You know it’s a good day when included among all the dry-as-dust press releases that arrive on your virtual desk is one that promises to combine Linux, Twitter and “dangerously outrageous” fun. Sure enough, from none other than the Linux Foundation came the tantalizing announcement of the “Fake Linus Torvalds” promotion, which it kicked off last week. Believe it? It’s true, and in no time Linux Girl’s spine was tingling with excitement.
Nokia will postpone the launch of its ‘Comes with Music’ music subscription service in the U.S. to next year, according to reports.
Nokia launched the service, widely seen as a potential iTunes competitor, in the U.K. last year by bundling free unlimited music downloads with some of its handsets. The first of Nokia’s phones, the 5310 XpressMusic, featured the service. Nokia would offer a year’s worth of music to its users free and charge users for it after that. Customers were allowed to keep all the music they already downloaded.
If successful, Nokia could be in a position to challenge Apple’s iTunes hegemony in the music distribution business, said some analysts.
However, the service met with lukewarm reception in Europe. In the U.K. only one carrier partnered with Nokia to offer the service.
The company’s problems with the service have been much greater in the U.S. Nokia stumbled in its launch of the 5800 XpressMusic phones after users complained of crippling connectivity problems with the device. Nokia pulled the U.S. version of the phone off its shelves and offered the handsets a few days later after a fix.
The company is now reportedly rethinking its strategy for the music subscription service in the U.S. Without subsidies from carriers such as AT&T and Verizon, American mobile phone users are unlikely to pay the high cost of handsets that are bundled with music. Nokia will also have to simplify the Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues in the service that could potentially cripple how users listen to the music before it is introduced in the U.S.
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Photo: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone (manu contreras/Flickr)
LG is set to show a 15-inch OLED TV that is striking in both its luminosity and design.
The TV is expected to be introduced at the IFA 2009 consumer electric show in Berlin in September and launched at the end of the year, says the website, OLED-Display.net.
LG hasn’t revealed the pricing for these beauties but it is not likely to come cheap. Sony’s 11-inch OLED TV costs $2500.
The new LG OLED display looks much like a photo frame with its controls and ports tucked in behind the screen. The screen can be wall mounted and tilted for best viewing angle.
OLED (organic light emitting diode)-based displays are taking off in a big way with companies such as Samsung and Nokia offering mobile phones with small OLED displays. The displays are attractive to consumers because they offer extremely vivid colors and high clarity. But so far the high cost of these screens has meant the technology hasn’t become widely used in consumer products.
The new LG 15-inch OLED TV could be a sign that these displays may now be ready to take the place of LCD and Plasma in HD TVs. With mass production and high sales volume, prices of these TVs could come down rapidly in the next few years. LG is also reportedly working on a 40-inch OLED TV.
More pictures of the LG OLED TV
Samsung will be the latest handset maker to get an app store of its own. The company announced plans to introduce a marketplace for games and other applications from developers that will launch Sept. 14.
The app store will initially be available in Europe. And only select models of Samsung phones, including the Omnia and I8910 HD devices can access the app store, says the company.
Samsung is late to the game. Since Apple introduced the iPhone App Store as a centralized clearing house for mobile applications in 2008, app stores have become an important part of the business strategy for most handset makers. BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion, Palm and Nokia have all launched app stores this year. Even cellphone carrier Verizon has been courting developers to create programs for its users.
The lack of Samsung’s app store’s availability in the U.S. is likely to dampen developer interest in its announcement. Earlier this month, the company announced the availability of a mobile widget software developer kit (SDK). The SDK would allow programmers to create widgets for different Samsung phones that use different operating systems, including the company’s own version. The company also plans to hold a widget developer camp in San Francisco from September 11-13.
For Samsung, that may not be enough to woo developers away from Apple, Palm and Android.
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Photo: (Aquila/Flickr)
Nokia announced Monday it will return to the PC market, an arena it abandoned in 1991 to focus on the growing mobile phone field. The new device, featuring integrated GPS and a claimed 12-hour battery life, will be formally unveiled Sept. 2 at Nokia World, the company’s annual expo. The netbook, to be called the “Booklet 3G,” will likely be sold through telecommunications retailers, leveraging Nokia’s strong relationships in those channels to market the device as an extension of the mobile lifestyle, Gartner PC industry analyst Ranjit Atwal told TechNewsWorld.
Nokia doesn’t make phones. It makes portable devices. And it appears the Finnish company also doesn’t make netbooks. Instead it makes “mini-laptops”.
Announced today is a brand-new, 3G equipped min-laptop, the Booklet 3G. The 10.1-inch screen and Atom processor put it clearly in the netbook market, but it comes with some extras you won’t find elsewhere; the kind of extras you’d expect from a cellphone manufacturer.
First, the thin (2cm) aluminum case holds an HDMI-out port, along with the usual webcam, Bluetooth and SD card reader. It also has a 3G radio in the form of HSPA and a hot-swappable SIM card slot, and faux-GPS (Wi-Fi triangulation) hooked up to Ovi Maps.
The price? That will be announced on September 2nd, but expect to see this heavily subsidized on a cellphone plan, at least in Europe where people actually buy Nokia phones, sorry, devices.
Nokia Booklet 3G mini laptop unveiled [Nokia]
How do you turn a $1000 PC into a $30,000 machine without changing its innards? It a trick that calls for a good alchemist. So say hello to German company, Gaiser High End PCs. Gaiser offers bespoke PCs dipped in 24-carat gold for the bling-bling crowd.
The company’s Tricolor Gold PC, for instance, offer a choice of processors ranging from Intel Atom to Core 2 Duo, solid state drives and Blu-ray player but those are pedestrian details. The real value is in the use of white and yellow gold plating and crystals to create designs that push the price of the PC to a whopping €21,500 or $30,552.
Gaiser does have cheaper models but still prices start around $7,800. The gold-leaf and crystal motifs on its PCs are beautiful but you have to wonder, with the current economic environment, aren’t even the ultra-rich hurting?
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[via Born Rich]
MobiSystems OfficeSuite is a complete mobile office solution, allowing you to create, view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files away from your office.
The new version 5 of the MobiSystems OfficeSuite has been especially enhanced with Microsoft ® Office 2007 file support. You can enjoy all of the great features of MobiSystems OfficeSuite 4 + the ability to open new Microsoft ® Office 2007 DOCX and XLSX files on your S60 5th Edition phone.
The program utilizes the most commonly used desktop document formats and allows you to easily acquire your sensitive documents on your handset. With the advanced editing features you can modify documents on the fly and save them in their original format, just ready to be used back on your desktop PC.
Features of Mobisystems OfficeSuite:
Try it for FREE today: MobiSystems OfficeSuite 5 Symbian S60 5th Edition
Tags: Edit Excel Nokia, Edit Word Nokia, Excel Files Nokia, Microsoft Office Nokia, Mobisystems OfficeSuite, nokia, Symbian
Nokia has eliminated the monthly subscription for anytime files on their Ovi Files service! The pricing used to be a monthly fee, with the option for either a 10GB or 30GB bucket of online storage. Nokia Ovi Files provides 10GB of complementary service, which is certainly much appreciated.
Ovi Files is the result of Nokia’s purchase of Avvenu. Basically, there is a PC-based (Windows only, unfortunately) Ovi Files Agent that runs on your connected computers, constantly synchronizing files with the online server. Initially, the free version required that your home computer be on and connected in order for you to access your files. The ‘Anytime Files’ were ones that were copied onto Nokia’s server in your Ovi Files account, so that you could access them, well, anytime.
You can use Ovi Files for various purposes, usually installing things to various phones. There is a helpful widget that you can download, though it does not really do much, aside from automatically logging you in to the mobile site. We recently thought of a host of ways that Nokia could add some real value to the Ovi Files product, and I really hope that they were listening, because, especially now that it is free, they could really gain some attention with it.
Sign up for free Ovi Files service.
Tags: 10GB, 30GB, Avvenu, complementary, files, nokia, Ovi
