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

Found two interesting posts about how Twitter becomes a real-time news media and how it contributes to spread news all over the World despite telecommunication networks breakdown and/or government censorship.

Smart Mobs author Mark A.M Kramer asks if Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) could make humanity morally accountable ? Today, even with a very limited presence of the International community (politics, journalists as well as Aid workers) we continue to receive near real-time information from Myanmar through various multi-plateforms communication media such Twitter, SMS, RSS etc.

Ten days later, in China, an powerful earthquake shook the Sichuan province, information that Technology blogger Robert Scoble claimed that Twitter had the breaking news even before the United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.

Is Twitter's slogan "What are you doing" should be now replaced by "What's going on" ?

Sources: SmartMobs, BBC

I found very interesting post on Tom Barrett's "ICT in my Classroom" blog about how Twitter is used as an educational tool.

Tom's post also describes where Twitter is positioned among other communications tools. Twitter is not a synchronous or an asynchronous communication system. It is rather both at once depending how channel's followers use it.

He makes a nice metaphoric comparison between Twitter and a flowing torrent where people can just stand by it and observes the flow. Some prefers to jump into while others simply do not pay much attention to the  stream.

Personally I am amazed to see how many different ways Twitter is used today. There are, indeed, lots of individuals (you and me) but also some politicians (Clinton, Obama, UK Prime Minister), Public Services (LA fire department, AmCross), Airlines, News agencies, etc.. which are increasingly using it, but not necessarily to interact with others but to broadcast content or information.

Is any company using Twitter for internal use only ?