Nokia’s VP answers some questions

Suggested reading at Engadget. It took them long enough, but Nokia just might be able to pull off a turn-around. The hardware of the N8 looks nice and the MeeGo OS is built on the solid foundation of Linux and Qt. The Nokia Vice President also seems aware of the challenges they are facing and gives refreshingly non-marketing answers (such as Symbian’s menu-based navigation not being a good match for touch interfaces).

True roaming

Daring Fireball has a nice post on what Apple’s iPhone 4 video chat application “FaceTime” means long-term: That we get more alternatives to cellphone networks. With FaceTime, you currently need a cellphone connection to get started, but afterwards, all communication continues on the internet, via a WiFi connection. This is especially appealing in apartments such as mine where cellphone reception is bad. We are thus slowly progressing towards true network roaming. Another piece of the puzzle is the universal inbox (which integrates cellphone voice box, SMS, fax, and email).

Mobile HTML: dial a phone number via a hyperlink

As HTML5 is becoming a really cool way of developing applications for the major smart mobile platforms (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm Pre, all of them Webkit-based), it would be nice if one could invoke the dialer. It turns out, you already can, via URLs such as tel:+49/89/12345. Dots, slashes and a prefixed plus are all handled corrrectly. SMS URLs and Skype URLs are also possible.

MVV und MVG fürs Handy

Es gibt mittlerweile zwei ganz nette mobile Auskünfte für den Nahverkehr in München.

• www.efa.mobi: Die MVV-Auskunft, mobil.
  
• mobil.mvg-live.de: Hier wird angezeigt, welche Verkehrsmittel demnächst an einer bestimmten Haltestelle abfahren. Zeigt leider nicht die S-Bahnen an. Beim MVV gibt es den „Abfahrtsmonitor“, der alles anzeigt.
  

Microsoft and netbooks

The same old anti-competitive tactics: Microsoft strikes back at Linux netbook push. Sad, really. And all that while they have a reasonably strong offering with Windows 7 and it's not clear how much mainstream appeal Linux will ever have (I've heard good things about the latest Ubuntu, though). [Source: dzone.com]

WiMax: Not that good in practice?

WiMax has been pushed hard for a while now by Intel and, as a consequence, is increasingly showing up in laptops. The idea is great: If WiFi is there, you use a really fast connection, in all other cases, you still have the fairly fast WiMax. Even the name sugggests that WiMax is a complement to WiFi. Of course, it has a competitor---the cell phone networks: HSPA is not as fast as WiFi, but it is much more widely deployed.
I haven't used either of these technologies, yet, so I don't know they compare. As an update on this competition, I've just read that one company that is currently deploying WiMax calls it a "miserable failure".