Wireless

A company called Proximic says it has developed an easier way for consumers to do complex searches from their cell phones.

While Apple's iPhone has helped make surfing the Web from a mobile device easier, it's still difficult to type in complex search queries. But Proximic has introduced a new application called Promixic Agents for the iPhone that will help. The new technology, which is language-independent, uses point-and-click technology to highlight bits of text. This means that users don't have to type in a long string of search terms.

Search results from a Proximic search.

(Credit: Proximic)

Unlike other search engines, which rely on keywords to find results, the search technology from Proximic looks for patterns in the text to see where these patterns overlap. It then delivers relevant results based on these patterns.

Proximic co-founder and CEO Philipp Pieper believes that conducting searches in this manner provides more contextualized and relevant search results and also makes conducting complex searches much easier.

"Mobile phones today lack ease of use when it comes to complex searches," he said. "But with our technology users can click on a paragraph or a whole Web page and get other relevant stories or information."

The application is initially being offered on the iPhone through the Apple App Store. It's free to download. But Pieper said that the technology will eventually be available to other smartphones. Future releases of the software will also allow users to do much more, like find more relevant search results based on location. Other search companies such as Yahoo and Google are also using location-based technology to provide local search results for mobile devices.

Users can highlight an entire paragraph for a search query.

(Credit: Proximic)

But Pieper believes that the Proximic technology will be able to take location-based search a step further. For example, in future releases of the software, users will be able to go into a store and take a picture of a product description and then be able to search for that product or a product with similar features. Users will then get reviews of that product or will even get results for where they can buy that particular product nearby.

"Imagine you're shopping for a TV in Best Buy," Pieper said. "You punch the product description or take a picture of the description, and you can get search results that show you the same TV is being offered for a lower price down the street at another store."

Pieper went on to say that these kinds of search results could be a boon for mobile advertising.

"Advertisers are looking for useful ad placements," he said. "Especially now in the current economy, advertising needs to be useful and relevant to users. It has to be something that users value and engage in to make it worthwhile to the advertisers."

Research In Motion is the latest smartphone maker to fall victim to the sagging economy.

The maker of the popular BlackBerry mobile devices late on Tuesday reduced its outlook for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on Saturday. The company said it expects to earn between 81 cents and 83 cents a share on revenue of between $2.75 billion and $2.78 billion. In September, RIM said it expected profits between 89 cents and 97 cents on revenue of between $2.95 billion and $3.1 billion.

RIM's executives blame the shortfall on the stronger dollar and the "general economic weakness in the United States." Other phone manufacturers have also reported lower-than-expected sales. Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, warned last month that it expects to sell fewer handsets than it had expected during the fourth quarter of 2008.

Palm, which makes the Treo, also reported that it expects dismal earnings. The company said revenue for its second fiscal quarter will be just $190 million to $195 million. Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts had expected Palm to bring in about $331 million in revenue.

In addition to slowing demand due to economic troubles, RIM also faces stiff competition, especially from Apple. Market research firms have crowned Apple's iPhone the most popular phone in the U.S. market and the second most popular smartphone worldwide.

RIM recently introduced its iPhone competitor, the BlackBerry Storm. The device, which, like the iPhone, has a touch screen instead of a physical keyboard, launched two weeks ago exclusively on Verizon Wireless's network in the United States.

(Credit: Verizon Wireless)

RIM says response to the new product has been very strong. The company said it signed up a record number of new customers the day the BlackBerry Storm hit store shelves in the United States. Indeed, customers lined up outside Verizon Wireless stores in several cities to be among the first to get the device.

Of course, the hype and frenzy surrounding the Storm paled in comparison to that surrounding the launch of the original iPhone and then the iPhone 3G this past summer.

Still, RIM believes that the strong momentum for the BlackBerry Storm will continue into the fourth quarter. Other new BlackBerry models, such as the Bold and the clamshell Pearl, should also help spur growth, executives have said.

"Initial sales of new products have been very positive, and we believe we have the strongest smartphone portfolio in the industry by far; however, product launch timing, general economic conditions, and foreign-exchange volatility have tempered our results in the third quarter," Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM, said in a statement. "We believe RIM is well-positioned to capitalize on the increasing smartphone market opportunity, and we remain focused on driving growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 and beyond."

Nokia's N97 runs the Symbian operating system, which will be released as an open-source project next year now that Symbian is part of Nokia.

(Credit: Nokia)

Nokia spent most of Tuesday buzzing about its N97 phone, but it also quietly completed an important step in its plan to evolve as a mobile computing company.

Symbian announced that Nokia has formally completed the acquisition of the world's biggest smartphone operating system company. The companies announced their plans earlier this year to have Nokia buy out the remaining partners in Symbian with the ultimate goal of releasing the Symbian operating system under an open-source license.

Devices such as the N97 run Symbian OS, which is by far and away the most widely used smartphone operating system in the world thanks to market-share leader Nokia's historically close ties with the developer. Starting next year, Nokia intends to form the Symbian Foundation with companies like AT&T, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and others with the intent of creating a royalty-free open-source operating system. Sound familiar?

After entertaining the world press in Barcelona during the early part of this week, Symbian and Nokia executives will be in San Francisco later this week to discuss their plans for mobile computing and open source, and we'll have reports from the Symbian Partner Event on Thursday.

Nokia has released new versions of its mapping and navigation service along with a new messaging service in an effort to build out its mobile services.

(Credit: Nokia)

The upgraded Nokia Maps offers new features, such as high-resolution aerial images and 3D landmarks. The new software also allows users to share their location using GPS. Nokia has also tied the latest version of Nokia Maps more closely with its PC-based service Ovi. And the new Nokia Maps allows users to plan their journey ahead of time on their PCs and sync the information with their mobile phones for when they're on the road. Currently, the pre-planning function is only available for Windows-based devices.

Some of the other new features available include: the ability to purchase turn-by-turn car navigation guidance; instant access to real-time information about traffic in certain countries; access to Wcities, an event guide that gives real-time information for events and movies in some 450 destinations; and the ability to see multiple entrances to the same underground subway stations in certain cities.

Nokia also announced it is upgrading its Nokia Messaging client so that it integrates e-mail and instant messaging from Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, Google Talk, AOL Mail, and thousands of international ISPs. The service is also integrated with Ovi and gives users 1 gigabyte worth of storage. It also provides a single sign-in on their cell phones. The beta version will be available this month in 12 languages.

All these service announcements come at the same time that Nokia has launched its latest device, the N97. This new phone, which is part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, comes with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen.

The smartphone, which is set to launch next spring, comes with a bunch of bells and whistles in addition to supporting the new mapping and messaging services. For example, it provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

Nokia N97

(Credit: Nokia)

Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. And despite some close guesses, no one got it quite right, so without further ado, let us introduce you to the Nokia N97.

Part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, the N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen (anyone else reminded of the AT&T Tilt or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1?). Yes, there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, but the N97 includes phone capabilities and is designed for the "needs of Internet-savvy consumers."

For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia's Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform--though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States.

The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card.

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however.

The Centro is keeping Palm afloat, but it needs more than pretty colors to get back on track.

(Credit: Palm)

With revenue falling to dire levels, Palm may need a Christmas miracle to stay afloat next year.

The latest dose of bad news? Revenue for Palm's second fiscal quarter, which ended last week, will be just $190 million to $195 million, the company announced Monday ahead of its December 18th conference call. Wall Street analysts had been expecting Palm to record $331 million in revenue, an astonishing 41 percent gap caused by "reduced demand for maturing smartphone and handheld products," Palm said in a press release.

Last week Palm revealed plans to cut workers and refocus its business as it copes with a poor economy and strong competition from the likes of Apple and Research in Motion. Palm's Treos were once very popular, but they have looked positively ancient against the iPhone and new BlackBerrys such as the Storm and Bold. If it wasn't for the Palm Centro--which doesn't really break any ground on the software front but costs an attractive $99--Palm might already be dead.

The company's fortunes will be determined by a race against time: if Palm can get products using its Nova operating system--which scheduled to arrive in the first half of 2009--out in the market before sales of Treos dwindle to zero, it has a chance to regain its perch atop the mobile computing world. Otherwise, Palm is stuck in a moment and it can't get out of it.

The transaction, announced in May, creates a new company valued at $14.5 billion, formed with the WiMax assets of both Sprint-Nextel and Clearwire. The new company aims to create a nationwide broadband wireless network to rival AT&T.

As part of that plan, the new company will retain the Clearwire name and offer mobile WiMax under the Clear brand. Over the coming months, Sprint Nextel's XOHM service will undergo a name change.

The newly company aims to offer an open all-IP network that features mobile WiMax technology with download speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second. The open IP (Internet protocol) will be designed to allow any WiMax device to connect to the network, said Clearwire CEO Benjamin Wolff during a conference call to announce the closing of the transaction.

He added the new Clearwire also aims to offer greater spectrum and an all IP-network to bolster its network capacity and improve performance.

"We are the underdog," Wolff said, but noted the steps Clearwire is taking will prompt other companies to hold similar aspirations.

The new company is also working on launching a nationwide 4G wireless broadband network using WiMax, which aims to run five times faster than 3G technology. The combined spectrum holdings of the new company provide it with 100 MHz, or more of potential 4G spectrum in most U.S. markets.

Clearwire, as it has previously laid out, will receive a $3.2 billion investment from Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Google, and Bright House Networks, as well as an additional investment from Trilogy Equity Partners in the coming months.

The newly formed company expects to begin making upgrades to its mobile WiMax network early next year.

A new front has opened in the ongoing arms race between Apple and iPhone hackers, with one hacker group making the iPhone boot with a Linux 2.6 kernel.

The announcement of the successful kernel porting was made on the Linux on the iPhone blog, complete with instructions and source code.

Although a bootloader, kernel and a Busybox terminal are able to be loaded -- many features of the iPhone remain unimplemented: touchscreen, sound, accelerometer, networking. Input to the terminal must be made via a USB interface from another device that the iPhone is attached to (humorously summed up by Geek Hero Comic).

The group that ported the kernel is derived from the iPhone DevTeam group that has been responsible for jailbreaking previous iPhone software.

iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

Fring.com, a provider of voice over IP and instant-messaging applications, has laid off 20 percent of its staff, or about 10 people, according to a report Thursday on TechCrunch.

CEO Avi Shechter told TechCrunch that the company was doing well, and that the staff reductions were designed to ensure that the company had enough money to get through 2009. The Israel-based start-up, which had raised $13 million in previous funding rounds, told Tech Crunch that it had recently raised a third round but declined to discuss the amounts or investors.

Nokia, the world's largest cell phone maker, plans to stop making phones for the Japan market, one of the largest in the world.

The Finnish phone maker announced Thursday that it would stop manufacturing cell phones for NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, but will continue producing its luxury Vertu brand, according to a report by Reuters.

"In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific localized products is no longer sustainable," Nokia executive vice president Timo Ihamuotila said in a statement.

While Nokia has a 40 percent global share, the Japanese market has been a tough nut to crack, the report notes. Some 85 percent of the population already owns cell phones, which tend to be part of third-generation networks that sport advanced features, such as TV broadcasting and electronic payment functions, according to the report.

Even Apple's iPhone 3G has had difficulty making in-roads in the Japan market. Apple sold about 200,000 phones in the first two months it was available in Japan, according to a September report in The Wall Street Journal that cited data from market-research firm MM Research Institute. However, demand has fallen, and many analysts don't believe Apple will even reach half its goal of selling 1 million units in Japan.

Meanwhile, Nokia also announced plans to create a platform that will allow people to use their mobile phones to control their home electronics, and security and energy management systems. The Nokia Home Control Center is designed to help people reduce their carbon footprint by allowing them to remotely manage their home's energy consumption.

"We want to create an open solution where external partners can develop their own solutions and services on top of our platform," said Teppo Paavola, chief of Corporate Business Development. "We believe that the mobile device is an ideal interface to control home intelligence, especially when the user is not at home."

Nokia is expected to demonstrate the Nokia Home Control Center at the Nokia World event being held in Barcelona on December 2-3.