With a veritable orgy of announcements, BenQ Mobile rolled out six new mobile phones at the CeBIT trade show in Germany.
The phones, all going under the BenQ-Siemens brand, include the P51, a quad-band GSM/EDGE GSM/EDGE handset running on Windows Mobile 5.0.
Definitely not one for the pockets of the tight trouser brigade, the chunky P51 wedges in a Treo-like QWERTY keyboard, a large 2.8inch 240 x 320 pixels screen, an integrated SiRF Star III GPS module and a somewhat underwhelming 128MB of memory, along with an SD slot for expansion.
VoIP calls are made possible through the built in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity and pre-loaded Skype software.
The P51 also comes with a music player (MP3, AAC, AAC+) offering a sound equalizer and 3D surround sound and an integrated 1.3 megapixel camera with LED flash.
The handset is due to be made available in Q3, with prices, networks and stockists to be confirmed.
Also announced was the flagship EL71, a tri-band, 16.5mm thin slider phone with a metal casing in brushed aluminium finish. Designed for the “young professional,” the phone sports a 2-inch, 260,000-color QVGA display.
The C81 comes with a built-in multimedia player supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+ and AAC++ formats and an integrated 1.3-megapixel camera with 5x digital zoom. Pictures can be printed directly – no PC needed – by Bluetooth via Pictbridge and the phone has a 1.8- inch TFT 262k screen.
The CL71 slide phone is another slim number (17.8mm) with built-in 1.3-megapixel camera, MP3 player and radio with a 2-inch TFT 262k display offering 176 x 220 picture resolution.
The consumer-oriented CF61 also comes with a music player, Bluetooth and exchangeable covers. The integrated 1.3-megapixel camera allows capture of nine images in quick succession and a voice commentary can also be added to pictures. There’s also a built-in music player supporting the usual formats.
Finally, the wedge shaped E61 comes in orange, yellow, or silver, with a built-in VGA camera with 2x/4x digital zoom.
If you thought the switchover to digital television was going to be a challenge, spare a thought for the regulators, policy makers and engineers who are already tasked with trying to figure out the best way of re-allocating the spectrum freed up by switching off the analogue broadcasting signal.
The first two sessions focused mainly on the problems associated with harmonisation. It is essential that adjoining states will have to work together to allocate spectrum, if there are not to be interference issues. The ITU’s 
Of course regulatory uncertainty is same for all those looking to unlock the digital dividend (although some argue that the broadcasters are well positioned because they already sit on the spectrum). Whatever happens its going to be a complex and highly political interplay between policy makers, regulators and transnational organisations such as the ITU.
Luke Gibbs is a co-founder of 
Currently hovering betwixt prototype and retail status, Advance Tech Communications new Windows Mobile smartphone market looks hot! hot! hot!
On board storage is taken care of courtesy of a generous 8GB hard disk, backed up by 512MB RAM and 512MB ROM, with a micro-SD expansion card slot.
Instead, the company are proclaiming their new device to be a “laptop computer miniaturised to the size of a handheld device,” which perhaps isn’t the snappiest description they could have come up with.
On balance, the world is probably a better place with Microsoft, than it would be if Bill Gates hadn’t succeeded. But this week, the company is trying to get us to admit something different: that it is an innovative presence in the world, encouraging innovation in others. Specifically, it is running the Imagine Cup, and this week, in the UK, it’s judging 50 students who have entered a programming competition.
The content is fine! It goes on fairly meaninglessly with an animated techno-rabbit running around and flying; and then launches the theme.
So naturally, I asked MS why. I got their local expert, and asked: “Why on earth would you copy-protect a promotional video? Surely, the idea is that people mail it around, and it generates viral marketing traction, like the 
As excuses go, that is such clear nonsense that I didn’t know what to say. If you have a modem link, you certainly can’t stream a WMV file. I couldn’t stream it with a 10megabit Telewest cable modem! And in any case, both the clips on that page are short! – one is two minutes, and that’s the long one. The other is 30 seconds.
The London book fair, just finished. At it, there was no sign of an e-book reader from Microsoft – which is odd, because all the stuff Microsoft has been teasing us about with 
Nokia has launched Nokia Lifeblog 2.0, an updated version of their photo-blogging offering.
Well, that’s how we’d describe the process, but Nokia has a more flowery interpretation, insisting that adding the extra information is “rendering them as part of the rich tapestry of items that make up your personal Nokia Lifeblog timeline.”
“With imaging becoming an integral part of mobile devices, the way people approach photography is changing. You are able to capture events and create memories in a spontaneous way as your device is always with you,” gushed Mikko Pilkama, whose job title is surely unpronounceable after five beers: Director, Nokia Nseries See New, Multimedia, Nokia.
There may be almost 76 million sites stuffed full of six billion pages of information vying for our attention on the Web, but it seems that most surfers only choose to visit six sites on a regular basis.
Sadly, it seems that the days of random surfing are coming to a close, with the vast majority of Web users (95 per cent) going online with a specific destination in mind.
Bringing together public services from across eleven Whitehall departments, visitors to Directgov can unearth a mountain of useful information and services, from renewing driving licences, car taxes or passports , locating local services like schools, childminders and recycling and even planning journeys on foot, by car or by public transport.
With a bonkers new naming strategy that suggests the creatives may have been on something stronger than caffeine, Orange have launched a new tariff that links customer behaviour with animal characteristics.
Initially launching to Pay Monthly customers, the animal packages will be made available to Pay as you go customers later in the year.
Samsung has announced the world’s first 8GB Hard Disk embedded smartphone, the SGH-i310, which is expected to start shipping in Europe during the second half of this year.
The smartphone seems pretty pocketable too, measuring 111.9 x 48.5 x 19.8 mm and weighing 120g.
Almost 60 per cent of Britons rely on the Internet to do their banking, according to new research commissioned by the Alliance and Leicester bank.
Designed to cut down on identity theft and online fraud, the two-factor authentication compels users to provides two means of identification.
Other banks are also jumping on the security bandwagon, with Barclays running a new chip card reader trial involving 5,000 customers and staff, while Lloyds TSB is close to completing an exhaustive six-month test of a keyring type device.