Skype and Nokia strike up a deal
Skype has been striking deals with mobile phone makers. In fact they just announced a deal with Nokia to have Skype bundled on Nokia phones.
The first phone to see the new Skype will be the N97 Nokia's flagship Smartphone. Skype will be integrated heavily into the phone, including being part of the address book so that you will be able to see which of your contacts are online with Skype straight from there.
Skype and Nokia are also going to allow the service to work over both the 3G and Wifi networks. This would mean messaging and VoIP calls even when you are not at a hotspot.
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Thecus to show off new NAS servers at CeBIT 2009
With CES out of the way, Thecus Technology has announced some of their plans for the upcomming CeBIT in Hannover. First up are their new N7700 and N8800 NAS servers. The N7700 houses 7 SATA drives for massive storage and can be stacked with an additional five N7700's. If you have room for the NAS in the rack, the N8800 comes in a 2U form factor and ups the ante a bit with an eigth drive. Both support iSCSI making it easy to centrally manage and deploy storage for an entire network.
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Micrsosoft announces old news at the MWC
More news from Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, unfortunately the announcements from Microsoft have almost all been leaked out weeks ago.
Most have seen the leaked pictures of Windows Mobile 6.5 and some have even seen the next version Windows Mobile 7. The Windows Mobile App store is old news as is the cloud computing service that will allow for syncing contacts and photos. There was nothing about an nVidia based phone, or anything else overly exciting.
So what was new in the MS announcement? Well they are going to call the new Phones "Windows Phones"; looks like we will have to wait to see any real competition for the iPhone, G1 and Palm Pre from Microsoft.
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MS and Red Hat sign Interoperability Deal
Microsoft and Red Hat signed an interoperability agreement that signals the end to some of the MS Open Source fighting.
I would not go so far as to say this opens a new chapter but things will certainly be different at least as far as virtualization is concerned.
The agreement only covers the ability to run MS Guests on Red Hat's virtualization and Vice Versa.
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Sparkle launches DLC cooling Enhancement
Sparkle is introducing a new type of cooling. This new cooling technology has been dubbed DLC or Diamond-Like Carbon.
DLC by itself is not a new cooling material; it is also not a thermal paste. What it is; is a new coating material that enhances the cooling properties of other metals (Aluminum or Copper).
Sparkle's testing has shown that by applying DLC to a stock heatsink you can reduce temperatures by as much as 5c. DLC also appears to harden the material and make it more resistant to scratching and bending.
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Intel and LG team up for Mobile Internet Devices
Intel and LG are teaming up for some next generation internet device love.
LG is looking to get ahead of the game and is working with Intel's latest SoC product named Moorestown. They will also be one of the first companies to implement Intel's Linux based Mobline 2.0 software.
LG stated that they were impressed with the Atom Based netbooks and felt that MIDs based off of the Moorestown (which is an Atom Based CPU complete with GPU and IMC) will be very popular in this and future years.
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Apple Sued over iPhone screen rendering
Most of the Press has been speculating that Apple might take Palm to court for Palm's new Pre Phone. Most of this speculation comes from Apple's recent Patent on Multi-Touch.
However while some of us expected Palm to counter Apple with the many patents they already have that relate to touch screens etc. what none of us expected was for a different company to file a patents infringement suit against Apple.
The new suit claims that Apple has used a vital part of a technology created and patented by Picsel Technologies and Picsel Research. The technology allows for rapid refresh of content on mobile phones.
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Midway Games Files Bankrupcy
Game Publisher Midway games has filed bankupcy under Chapter 11 according to Register Hardware. Most of you will remember Midway brought us the landmark titles "Spy Hunter, NBA Jam, and of course, Mortal Kombat.
Midway's debt became overburdening in December when majority shareholder Sumber Redstone sold his 87.2% stake in the company. The change in ownership caused repayment clauses to kick in allowing creditors to request more than $150 million in outstanding notes that weren't due until 2025.
Apple Claims Jailbreaking Violates Copyright
Apple has filed a motion with the US Copyright office claiming that the very act of Jailbreaking an iPhone is a violation of copyright and seeking a ruling under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
I am not at all surprised that this is happening in the US as it is one of the few places that Apple still has a very strong single carrier hold on the iPhone.
However the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a counter motion asking that Jailbreaking be given an exclusion saying it represents fair-usage to owners of the iPhone.
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Microsoft Accuses Adobe of Unfair Practices
In what has to be a very ironic turn of events Microsoft is actually accusing another company of interfering with consumer choice and free competition.
It seems that Adobe is bad mouthing Silverlight 2 and claiming that AIR, Along with Adobe Media Player, Tweetdeck and Twhirl are much more popular.
The problem is that the download numbers Adobe are pointing to are from bundled downloads (are you listening Mitchell Baker). Adobe has been pushing AIR and other applications on anyone downloading Acrobat Reader. Unsuspecting downloaders have AIR and AMP forced on them with no method to opt out of the installation. This does sort of make for skewed numbers as I am not sure how many people would actively download those products on their own.
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