Polytechnic students fly airplane with a mobile phone

Although we are getting used seeing mobile phones expanding their functionality every day, this one came as a surprise. Apparently, a research team of Mechanical Engineering Polytechnic College in Dattewal village of Moga district in Punjab was able to fly a scaled-down version of an airplane with the help of a mobile phone that worked as a remote control. Naturally, a special software was developed in order to control the plane. We’re not aware which platform the phone runs, but we’re quite confident it’s either Windows Mobile or Symbian. Nice work folks!

Attend multimedia virtual meetings on your iPhone

In case you haven’t realized so far, you can organize virtual meetings with your iPhone. There are a number of solutions available on the market, and today we’re presenting you with the one developed by the collaboration service provider - Genesys.
First thing they like to underline is that they were the first company to release the iPhone-optimized version of their Meeting Center service — it’s our bad that we’ve missed it.

As with other such services, Genesys’ solution relies on heavy use of AJAX technology to deliver its service via iPhone’s built-in Safari web browser. The interface is as simple as you would expect it for the iPhone web-based application and will allow users to effortlessly join a voice and web meeting — the latter is suggested while you’re on an EDGE network. As for the features, Genesys emphasizes that iPhone users will have access to “full virtual meeting capabilities.”

Nice work guys. You make the iPhone look more enterpriseish.

Koreans can now pay highway tolls with their mobile phones

Now, we already know you can pay the parking fees using your mobile phone in many cities around the globe. We’ve even seen citizens of London paying congestion charge fees via SMS. And now, thanks to the LG Telecom’s new service called PassON, people of South Korea can pay highway tolls with their mobile phones, thus reducing the time spent at toll gates up to a seventh as well as saving toll both running costs by 23%.

The system is linked to the “high pass” service of the Korea Expressway Corporation and when a car with OnBoard Unit passes toll gates, the toll is automatically subtracted from “high plus card.” To use PassON, Koreans should get the mentioned OnBoard Unit which is linked with the phone using the standard Bluetooth technology…

Nice move, hopefully we’ll see this system implemented in other parts of the world in the near future.

Nokia: Sorry iPhone early adopters, at least you can use MOSH

So it looks like early iPhone adopters aren’t the only ones feeling the pain of having their uber-expensive devices price-slashed like last year’s fashions. Nokia feels our pain too. Not a day after Apple announced their early-adopter screwing policy, Nokia has launched a Google ad campaign to empathize with our $200 loss and offer a chance to redeem our iPhone’s worth by using the Nokia mobile social-network, MOSH.

Apparently, the MOSH social network is enough to help us “salvage” our newly cheap iPhones. We’re not sure we’re MOSH is going to help us feel any better about seeing our neighbor pick up an 8GB iPhone for just $399, but hey, it’s the though that counts.

25% of Nokia's sales in India are from E and N Series devices, flagship store to open in Mumbai

In a statistic that is sure to shock you as much as it did me, a quarter of Nokia’s sales in India are from the mid to high end E and N series devices. Talk about impressive, Nokia is also going to locate the headquarters of NSN in India. Read more about this country who recently took America’s spot as Nokia’s number 2 region in sales in this Business Week interview with Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

On that same token, there is news that Nokia’s 7th flagship store will open in Mumbai. All my inital connootations of the Indian market have been incorrect, I’m actually keen on visiting now and seeing the region for myself.

China and India lead the globe in new wireless subscribers

When you have fully one-third (1/3) of the world’s population caged within your borders, you’re bound to be a leader in the burgeoning mobile phone market. Such is the case with China and India. Between them, they have signed up almost 200 million new wireless subscribers in the first quarter of 2007 alone.

China is good for 87 million new mobile phone users, while India claims an astounding 110 million new wireless customers.

According to the United Nations telecommunications agency, the new surge in wireless use is being spearheaded by the developing nations that China and India lead.

It’s a good thing Nokia invested in that new design center and additional battery recall infrastructure in India. With 100 million new potential customers in just four months, it’d be foolish not to cater to that market.

Why should the big boys be afraid of the Google Phone?

This post is entirely speculation on my part, I don’t have any inside information and you shouldn’t listen to people who say they do either.

The Google Phone, it might be an operating system, it may be an actual device or series of devices, whatever it is I know that if Google gives this thing the proper tender loving care it deserves then they can really shake things up.

Forget about the actual phone for a minute and think about all the services Google offers. Gmail is hands down the best web based email client out there for a lot of people thanks to the threaded conversation view. The search is robust, the interface is straight and to the point and they even offer hosted services for small business and universities.

Google Maps, used by everyone out there since people need to find where things are. Highly accurate, offers phone numbers, customer reviews of restaurants and hotels and it is free.

Google Documents, quintessential for college students who can’t figure out how to pirate Office 2007 and for collaborating with your peers. All your documents, available all the time, as long as you’re somewhere with an internet connection.

Google Spreadsheets, again just like Google documents.

Calendar is great for keeping your life on track and the interface for a web based application is surprisingly robust. Typing in one line “Lunch with Janet on Monday at 12:30″ enters it into the system with zero fuss.

Reader for all you RSS addicts.

And there are simply too many to list so just go to this website.

All of these Google Services are fantastic, but there is one problem. They aren’t mobile and can’t be built in mobile browsers (iPhone, S60) either since there are no standards for that technology, yet. People buy Windows Mobile devices because they know Office Mobile will handle their documents and Exchange Server support is best in class. People install Google Maps Mobile and Gmail Mobile because they like having these services with them no matter where they are.

If Google released a device with all their services bundled in, think how useful it would be. You could be writing a document on your computer and on the way to work you can edit it with one hand. Want to send it to your coworkers? No problem, just email it to them directly from the application. Get to work and finish doing what you have to do and then shoot it off in an email to the boss.

You can work from any internet connected device as long as it is connected to the net. You don’t need to install Word 2007 and you don’t need Outlook for email since all your contacts are already in Gmail. You don’t need to backup since all your data is in the cloud. You don’t need to worry about version tracking or forgetting your USB key at home.
It is a Google world, in your pocket and you don’t have to install anything. It just works. One sign in and boom you have access to everything. It doesn’t stay in sync with the cloud because everything is happening in real time.

If people get used to this then what will the other handset makers have to do? Will Microsoft have to offer their Office Suit in the cloud? Will Nokia have to buy someone like Zimbra or Zoho? Will the old desktop application model or opening files, saving files and emailing them as attachments still be the world we live in given one years time?

I don’t have an answer, but I do know I am excited. I really want to stop caring about where my content is and worry more about producing, editing and refining it.