NewsforDev | News for Development News

Submit Source

New User

Dossiers

ACP-EU

CTA

ICT

ICT4D

S&T

S&T4D

Trade

World News

Select News

Home > All Sources > Connectivity

Connectivity


From the newsfordev database of articles
	1-25 > Next 25

In the Driver’s Seat
CommunicationsDirect | News 13 10 2008 The Big 3 U.S. automakers – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler – each have some kind of connectivity strategy. GM has OnStar. Ford has Sync, and Chrysler is touting “uconnect” for phone, tunes, GPS and Web access. Given today’s credit crunch, high fuel prices and consumers’ desires to get rid of...

The Mobile Web for Development: Reality and Potential
MobileActive.org | News 13 10 2008 Reposted from MobileActive08.org, by Brett Davidson This afternoon I attended 'The Mobile Web': The potential and reality for developing countries, facilitated by Toni Eliasz. There was extended discussion of the value of the mobile web to developing countries. Views hinge a lot on how one defines 'mobile web'. Some people had strong reservations about the potential of the mobile web, related to affordability, the need for high-end phones in order to browse the internet, the high cost of data access via cellphone networks, and ongoing problems with connectivity. But many of these reservations can be removed if one defines the mobile web more broadly than accessing the Internet. One person proposed defining it as access to data and databases in whatever form. So if people are able to access data on the Internet, through tailored SMS services, for example, that qualifies as the mobile web. Read More>> read more

SourceForge Announces Hosted Applications
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 13 10 2008

SourceForge.net, a longtime provider of open source code and applications, has announced a new service for developers that provides virtualized access to open source apps. With the new Hosted Apps service, you're able to install an app within your own web space, and it's managed by the SourceForge team in a dedicated and secure web space, including any necessary maintenance like updates and patches.

Sponsor

The New Hosted Apps Service

At this time, there are only three applications available in the new hosted format:

LimeSurvey, Survey Application: Documentation, SourceForge.net Project Page
MediaWiki, Wiki Application: Documentation, Reference Manual
phpBB, Forum Application: Documentation

However, any existing application can now be enabled as a hosted app, too. This can be done from the new "Hosted Apps" Project Admin page, a link to which can be found under the "Admin" project navigation menu. According to Ross Turk, director of community at SourceForge, "developers can be much more productive when they don't have to worry about maintaining their infrastructure, and this new offering allows them to use the tools they know and like without the burden of maintaining them."

Benefits Of Hosted Apps

This service was actually launched quietly a few weeks ago, as SourceForge insiders may already know. The announcement was then made via a forum posting which clued in members to the new service. But since the news only hit the mainstream channels today, we imagine this means that they're now ready for primetime. That earlier announcement touted several benefits to using Hosted Apps, including the following:

Eliminates the overhead of deploying supported applications; simply opt-in and begin using the application right away. No need to deal with config files and install procedures.
Served from a dedicated database and web server pool, separate from the project web servers -- so you don't need to cope with the security limitations of project web's shared hosting environment, or project web's outbound mail and connectivity restrictions.
They maintain the application code for Hosted Apps and will deploy updates as they become available from the vendor. This should reduce the risk from vulnerabilities found in the Hosted Apps and eliminate a major administrative burden (installing updates) to projects.
They perform regular backups of the Hosted Apps data, but also provide you the ability to easily make application backups on-demand.
They perform application testing, tuning and monitoring to ensure Hosted Apps operate properly. If service faults occur, they respond and fix the issues. If defects are found in the application (either through our own testing or through end-user report), they will repair the defects or raise the defect to the vendor for repair.
All Hosted Apps make use of our centralized authentication infrastructure (users login with their SourceForge.net usernames and passwords) but retain the permissions (authorization) of the application (so, for example, existing users of MediaWiki will find permissions handling exactly as they expect).
Since this offering is centrally managed, any improvements they make either to the infrastructure or to the Hosted Apps themselves will immediately become available to all projects. The Hosted Apps offering reduces their overhead for adding major new functionality to their offering, since all applications share common integration points and common infrastructure.
Since Hosted Apps are available under an Open Source license, this centralized service has the potential to rapidly increase the user base of Open Source applications and drive high quality feedback for the further improvement of those applications.

Discuss

Uganda: Subsidised Internet for Education
AllAfrica | ICT and Telecom | News 13 10 2008 Last week we noted that high internet connectivity costs remain a major handicap to the widespread integration of IT in teaching and research at Ugandan educational institutions.

Social Media in Africa, Part 3: Democracy
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 13 10 2008

Traditionally, the greatest power that governments have held over their people has been information. The promise that connectivity brings to Africa is that people are now using that abundance of information for oversight of government and more interaction with administrations. To say that the propagation of internet and mobile connectivity in Africa has been disruptive is an understatement. A number of web and mobile applications are undermining the efforts of dictators and totalitarian governments, allowing them to be more readily be held accountable for their actions. In this post we profile some of them.

Sponsor

Democratizing Information Through Technology

When the Ethiopian government instituted an SMS filtering service to censor mobile communication, the developers behind Feedelix responded swiftly. They created their product Feedlix, a java-based client that supports Amharic, Chinese and Hindi characters. The application then uses GPRS, through internet protocols, to mimic SMS and bypass the censoring filter put in place by the government. Sokwanele is a civic action support group campaigning for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe. Their website includes an 'election violence map' that provides detailed information related to localized occurrences of violence related to the election. During the most recent crisis in Zimbabwe, Sokwanele was used to get information out of the country when the government began restricting communication.

Mzalendo is an aggregation platform for tracking the actions, activities and communication of Kenya's Parliament. For people who want to make sure their elected officials are staying on task, it's invaluable. When Moroccan blogger Mohamed Erraj was jailed for disparaging the government in his online magazine, Hespress, it was through the efforts of other bloggers (like the writers at GlobalVoicesOnline) and people using applications like Twitter that his story made international news. The added pressure of having the whole world paying attention is perhaps what convinced the Moroccan government to let him free where traditionally his actions could have resulted in much harsher punishment.

Rethinking Africa

In conclusion, Africa is producing some very unique and innovative technologies. There's more to the continent than the things you see on TV - something people, especially in the tech industry, seem to forget. Where most other markets in the world are incredibly saturated, Africa offers the opportunity to start afresh: new ideas and a billion new people to use them. It's a big place; nearly one billion people and a land mass where the sum is greater than that of China and the United States combined. For social entrepreneurs and investors, the innovation occurring here is a huge sign of progress that could potentially change the continent's world standing forever. The most exciting aspect for me, however, is the decreased reliance on developmental aid and foreign groups to provide these solutions. The number of African developers who are beginning to create applications that offer solutions for their own communities is increasing and that, more than anything else, will shape the future of Africa.

"If Africa is surprising, then you're not paying enough attention." Ethan Zuckerman at PICNIC08

You can read more articles by Jon Gosier at Appfrica.net. See also: Social Media in Africa, Part 1
and Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations Discuss

New Google tool reveals marine protected areas
ICSF | International Collective in Support of Fishworkers | News 10 10 2008 Conservationists working with Google Inc. have unveiled a tool that lets people view protected marine areas with the click of a mouse �' a bid to harness the Internet's top search engine to raise awareness of endangered ocean habitats. The feature on Google Earth displays icons indicating sensitive areas of the world's oceans, from the waters off the Galapagos Islands to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. A click on them brings up photos and/or video of the sites and marine life there, as well as text explaining the sites, how they are managed and local maritime lore. Google Earth project manager Steve Miller said the tool presented Tuesday, which Google Earth calls a layer, is the culmination of a yearlong project to let conservationists bring hard science to the general public in an entertaining way. "We sat down and said 'let's open this up, let people around the world who might be passionate about their (marine protected area), who might be passionate about the water in their backyard, let them contribute to this,'" Miller said. The new feature was presented at a congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a grouping of more than 1,000 government and nongovernment organizations and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries. Google Earth is the platform for the new tool and helped develop it with the IUCN and the World Commission on Protected Areas. Around 4,500 spots scattered around the world's oceans have been designated as marine protected areas, which means activities such as commercial or recreational fishing are restricted or outright banned to protect dwindling stocks of fish and other marine species. Not all of them are featured on the Google tool, but its creators say it is nonetheless a groundbreaking way to get people all over the world interested in the environment. At the same presentation, National Geographic unveiled another novelty: a live, continuous underwater video feed of a coral reef, off Belize in Central America, WildCam Belize Reef. National Geographic has been attaching cameras to land animals like lions and sea creatures like turtles for years and sharing the footage, but this project is believed to be the first such experiment that provides a live, nonstop feed, said Torre Stockard of National Geographic's remote imaging department. Laffoley said he was viewing it the other day during the testing phase, sipping his first cup of morning coffee as dawn broke in Belize, when suddenly a shark swam by on his computer screen. "It is going to be addictive for a lot of people to have this kind of connectivity," he said. http://earth.google.com/ http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/wildcambelize/

Zoho Mail Gets Offline Support via Google Gears - Ahead of Gmail
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 10 10 2008

Innovative Web Office startup Zoho has beaten Google to the punch again, announcing offline support for the newly public Zoho Mail tonight. Ironically Zoho is using Google Gears to enable offline functionality in Zoho Mail - see the video below by the Google Developer team. Zoho also beat Google to offline support in online word processing, again using Gears, by launching that functionality in November 2007. Google followed up with offline support for Google Docs at the end of March 2008.

Sponsor
We wrote in July about speculation that Google will start rolling out offline support for both Gmail and Google Calendar through Google Gears within the next six weeks. Didn't happen. However Yahoo Mail did come up with offline functionality in July - it gave offline access to all free and paid Yahoo Mail users through the Yahoo Zimbra Desktop. Earlier this week Yahoo announced further Zimbra integration, this time with its Calendar app. So Google is well and truly behind the times with offline support for web mail. However the Google white coats are having a fine old time tinkering with mail stuff in their labs - tonight Google Labs announced Advanced IMAP Controls, which lets you "fine-tune your Gmail IMAP experience." To be fair, Google probably isn't worried about Zoho coming out with offline functionality in its mail product before Gmail has. For one thing Google is so big it can afford to wait until it's good and ready, despite Gmail fans yearning for offline support! But also Google probably sees Zoho less as a competitor at this point (even though Zoho does compete directly against Google Apps) and more as an evangelist for its technology - such as Google Gears. To access mail offline in Zoho Mail, you'll need Google Gears installed on your browser - at this point IE and Firefox are supported. Chrome and Safari support is coming. According to Zoho's blog, you can also download images and attachments in offline mode. Another cool feature is that Zoho Mail automatically detects your connectivity and switches to online/offline modes. Here is the video, also available on Google Code blog: Discuss

Organizations from Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua win IDB grants for innovations to help the poor
Moreover Technologies | Caribbean | News 09 10 2008 IDB team leader About us Press Contact Christina MacCulloch (202) 623-1718 Support for pilot projects involving wireless connectivity, child nutrition, medical technology and Internet sales for artisans ASUNCION, Paraguay â?? Four pilot innovation

Motorola VC6096 is world's heaviest WinMo device
Megite Technology News 09 10 2008

Filed under: Handhelds Like your smartphones with a little heft to them? Check out Motorola's new VC6096, an oversized Windows Mobile 6.1 device for those with inventory (and employees) to track. The 4.85 pound behemoth is intended for dashboards, not Dockers, and features a wealth of connectivity to ensure your workers are never offline, like ... (Read on Source)

Motorola VC6096 is world's heaviest WinMo device
Megite Technology News 09 10 2008

Consumer Electronics Vendors Experiment with Connectivity
CommunicationsDirect | News 08 10 2008 As mobile phones take on more capabilities, the consumer electronics (CE) industry is left seeking alternative ways of keeping its devices relevant. Especially in tough financial times, CE manufacturers have been hit particularly hard as consumers evaluate whether a device that does a number of functions well enough supersedes the...

CJR Daily: From Green to Greenbacks
Center for Media and Democracy | PR Watch 08 10 2008 Environmental journalists have long called for greater connectivity with the political and business beats �' that objective has never been more critical than it is now. Last week, I wrote a column commending those journalists who had tied the ongoing clean-energy story to the $700-billion-bailout story, the question being: Will “green technology” be the victim of, or the solution to,...

How To Build a House from Straw Bale and Mud
Treehugger | Green products and services 07 10 2008 Straw bale and mud house under construction in Texas photo

Straw bale and mud house under construction in Texas photo

Image source: KLTVWarning! If you do not want to live in a straw bale house with a living roof and solar panels to power your satellite internet connectivity, DO NOT watch the video over the fold!Because when you see this video of Nick Moser's straw bale house project, you will not be able to resist making your own natural house. The gorgeous timber framing which sets a spiral patterned layout inspires the craftsperson in you. The video of Nick merrily pitching clay onto the bale walls looks like so much fun, you will want to build a house just so you can vent your frustration...

Digital Foci Ships Image Moments 6 Digiframe
PhysOrg.com | Science and technology | news 07 10 2008 The Digital Foci IMT-063 Image Moments 6 digiframe features a 5.7 inch 640 x 480 display with LED backlighting, two tone chrome finish, 450Mb of internal storage, support for memory cards, and USB 2.0 connectivity. The frame also plays back audio and video files.

Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 05 10 2008

In Amsterdam the social media technology conference PICNIC2008 wrapped up last week after devoting an entire day of scheduling to the innovations coming out of Africa. Dubbed 'Surprising Africa', the conference featured prolific social entrepreneurs and technology developers from around the world who offered insight into various projects from the African continent. In this post we look at the state of the fast-growing mobile industry in Africa. This is the second post in our series on Africa's Web (Part 1 is here).

Sponsor
Africa is unique in that it seems to have bypassed the same era of community infrastructure building that has occurred in developed nations around the world. This is not without reason, there are some incredible hurdles to over come. Displacing the poor, complying with local governments, paying bribes, and the risk of civil unrest. Thus, most of the technologies that currently permeate Africa aren't terrestrial. There are very few telephone lines, but mobile penetration is higher than any other region in the world. There is also limited terrestrial fiber for connecting to the internet. Instead, internet connectivity is distributed nearly entirely by satellite. As useful as this is now, satellite connections have a bottleneck that naturally limits the number of users who can connect before the whole network slows down. This keeps prices unreasonably high while internet speeds tend to be unreasonably slow in comparison to the rest of the world. The tough conditions developers face in the continent provide some challenges but overcoming them offers something greater. According to Ushahidi co-founder Erik Hersman:

"The challenges brought about by bad governance, poverty, low bandwidth (all the negative things you associate with Africa) also provide an incredible opportunity. The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere."

Perhaps this thought is what motivated Google to invest in O3B Networks earlier this month. O3B Networks is an ambitious attempt to bring three billion people in the developing world (mainly in parts of Asia and Africa) online by launching sixteen inexpensive, low-orbit satellites. The potential benefits for Google are obvious. This is three billion new internet users, who will more than likely use Google to search, and who will potentially click-through Adsense links and use other Google products. An indicator that Google may be anticipating as much is their move into Africa last year. They've since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya with plans to eventually operate out of all sub-Saharan African countries.

Mobile Penetration Statistics from Africa

At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4%
Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country.
Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
Increased competition as more operators come online in each country (11 in Nigeria, 4 in Kenya and SA, 3 in Egypt and Morocco)
Pre-paid subscriptions account for nearly 95 percent of total mobile subscriptions in the region.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers.
In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.

via PICNIC2008

African Innovations in Mobile

A broad look at some of the tech being produced for the mobile industry by the continent... Micro-payments and Mobile Banking In Africa, until recently, there's been no easy way for consumers to purchase things other than with cash. Most financial institutions on the continent don't offer credit credit cards, and those that do have trouble finding other institutions that will accept them. This has lead to an incredible amount of innovation in the areas of micro-payments and mobile banking. MPESA by Safaricom (micro-payments) and Wizzit (mobile banking) are examples. Mobile News Reporting Because of the lack of basic infrastructure, getting information from one place to another quickly is often extremely difficult. A number of organizations have tackled this problem using Mobile devices. mPedigree offers a way to authenticate pharmaceutical drugs and prescriptions using SMS. Winafrique tackles issues with communication and power by offering wind powered cellular towers. QuestionBox.org collects data from and distributes it to rural areas using a SMS/web/voice platform. Ushahidi allows people to report and geolocate incidents of violence and incident using SMS. Mobile Application Developers Kenya's Mobile Planet made news in August when Google announced that they'd be investing in the mobile application start-up. Mobile Planet specializes in the development of wireless voice & data applications for mobile devices in Kenya, with a special focus on SMS-based products and services. Meanwhile, independent developers like Moris Mbetsa have repurposed mobile technology for all sorts of solutions like this anti-theft and tracking system for vehicles. See also: Social Media in Africa, Part 1 Discuss

Social Media in Africa, Part 1
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 03 10 2008

Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not completely absent from the Internet. In fact, the continent at large is undergoing a connectivity revolution unlike anything it has ever seen. Mobile phones in particular are propagating at an incredible rate, with penetration ranging from 30% to 100%. The average is 30.4% and there are 280 million subscribers in total, making Africa the fastest growing mobile market in the world. The point of this series is to highlight African contributions to social media and, in turn, reveal how social media is changing Africa.

Sponsor
Part One of this series looks at social media contributions from Africans, Part Two looks at mobile and connectivity innovations and Part Three looks at how local Governments, NGOs and nonprofits are being affected. If you like this series of articles, I cover these topics daily at the African social media news blog Appfrica.net, as does Erik Hersman at WhiteAfrican.com and Ismail Dhorat at StartupAfrica.com. Things aren't perfect; the continent still suffers from disproportionate amounts of poverty, the vast majority of people remain without reliable electricity and the spread of AIDS claimed about 1.6 million African lives in 2006. Historically, that's all the world has known about Africa - but the facts are changing and other aspects of the continent deserve attention. For one, Africans are embracing the web and all things associated.

The Web Community in Africa

Technology unconferences and Barcamps have sprung up all over the continent, everywhere from Kenya to Nairobi to Madagascar to Uganda and Senegal. Although terrestrial broadband infrastructure is still a problem, VSat has provided internet connectivity in areas that don't even have electricity. There were a number of protests from the continent when Twitter shut down it's international services. It's no wonder, then, that a number of companies, investors and entrepreneurs have taken a second look at the continent. Google especially seems to have taken an interest in supporting the burgeoning tech renaissance in Africa. They recently agreed to facilitate Barcamp Africa at their world headquarters at GooglePlex in Mountain View, CA, U.S.A. Beyond that, they've launched a blog to document their operations in sub-Saharan Africa and a complimentary forum.

African Social Media Leaders

The three biggest success stories of independent social media projects taking off in Africa are Afrigator (a South African aggregator of African blogs and news), Zoopy (a YouTube/Flickr like service also out of South Africa) and Ushahidi (an SMS crisis reporting and mapping engine from Kenya). All three have drawn international attention which resulted in a major investment for Zoopy and Afrigator's acquisition (ReadWriteWeb's coverage). Meanwhile Ushahidi has successfully raised several rounds of funding after winning the Net² Mashup Compeition prize of $25,000. Afrigator

Afrigator defines itself as "a social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the web." They made a big splash in the social media space when Marshall Kirkpatrick reviewed their site here on ReadWriteWeb last year. Afrigator adopted the XFN microformat standard very early on allowing their users to use their blog rolls to import friends. Afrigator makes heavy use of a proprietary filter based on an algorithm that uses page rank, incoming links and the site's overall traffic to determine what's "hot". Afrigator was created by Justin Hartman, Stii Pretorius, Mike Stopforth and Mark Forrester. Zoopy.com

Zoopy is a South African social media tool created by Jason Elk that allows users to upload videos, podcasts, and pictures and share them on the web. Although, it can be used by anyone, it targets the niche local market of South Africa. Zoopy also uses XFN to import friends from the aforementioned Afrigator. Zoopy recently attended the Web 2.0 Expo 2008 in New York where they showcased their platform. Ushahidi

Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, was built in the aftermath of the Kenyan 2008 elections. When violence erupted, Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh, Daudi Were, Segeni Ng'ethe and Juliana Chebet used their collective talents to create Ushahidi, a web app that maps SMS reports of violence by location. Ushahidi relies heavily upon GoogleMaps, which it uses for mapping reports of incidents. It's built on the Zend framework for PHP and uses a number of different protocols for SMS, GPRS and mapping data.

African Social Application Round-Up

Although these three standout applications are the most well-known home grown social media projects from Africans, there are an increasing number of social media websites coming from the continent. Here's a round-up of several. If something gets overlooked, please add it as a comment along with a description. I've deliberately only included applications that I know were created by people from Africa. In Part Three I'll list social applications created by foreigners and nonprofit groups.

Muti.co.za (a Digg-like South African news site)
Sokwanele.com (an SMS/mapping application similar to Ushahidi)
Amatomou (a South African news and social media aggregator)
BlogSpirit (a Ugandan blog aggregator based on the open source Gregarious)
Mzalendo (portal for tracking the actions of Kenya's Parliament)

Top image: whiteafricanDiscuss

Social Media in Africa, Part 1
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 03 10 2008

The Web Community in Africa

African Social Media Leaders

African Social Application Round-Up

Muti.co.za (a Digg-like South African news site)
Sokwanele.com (an SMS/mapping application similar to Ushahidi)
Amatomou (a South African news and social media aggregator)
BlogSpirit (a Ugandan blog aggregator based on the open source Gregarious)
Mzalendo (portal for tracking the actions of Kenya's Parliament)

Top image: whiteafricanDiscuss

Nokia Reveals iPhone Competitor And Prepares To Do Battle With iTunes
Read/WriteWeb | Weblog 02 10 2008

At an analyst and media event in London today, Nokia plans to unveil their company's first touch-screen phone, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, otherwise known as the Nokia "Tube," a device designed to compete directly with Apple's iPhone. Along with the phone, Nokia will also detail plans for their new "Comes With Music" service, a 12-month subscription service which offers unlimited downloads. There's no charge to download the individual tracks because the cost for the music is bundled into the cost of the phone.

Sponsor

About "Comes With Music"

Nokia isn't the only company with a subscription music service, but theirs will be the first to let customers keep all the music that they download after the 12-months of the Comes With Music service expires. This is much different than other music subscriptions services, like Napster, for example, where you lose access to your music as soon as you stop paying. Although the tracks will be wrapped in DRM and tied to the handset and to a PC, they will be permanently owned by the customer. Other companies planning similar services include Sony Ericsson who recently announced PlayNow plus (PNP) and Korea's LG Electronics. Nokia's other "Comes With Music" phone, this new one should be much better:

With 2 million tracks available, the "Comes With Music" service is no small offering, and considering the touchscreen device it's being paired with it's clear that Nokia is prepared to do battle with other smartphones. Whereas before Nokia only competed with conventional cell phone makers like Motorola, Samsung, LG Electronics, and Sony Ericsson, they're now going up against big competitors like Apple, Google, and Research in Motion (RIM), companies who are driving forward adoption of mobile internet. "Suddenly you have the mightiest companies in the world there as your competitors. That is a little mind-boggling," said Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

Making Mobile Music Happen Isn't Easy

To get to the point of being able to offer music on a mobile device, bundled into the cost of the phone, Nokia had to collaborate with both the slow-to-adapt music industry, who worry that mobile music offerings will cannibalize existing music spending (see chart below). Also a concern is the fact that, in many cases, consumers aren't willing to pay more for a mobile phone or contract just to get unlimited downloads. For example, a recent study by Jupiter Research found that only 5% of Europeans would choose to pay more for the service, a figure that speaks to the perceived value of subsidized services - and perhaps, the value of music in general. On the bright side, though, analysts at TNS Technology said that the launch of "all-you-can-eat" music downloads would reduce illegal file-sharing of songs. This is backed up by Jupiter Research, who found that half of the interested customers in this technology claim to be file-sharers.

Credit: Jupiter Research; Click to see bigger Here in the U.S. there are more people interested in a "Comes With Music" type phone than a subscription music service. 13% would choose an affordably-priced $150 handset and only 6% would go for a $15/month subscription service.

Fighting Apple Means More Than Music

Nokia CEO Kallasvuo specifically singled out Apple as one of the mobile industry's main players, saying "We have a new, credible competitor in this business. You know I need to take my hat off. Of course we need to be able to respond to any competitor and we will." With the launch of the new phones and music service, Nokia thinks they have something that can threaten iTunes because they believe that ultimately, price and selection will win out over brand identity. We're not so sure that it's that simple. The Apple iPhone is far more than just a simple music/phone pairing. It's the App Store that makes Apple's offering so unique. Even Google new Android OS (now available on the T-Mobile G1) knew they had to build an App Store of their own in order to have any chance against the iPhone. While overall, the Nokia phone has a more appealing form factor than the G1, there are other areas of concern is in its design. Where Apple has mastered simplicity and ease-of-use with their interface, the Nokia phone runs the Symbian platform, something many potential customers will be unfamiliar with.

Breaking News Section

We're waiting on the official announcement, but in the meantime, here's what we know about the Nokia Tube: This photo was widely available on Flickr before being yanked down -

Phone is expected to include a 3.2in color touchscreen, full internet browsing connectivity, a 3.2 mega-pixel camera and built-in GPS.
There are a lot of photos on Flickr for the Nokia Tube, but no one is sharing...all are copyrighted and we're not taking any chances. But a quick search will help you find them.
T3 has a sneak preview where we learn the following (excerpt follows):

Discuss

Xbmc/boxee on Apple TV
Megite Technology News 01 10 2008

It looked great, the boot video was amazing, but then it lacked some basic stuff (video format limitation, ability to connect to multiple sources, streaming of photos, connectivity to other Internet services, etc.). so we stuck to our Mac Minis, which are more expensive but don’t make you live in a closed garden. (Read on Source)

World Bank, AfDB announce $55b investment in Africa
UNDP | ICT for Development Observatory 30 09 2008 The Connect Africa Summit ended yesterday in Rwanda with World Bank, European Commission and African Development Bank (AfDB) announcing investment commitments amounting to over $55 billion, with the information and communication technology (ICT) sector taking the lead. The summit decided to bring forward ICT connectivity goals to 2012 to enable the achievement of the broader Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

LG KC780 is touted as the slimmest 8 MP slider phone
Megite Technology News 30 09 2008

LG has officially confirmed their KC780 8 megapixel camera slider phone, touted as being the slimmest mobile handset to offer an 8-megapixel camera to date. The Slider phone will support GSM 1900 and Bluetooth emissions. Other features include quad band GSM/GSM/GPRS and EDGE connectivity. It also supports a microSD card and a 140 MB of internal ... (Read on Source)

Vendors launch sticker chart to boost 3G take-up
The Register | News 30 09 2008

GSMA launches pre-emptive strike

The GSM Association, trade body to the network operators, has teamed up with 16 companies to launch a new logo which can be affixed to any kit offering 3G connectivity.…

Walking the tight rope of regulation
Moreover Technologies | Caribbean | News 29 09 2008 In the late 1990s the buzz in the financial services sector was the Asian financial crisis and contagion. It is accepted that the world had to react sharply because this event threw up the issue of the accelerated connectivity of markets with the

MWEB Installs VSAT in Namibia
CIO.com | News 26 09 2008 Namibia’s ISP (Internet service provider), MWEB Africa, has installed VSAT that will provide Internet services in both rural and urban areas in order to increase connectivity across the country.

Redfly now only $199
Megite Technology News 26 09 2008

I'm not sure what this means for Celio but they now have the Redfly Smartphone Companion on sale for just $199. The Redfly is a mini-laptop that isn't, with all processing power and connectivity coming from your Windows Mobile smartphone. See our video review of the Redfly to determine if... (Read on Source)

1-25 > Next 25

Latest News | Login: Users

© 2008 CTA | Disclaimer

Website by Maarten van den Berg | RISQ Consultancy

Powered by MyHeadlines © 2004-2006 Mike Agar.
Page generation: 0.50 Seconds