~NIO- A Bluetooth-based alarm

'Nio', a device that can tell absent-minded technology geeks when they have left their mobile phone or laptop behind is soon to hit the shops!
This device sounds magical but in reality it is nothing but a key-ring-sized box of tricks that emits an alarm whenever a person's device is more than a certain distance away.
The device is the work of a 34-year-old gadget whizz ‘Ben Hounsell’, director of Tenbu Technologies based in Giles Street.
It uses Bluetooth technology to create an invisible wire, and whenever this wire is broken or when the user leaves the phone behind the key-ring emit a shrill alarm sound. The alarm may also make it easy to spot a potential theft.
Nio can be set to go off anywhere between 2 to 25 metres, and it can emit a police siren, a whoop or a Catchphrase buzzer sound.
The name Nio comes from Japan and is named after the fearsome looking statues outside Japanese Bhuddist temples that are there to protect the temple. The names will also appeal to Japanese customers, who are well known for their love of gadgets, especially computers and smart phones.
Hounsell said: “We see this device as a 'gadget guardian' - it's there to protect your device if it gets mislaid or stolen”.
Its creators are said to be in talks to be planning to sell it through Amazon within the next few months, and a number of High Street hardware stores by next year.
The device is currently available on their website www.bluenio.com.

Apps Help Users of iPhones Find Their Way...

Apple's iPhone doesn’t only serve to provide all da functionalities of a mobile phone with computers; it also helps users at the time of need, when they need to know the direction.
With its GPS features with include manual and written driving directions built into its standard Maps application makes it a multi-tasking device.
Apple has just started the application, now, a number of companies have launched, or will soon launch, iPhone apps that do offer voice-prompted, automated, turn-by-turn navigation.
This service is not at all new; many other cellphones have long offered such services. But the iPhone's large screen, decent mono speaker and large selection of car mounting kits make it a tempting navigation device...
There is one problem: Because Apple doesn't allow third-party iPhone apps to run simultaneously with the device's core functions, any incoming or outgoing phone call will interrupt all these apps during routing. When the call is over, the apps will automatically resume and continue your route. And none of these apps work on the original iPhone, only the 3G and 3GS. Some of the apps take up a large amount of space on your iPhone, because they store all their maps locally. Others are much slimmer, because they download the apps on the fly, but these require you to have good cellular or Wi-Fi coverage at least at the start of a navigation session.
This new apps out performs many others at navigation, though they have different styles and features.
Let us have a closer look at the similar application provided by other cellphone makers:
1) TomTom: The U.S. and Canada navigation app costs $100 and takes up 1.2 gigabytes of space on phone. But there is no subscription fee and the maps are always present like a stand-alone navigation device. The drawback being, TomTom's app doesn't have live traffic information, doesn't provide a text summary of your planned route doesn't announce street names and doesn't integrate control of the iPhone's music player.
2) Navigon MobileNavigator: This app costs $90, and it takes up 1.3 GB on the iPhone because it also stores all the maps. There is no recurring fee. The app barks the word "caution" when you are speeding. But the Navigon voice was the least distinct. It also lacks a route summary and live-traffic report.
3) MotionX-GPS Drive: This app cost $1.99 and includes a 30-day free trial. After that, it's $25 a year. This one looks and works most like a typical iPod app, and least like a navigation program ported from another device. Its main screen has a clever menu arranged in a circle. It's also fairly small—just 10 megabytes or so. But it must download maps and other info each time you start a route. This also allows it to update the information on the fly. It is packed with features, including live traffic, a route summary, and integrated music control, but it doesn't announce street names, and its function buttons are very small and labeled with tiny type.
4) AT&T Navigator: The iPhone version of this existing service, like Drive, downloads maps and info on the fly, but it takes up even less space on the phone—just 2.3 megabytes. That means you need a good connection at the start of a trip. Its interface is clean, and it has a route summary, live traffic and announcement of street names. And it synchronizes saved addresses with a Web site. But it is potentially the priciest. The app itself is free but usage costs $10 a month.

YouTube to 'Rent' streaming videos…

YouTube, one of the grade-A, top-line, and biggest websites on the net today is also one of the web's biggest disasters in terms of the revenues it earns.
Reports says, Google will lose about half a billion dollars running the site this year.
Apart from a few ads, there's really no revenue making stream for the impossibly popular site.
To cope up with this, Google has come up with the very idea of ‘renting movies’.
But the idea of doing all of this in the web browser as opposed to, say, Apple's approach, which lets movie renters watch a film on their computer, their phone, or their television via the Apple TV box puts a question marks on the success of this new proposal.
Also the obvious question arises: Who will pay to watch videos online?
According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube is eyeing a $3.99 rental price, on par with the competition and other video-on-demand services. Alternately, some movies may be streamed for free, with commercial breaks or other ad sponsorship.
WSJ cites people familiar with the matter who say that while details vary depending on the studio – some will offer streamed rentals for a fee while others will offer them for free but with advertising – the cost of a rental would likely be around $3.99, the price Apple charges for new releases on iTunes.
YouTube is talking to Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Sony Corp., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. about charging for new titles on the existing YouTube site. In some cases, these titles might be available on the site on the same day that they come...
On the other hand, YouTube’s Consumers are always reluctant to pay for something they’d formerly gotten for free -- and even when YouTube began to add embedded advertisements to the service, users staged loud and angry mini-revolts. While YouTube has been working on building links with a few key services and products like TiVo, it’s unclear whether paid rentals would be available on any platform beyond the website (where it would be much easier to arrange for payment).
Would the consumers be willing to pay four bucks to watch a movie on a little screen on their computer? Well... maybe, if they were bored at the office and wanted to pretend like they were working!

~Nokia-Facebook Deal…

Finland based mobile phone maker Nokia on Wednesday challenged the iPhone maker Apple, by bolstering its smartphone line-up and announced a new location-based service "Lifecasting" with social networking site Facebook.
The deal with Facebook will allow Nokia users to update their location and status directly to the social networking site via a Nokia Ovi account. The first phone to support the service will be the ‘N97 mini’, which will start shipping to retailers in October at an estimated price before taxes and subsidies of €450 and comes with features such as a QWERTY keyboard and a fully customizable home.
This entire offering is supposed to be an effort to cope up with the fact that recently the company has witnessed a drop in its profit margins over the last few quarters as handset demands has slumped, and at the same time Nokia lagged Apple's innovativeness as the focus of cellphone businesses shifts to services and software. Nokia has been looking for business opportunities in offering services like music downloads or games to cellphone users as the handset market mature, but so far its offerings have been very limited.
Its new Booklet 3G netbook computers, is expected to be available for about 575 euros and run on Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.
With the move to making laptops, Nokia is crossing the border between two converging industries in the opposite direction. (Apple, which entered the phone industry in 2007 with the iPhone)