According to Aussie reports, cops in New South Wales are asking the public to submit photos or videos of crimes captured on cameraphones to the police to help them with their investigations. Users will then be able to upload the footage to the police over the internet.

Apparently, the move was inspired by the London bombings as well as riots in Sydney. According to ABC, the state’s police minister has warned would-be crime fighters to put their safety above gathering evidence.

With cameraphones’ resolution now around 5 megapixels or higher on most new models, it can’t be long til this type of footage will start appearing in court as exhibit A.

Nokia has bested Qualcomm in the ongoing fight over patents here in Blighty. A high court judge yesterday ruled the disputed Qualcomm GSM patents invalid and said Nokia doesn’t need to compensate Qualcomm for them.

The defeat follows an International Trade Commission decision last week to turn down Qualcomm’s petition for review of Judge Luckern’s Initial Determination last year, which said Nokia does not infringe the three alleged Qualcomm patents in the case and that one of the patents is invalid. It also follows an agreement between two to stand down on patent litigation.

Hopefully the agreement between the two - and not the court fights - is an indicator of how the Nokia-Qualcomm relationship will play out. I can’t help but think if they put took their lawyers’ wages and reivested them into their engineers’ wages, it might be a better result all round.

According to The Times, BT’s mobile users are at an all time low. Not in the emotional sense, just numerically.

The paper says that there are now only 86,000 people with BT as their mobile provider, the lowest amount since the telco’s numbers started. It’s not really a great surprise, given BT hasn’t had its own mobile network for a good long time and its last big pushes into mobile, Fusion and Movio, weren’t a real hit with customers.

BT is apparently working on a new mobile strategy, although there’s aren’t many details at the moment on what that will entail. Chances are there will be more Fusion, perhaps with a more businessy edge and, who knows, maybe an all out exit from consumer mobile services altogether.

A Federal California judge has ruled in the patent infringement case between Broadcom and Qualcomm. Broadcom claims that Qualcomm is infringing on three patents, covering WCDMA chips, EV-DO chips, and technology around mobile video compression, walkie-talkie services, and simultaneous network connections. The judge decided that Qualcomm has to immediately stop shipping all 3G/WCDMA chips infringing on the patents. However, for the EV-DO chips, they’re allowed to continue selling, but with restrictions.

The EV-DO chips that Qualcomm has been selling since May 29th, 2007 can continue to be sold, but only to existing customers, and only until January 31st, 2009. On the 31st, they must cease selling/shipping the chips, and are barred from infringing on the patents again. Also, Qualcomm must pay mandatory royalties to Broadcom for all chips sold and shipped between now and January 31st, 2009.

Broadcom was seeking a much more strict ruling, and has already complained that the chips that Qualcomm says work around the patent are still infringing.

I can understand why the judge made his decision. Qualcomm is a major player in the mobile network infrastructure around the globe, and he didn’t want to completely put them under by requiring them to halt all sales immediately. However, with the current ruling, he essentially slapped them on the wrist and said, ‘It’s not ok to infringe on the patents, but since you’re already doing it, I’ll give you time to develop something else, so that you aren’t fully punished for what you’ve done.’

Qualcomm used to manufacture handsets, in addition to chipsets and the like. In fact, my first cellphone was a Qualcomm on Sprint’s network here in the U.S. However, as of late, they’ve become what appears to be little more than a patent holding company, which really bothers me quite a bit. They’re at odds with the ITC, as well as with Nokia and most of the other cellphone manufacturers for unfair licensing policies. At the same time, I do believe that they should be compensated for the things they’ve researched and designed.

I’ve recently gotten my mitts on a 4GB iPhone for testing and because I’m a geek. I’ve been playing with it for a few days, but the first thing I’ve come to realize is that it’s far from the ultimate music phone.

The problem is not in getting music ON the phone (which is where most other handsets fail miserably). It’s disgustingly simple to get music ONTO the iPhone, and the organization is similar to the iPod, which is well accepted to be dead-easy to use.

The problem lies in attempting to ENJOY that music. You can’t easily do so. There’s three main ways to enjoy music - wired, wireless, and through loudspeakers. The iPhone sucks at all three. It has a 3.5mm jack, so Jobs would say it’s not proprietary. However, that jack was recessed into the handset, so you must use Apple’s specially designed headphones, or purchase a special adapter, which means it might as well be proprietary, for all intents and purposes.

Now let’s look at wireless. The iPhone HAS Bluetooth, but you can’t do much with it. The necessary profiles are missing, namely A2DP. This is something that Apple has routinely NOT put in their iPod line, and it really bothers me. It’s secure, there’s no reason not to include it. Thus, the iPhone cannot be used with any stereo Bluetooth headphones.

Last, the speakers built-in suck. They’re inconveniently located at the bottom of the device, and they’re dual-mono, meaning you get the same sound out of both speakers. They don’t get very loud, and they’re simply sub-par for what seems to be marketed as a ‘music device’. Again, you can’t use external speakers, other than using a proprietary dock.

Coming from the Nokia N95, I’m used to having a bear of a time trying to get music ONTO the device (save for having to suffer through Windows Media Player), but having zero issues enjoying the music in whatever form suits me. WIth the Nokia, I can even pair a regular single-ear Bluetooth headset and listen to music, which is great for podcasts and the like. I have a 3.5mm lead in my truck that I added myself, to use with my iPod, and more recently, my N81 8GB or N95. This lead won’t work on the iPhone, which is frustrating.

It begs the question, though. What is more important to get mass usage? Being able to easily *get* music onto your music phone, or having the ability to enjoy that music in several different ways?

Over at the MyStrands blog, they’ve announced the cool news that they’ve hooked it up with MTV for the New Years 2007 celebration in Times Square, New York City. Partiers in Times Square will be able to use their handsets to send messages, answer trivia, and vote on music and videos on MTV’s massive 44.5 foot screen in front of MTV Studios.

MyStrands is one of the leaders in music recommendation software and social music. With PartyStrands, they’re all about keeping music social. You can get more information on the MTV/Times Square party at www.mystrands.com/mtv

This is really a killer idea. There’s crazy amounts of people down in Times Square for New Years, and it’ll be even cooler with this social aspect added to the mix.

Verizon Wireless wants your old useless handset this holiday season. They’re calling out to anyone who found a new mobile in their stocking this year to bring their old stuff up to any Verizon Wireless location to donate it. Verizon will use the phones in their HopeLine Phone Recycling Program, which uses handsets and funds to help survivors of domestic violence.

If the phone is still usable, it can be used as an emergency handset for victims. A federal requirement is that all cellphones be able to make a 9-1-1 emergency call, regardless of whether they are active or not. You can also take your handset to any battered woman’s shelter in your area for them to use for the same purpose.

Please remember, if you’re going to donate your handset, to delete all of your personal information from the memory, such as contacts, pictures, and anything else.

Some interesting statistics on the HopeLine program, it has kept more than 200 tons of handsets out of landfills. They’ve collected nearly 4.2 million wireless phones and properly disposed of 1 million of them (it doesn’t say what happened to the other 3.2 million handsets. Hmmmm.) Verizon’s HopeLine has also, since 1999, given more than $4 million in cash grants and over 45,000 phones with airtime to domestic violence prevention organizations.

I’m fascinated with the idea of mobile gaming, and fully believe that it’s a massive market opportunity. I’m seeing more and more ways to game on your mobile, and I wanted to highlight two of them today - NokMote and PSX4iPhone.

NokMote was released right around Christmas by an independent developer. He’s doing some really cool stuff for S60 devices with the accelerometer built-in. Nokmote is mainly for gaming, and allows you to use your handset like a Wii controller for games, but it also works throughout the various menus. Paired with TV-Out on the Nokia N95, NokMote turns any N95 into a motion-controlled gaming system. There’s tons of videos, but the one that I like the most is here, showing off a guy playing Quake, running off his N95 with NokMote installed.

PSX4iPhone is a Playstation emulator for the iPhone, for PS1 games. Most all games work, and you can control them right there on the touchscreen of your iPhone. This is the first PS1 emulator that I’ve seen for a mobile handset, though I’ve used emulators for NES, SNES, and Sega systems on my S60 for a while now.

This is all fascinating to me because it shows how far mobile gaming has come. From the first Nokia’s that sported the black-and-greenish-yellow version of Snake, to being able to play games that were designed for a full desktop computer. The fact that our handsets are starting to now detect movement, and be able to project their displays onto a TV (via cable) is really mindblowing when you think about it.

I still imagine a future of gaming where I’ll be able to play against you while I’m in line at the grocery store and you’re sitting at home on your console system. The connection of console and mobile games into one platform, I think, is something that will really take the mobile gaming scene to a whole new level.

What do you think? When was the last time you played a game on your mobile handset? Did it impress you at all?

I spent this past weekend in Abilene, TX, at my fiance’s grandparent’s house. They live slightly out of town, on the lake. I was warned on the way out there that I would be without service, as they live out of town, but I shook that off, since Christina previously had a Sprint cellphone, and hadn’t been out to their house with her new AT&T phone yet.

She was right, somewhat. I didn’t have signal *in* their home, though walking outside I was able to get 3 bars on my N95 8GB. It became interesting to me how my usage changed without a signal. First off, I could care less about having a voice signal. I was overly concerned about not having data. We spent 3 days with them, and not being able to check email or read RSS was nerve-racking for me. It should be clear that I wouldn’t have simply sat the whole weekend glued to my phone. Afterall, that would be rude when visiting someone else. However, it would have been nice to be able to check email/RSS before bed and when I woke up.

I noticed that I lost all interest in my handset entirely. I even kept it powered off on the 3rd day. On the first day, I was mostly concerned with waving it around the house, desperately seeking at least one bar to calm my nerves.

I’ve always been one to say that technology should enrich and enable your real life, and I firmly believe that. Spending 3 days with no cell signal (unless we went ‘into town’, that is, at which point I certainly was glued) really tested that. At one point, NOT having technology (specifically, cellphone) inhibited real life. After a short period of time, however, I was actually (gasp) able to function without even having my phone ON, much less having signal.

How does this affect the way that I use my phone in other situations with full service? Were you subjected to any withdrawals on your holidays?

Regular SMS Text News contributor and SpinVox employee James Whatley gave me a nudge this morning telling me that the SpinVox blog may be down for a few days over the Christmas break for a facelift. Don’t fret, it should be back up in short order come New Years, which is great, but then I realised I hadn’t actually read it for a while (sorry Dude!).

Anyway - why am I sharing? THIS made me laugh A LOT. Stick with it to the end - the video is hilarious.

James said there was something hidden in the post, though. I didn’t find anything, but leave a comment and let me know if you did.

Yahoo! has announced a partnership with America Movil to bring mobile services to customers across 16 countries in Latin America. America Movil will be using Yahoo! OneSearch as the default serach service across its wireless services, and Yahoo gets big access to Latin America.

With 143 MILLION wireless users throughout Latin America, America Movil is definitely a huge player, and it’s about time Yahoo! did something to get in really IN the mobile arena. This agreement puts them at the forefront of 143 million users’ mobile web experience, and will go pretty far in securing a large foothold in that market. Good job, Yahoo!.

Zed Group has created a special app for the holidays, dubbed ‘XmasMaker’. It’s simple, really. Instead of writing a “Merry Christmas” SMS and then sending it to everyone in your phonebook, the Zed XmasMaker allows you to send an MMS. Not just any ordinary MMS, mind you, but a photo - taken with your phone - and then customised with Christmas-y graphics.

Cool, right? I thought so, too, except for that you need to be a Zed premium member, for 3 GBP/week. If you’re game, sign up here. If not, send an MMS anyways. SMS aren’t greeting cards!

The Palm Treo 750 was gifted with an update earlier this year, offering Windows Mobile 6 and a few other enhancements to AT&T customers. A few of the features of the updated include general speed enhancements, along with better sync support for Vista desktops and support for Microsoft’s direct push technology.

Oh yeah, and AT&T went ahead and removed the Windows Live service, as well. They’d much rather you use their Xpress Mail and instant messaging application, which uses SMS rather than data. Don’t you love when carriers make choices for you, in their favor?

What’s really frustrating for AT&T customers is that the unbranded version of the Treo 750 is fully rocking with Windows Live support, verifying that it was AT&T’s greedy decision. Odd for a company so proud of being so ‘open’ methinks.

Anyone know if you can easily unbrand a Treo 750?

Reports are coming in that the Nokia N82 is showing up online at the Nokia UK online shop, as well as at Carphone Warehouse. The N82 was announced not too long ago in Finland, and brings back the classic Nokia candybar form factor. The phone is an imaging powerhouse, with a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and autofocus. Those crazy Finns have also added a true Xenon flash for really killer pictures. HSDPA, WiFi, GPS, and TV-Out round out the feature set, and I have to say, after spending a few weeks with the handset, it’s really a knock-out device.

The N82 runs 399 GBP at the Nokia UK Online shop, and is part of the ‘N82 Adventure Pack’, bundled with the Nokia Sport Tracker Application and a Salomon backpack. Reports also say that 3 months of free voice-guided GPS navigation (an 18 GBP value) is included as well. Symbian-Guru has a multi-part review of the N82 here.

The Associated Press reports that Palestinians will soon be allowed to setup a 2nd cellular network. Israel controls all of the cellphone frequencies in the West Bank and Gaza, and have repeatedly turned down requests from Palestine to be able to set up a 2nd wireless network, to meet demand.

The change in heart from Israel is due to warming relations between the two groups, who have been at odds since 2000. The second network is not official yet, with with peace negotiations starting last week, they should be announced soon.

James Burland’s sharp eye noticed that Nokia’s doing more product placement in movies these days. The latest is in JJ Abrams’ ‘Cloverfield’, set to debut soon. The trailer features a black Nokia N76, and a pink Nokia 7373 (from their 2nd Fashion Series).

Personally, this is something that I don’t think we see enough of, product placement in movies. It doesn’t need to be overt, but can be just showing a character using a device, that’s it. Typically whenever there’s a movie out with handsets, the forums go crazy with people clipping scenes to try to figure out what the device is.

If you want to see how product placement is done right, watch the U.S. version of The Office (I know, blasphemy, but hey, I’m in the States, and it’s not like I haven’t seen the UK version). The U.S. version has product placement all over the place, but you wouldn’t notice if you don’t watch the commercial breaks.

Do you think product placement is a good idea, or no? Obviously it’s a fine line between overt and not, but I think it can be done tastefully and without intrusion.

It might be a stretch, but Google has introduced new Bots for its Google Talk service that will automatically translate IM conversations on the fly. For it to work, both chatters must add the appropriate bot to the conversation, and off it goes. For instance, if I wanted to chat with someone in Germany, I would add the German-to-English bot, and they would add the English-to-German bot, and we would then chat as normal, with the bots making it all easy cheesy.

This got me thinking about the possibility of an application that could do this through your phone (or over Skype or some other VOIP application). What if you could call someone in a foreign country and chat with them as if you were both chatting in your native tongue?

I don’t know how far off this is, but if it’s in IM, surely it can’t be too much more difficult or far off to add a text-to-speech feature, and then a speech-to-text on the other end, and then make all that happen directly on the handset, with a translator in the middle.

Things like this would really make VOIP something exciting, in my opinion, but there’s also other entertainment values as well. Think women speaking in foreign languages are hot? Does your wife nag you all the time on the phone? Next time she calls, why not switch her into French? It’s not like she expects you to remember what she’s said anyways, and at least then it’s a pleasureable conversation for you.

Any other great business opportunities you can think of with this?

The FCC has released lists of the applicants for the upcoming 700MHz auction, to take place in January. The auction is for blocks of the 700MHz frequency that will be vacated as the United States moves to mandated digital TV broadcasts.

Interestingly enough, there are 2 lists. The first list is companies that have submitted a complete application and been approved, while the second list is companies that have submitted an incomplete application, and have until January 6th to complete the application. The approved list includes Google, as well as some smaller companies with big names such as Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative and Guam Cellular and Paging. The other list of companies who have only a few weeks to get their paperwork in order includes the big guns such as AT&T, Alltel, and Qualcomm.

I’m anxious to see who comes out on top in this auction, specifically with Google seemingly all ready to rock and the other guys taking their sweet time.

Over at the Financial Times, they’ve got some dirt that Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson has been added to the Disgustingly High Roaming Bills rank, thanks to his trusty iPhone. Seems that on a recent foreign trip, Anderson had his iPhone powered on in his pocket, and forgot to disable the email app, which was connecting and checking his email every ten minutes.

$2,100 later, Anderson stands a good chance of winning the ‘Roaming Mad’ contest we wrote about earlier this week. When I was in Amsterdam recently, I made sure to not stick my AT&T SIM card back into my phone till I was safely on the ground in the States.

This also brings into question different features of handsets and how they use data. Obviously there’s an offline mode, but how many users would connect offline with data, or even know that data runs even without them using the voice aspect?

Word on the street is that AT&T Wireless will launch their MediaFLO-powered mobile TV service in the States ‘as early as possible’ in 2008. Launching with 8 channels - ESPN, MTV, NBC, CBS, and Fox among them, the service has apparently been testing really well. A slight delay is necessary to optimize the user experience, according to Mark Siegel, AT&T Executive Director of Media Relations.

Verizon Wireless currently offers a MediaFLO-powered mobile TV service in the U.S. for $13-25/month on top of regular mobile charges. MediaFLO is owned by Qualcomm, which presents an interesting challenge for Nokia. Nokia already has significant issues getting a handset launched on AT&T’s shelves. They also pioneered the DVB-H standard in Europe, and obviously hoped that the US market would also adopt DVB-H, instead of Qualcomm’s MediaFLO. If Nokia wants to launch a mobile-TV-compatible handset on AT&T now, they will have to license the necessary chip from Qualcomm, something which Nokia is also not particularly fond of.

Once the two largest carriers in the United States offer a mobile TV product, will we finally see any significant uptake with consumers, or will the pricing drive them away?

Verizon Wireless has teamed up with the NCAA to be able to offer full coverage of the 2008 college bowl games to subscribers of their MediaFLO-powered VCAST Mobile TV service. Starting with the Poinsetta Bowl on December 20th and going through to the GMAC Bowl on January 6th, Verizon VCAST Mobile TV customers can tune in to ESPN, CBS, or FOX Mobile TV to get live, full coverage directly on their handsets.

Personally, I don’t really see the draw of watching a sporting event on your mobile phone. I can understand movies and whatnot, as they typically involve close ups and that sort of thing. I can only imagine trying to figure out the score on a 2.4″ QVGA screen. I’ve also not actually used VCAST Mobile TV, so there’s a big chance that they’ve thought of that and developed some way to overcome.

Mobile digital TV is something that has been coming for a long time, and never really got much of a following, at least not as much as industry analysts had hoped. Deals like this, bringing high-demand programming to the mobile handset is certainly exciting and will hopefully drum up more excitement and use.

Sprint Nextel today announced that they have chosen a replacement for Gary Forsee, who stepped down in October of this year. Daniel R. Hesse will be taking the helm as President and CEO of Sprint Nextel, effective immediately. Hesse has served in the same position at Sprint spin-off Embarq Corporation, and also has over 2 decades of experience with AT&T Wireless, including a 3-year stint as the President and CEO.

Following Forsee’s resignation, CFO Paul Saleh stepped in to cover the position until a replacement was found, and will now be returning to his normal duties.

Welcome to the team, Daniel, we look forward to see what Sprint Nextel will do in the coming year in the US wireless market.

Pownce, the micro-social-blogging site launched by Digg.com founder Kevin Rose, has launched its mobile site, mobile.pownce.com. The site is optimized for mobile browsers (apparently it even looks killer on the iPhone, perhaps someone can confirm this for us) and allows you to do most everything on your phone that you can with a PC browser.

Twitter, Jaiku, and now Pownce all have mobile-oriented sites, as do Facebook and MySpace. Is anyone out there still unconvinced that the mobile web is going to see a bigger explosion of users than you can imagine?

Martin Sauter has a great article on why the Mobile Web had such a terrible start, and why he thinks it’s going to see a boom soon, as well. I know that I’ve been known to break down in tears and assume the fetal position when AT&T’s data network has an outage.

M:Metrics recently conducted a survey of 625 mobile phone users, trying to get a grasp on where mobile phone users are most receptive to ads on their mobiles. The study was commissioned by digital SIDEBAR, a company that specializes in mobile advertising and digital content.

The key purpose of the study was to determine what actions or events on a mobile would be optimal advertising opportunities. A few areas tested included before and after voice calls, data calls, or SMS/MMS, as well as on the home/idle screen. SIDEBAR also wanted to know what types of incentives would encourage consumers to sign up for mobile promotions.

Among the findings, the top 3 preferred actions or events were while the browser is loading a webpage, on the home screen, and after a completed phone call. I find this interesting, as those are mostly times when the consumer is not necessarily paying attention to the screen of their mobile (save for the browser). Also, the top 2 incentives were, not surprisingly, discounts on monthly bills and free minutes.

Personally, I would like to keep my phone clean of ads, it’s the last place that advertisers haven’t been able to break through. I don’t mind them when browsing the mobile web, but ads that are actually served up on my phone are not something I’d be open to, even for free minutes. What about you?

(Image Source: The Economist)

I received an interesting press release today, I suppose it’s from Network Appliance, though it wasn’t explicitly from them. The gist of it was the results of a study conducted by Network Appliance among 2,035 online adults, who were asked questions relating to the types of digital data that they have, as well as their experiences saving (or losing) said data.

It’s a very interesting concept, specifically with mobile phones being such a large player in recording our digital memories. I, for one, use my N95 to take pictures and videos costantly, as well as using it to store all of my contacts and calendar information. Lucky for me, I’m used to synchronizing with my PC. I have Bluetooth setup so that when I walk into my apartment, my phone automatically hooks up with my computer, copying all my pictures/videos/contacts/calendar/etc over to my PC for safekeeping.

The sad reality, though, is that I’m a minority. How many people do you know that keep a backup copy (or 2) of their digital memories? How many friends do you have that have lost their phones, along with their entire contact list? According to NetApp, 40% of Britons admit to not backing up photos, while a shocking 58% store up to 500 photos on their portable devices. Only 6% of those surveyed are even concerned about losing these memories.

How do you backup your digital memories?