ESPOO, Finland – I’ve not been able to do a link round up in the past few days. Did you notice? Do you like these round-ups?
In any case, I managed to get online today for a quick fix of info from around the neighborhood. I’m in a punchy mood, so certain things stood out. What I have for you today is a Retro Phone, a Car Phone, an Open Phone, and a Journo Phone. Intrigued? Then read on.
Retro Phone
ThinkGeek, a store for “stuff for smart masses”, has a cool retro handset for mobile phones. They now have a Bluetooth version that has no chord. You gotta see it to believe it.
I actually think there’s a market for retro phones. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a zippy phone in an old design, say the Nokia banana phone?
Car Phone
Chrysler has gone bananas creating a bundle of tech to be installed in its cars. It’s called ‘uconnect’ and has everything a geek would want when in her car. Dailywireless.org lists the contents of the bundle. There’s Wi-Fi, a 30-gig drive for music, games, GPS and maps, digital radio, and sync for the phone (store your phone book in the car). Also, seems like you need to get a subscription for most of this stuff.
Is this Ovi on wheels? Whoah.
Open Phone
The Industry Standard caught up with Microsoft, who had a few comments to make regarding the recent Symbian Foundation announcement. They quibble a bit about the ‘open’ moniker, now that they are the last of the big bananas that is still licensing its phone operating system (Windows Mobile). But they also take Symbian to task for potential fragmentation of the platform.
Valid points all and I hope they keep up the competition so that the Symbian Foundation delivers on its promise.
Journo Phone
Symbian Freak picked up on a story that Nokia Research Center announced another project in Mobile Journalism, this time with WITS University in South Africa. We are a fan of the mobile journalism kit, but have been going bananas trying to get some of the components.
This project should be interesting. Will it spread the concept across Africa? Some African countries could use a bit of independent journalism, and if more students are equipped with these tools, the more open the governments need to be. What do you think?
If you want to learn more about the new project, the kit, and the folks at the WITS Journalist program, head on over to Symbian Freak.
Image from Jimmy Joe