to hopefully change Africa’s Telecom Landscape.

All details in AllAfrica.com

http://allafrica.com/stories/200906260694.html

After yesterday’s Apple event announcing iPhone OS v.3.0, I guess the 30 millions of iPhone & iTouch are happy, as they will get this summer what most of them were waiting for.

New iPhone OS 3.0 new features

• Copy/Paste
• Multimedia Message System (MMS) – iPhone only
• Landscape format for Mail, SMS, Notepad
• Voice Memo
• Notes synchronization with Mac & PC
• Automatic connection to Wireless Hot-Spots (if you have an account)
• Spotlight allows  to search across the entire information contained in the device
• Search in Mail, Calendar, and iPod.
• Push notification for email
• 3G Tethering permits to connect a laptop to the Internet using the iPhone as a modem.
• Bluetooth stereo support
• Automatic login in Safari
• Safari Anti-Phishing protection
• “Shake to Shuffle”

  and lots more features which will certainly gives Developers plenty opportunities to come with some great applications.

Update will be free for all iPhone users and 9.95 USD for iTouch ones.

Now we have to wait till this summer, or try the beta available here

Internet is 20 years old… according to Microsoft, in 10 years, what we today call “Internet” will be like this…

most likely, the concept of being “on line” or “off line” will disappear and objects, not only computers, will communicate independantely to each other.

That could be true for highly developped areas, but for these who, still today, have hard time to get access to drinkable water and haven’t seen electricity yet, this future by MS is definitively science-fiction.

In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it’s not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.

“They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time,” said Nicholas Johnson, NASA’s chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects.”

More details on CBS site

PingER project made this “Internet Weather” map of Africa and shows the network performance measured from Trieste Italy to African Universities, from April 2007 to March 2008.

Darker red dots indicate higher speeds such as enabled by ADSL or better . Clearer, lighter red dots indicate lower speeds, in some cases as poor as 56kbps modems. If a site is unreach able its dot disappears, so flickering dots indicate fragility. If all dots disappear the measurement host expe rienced an outage. Africa’s network performance is over 10 years behind that of Europe and the US and falling further behind. These measurements are made by the international PingER project and provide hard evidence of the extent of the Digital Divide for planners and policy makers.

In Africa, only 4, 99% of the population have access to the Internet. An average small compared to 41.18% of Europeans and Americans who are familiar with the Internet says another report published yesterday.

About PingER
PingER (Ping End-to-end Reporting) is the name given to the Internet End-to-end Performance Measurement (IEPM) project to monitor end-to-end performance of Internet links, developed by the IEPM group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The network performance of more than 300 hosts are monitored worldwide.

Huawei has unveiled the E180 next generation mobile broadband device.

The world’s slimmest HSPA USB stick to date, the only 10mm thick E180 is a highly compact device supporting the complete range of HSPA/UMTS and GSM/GPRS/EDGE network technologies, allowing fast uplink speed rates of up to 5.76Mbps and a downlink of up to 7.2 Mbps.

The E180 is a real plug-and-play device compatible with MS Windows (2000/XP/Vista) as well as Mac OS and is designed with a ultra slim rotatable USB connector, which can be turned by 270 degrees. This way, the USB connector can be stored safely without the need of an additional cover.

The E180 comes with its built-in MicroSD card slot and supports up to 8GB memory card which eliminates the need for an additional USB memory stick to carry documents, music or movies. In addition, the device supports various useful services like SMS/MMS, PC voice, phone book, flow display and statistics.

Availability : Mid-June 2008

Specifications

HSPA/UMTS (2100MHz)
EDGE/GPRS/GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz)
Support 2Mbps (5.76Mbps ready) HSUPA and 7.2Mbps HSDPA services
Support SMS and Voice services
MicroSD Card Slot
Plug & Play
Data statistics
Support Windows2000 , Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac Operating Systems

Source: Huawei

Following the Touch Diamond few days ago, HTC announced the “Touch Pro” which utilizes similar styling and functionality of the highly anticipated Touch Diamond™ and introduces a variety of business-focused enhancements that make getting work done on the go quick and easy.

With the Touch Pro, they introduce a TouchFLO 3D, a touch screen innovation providing a stunningly intuitive way to zip through common tasks like messaging, calendar appointments or making calls with just one touch.  Shall we call TouchFLO 3D the HTC response to Apple ?

Will the Touch Pro the replacement of my aging HTC S620 or will Apple iPhone 3G version (to be announced on June 9th at WWDC) shake the market again with stunning innovations ?

HTC Touch Pro Specifications

• Processor:  Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz
• Operating System: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Memories: ROM 512 MB – RAM: 288MB
• Dimensions: 102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 18.05 mm (T)
• Weight: 165 g (with battery)
• Display: 2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
• Network HSDPA/WCDMA:    Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
  Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:   Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz
• Device Control: TouchFLO™ 3D Touch-sensitive navigation control
• Keyboard: Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard
• GPS: GPS and A-GPS ready
• Connectivity:
• Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
  Wi-Fi® IEEE 802.11 b/g
  HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0, audio jack, and TV Out* in one)
• Camera:
  Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash light
  Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
• Audio: Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
• Battery: Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery 1340 mAh
• Talk time:
  Up to 397 minutes for WCDMA
  Up to 485 minutes for GSM
• Standby time:
  Up to 503 hours for WCDMA
  Up to 406 hours for GSM
• Video call time:
  Up to 201 minutes for WCDMA
• Expansion Slot: MicroSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
• AC Adapter: Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
• DC output: 5V and 1A

Not releated at all with Nomadcom (just in case some might have a doubt) ,

Skype has selected Rebecca, a 26 y/o Australian girl, to take up the "Skype Nomad Challenge" which is to travel non-stop around the Globe and demonstrates that Skype is now mobile.

Over 33 days, Rebecca "The Nomad" will be using as many different forms of transport possible for a girl – from jumbo jets to dog sleds, canoes to camels, sky diving to revolving restaurants.

Her non-stop journey started on May 5th from London (UK) to Singapore, China, Australia (current location) Alaska, USA an back to Europe.

To keep in touch, Rebecca uses SkypePhones as well as a Nokia N810 (the Internet Tablet) loaded with, indeed, Skype software. 

All related links which also gives a good overview of what Web 2.0 is offering:

• Twitter
• Skype: theskypenomad
• Flickr
• You Tube
• Blog
• My space
• Facebook
  

All this perpetual motion is also for a good cause – to create some noise about an awesome charity called Motivation. Basically, they help disabled people in poor countries get mobile.

I may propose to Skype the Challenge #2 as I have an extended list of countries and locations which cannot be so called "Internet/mobile phone" friendly… interested ?

HTC launched earlier this week in London the "Touch Diamond" the lastest smartphone of their TOUCH series.

The Touch Diamond is a stainless steel frame based of only 11.5mm thick, comes with a 2.8 inch touch-sensitive TFT 640×480 VGA screen. An integrated GPS system as well as a 3.2 megapixel camera and a second VGA CMOS one are also available.

This "iPhone-like" smartphone will be available in Europe and Asia in June 08 for about 770 USD.

Surprisingly, there is apparently no Mini-SD card slot to extend the 4 GB internal storage memory.

Highlights:

• 2.8-inch touch screen, with four times the pixels of most phones.

• Vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface, responding perfectly to your finger gestures when scrolling through contacts, browsing the web, and launching media… all vividly displayed as photos and artwork powered by the 3D graphics processor.
• HTC Weather – providing a constant view of weather at home and abroad.
• Surf and download at broadband speed with HSDPA internet connectivity.
• 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera for quality stills and video.
• 4GB of internal storage to preserve more photos, music, files and exchanged data than ever before.
• Integrated GPS for use with maps software for a full turn-by-turn satellite navigation experience.

Technical Specifications:

• Processor
  Qualcomm® MSM7201A' 528 MHz

• Operating System
  Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Memory
  ROM: 256 MB
  RAM: 192 MB DDR SDRAM
  Internal storage: 4 GB
• Dimensions
  102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 11.5 mm (T)
• Weight
  110 g (with battery)
• Display
  2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
• Network
  HSDPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
  Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds

  Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
  Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz
  (Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)

• Device Control
  TouchFLO' 3D
  Touch-sensitive navigation control
• GPS
  GPS and A-GPS ready
• Connectivity
  Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
  Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
  HTC ExtUSB' (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
• Camera
  Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
  Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
• Audio
  Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
• Ring tone supported formats:
  MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB
  40 polyphonic and Standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
• Battery
  Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
  Capacity: 900 mAh
• Talk time:
  Up to 270 minutes for WCDMA
  Up to 330 minutes for GSM
• Standby time:
  Up to 396 hours for WCDMA
  Up to 285 hours for GSM
• Video call time: Up to 145 minutes for WCDMA
  (The above are subject to network and phone usage.)
• AC Adapter
  Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
  DC output: 5V and 1A

All informations on HTC site

National Bureau of Statistics of China, has release some figures about telephone usage in China. Figures are self explanatory and may give some Vertigo to European operators.

In end of March 2008 they were 574 millions cellphone users in China (+94 mio in 2007), a 20% increase compared to last year. It also mean that 40% of the Chinese population own a cellphone.

The NBS reveals that in March 08, 58 billions SMS were sent (nearly 700 billions/year !)

28% of Chinese population (361 millions) uses a fixed telephone, but landline operators are losing customers (minus 4 millions for the 1sr quarter 08) as calls from mobile phones are cheaper than through landlines.

China Mobile, the first Chinese mobile phone operator has 377 millions customers at end of January (+22.6%) while Unicom China only has 181 millions customers.