"It does open up the prospect of cutting out the mobile carriers for the most popular of their current dreams - of sending expensive MMS video clips of sporting highlights, like football goals or motor racing incidents, to subscribers."
As if WiFi wasn't bad enough news for the mobile operators :o
Java Pro - In Brief: "Nokia and Metrowerks announced a new version of CodeWarrior for Symbian OS to develop C and C++ applications for both UIQ and Series 60 phones, such as the Nokia 3650 and the recently announced Nokia N-Gage."
CNet notes that the Nokia Observation Camera will be launched in the USA in July. This is a "wall-mounted surveillance camera that can send images directly to a cell phone".
From BBC Technology News: O2 tries out mobile video - "It will begin trials of a mobile video service with 350 of its customers at the end of this month. The trial will offer news clips from satellite broadcaster Sky, sport, weather and entertainment".
Tom Hume notes how some of the operators, such as Orange and T-Mobile are updating their WAP services to "create attractive, branded services which match or surpass the branding opportunities available to them on the rest of a handset UI, and use these to differentiate themselves from their competition."
That's fine as long as they don't continue down the walled-garden route!
Nokia 3650 review by PC Magazine:"The Nokia 3650's uncluttered design is in sharp contrast to its depth of features. It's a good fit for anyone who wants a fashionable phone with a useful camera and a passel of other fun features."
They also gave it 4 out of 5 stars (well, circles really!).
"Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, keeps finding ways to sail through the heavy weather in its industry with surprisingly little damage. The company said today that its pretax profits had fallen by only 4 percent in the first quarter from the comparable period in 2002, a smaller drop than analysts had expected, and that net income was up in the period.
The bright spot was Nokia's world-beating handset division, which commands 38 percent of the global marjet. The division's profits were up 9 percent in the quarter to 1.31 billion euros ($1.43 billion), and its operating margin was a healthy 23.9 percent. Nokia is widening its lead in handsets. It sold some 38 million of them in the first quarter, a gain of 13 percent from a year ago, in a market that grew only about 10 percent."
Video clips coming to Vodafone soon: "Vodafone said Thursday that it will soon launch a service in the UK that would allow short clips of video to be downloaded on to its customers' 2.5G mobile phones without the need for 3G technology. A spokeswoman for Vodafone UK said the service will operate using the Nokia 3650 phone, and is based around its current 2.5G network and Vodafone live! service."
Sydney firm to protect 3G content - theage.com.au:"A small Sydney maker of copyright enforcement technology has beaten Microsoft for the coveted crown of protecting content consumed by the next generation of multimedia mobile phones.
IPR Systems' Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) version 1.1 has been adopted by mobile makers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony-Ericsson, operators including Vodafone and open-standards-setting body the Open Mobile Alliance to safeguard copyrighted content distributed over third-generation (3G) networks.
Iannella says users of devices such as Nokia's 3650 multimedia messaging service mobile phone benefit by having explicit rights to forward media once it has been consumed.
"The advantage is that the terms and conditions that they acquired the content under can be managed by the handset. They need not worry about an infringement that may occur. Therefore they will legally be allowed to forward content on.
"Also, because the content is protected, consumers will be allowed access to it, whereas before content owners were too scared to release their content."
One of the items discussed at Ireland’s first major conference on ‘New TV’ (in a Guinness Brewery!!) was "MMS ‘soap opera’ launched in the Netherlands where ‘viewers’ could subscribe to receive 4 or 5 frames of story per day."
And I decided to blog about MMS....... emmm........
Here's a great post by MobitopianMartin Little about how industry standards appear to much better in place, such that the we should not see the same results (hopefully) in the browser war on the mobile platform as we did on the desktop. Microsoft is still nowhere near gaining the same ground as it did against Netscape and the excellence of such browsers as Opera's small screen version, among others, hold out great hope for a lasting competitive landscape.
Hutchison to sell Motorola Symbian 3G handset" Hutchison 3G has officially announced its 3G service in Australia and will be one of the first network operators to offer Motorola's A920 Symbian OS 3G handset."
Good to see the ante being upped as regards interoperability issues even though, as I've said before, you'd have expected all this to have been sorted out long before MMS rollout. Still, we can't grumble too much I suppose.....
A hearty congratulations to CNN Money for carrying the first mainstream American media article I've seen that really get's it -
"But there's a reason that the ads for this new generation of cell phones focus less on their practical uses than on wacky you-had-to-be-there scenarios. In one, for example, a woman sends her husband a picture of their dog, the recent victim of a horribly inexpert haircut by their child. Another involves a huge potbellied pig drinking from a teacup. Point being: As useful as camera phones may turn out to be, their biggest appeal is the way they make people who are far apart feel connected. It's similar to the enormous impact instant messaging has had on text communications: This new technology has the potential to increase the intimacy and immediacy of cell-phone use."
There you go, a ringing endorsement of my own personal mantra - P2P is Key! (I always knew the mainstream media would eventually start endorsing my opinions ;-)
This is the first m-commerce type announcement of note I've seen in a while. Mabye I just haven't been paying attention but it's good to see that there's still life in this particular put-a-letter-before-the-word-commerce.
Here's one for the developers. I've just come across Symbian Open Source which bills itself as a providing "free services to developers who wish to create, or have created open-source projects."
Sony Ericsson P800 Overview - ZDNet. "The Lowdown: The Maserati of smart phones". They also give it an overall score of 8.3, which I guess means they like it ;)
Thanks Napoleon for buying some shares of MMS Memo on Blogshares! And sorry for deleting your comment along with my recent post - I was just quickly testing Camblog's facility for posting images to Blogger blogs which, as you saw, works very nicely!
Also thank you for filling us in on the activities of Octane Mobile. Octane Mobile MMS Suite sounds like a very interesting product indeed and one that, as you say, takes a different path to many other products out there.
infoSync World: isn't bowled over by the Nokia HDW-2 Wireless Headset - "For being a first generation headset, the Nokia HDW-2 Wireless Headset offers an acceptable performance when compared with similarly priced competitors. It could however benefit from being more comfortable, as the speaker of the headset tends to irritate the ear during longer phone calls."
That's a pity because I think it looks super cool.
TelevisionWeek:"Europeans are getting the first taste of "takeout TV" as part of a video pilot to transmit Internet material to mobile phones. Sonera (Finland's major communications operator) launches its beta video service this week that enables customers using the Nokia 3650 phone, or other devices with RealOne Mobile Players from Real Networks, to watch videos."
CamBlog is a blogging service that allows you to publish photo simply by emailing them. So it's another great way for camera phone users to moblog! [via Smartmobs.com]
