mobile phones

R U cycle? Book! Fancy an adds down the sub? There's a gr8 new carnage.

It may look like gobbledegook, but the most streetwise of British teenagers would have no trouble translating and responding to it in kind.

A new language is being developed by mobile phone-addicted kids based on the predictive text of their treasured handsets.

Key words are replaced by the first alternative that comes up on a mobile phone using predictive text -- changing "cool" into "book," "awake" into "cycle," "beer" into "adds," "pub" into "sub" and "barmaid" into "carnage."

Union Labor Minister, Oscar Fernandes, has said the state and privately-owned communication companies will make cheap mobiles available for farmers for Rs 500 apiece. This will be done through digital technologies that help considerably cut mobile telephone costs.

The minister was addressing an Assocham conference in the capital, when he said that the government is putting its best foot forward in bringing village farmers closer to mobile phones. The objective being mobile connectivity and Internet accessibility would help farmers enhance farm production, and dictate a fair price for their produce from end consumers.

Internet giant Google's offering for the mobile phones -- the Android platform -- is aimed at increasing the mobile penetration in emerging markets, as the number of personalized cell phones is higher than PC penetration.

The technology will drive low-cost handsets, thus making communication cheaper and affordable with the advantages of Web 2.0.

Affordable communication
Android, the Java over Linux platform, is not just a mobile platform, but much more than that. According to Andy Rubin, director for Mobile Platforms at Google Inc., Android is the first step in making the software for mobile phones much affordable than the legacy systems.

"Android will enable better Internet user experience. Though the handset prices have come down phenomenally due to the mass production in China and Taiwan, cell phones are still a costly proposition, as majority of the cost is involved in the software platform," he said.

With the platform being made available for the developer community from next week, Google expects an Internet-ready smart-phone to cost about $100-150 in the next couple of years.

Web 2.0 to Mobile 2.0
Google, which shot to fame with its innovative products and solutions in the Web space, aims to replicate its success in the next phase through the convergence of the cell phone and the Internet.

"Android will be the world's first mass-up platform for the mobile segment. This will bridge the island between the Internet and the mobile phone," Rubin told CyberMedia News during a conference call from the US.

"People want to communicate with mobile phones, they want to be connected with their social and community networks. The complete web-browser experience is missing and Android will fill the gap," he asserted.

Google acquired Android in 2005. Palo Alto-based Android was just 22-months-old when Google acquired it. Incidentally, Rubin, who founded Android, had also worked with Apple.

Power of partnership
When asked about its competitors in the mobile space, namely Microsoft and Nokia, Rubin pointed out the issue of Apache Portable Runtime (APR). "The opening of the APR alone by the two companies does not help the industry, as no differentiated services can be built by the developer community. However, through the Open Handset Alliance, the codes for building the killer-applications on Android is made available," he added.

And that"s only one part of the story! The developers will have the say in building the next generation applications on the Android platform, with HTC launching the first series of mobile phones in the second half of next year.

Apart from the developer community, Google has also ensured that it is a win-win game for all stakeholders in the mobile business. "We will be interacting with each one of our partners who have been segregated as five categories: semiconductor companies, content providers, service providers, mobile phone manufacturers and developers -- through the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). The only criterion for our partnership is that the partners should contribute something for the development of the applications," Rubin said.

Through the OHA, in which Google has 33 members, the Internet-major has ensured that all the stakeholders are involved in the final building of applications, and hence making the software is more user-friendly.

The members featuring in the OHA are T-Mobile, manufacturers such as HTC, Qualcomm, and Motorola along with Nvidia, eBay and Texas Instruments. Nokia, Symbian, Microsoft, Apple, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, AT&T, SAP, Sybase and Oracle have so far dissociated themselves from the OHA.

Symbian, Microsoft and Apple were unison in their opinion that Android does not pose a threat to their operating systems. Nokia too, seconded the view. Finnish giant Nokia holds 47.9 percent in Symbian, the leader in mobile device operating systems.

A million G-phones
Rubin did not rule out Google phone or the G-phone being rolled out in future. However, he said that if and when the G-phone is launched, Android will be the first and best choice.

"We are not announcing G-phone, but when a G-phone is built on this, it will be so open and so sensible, very different, innovation, and Android will be the best choice. However, through the Open Handset Alliance, it is not just building a single G-Phone but a million G-phones," he said.

Worried that you're not getting enough exercise or that you've eaten way too much garlic? A Japanese firm has come up with a phone that can help.

Japan's largest mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo unveiled this week a "Fitness Phone", designed to help the user stay healthy - and avoid bad breath.

The handheld phone, equipped with various devices that can measure your pulse or the amount of steps you've taken in a day, dispenses heath advice after you've punched in statistics such as gender, age and weight.

And you can also exhale into the phone and it will tell you whether its time to reach for the breath mints.

"Our primary target groups would be fat-fighting middle-aged businessmen and young women on diets," said Kentaro Endo, a spokesman for NTT DoCoMo.

A recent government survey found that on average, Japanese men in their 40s were fatter than they were 12 years ago, mainly due to lack of exercise, while women in the same age group were slimmer because they were more health conscious.

If you are using a Windows based Pocket PC/Mobile Phone or a symbian badsed phone,then you must be lucky enough if not
encountered a Mobile Phone virus.Here is a summery of mobile phone viruses(better say virus families)available till date:

1.Bardor:It reads the localhost IP adress and emails it to the virus author.It displays irelevant messeges to the user, it can upload and doenload files from PDA and can execute arbitary commands.Infects Windows based Pocket PCs.

Asus has introduced the world's first wireless music Skype phone; namely, the AiGuru S1, in the Indian market.

The phone is around 117mm long, 46mm wide, and 23mm tall; and weighs in at 100g along with the battery. It offers free international calls with Skype support, Wi-Fi technology, wireless music player functions, remote controller features, amongst others.

Launching the phone, Altaf Ansari, Product Manager of Asus India, said, "The AiGuru S1 Skype phone not only provides mobility to Skype users but also allows them to enjoy music on their PC wirelessly. The AiGuru S1 supports Duo-Audio features which allow playing PC audio and making Skype calls simultaneously."

Commenting on the phone, Joe Hsieh, Director of Digital Home Business, Asus, said, "The goal of digital home technologies is to share computer resource with other electronic devices around the house, and provide greater convenience. The AiGuru S1 packs several practical features for easy and wireless access of PC functions. One can Skype, listen to music, or even manage a music library with this new product."

Significantly, the AiGuru S1 features 802.11b+g support, and facilitates Skype calls sans constraints imposed by wires. According to Asus, the S1, unlike other Bluetooth-based wireless Skype phones, offers superior wireless signal quality as also larger signal coverage.

With the high-quality speaker, the S1 is transformed into an MP3 player for accessing and streaming songs stored in the PC wirelessly.AiGuru S1 includes Microsoft Media Player support plus remote controller functions, thereby allowing users to manage their music without having to be in the vicinity of their computers.

Other features of the new phone include: caller ID, phone book entries, call history, speaker phone for conference calls, and answering machine functions. Unlike other Skype phones, phone numbers, call history, and other such information is not required to be accessed via the computer; it is displayed on the AiGuru's in-built LCD display.

And, thanks to the dual-audio channel, users can watch DVDs or play games on the PC even as they make free long distance calls.

The AiGuru S1 will be available at an approximate end user price of Rs 7,750.

Raspie Mobile has been sourcing mobile phones for a while for big distributors mainly in Europe and the frustration of hearing over and over again the same comments about the phones they had seen so many times has motivated us to start-up something new.

We will introduce differently:

This means that we sometimes work with existing phones but we adapt them to the local market policies. Our XD-2 is a perfect example of that. It is a PDA-phone, with Bluetooth, WiFi, and so much more. But we introduce it as an out of the box VoIP enabled phone over the SIP platform.