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.

Amazon Kindle first hands-on

From Engadget -



A very brief hands-on review -

The device came out of box with too little juice to get on the EV-DO network, but the e-ink display looks great. The selector bar on the right is really interesting; it appears to be a white, opaque thin LCD panel that polarizes and turns clear letting reflective dots peer through -- the end result is a small selection bar that looks unlike anything we've seen on a portable reader device.

The keyboard is clicky and tactile, but with keys shallow enough that they won't get too in the way when you're reading. We're a little worried that the absolutely massive page forward / back buttons might get inadvertently triggered here and there, though.

Android Emulator Screencast

Here is a video of the Android Emulator (Android is the name of the just announced open source Google operating system for handsets). -



And if you are in an exploring mood, you can download the Android SDK at this Google site. It includes the Android Emulator. You can play with it to get a feel of what the operating system has to offer.

Pen Phone Design is Smallest Yet

From Gizmodo -




There have been pen phone concepts before, even a few working products, but none as slim and small as the one shown above. It is not a finished product yet but the company wants to gauge interest in such a device. What do you think?

HTC shipping out 50000 mobiles with Google OS?

From Engadget -

A UBS analyst is reportedly confirming that HTC will ship about 50,000 cellphones running on a mobile OS made by Google by the end of this year. Analyst Benjamin Schachter also suggested that the first batch wouldn't "be for sale" -- rather, they'd be used exclusively by developers "to understand how the software works."

These reports also help substantiate the belief that Google will likely be focusing on software, and furthermore, Mr. Schachter insinuated that he wouldn't be too awfully shocked if another handset maker (such as LG, imagine that) also jumped in to provide hardware.

Free cellular calls. No cell towers needed. Say bye-bye to your service provider.

From Neoseeker -

TerraNet, a Swedish company, has begun testing of their new peer-2-peer calling system. No service provider needed, no cell towers required, just a fully charged cellphone and other users are all that is required.

Their system uses modified handsets to roam out over a cellular mesh network to find peers within 2km of range. Once a peer is found, your cell call is passed through that peer and up to a maximum of seven hops in total until you're connected. Though the system probably wont be implemented in large cities, TerraNet has pointed out that this P2P calling feature would be sufficient to cover a small rural village or a disaster area. The modified handset are currently undergoing some field testing in both Tanzania and Ecuador.

As mentioned earlier, the handsets in question do require the TerraNet hardware to function in this mesh network calling mode. TerraNet is hopeful that cell phone manufacturers will begin adopting this technology in future revisions of their phones. So far only Ericsson has signed on.