AMIMON, Motorola, Sony, et al. join hands on wireless HD standard

From Engadget -
WHDI creator AMIMON has joined forces with Motorola, Samsung, Sony and Sharp in order to form "a special interest group to develop a comprehensive new industry standard for multi-room audio, video and control connectivity" utilizing the aforementioned Wireless Home Digital Interface technology.

Reportedly, the group will have a standard completed before 2009 with the overriding goal to "enhance the current WHDI technology to enable wireless streaming of uncompressed HD video and audio between CE devices such as LCD and plasma HDTVs, multimedia projectors, AV receivers, DVD and BD players, set-top-boxes, game consoles and PCs."



Source article here.

The BIC Phone - Is the mobile phone really a commodity now?

From The Red Ferret Journal -

France's Orange have just launched the BIC Phone which comes with an hour’s worth of calls pre-loaded, a charged up battery and the SIM in place. All you’ve got to do is tear off the packaging and start calling and texting. Oh and it’s got an FM radio in it too. The handset will be available on 7 August 2008, at a suggested retail price of €49 including tax. The BIC phone will be sold in Metropolitan France only.

Source article here.

Android Installer for Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

From pocketables -

The newly developed Android Installer (released July 1) has resolved practically all the difficulties associated with installation using the original method. The new version makes installing a very functional Android onto Diablo-running N810s as quick and easy as installing an application.

Now the the first thing you need to do is download and save the android.img.bz2 image file on the N810 (internal memory or miniSD card; 110MB free space required).

Source article here.

First Look: OpenMoko's Linux-based open smartphone platform

Ars Technica provides an early look at the OpenMoko's FreeRunner smartphone, a Linux-based handset that's completely open in both hardware and software, and is designed to encourage third-party modification and customization.

Complete Article here.

GoDaddy allows executives to bid against own customers in auctions?

As posted by member fyodor on the NoDaddy forum -

"When a GoDaddy customer forgets or otherwise fails to renew a domain, GoDaddy sells it off to the highest bidder through their TDNAM subsidiary. Some registrars--even Network Solutions--give the domain owner a percentage of the proceeds of such auctions. But GoDaddy keeps all the spoils to themselves. Anyway, it was recently discovered that the Vice President of TDNAM has been bidding on (and sometimes winning) TDNAM's own auctions. This drives up the prices for normal customers and also leads to conflict of interest issues since normal bidders need to trust TDNAM to keep various information secret, such as their proxy bids, bidding history, the domains on their watch list. Also, GoDaddy doesn't tell you when your bid price was inflated due to TDNAM executives bidding against you. They are one of the few auction services which don't even give you the nicknames of competing bidders.

DomainNameWire contacted other domain auction services, and none allow unrestricted employee bidding on their own auctions like GoDaddy does. Enom (a patner in NameJet) notes that "We definitely do NOT let employees compete in auctions. Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it." Yet GoDaddy seems to think it is fine for executives to inflate their auction prices by bidding against customers. They responded to DomainNameWire that they allow this. There is a big risk that these employees have access to private information of the normal bidders, that they get special discounts, or that they may sometimes shill bid to increase prices without trying to actually win."

The story has since been picked up by Digg and Slashdot.

Kindle: eTextbooks

From Yahoo! Buzz -

According to Inside Higher Education, Kindle will start carrying titles from Princeton University Press this fall. But the textbook savings aren't going to be instant. Kindle, is still pricey despite a $40 reduction. (It still costs USD349) With some titles only a few dollars cheaper than their paper version, e-readers save mostly on shipping costs and time.

Still, people have been buying the Kindle. Amazon had originally targeted the male tech-toy buyers, but women are apparently the true audience. Females have been warming to Kindle and currently makes up half of the device's searches, which have been growing after a post-holiday lull.


Source article here.

Nokia Helps Buys Symbian, Turns it Open Source

From Gizmodo -

Nokia has announced it's buying out all the remaining shares in Symbian it doesn't already own as part of a deal between Nokia, AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone to form what's being called the "Symbian Foundation."

Part of the press release:

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million.

Nokia has received irrevocable undertakings from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Siemens International Holding BV to accept the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares subject to the offer. Nokia also expects Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to accept the offer.

The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced today by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.

"This is a significant milestone in our software strategy" said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia. "Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices. Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation. This will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers."

"The wide support for this initiative, uniting the industry around the Symbian platform, reflects the strong gravitational pull it has for application developers and other ecosystem players. We will drive efficient, open innovation by unifying the platform and simplifying the software supply chain, leveraging our experience from mobile devices. Nokia is strongly positioned to realize the benefits of open innovation, as well as accelerating time to market, enabling us to meet and exceed consumer expectations for leading converged devices and experiences", Kallasvuo continued.

Symbian Limited is the software company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for mobile devices. User interfaces designed for Symbian OS include S60 from Nokia, MOAP (S) for the 3G network and UIQ, designed by UIQ Technology, a joint venture between Motorola and Sony Ericsson. A privately-owned company established in 1998, Symbian has its headquarters in London, UK and other offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Asia (Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo).

"Ten years ago, Symbian was established by far sighted players to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry", said Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian. "Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet and indeed today Symbian OS leads its market by any measure. Today's announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision by embracing a complete and proven platform, offered in an open way, designed to stimulate innovation, which is at the heart of everything we do."

Mobile devices based on Symbian OS account for 60% of the converged mobile device segment (source: Canalys, 12 months to Q1 2008). Symbian OS represented approximately 7% of all mobile device sales in 2007, up from 5% in 2006 (source: Strategy Analytics). To date, more than 200 million Symbian OS based phones have been shipped, over 235 models, from 8 vendors and on more than 250 mobile networks around the world. More than 4 million developers are engaged in producing applications for Symbian devices.

Nokia expects the acquisition to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2008 and is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. On a reported basis, Nokia expects the transaction to be dilutive in 2009, approximately breakeven in 2010, and accretive in 2011. On a cash basis, Nokia expects the transaction to be dilutive in 2009 and accretive in 2010 and 2011. After the closing, all Symbian employees will become Nokia employees.

Source article here.