BBC reported on a students' mobile film challenge. Producing films for the smallest of screens - mobile phones - presented a big challenge for media students at the University of Wales, Newport.

The shortest of shorts and animations each had to be no more than 30 seconds long but this was not the only problem.

First year student Alex Rainish said: "You've got to ensure the main action is big enough so it can be seen on the display of a mobile phone".

The films have been showcased at a mobile phone shop in the city.

Chris Bennewith, multi-media programme leader at Newport's School of Art, Media and Design, said that the new generation of mobile phones were versatile but still faced challenges for showing film.

He said: "The mobile screens are still quite small and it's very difficult to see detail - this project has shown that up.

Nokia has begun selling its much-anticipated 770 Internet Tablet through a direct-sales website serving 12 European countries. The device is still listed in the "expected soon" area of Nokia's US website, however.

The 770 Internet Tablet is Nokia's first consumer product based on Linux. It is a small tablet based on a 220MHz ARM processor, with integrated WiFi and Bluetooth, and various Internet clients.

The 770 was expected to ship in September, at prices around $350, but was delayed last month, for unknown reasons. The device has been approved by the FCC for sale in the US.

The 770 is available through Nokia's direct sales European website, which serves Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. It is priced at 349 Euros (~$412).

Meanwhile, US users can sign up for email availability alerts through a product information page on Nokia's US website.

Source : LinuxDevices.com

Also, a Nokia 770 Accessory Guide is availaible at Internet Tablet Talk.

Nokia yesterday unveiled the new Safari-based Web browser for its S60 smartphone software and platform. The new browser is "aimed to provide smartphone users with a true Web experience and industry leading performance when browsing full Web pages on the Internet using a smartphone" and is available to S60 licensees as part of the S60 3rd Edition offering. As announced earlier this year, the new Web browser for S60 is based on the WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple’s Safari Web Kit, which it says is the industry’s "smallest and fastest" open-source full Web rendering engine for mobile devices and is the same engine that Apple uses in the Safari internet browser.

The browser's open-source codebase and extensible architecture will enable other industry parties, such as S60 licensees and the open source community, to develop new features for the browser, according to Nokia. The company says that S60 application developers can use open APIs to build on top of the browser--to render rich content within their application. Nokia says it is committed to open-source, and intends to actively participate in the open-source community to further develop and enhance the browser, contributing Nokia's expertise in mobility.

Source : MacNN

Nokia announced the N92 which offers a 2.8 inch, 16 million color, 320 x 240 display. It can twist into an LCD viewfinder like a handheld video camera or sit on a table like a portable DVD player. With Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DBV-H), it will enable the users to watch broadcast TV programs.

It has a 2 megapixel camera for taking great snaps and an additional integrated VGA camera. The internal memory is 90 MB which can be increased to 2 GB easily with a memory card. For connectivity, there is 802.11g Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, infrared and Bluetooth wireless technology. It runs on Symbian OS and Series 60 third edition and will be availaible in mid-2006.

Sony has been installing a hidden software in PCs, when people buy music albums published by Sony BMG Music and play them on their computers. This software is called Extended Copy Protection (XCP) which uses techniques similar to those used by viruses, trojans and spywares to hide itself from the user. All this is done for preventing unauthorized music copying.

WMAPlus is an advanced wma player for phones running on Symbian OS v7.0 and above like Nokia 6600, 7610, 6630, 6680, etc. It is the first music player for Symbian phones that supports the WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. Other supported formats are mp3, aac, amr, mid, ogg, mp4 and mp4a. Another interesting feature is that it lets you set wma files as ringtones.

Gizmondo finally launched in US on 22nd October and is priced at $229.

Mobile review has given a nice detailed review of Sony Ericsson P990 hardware, with pictures.

The Music Player which is used in Nokia's N91 and other new phones is availaible for download at Nokia 6630 Support page.

I just came across this cool trick. Now you can use your Gmail account as a virtual drive for storing data.