pda | ipod | mobile phone | GPS Info

It didn’t take long for some actual photos of Nokia’s soon to be 8600 Luna phone to show up. The phone was initially discovered on Carphone Warehouse’s ‘coming soon’ list of handsets.

When spotting a leaked photo on the net, you can pretty much be in doubt whether the phone will ever hit the market. But when a retailer goes on and presents it, it is clear that the phone is being planned. As a result, some time later, the Luna also passed the FCC, and now the first photos of it in the wild have showed up.

Although not a lot of details regarding this phone have been provided, one should expect something very similar to the Nokia 8800 with both its ups and downs.

The design of the case has undergone a few minor changes but in the end it’s quite similar to the 8800’s. As 8800 and Sirocco users might have noticed, the phone’s case is just perfect for living your fingerprints all over the place and giving the phone a slightly ’stained’ look.
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From his basement in Granite Falls, Minn., 21-year-old Blake Paulson uses a paper clip and other pry tools to operate on scores of iPods sent to him from around the country. Some have worn-out hard drives. Others have broken screens. Then there was that iPod that fell into the toilet.

“I used gloves for that one,” Paulson says.

His online business Save 15% on Your Next Domain Purchase. Click Here., IFixiPodsFast.com, is part of a booming new industry: third-party iPod repair. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple commands 72 percent of the market share for portable MP3 players and has sold more than 100 million iPods since 2001.

The product’s popularity and Apple’s limited warranty policy, plus iPods’ susceptibility to abuse, have created a business opportunity for Paulson and other iPod doctors.
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At least a half-dozen iPod support businesses have popped up on the Web, including iResQ.com, iPodRepairSquad.com and iPodMods.com.
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Iran’s Telecommunications Ministry will start filtering “immoral” video and audio messages sent via mobile phones, state television reported on Saturday.

The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a body set up after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, has instructed the ministry to buy the equipment needed to prevent any misuse of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), it said.

MMS allows users to send multimedia messages that include images, video and audio.

” … in order to prevent possible misuse of MMS, immoral actions and social problems, the Telecommunications Ministry will filter immoral MMS,” the television said.

It did not give details of the techniques it would use to filter such messages, when it would start or how it would define “immoral” messages. [via]

In the 21st century networking giants Orange and Vodafone would do well to learn from his example.

Sadly however both companies appear to have flunked their history lessons since this week they have taken the remarkably short-sighted step of banning the VoIP capabilities in their flagship handsets. The decision – which affects the ubiquitous Skype and progressive newcomer Truphone, amongst others – arose following the launch of Nokia’s self proclaimed “mobile multimedia computer”, the N95 (above).

This dual slider ships with box loads of features including integrated GPS, a 5MP camera, WiFi and HSDPA but also – controversially – built in VoIP software. Both networks immediately saw the threat this could pose to its voice revenues and stripped the feature from the handset. This so incensed Truphone that it has posted a cautionary video on YouTube showing the difference between a sim free N95 and one purchased through Orange.
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Scattered reports from people who have put their hands on pre-release models say that its main problem is not the rumored battery-life shortfall, but the sleek, slippery surface.

I handled one for about 15 minutes earlier this year and didn’t find it any more prone to flying out of my hands — or my shirt pocket — than an iPod. But others who have spent more time with it say different.

Alexandros Roussos recently interviewed a “tipster who had the chance to play with the device for a longer time than just a few minutes.” He reported on MacScoop that its real-world battery performance would “surprise us,” and, in fact, exceed Apple’s posted specs: up to 5 hours talk/video/browsing, and up to 16 hours audio playback.
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Wordpress is a very popular blogging platform — I use it myself — and so this news may be of particular interest to all those people out there who must know about everything Web 2.0. Andy Moore, creator of Web2Txt, has teamed up with AdMob to create a free mobile plug-in blogging tool for the Wordpress community. This creates mobile-friendly versions Wordpress-powered blogs.

It is easy to publish to mobile in just a matter of seconds, resulting in an extended reach of content to mobile phones. Using the Wordpress plug-in users can extend existing blogs to mobile phones, publish posts and upload files from their phone, configure appearance of mobile internet blog pages, Enable showing and posting of comments, Choose to turn on advertising and manage the ads, and access real-time reports on click-through statistics, traffic and earnings. The test tool is available to Wordpress users and can be downloaded at http://www.andymoore.info/wordpress-mobile-plugin. [via]