No common wireless HDMI standard

There are several suggestions on how to transfer the image from such a Blu-ray Disc player to a TV, but according to a report from the firm In-Stat, there is no consensus about which one should use .

The three technologies, it is about is WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface, WirelessHD and WiGig (Wireless Gigabit), developed respectively by Israeli AMIMON, U.S. SiBeam and WiGig Alliance.

None of the technologies are compatible with each other because they differ markedly in operation in some areas. WHDI communicates so in the 5 GHz area in which the two other uses spectrum around 60 GHz.

WirelessHD and WiGig differs in that the latter can also be used for data communications between computers, as behind firms see it as the future of Wi-Fi standard. Among WiGig-alliance members will find companies such as Broadcom, Dell, Intel, LG, Microsoft, NEC, Nokia, NXP, Panasonic and Samsung.

In-State's conclusion is that none of the technologies are particularly ripe yet, and combined with the fact that they are fighting each other, they expect a very slow diffusion of new televisions.

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Sony Ericsson Ranked Highest in Wireless Handset

According to Mobile TechNews :For the second time, Sony Ericsson ranked highest in U.S. overall customer satisfaction performance among wireless mobile phone brands in the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Wireless Customer Satisfaction StudySM. Last week, Sony Ericsson also ranked highest among wireless mobile phones brands in the J.D. Power and Associates Canadian Wireless Customer Satisfaction Study. "Sony Ericsson continues to show a strong commitment to the North American market with an expanding portfolio of compelling devices for every consumer," said Najmi Jarwala, president of Sony Ericsson North America. "Receiving the top ranking in the J.D. Power and Associates study is a reflection of Sony Ericsson's ongoing ability to deliver eye-catching, feature-rich and high-quality products that enhance the consumer experience." In the U.S., Sony Ericsson ranked highest among mobile phone brands with a score of 741, significantly above the industry average. Sony Ericsson received significantly higher than industry average scores in features and battery function categories. The brand ranks higher than the industry average in physical design, operation and durability factors. In Canada, the company ranked highest among mobile phone brands with a score of 728, performing particularly well in the features, physical design, battery and operation factors. The study measured customers' satisfaction with wireless handsets based on five key product performance factors, including physical design, operation, features, handset durability and battery function. A joint venture between Sony and Ericsson, Sony Ericsson entered the wireless handset market in 2001. Since its inception, it has released a number of Sony co-branded handsets, including the music-centric Walkman brand and the imaging-focused Cyber-shot brand in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

For Sony Ericsson games / application, visit: Youpark

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Start navigating your organization with GPS using your cellphone

According to a latest news from Wireless Week, American Automobile Association has started using GPS for navigating their organization using the mobile phone. The AAA has 50 million members and 24% of all households in the United States.

The association recently launched its AAA Mobile service on the Sprint network and expects to have it available through other carriers soon, according to Jeff Green, managing director of the association's location-based technology effort. The service uses the Networks in Motion platform and initially is available on nine GPS-enabled devices.

The service allows members to receive audible, turn-by-turn directions plus information from the AAA's database like ratings of hotels, restaurants and points of interest from its guidebooks. A click of a button sends the member's GPS location to a AAA representative for roadside assistance.

The service carries a $9.99 monthly subscription charge. AAA will promote the service to its members through its regular channels. Sprint apparently won't advertise it, since the carrier has its own white-label on-deck GPS service provided by TeleNav.

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T-Mobiles towards Steady Growth

T-Mobile USA reported steady growth for the quarter adding 857,000 new customers, totally 27 million customers at the end of the second quarter. Though it grew slower than the top Tier 1 two carriers, its customer additions more than doubled those of the third largest U.S. carrier, Sprint Nextel. The carrier also reported a lower contract churn rate than Sprint, at 1.8%, down from 2.2% the first quarter.

Average revenue per user also showed slow, but steady growth rising from $52 last year to $53 for this quarter.

T-Mobile posted revenues of $4.8 billion, up 13% from last years $4.2 billion.

"In the quarter, T-Mobile continued to take bold steps to expand our user base and drive consumer-relevant innovation," said Robert Dotson, chief executive officer and President of T-Mobile USA, in a company statement. "We continued to add high-quality customers… In the quarter, we also introduced HotSpot@Home, the first in a new line of breakthrough products and services that allow customers to make unlimited calls from home while providing the best in-home wireless coverage possible. With this introduction, the landline replacement revolution has begun in earnest."

Source: Wireless Week

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Features World's smallest GSM phone

Available now, sim-free, from Unlocked-Mobiles.com is the new Haier Elegance, a handset from the Chinese mobile manufacturer that claims to be the world's smallest GSM mobile phone featuring an MP3 player. Weighing only 64 grams and with diminutive measurements of just 90.6 x 35.3 x 18.2mm, it sure is little. Despite its small size, it can hold over 250 MP3 tracks (albeit via a Micro SD card slot), has a "groovy" 3D full colour graphics display on its 1.1-inch OLED screen and features an alarm clock, calculator, games, calendar, text messaging, speed dial and USB2 connectivity.

Featurs
•Launched in the UK at $330
•World's smallest GSM phone featuring an MP3 player
•A lipstick case-sized luxury GSM mobile phone only 3.5" long
•ultimate fashion accessory for the active club set and women on the go
•Weight = 64g
•Dimension= 90.6 x 35.3 x 18.2mm
•FM tuner & stereo Bluetooth
•Voice Recorder & Photo viewer
•128MB RAM
•OLED display with delightful 3-D animated graphics
•Tri-Band GSM.
•3 hours of talktime
•MP3 player with 11 hours MP3 playback and 1.128 GB capacity

HereYou can find FewMobile aplications

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Disney Calls For More Mobile Web Experimentation

Walt Disney Internet Group President Steve Wadsworth has said he would like to see US carriers experiment more with pricing and advertising to encourage consumers to buy more conent. “In the end, they are setting the prices,” he said of the carriers. “There has not been the robust experimenting with prices to drive (the growth) we want to see.” This was at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, and he also spoke about the complicated and non-uniform process of getting content delivered through the various carriers. “There is a need for much more standardization and streamlining of that process to get content from our brains, our creative development and software development, into a consumer’s hands… I think that is probably one of the biggest issues.” Disney’s mobile content sales in the US has grown at 20-30 percent

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Mobile TV is not that Popular

A survey by Canalys has shown a moderately strong interest in mobile TV. The online survey was conducted in April among more than 2,000 employed, adult mobile phone users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, and found that 49 percent of respondents had absolutely no interest in mobile TV—even a free service. So 51 percent (of a very large audience) is interested in some form of mobile TV, but Canalys points out that a range of content and options is required to get these customers.

29 percent showed interest in Live TV such as sport or reality shows
23 percent showed interest in content related to hobbies or personal interests that they could not get at home
23 percent showed interest in watching the shows they did get at home
15 percent said they would be interested in watching videos from web sites such as YouTube
14 percent liked the idea of place-shifting content that they had already recorded at home --

There was similar levels of interest in short clips, half-hour programmes and full-length movies

For ad-supported services, the survey showed higher interest around vehicle and pedestrian navigation, mobile e-mail and IM than for TV.

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Nokia Adding Power Saving Alerts to Phones

Nokia has launched the first mobile phones to include alerts encouraging people to unplug the charger once the battery is full, a move that could save enough electricity to power 85,000 homes a year. Kirsi Sormunen, Vice-President of Environmental Affairs at Nokia said, "Around two-thirds of the energy used by a mobile phone is lost when it is unplugged after charging but the charger itself is left in a live socket. We want to reduce this waste and are working on reducing to an absolute minimum the amount of energy our chargers use. The new alerts also play an important role, encouraging people to help us in this goal by unplugging their chargers."

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Konami to go mobile with Glu

Glu Mobile has added another giant ‘traditional gaming’ brand to its distribution roster, signing a strategic partnership with Konami

The deal makes Glu the exclusive distributor of Konami mobile games in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It bolsters a Glu catalogue that already includes titles from Sega Mobile, Activision, Atari, Codemasters, Warner Bros and others.Japan-based Konami is an historic name in video gaming, with over 30 years in the business. Although the partners have not confirmed which titles will be selected for the mobile treatment, attention is focused on the ‘big four’ of Pro Evolution Soccer, Silent Hill, Castlevenia and Metal Gear Solid. The first titles will launch in the second half of 2007.The production and porting of the titles will be led by Konami’s mobile development facilities in Europe, with deck management and marketing handled by Glu.

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Satelite navigation fools drivers

A 20-year-old student's car was wrecked by a train after she followed her sat nav system onto a railway track.
Paula Ceely, was driving her Renault Clio from Redditch, Worcestershire, to see her boyfriend at his parents' home in Carmarthenshire for the first time.
She was trying to cross the line in the dark when she heard a train horn, realised she was on the track, and the train smashed into the car.
Transport police said drivers must take care with satellite navigation.
The car was carried about half a mile (800m) down the line by the Pembroke Dock to Swansea train, although Ms Ceely escaped injury in the incident near Whitland.
A second-year student at Birmingham University, she had borrowed the sat nav from her boyfriend, Tom Finucane, 21.
"I put my complete trust in the sat nav and it led me right into the path of a speeding train," she said.

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AbMob and Mywaves To Offer Mobile Video

Mobile ad network AdMob and video company mywaves have teamed up to offer a user-initiated video ad format, which will appear on AdMob partner sites. The ad will appear as a banner unit on a mobile Web page, and it will lead to a landing page containing a mywaves-branded embedded played, which will offer video content selected by the advertiser. Coca-Cola is the first company to sign up for the new mobile video format, called Click-to-Video, which is capable of video playback of ads in approximately 160 countries

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Earnings: T-Mobile Revenue Increased 10.9 Percent On International Gains

Taking its global mobile business, T-Mobile showed an increase in revenue of 10.9 percent to 8.4 billion euros (US$11.3 billion) while profit increased by 1 percent to 1.066 billion euros (US$1.437 billion). --T-Mobile Deutschland’s customer base rose by 5.1 percent to 33.0 million customers in the first quarter. T-Mobile Deutschland’s revenue dropped by 2.6 percent to 1.95 billion euros (US$2.63 billion), due to a drop in prices and termination fees because of heavy competition. However, the revenue is falling lower as customers with the lower prices make more calls: Among contract customers, calling minutes increased by an average of 11 percent per customer compared with the previous year. --T-Mobiel USA increased the number of customers by almost 1 million in the first quarter of 2007 to a total of 26 million customers, 74 percent of whom are contract customers. --T-Mobile UK saw a drop of 1.2 percent in the number of its customers to 16.7 million, with the silver lining being that the prepaid segment shrank while the number of contract customers increased by 106,000 during the quarter. --Eastern European companies recorded positive customer growth during the first quarter of 2007, particularly PTC in Poland, which gained 145,000 customers, along with the national companies in Hungary and the Czech Republic. --T-Mobile recorded international revenue of 6.4 billion euros (US$8.6 billion), a year-on-year gain of 15.8 percent. Inorganic growth from the full consolidation of PTC in Poland and tele.ring in Austria were among the factors contributing to this positive result. Double-digit organic growth in revenue in the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Slovakia also had a positive impact, as well as ARPU growth in the US and UK. Adjusted EBITDA from national companies abroad increased by 23.4 percent to 1.8 billion euros (US$2.4 billion).

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Google Maps for Mobile UK

Nathan Weinberg reports on the InsideGoogle blog that Google Maps for Mobile UK was announced at a London press briefing today.
Personally, I’ve been using the US version of Google Maps on my mobile in the UK for around the last four months and it’s been useful on several occasions.
One of the things I’ve never understand about Google is why they take so long to release services and applications for the UK market – especially when the actual content doesn’t appear to have been localized. When selecting the “Find Location” option, the interface displays this US example:
Move the map to:(e.g. 90210, dallas, 10 main st boston ma)
I guess it’s easy to forget to localize UI strings like that but there’s no excuse for asking me to select a favorite rather than favourite. Even the online demo gets that right! In fact, one of the few localized features I could find in the UK version of the application was that it centered the map on London after installation. And I don’t live anywhere near there!
Come on, Google. If you’re going to take months to release localized versions of your applications, at least localize them properly for us Brits!

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Vertu Celebrates Summertime with Strawberries and Cream

You surely have been living in caves if you haven’t heard about the luxury cellphone maker Vertu. The Nokia’s luxury division Vertu has now strawberries and cream to celebrate this summer. Well, I am not talking about the fruits but yet another exceptional edition version of Ascent luxury mobile phone. The Special Edition Strawberry and Cream models add an inimitable pierced leather back in either a cream or strawberry color to match the surface of the seasonal fruit. The luxury phone touts a high-performance 20 mm hands-free loudspeakers with advance Yamaha polyphonic hardware and sapphire-coated LCD. The meticulously-made stainless steel keys and the bling thing will further add to its cost. As usual, the pricing is unknown but Vertu lovers can find the special edition Strawberry and Cream handsets in Vertu stores worldwide by June.

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London to be Europe’s largest WiFi hotspot

So blanketing the River Thames was step one, step two seems to be aiming for the whole city of London. The Evening Standard is reporting that the whole city of London will soon become “Europe’s largest wireless internet hotspot”. Over 130 base stations will be arranged in a sophisticated mesh-networking setup.
The are will span “the entire Square Mile,” giving about 350,000 employees in the area access to wireless internet. While the service does not cover a large area currently, it will be expanded as you can see from the image, the sheer space in the “soon to be” covered areas. Nothing comes free these days, and this is no exception coming in at £11 ($22) a month for access.

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