Related link: http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/2630/

In a recent announcement, AOL noted that Sudoku (the Japanese, number placing puzzle) is a term that has quickly risen to the ranks of their leading search terms… the term has made the list of Top 25 AOL search terms for 2005. This addictive game is available from numerous publishers and typically ranges in price from $3 - $9, although free versions can be found if you look hard enough. UIQ, S60, S80, and Java flavors are available.

About Sudoku
Sudoku has turned everyday puzzle players into Sudoku fanatics. There’s no math involved. The grid has numbers, but nothing has to add up to anything else. You solve the puzzle with reasoning and logic. It’s fun. It’s challenging. It’s addictive!

We looked around and have featured details of a number of mobile Sodoku apps that are available for your smartphone.. enjoy! See HERE

Related link: http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/2660/108/

Not yet officially available, however, Opera software have removed the download restrictions “temporarily” enabling users to download and test this nifty new web browser.
FYI:

Opera Mini is free to download and use and does not require any registration fee.
Your phone must be able to run Java applications, and GPRS Internet connections.
The Opera Mini server uses the same engine as desktop installs of Opera, so it has the same capabilities as Opera for desktop.
Opera Mini is expected to be officially launched in early 2006

What do you get when you mix Asterisk with Ruby on Rails? How about a powerful and open platform for creating the next generation of voice applications. Joe Heitzeberg has developed the Ruby Asterisk Gateway Interface (RAGI), an open-source framework for bridging the Ruby on Rails web application server environment and Asterisk, the open-source PBX. According to Joe, the two fit together like chocolate and peanut butter.

Using RAGI, you can now easily and quickly develop voice applications that run with the power of Asterisk underneatht the hood. Check out Joe’s article for a taste of this Voice 2.0 peanut butter cup, and if it leaves you craving more be sure to attend his Ruby on Rails with Asterisk workshop at our upcoming Emerging Telephony Conference.

Related link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/technology/20rim.html

Of the 5 patents at the heart of the RIM and NTP lawsuit, the US Patent Office notified both companies that they’ll likely reject all patents that are under review.

Both companies are trying to spin this their way. From the article:

“It was a resounding rejection of NTP’s position,” James L. Balsillie, R.I.M.’s chairman and co-chief executive said on a telephone interview from the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. “The jig is up. I think the world is now starting to realize what is happening.”

Yet somehow the lawyers at NTP see the USPTO’s review of the patents as irrelevant in the current lawsuit:

Mr. Stout and lawyers for NTP said that the two processes were wholly separate, and that an injunction against R.I.M. remained a possibility. “We’re not going to go away silently,” Mr. Stout said. “Unless the case is settled, it keeps on going.”

Hmm. So even though the patent in the dispute are going to be rejected, NTP still wants to move forward with the injunction? IANAL, but I don’t think it’s likely they’ll find much support with that position.

Hot on the heels of last week’s Jingle announcement, comes Google’s release of LibJingle, an open API for their GoogleTalk service. Tim’s happy to see APIs like this opening up in time for our Emerging Telephony conference, where developers can get together and start mashing this stuff up. Tom Keating has written a good blog post on the topic, detailing what was released and looking forward to some of the possibilities.

The GoogleTalk API release just makes Norman Lewis’s comments in my recent interview with him seem all the more insightful:

Stewart: Which obstacles to innovation in internet telephony do you think will be removed in 2006, and which will take a longer time to remove?

Lewis: Emerging voice players such as Google and Yahoo are embracing open platform models in other parts of their businesses. It’s likely that their voice services will be opened in a similar manner, potentially enabling a period of real innovation around voice. This could parallel the rise of mash-ups we’ve seen this year that could further displace traditionally closed Telco VoIP efforts.

Russel Shaw is reporting over on ZDNet’s VoIP blog that Skype is announcing today that Mandriva Linux will now ship with Skype support built right in. This will be the first Linux distribution that offers Skype “out of the box” (or probably more appropriately for a Linux distro, “in the download”). Good move on both Mandriva and Skype’s part.

I posted a teaser of this on Wednesday, but here’s the full text of my interview with Norman Lewis, the director of reseach for France Telecom’s Home office and a keynote speaker at our upcoming Emerging Telephony conference. Norman has a lot to say about the future of the VoIP industry, the role that telcos will play, and he clearly understands that paradigms are rapidly changing in the world of communications. He’s also been actively involved in working on issues related to the Digital Divide. I’m really looking forward to his ETel keynote, Telco Is Dead–Long Live the Communications Company.

Remember, readers of this site can register for the Emerging Telephony conference in San Francisco, January 24-26, and get a 40% discount! Just use the discount code etel06v40 when you sign up.

The Jabber folks have just announced that they’ll be releasing Jingle, an open set of extensions to the IETF’s Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for use in VoIP, video, and other peer-to-peer multimedia sessions. Jingle is based on the protocol that Google uses in GoogleTalk, and the specs were co-written by engineers from Google and Jabber. A growing list of comapnies have already pledged support for the open protocol with a cute name, including Antepo, Cerulean Studios (Trillian), Coversant, Digium (Asterisk), Gaim, Jive Software, Novamens, Psi, SAPO, and Tipic. From the press release:

“Jingle provides a powerful framework for peer-to-peer multimedia sessions,” said Peter Saint-Andre, Executive Director of the Jabber Software Foundation and co-author of the Jingle specifications. “Thanks to Google’s commitment to open standards, the Jabber community can now build a wide range of new applications, from voice and video to file sharing, gaming, application casting, shared editing, and whiteboarding.”

Related link: http://m.gmail.com

In BlackBerry Hacks, Hack #29 is Six Ways to Check Your Gmail from a BlackBerry. I’ll need to add a couple more ways now.

That’s because today Google just announced Gmail Mobile which provides a nice interface to your Gmail from a mobile browser. A lot of the functionality that you’ve grown to love in Gmail remains present in Gmail Mobile (minus the Ajax), with a few extra features that are great additions.

Just go to http://m.gmail.com in your mobile browser and you’re greeted with the following login screen:

Once you enter your username and password, you’re redirected to your inbox just as you would be on a desktop browser. You’ll see 10 email conversations per page instead of the 50 to a page you normally.

You’ll have access to your starred messages (there’s one in the above image) as well as the ability to reply, forward, archive, star, and mark unread any messages you view.

There’s a search form at the bottom of each page in Gmail Mobile that you can use to search your 2.5 GB of email. This function works just as you’d expect:

At first, I thought Gmail’s excellent labeling feature was bypassed - but it’s simply hidden. You can choose which labels are displayed in the main view by clicking on more views:

You’re then taken to a view where you can choose which labels or folders (inbox, archived, sent, etc) appear on your Gmail Mobile page.

The items you select on this screen are displayed at the bottom of each Gmail Mobile page, much like the sidebar in regular Gmail.

Here’s a great feature that might just motivate me to populate some data into my very much neglected Gmail contacts. When you add a phone number into one of your Gmail contacts, an email to or from them will allow you to call their number directly from the email message you’re viewing:

This is a great feature that the BlackBerry has sported for years and it’s always been a user favorite.

When addressing a new message, there is an Add Receipients button which takes you to your frequently mailed contact list where you can add multiple recipients to the message easily.

Here’s the reply screen which works as you’d expect it to. The only feature worth mentioning is the ability to include the quoted text.

There’s no doubt Gmail access just got quite a bit better from your BlackBerry or any mobile phone. For a nice BlackBerry app that gives you a great interface for checking your Gmail, check out Gmail Mobile for the BlackBerry.

Related link: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8EGQIP03.htm?campaign_id=apn_tech_…

Just as I speculated just days ago, NTP has found some more lucrative targets to attack (albeit indirectly).

On the same day that it was announced that NTP had purchased an equity stake in Visto, a “mobile email startup”, Visto filed a suit against Microsoft claiming that they are violating 3 of its patents relating to wireless email.

Ironically, this news comes out on the same day that the US Patent Office rejected another of the 5 patents at the center of the RIM patent infringement case. All the patents in the case have either been rejected or are pending a review by the patent office.

Even though this next target is Microsoft who knows a little about defending itself in court, am I the only one that thinks this hot new industry (buy patent, sue companies with deep pockets, then profit) is terrible for technology?

There’s been a lot of talk recently about creating a tiered or metered Internet, which is being pushed for by the telcos and cable providers. The access providers want the ability to segment and prioritize Internet traffic so they can both give higer priority to their own services and charge others for a higher class of service. Everyone seems to think this is a pretty bad idea except the telco and cable execs, and now possibly the FCC Chairman. The big online content and application providers are pushing instead for a formal recoginition of Net Neutrality, which would forbid these kind of tiering practices.

The Washington Post reported back in the beginning of December that BellSouth CTO William L. Smith told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be, for example, able to charge Yahoo for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than Google. Smith made comparisons to first class vs. coach airline tickets and ground vs. express package delivery, and wondered why he shouldn’t be able to offer similar tiered service options.

Now the Boston Globe weighs in with a report that AT&T and BellSouth are agressively lobbying congress for just this sort of plan to be included in next year’s telecom legislation overhaul, and the issue is largely about the telcos being able to gurantee a quality of service sufficient for IPTV. Their own IPTV anyway, as the skeptics see a scenario unfolding where the access providers don’t allow other content providers to have the same level of quality as their own offerings.

The Age is also covering the issue, noting that to some companies the telcos use of terms like “priotization” and “quality of service” suggest more sinister intentions. “If a company talks about quality of service, it could be code for discrimination among sources of content,” said Paul Misener, vice president of public policy for Amazon.com.

This is shaping up as a battle between the Internet service providers and the large content and application providers. But it’s not just Google, Yahoo, Skype and their brethren that are concerned about having to pay a toll to the carriers to guarantee a high quality of service, the little guys should be worried too. It’s hard to imagine that any kind of tiered or metered net traffic plan could be good for innovation, but it’s easy to imagine how such a plan could give additional advantage to the large entrenched players. At least one influential congressman is skeptical of the telco plan though, as the Globe reports that Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member on the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, stated ‘’I don’t understand why we would tinker with the model that has been so wildly successful.”

I think the battle is just beginning and it’s not just about IPTV. VoIP is a key factor here, the telcos see their business models being shattered and they’d love nothing more than the chance to “prioritize” some of these services out of existence. And they very well may have the upper hand at this point, as recent comments by FCC Chairman Martin about taxing VoIP and not seeing a need for net neutrality rules certainly make it sound like he’s already in their pocket. Another disturbing factor pointed out by Catherine Yang in BusinessWeek is that the telcos have vastly more experience lobbying in D.C. and wielding influence than the relatively new Internet companies, after all they’ve been buying favors and politicians for decades. Compare that to the fact that Google has a single lobbyist on the payroll, and he was just hired this year.

Clay Shirky sums up the telco perspecitve in his inimitable way over on boingboing:

“We like everything about the internet, except the way it keeps us from locking out the competition, so we want something just like the net, except less useful to the user, but with more pricing power for us.”

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin recently commented that he’ll be looking seriously at taxing VoIP providers by forcing them to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF), and that he favored a “numbers-based approach,” which ties taxes to telephone numbers with no regard for the underlying technology. “I think telephone numbers are a good, easy mechanism to begin to address those issues,” Martin said.

Rich Tehrani nails some of the problems with this approach:

Mr. Martin is reported as saying all phone numbers should be paying into the fund regardless of underlying technology. As soon as this happens there will be a massive push to ENUM and people will bypass phone numbers altogether. We really don’t need phone numbers and taxing them is illogical.

Worse, are we going to tax US based numbers? All phone numbers? If we tax US based numbers then how many people will switch their phone numbers to international numbers? How will we police this?

The world is changing. VoIP is changing it and the old rules don’t apply. Making blanket statements about phone numbers in a world where phone numbers have less and less meaning will just push the market further and faster away from phone numbers. Then what do we do?

There’s some new Skype gadgets coming out just in time for Christmas. Like some spiffy new headsets from Icemat and Sennheiser, and these dual OS (Mac and PC-compatible) Skype phones. They’ll all be available shortly at the Skype online store or at your local RadioShack. We’re working on a Skype Gadget Round-Up where we’ll show you all the latest add-ons and put them through their paces. Check back soon!

New Scientist is reporting that the gaming company Artificial Life is readying an immersive MMORPG that will run on 3G cell phones. The game will let players assume a virtual persona and travel through a futuristic cityscape, chatting and interacting with computer-controlled characters as well as other human players while trying to solve puzzles that can be solved more easily through cooperation. I’m trying to get my head around how well that would work on a small phone screen, but Artifical Life’s CEO is very bullish on 3G games and entertainment:

“The future for mobile entertainment and games lies in this kind of sophisticated, massive multi-player games,” says CEO of Artificial Life, Eberhard Schoenebur. “This is what the 3G mobile carriers need to attract customers.”

This could get pretty interesting as mobile games begin to incorporate location-based phone technology to do things like blend real video footage with computer graphics. A rudimentary proof-of-concept was recently developed at the University of Singapore, where a version of the classic game Pac-Man was created that uses 3D graphics superimposed over real city streets. A telling comment at the end of the New Scientist article may shed a little more light on where this is headed, noting that Artificial Life hopes its mobile multiplayer game will provide a popular way of meeting new people and maybe even become a novel dating tool.
(Thanks Brian!)

I just finished doing a fascinating interview with Norman Lewis, the Director of Technology Research for France Telecom’s ISP, Wanadoo, and a keynote speaker at our upcoming Emerging Telephony conference. I’ve been impressed with what I’ve learned of Norman’s work, and it sounds like France Telecom is a telco that really “gets” all this emerging telephony stuff. I’ll be publishing the full interview in the next day or two, but I wanted to give you a taste now…

Stewart: Who thinks they own this space: the Telco’s, the ISP’s, or the Google/Yahoo/EBay trinity?

Lewis: Actually no-one but the customer ‘owns this space’. If there’s anything we should learn from history is that user behaviour and social forces will determine the shape of this space in the future. Just remember the first predictions on telephony itself!

But there is a sea change taking place. Telcos have begun to understand that voice is simply another data service over wireless or wired networks and that this migration of voice into the application layer opens voice to competition from other application-level players, such as portals. Though it appears GTalk, Y! Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger and eBay’s Skype could commoditise Telcos as simple pipe-providers, it should be remembered that Telco expertise in identity and authentication, quality of service, convergence, billing and customer care, places them in a strong and potentially dominant position. This space will become hotly contested: Telcos believe they can maintain their positions while ISPs, MNOs, portals and others believe they too can occupy this space and thus overturn old hegemonies.

‘Telcos’ in the traditional sense of the term will not occupy this space. VOIP is destroying existing business models and they will be disintermediated. But in the words of Lawrence of Arabia, ‘nothing is written’ – yesterday’s Telcos can transform themselves if they recognize this threat and become 21st Century converged communication platforms.

Hot on the heels of Yahoo!’s announcement of penny-per-minute VoIP to PSTN calling from their IM client, Microsoft and SIPphone are both jumping into the ring. Microsoft has announced a partnership with MCI to provide PC to phone calling in the near future, though at a disappointing 2.3 cents per minute. But SIPphone stepped right up to the plate offering standard 1 cent VoIP to phone calling rates anywhere in the U.S. Key industry watchers like Om Malik and Andy Abramson are declaring that the price war is now officially on.

This field is going to get crowded quickly, and it will be interesting to see what impact all the competition will have on the costs of getting from VoIP to the PSTN. Not to mention how Skype will fare now that the big boys have started moving into its territory. As services ratchet up and new applications emerge will we see free calling between the public telephone and the IP networks?

I know I’m a little late to this party, but like all good VoIP bloggers I should point to and comment on Jeff Pulver’s annual predictions for the IP communications industry. (You can’t really run an “Emerging Telephony” site without paying attention to what Jeff is up to.) One thing I appreciate is that he doesn’t shy away from his previous guesses, he’s also written a follow-up on his 2005 predictions that takes a frank look at how well he did. Pretty good actually.

Some of Jeff’s predictions this year seem obvious and right on: broadband penetration will continue to grow in the U.S. but not fast enough to raise our global standing in this area, lobbyists and policy-makers will continue to try and hamper new technologies with outdated rules and regulations, and the major Internet players will increase their efforts to influence communications policy. The most intersting prediction to me on his list this year, and the one I’m least in agreement with, is that filmakers will start going “direct to the Net” in 2006 and we’ll start seeing TV shows and movies debuting on the Internet first. I agree this will happen, but I’m skeptical that we’ll see it really take off next year. I think there’s still significant user-experience improvements that will need to be realized before the film and TV industries embrace the net in this way.

In additon to his yearly industry predictions, Jeff also recently publishes an annual list of what he considers the top VoIP blogs. One of my goals is to make sure Emerging Telephony is on that list next year!

Related link: http://mobile.blackberry.com

Here’s a nice present to go under your handheld tree - holiday ringtones for your BlackBerry. You’ll need to have one of the polyphonic BlackBerry devices to be able to use them.

Bring up a browser and go to http://mobile.blackberry.com and click on Holiday Ringtones for Polyphonic Devices. Then wade through the 8 pages of terms and conditions and click “I agree” and you’ll be presented with 12 ringtones ranging from Auld Lang Syne to Silver Bells. Be careful if you’re in a quiet place (like a library) - the tones take a few seconds to download and then start playing automatically.

If you’re lucky enough to be using version 4.1 of the handheld code, you can assign different ringtones to each contact - that way you’ll know who is calling without taking your device out of its holster.

O’Reilly has just released a new book I’ve been eagerly awaiting, Skype Hacks by Andrew Sheppard . As Andrew points out, saving money is really just the beginning of what you can do with Skype. Besides covering the basics, this book shows how to integrate Skype into web pages, write scripts to automate Skype, and deal with performance and quality issues.

To get a taste there are five sample hacks from the book available for free online (PDF):
Hack 43: Make Calls from Your Web Browser
Hack 44: Accelerate Skype Using Your Keyboard
Hack 45: Tweak Skype by Editing config.xml
Hack 47: Display the Technical Details of a Call
Hack 49: Add Fast-Dial Shortcuts to Your Menu or Desktop

I’m not a Vonage user, but if I was this new wifi phone would probably be at the top of my christmas list. The UTStarcom F1000 Wi-Fi Phone is a pocket-sized, wireless Internet phone that uses Vonage service by connecting to wireless hotspots and wifi networks. The list price is $129.99, but there’s currently a $50 instant rebate offer to sweeten the deal.

Related link: http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/

I’m pleased to announce O’Reilly’s new Emerging Telephony site - ETel for short. We’ll be covering VoIP, Asterisk, voice and mobile applications, as well as the policy and regulatory issues that impact these important technologies.

In addition to daily blogging and the exclusive in-depth articles you’ll find here, we’ll be spotlighting the new related O’Reilly books, like Switching to VoIP and Asterisk: The Future of Telephony and Skype Hacks. We’ll have these authors chiming in on the blog from time to time, too.

We’ll also be talking about our important new conference of the same name, the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. Look for interviews and articles from keynote speakers, plus in-depth coverage of the event itself (especially if you can’t make it to San Francisco next January 24-26).

Check it out and let us know what you think.

I always enjoy O’Reilly editor Andy Oram’s take on things, he’s not afraid to express an opinion or delve into the social, cultural, and political aspects of the technologies he’s watching. His latest article is no exception and his wide-ranging report from this year’s VON conference covers a lot of ground as he analyzes the latest trends and issues in the VoIP industry. From new products to security issues to what the politicos are (and aren’t) saying about the future of VoIP, there’s something for everyone. Andy notices that the enterprise is still where the action is in North America in VoIP is All Business at VON.

Phillip over on the MAKE: blog has found a nifty tip that describes how to use the same Special Information Tones (SIT) that the Telezapper uses to fend off telemarketers on your voice mail or answering machine. You can download the tones for free from Private Citizen, add them to the front of your greeting, and send the automatic dialers off on their merry way.

In what can’t be considered an unexpected move, Yahoo! has added PC-to-Phone and Phone-to-PC features to Yahoo! Messenger, which squarely competes with SkypeIn/SkypeOut. Yahoo! launched a public beta of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice today, which enables enhanced PC-based calling capabilities and VoIP connections to and from the PSTN. Rates are low, with most calls costing a penny per minute, undercutting Skype’s current rates for their similar service.

So who’s next, Google or Microsoft?

Matthew Gast delves into the mathematics of capacity calculations in his latest O’Reilly article How Many Voice Callers Fit on the Head of an Access Point? If you’re engineering a VoIP network you should take a look at Matthew’s analysis of the theoretical maximum capacity of access points to carry VoIP traffic over 802.11a, b, and g. Matthew is the author of 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide.

Over the summer, I came across a capacity calculation in the manual for a Cisco voice over IP phone detailing the number of simultaneous calls that can be supported on an access point. Intrigued, I extended the analysis. Voice and data on wireless LANs require opposing preconditions for good performance. High-quality voice requires that frames containing voice data can be transmitted very quickly after arrival, and they need to be transmitted on a very regular schedule with tight timing requirements. Good data throughput comes from stuffing the transmission queue as full as possible. Individual frames might suffer long delays, but the overall capacity is high. Voice quality is often very sensitive to network load.

Say you want to route interoffice calls over your company’s wide area network instead of via conventional telephone lines or point-to-point leased lines. Your telephone system is an outdated heap of junk that was designed circa 1970. How do you trick it into routing interoffice calls via VoIP? Brian McConnell shows you exactly how to achieve this bit of VoIP wonder in his recent O’Reilly Network weblog Telecom Recipes - Upgrading Old Telephone Systems To Use VoIP For Inter-Office Calls.

Probably old hat for readers of this site, but if you’re looking for something to point your boss at to explain all this VoIP stuff, Ted Wallingford has written an excellent summary in his O’Reilly Network article, What is VoIP?

Ted covers the different technologies that make up VoIP, as well as looks at some of the reasons for it’s growing popularity and where the technoloy is headed. Ted knows of what he speaks, he’s the author of Switching to VoIP, which has been getting rave reviews as a hands-on practical guide for telecom professionals making the switch.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the family of technologies that allow IP networks to be used for voice applications, such as telephony, voice instant messaging, and teleconferencing. VoIP entails solutions at almost every layer of an IP network–from specialized voice applications (like Skype) all the way down to low-level quality measures that keep those applications running smoothly.

I’m excited to announce the launch of our new O’Reilly site devoted to what we’re calling “Emerging Telephony.” We’ll be covering the latest happenings in telecommunications, from VoIP and Internet Telephony to new mobile applications and devices to the policy and regulatory issues that impact these important technologies. Please check back regularly or subscribe to our feed: you’ll find news, analysis, reviews, and the in-depth technical articles you’ve come to expect from O’Reilly.

I’ve been the editorial director for O’Reilly’s online publishing group for several years, but my background is in telecommunications, and I’m happy to be back in this space. I managed the telecom departments of two different California universities during the 1990s (back when VoIP was just a pipe dream and one of the campus connections to the internet was a 56K leased line), and I’ve kept my eyes on this constantly evolving industry. Clearly, there’s a lot of action to cover.

In addition to daily blogging and the exclusive online content you’ll find here, we’ll be spotlighting the new related O’Reilly books, like Switching to VoIP and Asterisk: The Future of Telephony and Skype Hacks. We’ll have these authors chiming in on the blog from time to time, too.

We’ll also be talking about our important new conference of the same name, the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. Look for interviews and articles from keynote speakers, plus in-depth coverage of the event itself (especially if you can’t make it to San Francisco next January 24-26). I’m thrilled to announce that readers of this site can immediately qualify for a substantial discount for this conference — just sign up using the code etel06v40 and you’ll get a 40% discount! I hope to see you there.

I’m confident you’ll find our Emerging Telephony website a valuable stop in your online quest for telephony news and views. I’m also looking forward to hearing what you all have to say. As Alexander Graham Bell himself once said, “Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.”

Leave a comment, skype or IM me at BruceETel, or drop me a line at bruce@oreilly.com. Let’s get the conversation started.

This bout is, of course, too big for even Don King. What’s left to promote?

In one corner you’ve got RIM (the “good guy”), the popular maker of the BlackBerry device which has become a staple in many corporations across the globe. In the other corner you’ve got NTP (the “bad guy”), a company that produces no actual products but simply buys patents and sues companies that they believe infringe on their patents (apparently a darn good business, unfortunately).

A sidenote: try googling for NTP. NTP’s home page doesn’t even show up in the results. That’s because they’re competing with a network protocol for Google PageRank. “NTP” is most commonly known as the network time protocol. They may as well have named their company HTTP. You’d think that they could afford to come up with a little snazzier web site, but I digress.

What started out as a minor nuisance for RIM has turned into a serious problem. The case has escalated over the last couple years to the point where RIM and BlackBerry users everywhere are having to come to grips with the possibility of RIM having to shut down it’s BlackBerry platform to comply with the injunction. (Sounds like NTP is landing some body blows.)

Meanwhile, the federal government filed a briefing with the court asking to have their BlackBerrys excluded from any injunction. (Chalk up a round for RIM.)

RIM has repeatedly assured customers that they have created a software workaround that would avoid the patents in question and could be implemented in short order. Most agree that this would be a risky move that could result in some downtime for customers. (RIM gets a whiff of some smelling salts in their corner.)

Just days later after it seemed that RIM was staggering from a knockout blow, the US Patent Office nullified one of the 8 patents still at the core of NTP’s case. More re-examinations of the remaing patents at issue are still pending. (Now body blows from RIM!)

Shortly after this news broke, it leaked that RIM hasn’t even been in contact with NTP for the possibility of an out of court settlement since May, when their first tentative agreement fell through. (An uppercut from NTP.) The very next day RIM issued a response saying that they have been in contact with NTP through a mediator. (I’d give that round to RIM - barely.)

The headlines sure have been entertaining as well. Take this one: NTP Patent Keeps BlackBerry in a Jam.

If you’re weary from this ongoing drama, it might simply be a case of BlackBerry thumb (as I mention in BlackBerry Hacks, there is a cure.)

So if you’re worried about your trusty BlackBerry becoming nothing more than a paper weight, fear not. There are many folks out there in the same boat (even the lead attorney for NTP!!) and many others who believe a settlement (not a head-fake this time) is around the corner.

A settlement would seem to be in the best interest of both fighters, er, companies and neither of them gets knocked out.

Related link: http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/7567/28/

By now you’ve heard the news… Autodesk Corp. has thrown their hat into Open Source movement via a collaboration with DM Solutions Group (Canadian-based web mapping consultants) and the University of Minnesota. Together they plan to advance open source web mapping technologies, mainly via the contribution of Autodesk’s new map server product, MapServer Enterprise, to the Open Source movement. We look at what this move involves, compare it to the Google maps initiative, and discuss the licensing. This move is significant to:
- the MapServer Open source community
- the Mapguide user community
- the geospatial industry
- the broader IT industry

The article takes a look at how this compares to Google’s move with the “open” API. See http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/7567/28/

Related link: http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/7589/

Today is a huge day for Microsoft… enter Windows Local Live (http://local.live.com/)! By now we are all familiar with Google Maps and the amazing functionality provided via the web service. Now we have another very slick alternative product to help visualize your search, provide directions, maps, imagery, and other “local” information. I’m off to Seattle this week-end for some “fun” so as a testbed I queries Seattle for a Starbucks close to my hotel. As can be expected a number of hits resulted. I was presented with the familiar “MapPointish” map and started panning and zooming about… the server was extremely fast! Once I zoomed-in tight enough I notice an option to view bird’s-eye image.. http://images.gisuser.com/gut/livelocal1.jpg) clicking this tab results in the display of high-resolution, oblique aerial images… wow… I could spot pedestrians crossing the street… be sure to check this service out and please share your thoughts with us in the discussion forum.. or simply blast me your thoughts. See the PR at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/7589/

Related link: http://www.symbianone.com

Sony Ericsson Developer World Partner Manager Peter Ahnegård will participate in a panel discussion at The Mobile Games Forum at 2:15 p.m. on January 26, 2006. More information is available at http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/newsandevents/eventscal/p_eventscal.jsp

Panel discussion topic: Controlling the industry cost curve: the Future of QA and device support costs

Should we continuously try to support all handsets? Handsets are allowing more advanced applications but developers cannot take advantage of this because of operator restrictions. How do we balance application size restrictions with increased game quality and visuals? Making the industry standards more easy to navigate How can we achieve a more standardised market? Optimising the testing process so it becomes less painful and costly for developers and publishers. Where is the future of mobile gaming going? What are the prospects for Symbian, Java, Brew?

Participants in the debate include:
Peter Ahnegård, Partner Manager, Sony Ericsson Developer World

Tim Harrison, Head of Games, Vodafone Group Services
Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer, Sun Microsystems Inc
Marcelo Valdez, Senior Regional Director, Europe, Qualcomm
Deborah Potts, Director of Deployment, Jamdat
Bill Pinnell, Head of Games, Symbian
Brent Melson , VP Technology, NSTL

Related link: http://www.symbianone.com

S60 3rd Edition Challenge for mobile developers - If you read the SymbianOne Monitor or frequent SymbianOne you’ve known about this for a couple of weeks now, however, just today Nokia has officially kicked off the S60 3rd edition challenge to developers… good luck chasing the €25,000 prize! See details at http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/2603/108/

Carbide.c++ Beta Testers Wanted - Carbide.c++ for Symbian OS, the development tools based on Eclipse and supporting the Series 60 and UIQ SDKs, has entered the Beta-testing phase and a recent posting on the developer portal puts out a call for testers - See http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/2597/108/

EDGE Coding Competition 2006 - Clickgamer Ltd, industry leading D2C retailer, announces a mobile game programming competition; the “Cutting EDGE Coding Competition 2006″ using the recently launched EDGE mobile game engine. See http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/2586/108/

The Smart Application Mobile Challenge - The “Smart Application Mobile Challenge” aims to promote development of mass intelligent applications through popularizing key mobile technologies (such as Series60 and SIP) among developers. Details at http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/2591/108/