At CTIA Wireless '09 this morning, Nokia unveiled Point & Find, a service currently in beta that uses a phone's camera to identify objects and present relevant information on screen.

Point and Find combines real-time image processing and recognition technology with the phone's data connection and GPS location to link the camera's real-life images to related digital content and services. Barcode scanning has also been integrated.

Continue reading →

Even though the interface is practically indistinguishable from that of the Android Market, details revealed today by Microsoft about the Windows Mobile Marketplace adds promise to Windows Mobile 6.5, an OS version that many have already written off as a placeholder until WM7.

When Windows Mobile Marketplace goes live, it will be populated with software from companies such as EA, Netflix, Pandora, Facebook, Sling Media, Gameloft, AccuWeather.com, and at least half a dozen others. Many of the apps will be ports of apps already proven popular on the iPhone, and Microsoft said it expects many more developers of the nearly 20,000 Windows Mobile developers to list apps.

Continue reading →

Wireless streaming of high-definition video must still be very far off.

While it does exist in various forms today, one of the premier members of the Wireless HD Consortium, Broadcom, is proposing a new streaming video interface standard which focuses on HD over Ethernet.

Continue reading →

At this point, the Adobe Flash platform is ubiquitous. For many users, like the growing number of those browsing on their iPhones its absence can be point of perpetual irritation.

Likewise, Facebook has reached near ubiquity, counting everyone from octogenarian grandparents, to captive elephant seals as users. A marriage of the two is a perfect fit.

Continue reading →

This morning, Sony has officially reduced the price of the PlayStation 2 to $99.99, confirming rumors that the nine-year old console would finally hit the "sweet spot" in price on April 1.

In Sony's announcement today, the company noted that the PlayStation 2's library of titles will grow to almost 1,900, an impressive total by any metric. The fact that it is still able to grow is especially remarkable when considering the console's proximity to retirement.

Continue reading →

Music search engine provider SeeqPod filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US Bankruptcy court in the Northern District of California yesterday. Not a large company by any means, it listed a modest $2 million in assets and $1.6 million in debts. Five percent of the company is owned by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory.

SeeqPod is most easily remembered for being sued by Warner Music Group early last year based on the record company's belief that the search engine was built to make money off of advertising in its built-in Web player, even though it did not even advertise.

Continue reading →

Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson today has announced its newest mobile broadband module, which offers promising wireless features built specifically for upcoming Windows 7 devices.

Ericsson's Vice President of Mobile Broadband Modules, Mats Norin, told Betanews that the F3607gw module consumes half the battery of its predecessor. With this decreased battery consumption, the module's HSPA/GPRS/EDGE radios can remain connected even when the equipped device (notebook, netbook, MID, etc) is asleep.

Continue reading →

In practical simultaneity this afternoon, AMAX, Cray, NEC, HP, and Dell all announced brand new products. The common link? They're all based upon the newly available Intel Xeon 5500 processors.

In fact, Intel says more than 70 companies will be announcing new products based on the Xeon 5500 processor, based on the company's energy-saving branch of its Nehalem architecture. Intel introduced the 5500 series today, touting it as its most revolutionary server processor since the Pentium Pro nearly 15 years ago. (Those who remember the Pentium Pro may be scratching their heads at that.)

Continue reading →

Sales of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic were halted in the US after less than a week of availability due to unspecified issues. While those issues could have included poorly assembled handsets, users' complaints indicated that performance was foremost on their minds.

Today, Nokia announced a software update for the 5800 that adds a handful of new features, but lists "faster user interface and faster download times" as the first, and arguably most important, aspect.

Continue reading →

Verizon will reportedly begin selling subsidized netbooks next month, like AT&T began doing late last year with the Acer Aspire One. Representatives of the company note that netbooks could begin selling as early as the next quarter in Verizon stores.

Like the AT&T deal, Verizon's main interest is getting customers to subscribe to the company's mobile broadband network. AT&T subsidizes the netbooks until they can be sold for $99, and then the mobile broadband service costs roughly $60 a month for two years.

Continue reading →

Microsoft will be settling with Dutch navigation device maker TomTom in the intellectual property battle in which both parties sued one another for patent infringement.

In Microsoft's suit, TomTom was accused of violating eight patents involved with memory management and file system architecture used in its Linux-based devices. TomTom shot back with a countersuit that accused Microsoft of infringing upon three of its patents, and then promptly became a licensee in the Open Invention Network, a group specializing in the protection and defense of Linux patent holders.

Continue reading →

Motorola hasn't exactly had the strongest presence in mobile phone hardware lately, and was slow to officially hop on the 3G touchphone bandwagon, but now it has debuted its second device in the familiar form factor.

Today, just two days ahead of the CTIA Wireless convention, Motorola announced the Evoke QA4, an CDMA/EV-DO (Rev. A) device with a 2.8" touchscreen. The Evoke is equipped with 256MB of on-board memory and is expandable up to 8 GB via MicroSD, a 2 megapixel 5x digital zoom camera, stereo Bluetooth and full HTML browsing.

Continue reading →

Skype, the popular voice, video, and instant messaging chat software parented by eBay is reportedly coming to the iPhone App Store tomorrow as a free download.

When a user's iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, they will be able to use their Skype account to make free Skype-to-Skype voice calls, send instant messages, and make outbound calls to other mobile devices or landlines for a fee.

Continue reading →

Nine years and more than 140 million consoles later, Sony's PlayStation 2 may finally be dropping to the sub-$100 price point.

A $99 PlayStation SKU has been captured on what appears to be a point of sale scanner showing two dates: 4/5/09 and 4/11/09. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of data outside of this photograph. It does not give the origin of the photo, and it does not say if those dates simply represent a brief window when the consoles will be sold at $99.

Continue reading →

This week, Samsung confirmed to Phone Scoop that the SWD-M100 Mondi device demoed at Mobile World Congress '09 is coming to the Clear WiMAX network in the US.

The tablet runs Windows Mobile 6.1, so the 4.3" touchscreen is therefore resistive (i.e., it requires a stylus). It slides up to reveal a QWERTY keypad and 8-direction control pad, there is a 3 megapixel autofocus camera facing outward and a VGA webcam facing the user. It has a microSD slot for memory expansion, but there is not yet a spec telling what kind of onboard memory and processing power it will provide.

Continue reading →