Microsoft Revamps MSN Mobile

Microsoft Revamps MSN MobileWith a swish of the ceremonial curtain, Microsoft has launched its updated MSN Mobile service offering, boasting a “redesigned, reinvented” portal.

Designed for ‘net connected mobile users, the MSN Mobile service offers “one stop” access to news, email, local movie listings, maps, directions, yadda yadda, as well as Windows Live services like Hotmail, Live Messenger, Live Spaces and Live Search.

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Ericsson Buys Drutt: Gets Into Mobile Content Delivery

Ericsson Buys Drutt: Gets Into Mobile Content DeliveryEricsson has bought 100% of Drutt, a dominant player in providing Mobile Service Delivery Platform’s (MSDP) that is headquartered in Sweden.

This is another purchase by Ericsson who have set themselves up as a provider of complete solutions for mobile operators and content producers who want to have their content distributed over mobile networks.

Ericsson are building a service they call Ericsson IPX which is an end to end service that lets any content producer sell their material through the system, splitting the revenue.

Speaking to senior people close to the division who have bought Drutt say that parts of the system the Drutt has built will fill in a number of functions that they are missing.

Drutt

Carphone Profits Hit By Free Broadband Launch

Carphone Profits Hit By Free Broadband LaunchCarphone’s pre-tax profits have crashed ten per cent to £123.1million, with the company’s financial buttocks feeling the lash of their £80.5million free broadband launch.

The launch just wasn’t just painful for Carphone, with punters galore feeling the weals of a truly rubbish service, being forced to wait months on end while the company struggled hopelessly to catch up with demand.
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Fetion: China Mobile Launch Free Mobile IM

China Mobile has launched its own IM service, Fetion. It offers PC and mobile phone messaging at zero charge, even from mobiles, with just the GPRS data charges being paid for. Users will be able to IM between mobiles running the service; PC to PC and PC to mobile. Currently there’s no monthly charge, although they haven’t ruled out of possibility of it.

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HTC Smartphone Launch, London

HTC Smartphone Launch, LondonThere was a large assemblage of HTC bigwigs in town for the global launch of their new Touch smartphone.

A sleek little fella sporting GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Tri-band radio (900, 1800 & &900), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0, the Touch launches in two flavours: “elegant soft black” and the truly daft sounding, “alluring wasabi green.”

The big news about the phone – hyperbolically described as, “a watershed as important as the introduction of the mouse” – is HTC’s new TouchFLO system, which lets users navigate screens by sweeping their finger across the phone.
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VIA Intros The $600 NanoBook Ultraportable Laptop

VIA Intros The $600 NanoBook Ultraportable LaptopRamping up a ton of pressure on the Palm’s new Foleo is VIA’s new NanoBook Ultra Mobile Device, an ultraportable laptop with a claimed retail price hovering around the ‘dead cheap’ price band at just $600.

Sure, the thing looks like it grew from an ugly acorn, rose to the top of the ugly tree and then hit just about every ugly branch on the way down before landing in a pile of ugly dung, but the specs sure look pretty for such a bargain basement device.
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Mobile Users Drop £342m Of Phones Down The Pan

Mobile Users Drop £342m Of Phones Down The PanAn astonishing 855,000 handsets are flushed away every year in the UK, totting up to an annual £342 million’s worth of phones flying around the u-bend.

The rather startling figure comes from the price comparison and switching service, SimplySwitch, who claim that 4.5m handsets are lost or damaged every year, with many enjoying a rather bizarre demise.

It seems that phones are particularly prone to falling down the loo as a result of falling out of pockets or being knocked off the toilet roll holder (or, we expect, slipping out of the hands of drunk blokes feebly failing to multitask after a skinful of Super-lager).
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Palm Sells Stake To Equity Firm, Ipod Genius Joins Team

Palm Sells Stake To Equity Firm, Ipod Genius Joins TeamFeeling the squeeze from a rampant smart-phone market and faced with the shadow of the iPhone looming large, Palm has announced that it is selling a quarter of the company as as part of a cunning reorganisation plan.

The 25% share has been bought by Silicon Valley private equity firm Elevation Partners for about $325 million, with the terms of the transaction seeing about $940 million in dividends dished out to Palm shareholders.
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Apple iPhone: Sales Restricted Until 2008?

Apple iPhone: Sales Restricted Until 2008?Slavering Mac fanboys anxiously counting the minutes until they can caress, fondle, drool and dribble all over their very own iPhone may be in for a very long wait.

Industry analysts are predicting that Apple won’t be able to keep up with demand and so will restrict sales of their shiny new iPhones until 2008.

A recent Merrill Lynch report sets the scene for much i-wailing and i-sobbing amongst the Apple cognoscenti with just 4 million iPhones rolling off the production line this year, with only a comparatively modest 12 million units coming out in 2008.
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