Mobile devices turn up the heat

Shipments more than double, with the Nokia 7650 putting Symbian at the top of the OS charts Figures for EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) shipments of mobile devices in Q3 showed a 104 per cent growth over the corresponding quarter in 2001, figures from research group Canalys show. This puts an end to four consecutive quarters of decline. The market is led by the introduction of a single phone, Nokia's 7650, which has been in such demand by retailers that Nokia temporarily ran out of stock in September. ...more

First intra-satellite link lasers into life

The first communication between two different orbits around the earth has been made by a Japanese and a European satellite over a laser beam. Scientists managed to link Japan's Kirari satellite which orbits at 610km above the earth to Europe's Artemis satellite in geo stationary orbit 36,000km away while both were travelling at relative speeds of several kilometres per second. Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency said that making and maintaining the connection is like 'hitting the eye of a needle placed on top of Mount Fuji'. ...more

Sun and Intel join forces on Solaris

Sun has teamed up with Intel for a new range of 64bit server and workstation systems running Solaris, Windows and Linux on Xeon processors. The new ranges will serve the enterprise and telco sectors and focus on performance and energy efficiency with single, dual and multi-processor sockets. They are expected to become available in the first half of this year. ...more

Mozilla tests improved Firefox

Mozilla has begun testing builds of Firefox that include a new spatial navigation feature. This lets users navigate links in Web pages using the cursor keys; links are selected based on their relative visual positions. The feature was initially developed for Minimo, Mozilla's browser for portable devices and may become a default accessibility tool in future Firefox releases. ...more

Sprint PCS goes MP3 mobile

American telecom company Sprint PCS is launching a new online service that will allow users to download MP3 files to their mobile phones. The company plans to start selling a new mobile phone that doubles as an MP3 player. The user will then be able to download music files from a personal locker stored on the Hit Hive Web site. ...more