Crave Talk: Nintendo must make a mobile phone

From Crave -



In a recent post, Crave's Andrew Lim discussed the merits of Nintendo making a mobile phone, even supply a photoshopped pic seen above.

As he pointed out, most mobile phone manufacturers -- in particular Nokia -- are taking gaming very seriously. This could dramatically affect the market, in the same way that the massive proliferation of music phones persuaded Apple to make the iPhone.

There are also Sony PSP phone rumors, which if true, could prove a genuine challenge to Nintendo's future portable consoles. So it is only natural for Nintendo to make a mobile phone, or perhaps partner up with a mobile manufacturer.

Nintendo has already demonstrated with the DS and Wii that it understands usability and aesthetics to such an extent that any phone it would produce would not only look beautiful, but would also be extremely usable in terms of hardware and software. The Nintendo DS already has the potential to be a PDA. At the moment you can use your DS (via an extra cartridge) to listen to music and browse the Internet over Wi-Fi using an Opera-based browser. It wouldn't take much to extend its functions.

Nintendo also understands casual, time-limited gaming better than any other company. If it could continue the quality of games it has produced for the DS on to a mobile, it would easily be the best phone gaming experience ever created. And that's the point: Nintendo makes consoles and is extremely good at it, so who would you rather have making your gaming phone?

Expert scares world with VoIP hacking proof

From Techworld -

An expert, Peter Cox, co-founder and ex-CTO of firewall vendor BorderWare, has released a proof-of-concept program to show how easy it would be for criminals to eavesdrop on VoIP-based phone calls.

Called SIPtap, the software is able to monitor multiple VoIP call streams, listening in and recording them for remote inspection as .wav files. All that is needed would be to infect a single PC inside the network with a Trojan incorporating these functions, although the hack would work at ISP level as well. The program can index 'IP-tapped' calls by caller - using SIP identity information - and by recipient, and even by date.

SIPtap demonstrates that the worst-case nightmares of VoIP vulnerability are now well within the capabilities of organized crime, which could use such a program to steal confidential data from companies, governments and even the police.