Born to be Wireless

According to MocoNews, Nokia is offering US$ 410 million to acquire all of the shares of Symbian that it does not already own.

"Nokia is offering 3.467 euros ($5.40) per share to acquire the remaining 52 percent of the company, a total of 264 million euros ($410 million)"

Read the full story here.

Labels: nokia, symbian

Steve Job's keynote was finished and I'm still waiting to watch it. Thanks to MacRumors and MacWorld I could follow the presentation kind of live :-)

iPhone 3G highlights:
- GPS
- better battery
-- 300 hours of standby time
-- 2G talk time is up to 10 hours (from 8 hours)
-- 3G talk time is up to 5 hours (other phones have 3-3.5 hours)
-- 5-6 hours of high-speed browsing
-- 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio
- thinner an the edges and black plastic back
- solid metal buttons
- same display and camera
- flush headphone jack (no more adapters to use yours 3th party headphones)
- dramatically improved audio
- US$199 for 8GB version and US$ 299 for 16GB
- Available in 22 countries on July 11th

Labels: iphone 3g

I'm going mad because I will have to wait until Steve Job's keynote has finish to finally see it!
For now, I'm checking live covers from MacRumors and Macworld.
Check them out!

Labels: iphone, iphone 3g

Wireless phones can make and receive calls because they are connected over the air to a nearby cell tower. The phone knows the ID of the cell tower that it's currently using. If the phone has GPS, the Maps application on the phone sends the GPS coordinates along with the cell ID to the Google location server. Over millions of such updates, across multiple phones, carriers, and times, the server clusters the GPS updates corresponding to a particular cell ID to find their rough center. So when a phone without GPS needs its own location, the application on the phone queries the Google location server with the cell tower ID to translate that into a geographic location, i.e., lat/long coordinates. Nifty, huh? We think so.

Read the full Google Mobile Blog post where they explain things in detail

Labels: google mobile

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software Engineer

Ever since Google Maps added public transportation directions for San Francisco, it's been a lot easier for me to figure out which buses and trains will get me where I'm going around town, so that today's gas prices take less of a toll on my wallet. Even so, I've often found myself wishing that I had an easy way to get transit directions while I'm out and about.

Enter the new version of Google Maps for mobile. This version (2.2) allows you to get transit directions in all the same places as the web version of Google Maps, including Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Vancouver, and over 40 other cities in North America.

This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips. The My Location feature, available on most phones, also makes it easier to set the start point of your journey.

To see how the transit feature of Google Maps for mobile works, take a look at this quick video walkthrough with my co-worker Ryan:



This version of Google Maps for mobile also includes a bunch of other goodies, like faster searching on BlackBerry devices and star ratings for businesses. It's currently available for BlackBerry devices and many other Java-based phones. To download it to your phone visit http://www.google.com/gmm from your phone's web browser or on the desktop.

We're working to bring public transit directions to Google Maps on other devices, so stay tuned!

source: Google Mobile Blog

Until recently the only way to post to Share on Ovi using the popular application Shozu was by using the email option, no more! This also makes Shozu one of the first 3rd party applications to make use of the Share on Ovi's API. To setup Share on Ovi in Shozu, login as normal and choose add site. Share on Ovi will be in the list among the many other supported options. Enter your Share on Ovi credentials and select where your media should be uploaded. The downside to Shozu is the 10MB upload limit.

source: Darla Mack

MocoNews reported today that China Unicom is buying China Netcom for US$ 56.3 billion in a stock swap. The expectation is that the deal will be closed by the end of the year.
Another news in China market is the purchase of China Unicom's CDMA unit by China Telecom for US$ 15.9 billion.

A little explanation about China market before today's news:
* There are two nation-wide fixed-line operators: China Telecom and China Netcom.
* There are also two major mobile carriers: China Mobile (GSM) and China Unicom (GSM and CDMA).

After finishing the acquisitions, we'll have:

- China Telecom on fixed-line and CDMA mobile network;
- China Netcom/Unicom on fixed-line and GSM mobile network;
- China Mobile on GSM mobile network.

Just remembering that even after this changes, China Mobile is the world's largest mobile carriers with more than 380 million customers.

Labels: china