticeably heavier, so if you’re not used to it, the feature is simply redundant.

An impressive camera

Droid boasts a 5 MP camera which makes iPhone’s 3.2 MP device look dull. The picture quality is in stark contrast to that of the iPhone as well as previous Motorola phones, even though the flash isn’t exceptional.

The look – a bit of this and bit of that

Droid’s touch-screen definitely wins; it’s got way more pixels per inch than the iPhone (267 ppi versus 160 ppi) and the screen is larger too (854 x 480 pixel versus 480-by-320-pixel).

The body of the phone, Motorola claims, is the sleekest with a slide-out keypad, but the Droid doesn’t look half as gorgeous as Motorola’s Razr V3i did, and this is a disappointment.

Navigation Button – nothing to write home about

Droid’s brown navigation button in its black and white slider keyboard is less appealing than scroll balls used in previous Android phones as well as the Blackberry. The four-way directional keys are difficult to use and seem like an unnecessary emulation of previous phone designs.

Not all that glitters is gold

There are still some flaws that need to be addressed, such as:

• the arduous task of copying-and-pasting text
• the inability to delete applications (once you install an app, the phone assumes you want to keep it forever), and
• difficulty in closing certain programs

These issues will be ironed out once Android enters the maturity phase, as iPhone already has but Google is extremely efficient at learning from its mistakes.

The phone and its smartphone competitors

Droid enters a big market with a few competing products, such as

• Apple’s iPhone
• T-Mobile’s G1 and MyTouch 3G, and
• HTC's Droid Eris.

But Droid’s features supersede those of Droid Eris, G1 and MyTouch 3G. The only competitor Motorola is concerned about is the iPhone, and considering Google’s ability to maneuver and improve itself to win the market, and that Droid uses Verizon, which offers better coverage than AT&T (iPhone’s provider), it’s very likely Motorola and Verizon will lead the market in the years to come with this phone.

Related Posts:

·         Nokia N900 Rover – Review 

Nokia 5330 Mobile TV: the Media-Centric Phone

Dell’s Mini 3 to Enter Smartphone Market

Sources: Review by Mark Milian in LA Times, Mac Rumors, Apple Inc., ZDNet News, ZDNet Blog, Pocket Now, Reuters, ZDNet Community, Phandroid (image)

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Broadband Penetration Must Rise in Developing Countries: U.N.

Poor nations in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean must develop a stronger broadband infrastructure in order to fully utilize opportunities presented by information technology, noted the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in the recent Information Economy Report.

Companies and consumers need to avail economic benefits of IT, such as the setup of offshoring industries (for instance, call centres) and use of cellular phones, in order to ‘narrow the digital divide’ and expedite the development process, noted Petko Draganov, Deputy Secretary-General UNCTAD. These industries remain profitable during economic slumps because they help large firms cut costs, which means they are key to generating employment in poor nations.

The digital divide is vast between continents, as well as between countries. Inhabitants of developed countries are 200 times as likely to use broadband as inhabitants of less developed countries, while the average cost of broadband is $1,300 per month in some African countries (such as Swaziland) and a mere $13 in others (such as Egypt), the report noted.



This is not to say Africa isn’t progressing at all. Currently, mobile phone connections in the continent are 20 times greater than fixed landline connections and growth in such subscriptions is fastest in the continent, moving from 54 million to 350 million in 6 years. However, because of poor internet access, consumer services like internet banking and market data services are in their infancy.

There is still much to be achieved before developing countries can compete with developed countries on a somewhat footing. Currently, South Korea has the highest broadband penetration rate of 86%, while Africa has a penetration of less than 1%, the report revealed.

Source: Reuters, Cellular News, BBC, TMC Net, broadband-finder.co.uk (image)
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Cisco and EMC join hands to lead cloud computing market

The cloud computing market is quickly becoming a high priority area of computing giants, Cisco Systems and EMC Corp. According to Reuters, the two firms are joining hands in order to enter the market of cloud computing hardware and software, competing directly against IBM and HP.

Cisco and EMC are to release a series of cloud-computing equipment related to networking, computers and data storage, such as servers, hard drives, and ‘virtualization technologies’ that will form a cloud-computing infrastructure. Thereafter, a holistic service will be delivered by the two firms through a service joint-venture.
All this news is unofficial but it’s expected the deal will be finalized in the next couple of weeks.

Cloud Computing 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with cloud-computing, it refers to the storage and access of data from various areas over the internet. Customers can access the ‘cloud’ of data to enjoy computing services (through remote internet access), such as internet business (e-commerce), internet banking. As a result, the cost of accessing such services depends purely on usage. The diagram above shows the system's basic structure.

Internet security issues in cloud exist in the form of possible insecure user-access, not knowing where the data is actually being stored and whether it’s safe, but they can be solved by using secure-web browsers, well defined terms of reference and data encryption.

Benefit of this Venture

The venture will be profitable for both firms involved since cloud computing is expected to become very popular in the coming years. Cisco is already leading the networking equipment market, and this endeavor will help it penetrate servers market, which it entered earlier this year and EMC will simply stabilize its position in the cloud-computing market.

The two firms have experience working together in the past, which will help this venture. Cisco also sells storage devices made by EMC and partially owns VMware, a company that makes virtualization software and works under EMC’s management.

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Sources: Reuters, Cloud Buzz, IB Times, Info World, Education ERP (Image)

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Holiday Shopping on Discount

Wal-Mart’s new season campaign is here. Online shoppers can pre-order 10 DVDs for only $10 each, from famous titles such as Star Trek XI, Night at The Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Angels & Demons, Four Christmases, G-Force, My Sister's Keeper, Santa Buddies, Terminator Salvation, Julie & Julia.

As online sales this holiday are expected to rise by 8%, many large retailers, such as Amazon and JCPenney are quickly cutting prices for consumer electronics and other items to attract traffic.

Source: Reuters, Walmart.com

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Spam and Scam Free? Not Facebook and Twitter

Be warned, even though we all expected this. Twitter and Facebook are being attacked by scams that lead users to sites with viruses and other malware.

Twitter users are receiving direct messages that state: 'I make money online with google. i learned how here [link].' Clicking on the link will take you to a phishing site that appears to be a genuine site requesting your username and password.

Similarly, Facebook users receive status updates stating, ‘I just made $124 in a day! Check out [link] to see for yourself. It’s real’. Or they get a message stating ‘just take a look at it and read it over and try it if you want [link].’ The relevant links, you may have guessed, leads to sites hosting malware. Save your Facebook account and change your password if your account seems to be generating these messaged.

There are also spamming attacks on Facebook. One of them has been resolved after a high-profile lawsuit against Sanford Wallace, the spam-king.

What was the crime?

Sanford, also known as, ‘Spamford ’ sent out thousands of ‘false and misleading’ marketing e-mails to FB users, as a result, compromising the accounts of many of them through phishing sites.


What was the punishment?

Sanford owes FB $711 million in damaged, and will certainly be upset that he won’t be allowed to make a FB account or access the website in the future.

Bummer!

This isn’t the first time he’s taken advantage of this crime:

• In the 1990s, he was part of a firm that sent out 30 million junk e-mails a day (you have to admire the sheer size of that number)
• Three years ago, his company, Smartbot.net, was ordered to pay $4.1 million to the state
• Last year, he was ordered to pay $234 million to MySpace, along with another defendant, for the same reason.

He certainly deserves applause for his commitment to a cause, albeit illegal!

This post was derived mainly from articles by ZDNet and CNet, which can be found here and here.The Image was taken from here.

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