Sawadee-kup, Thailand! This is your chance to showcase your talent, let your creativity bloom, and even see your application/widget on millions of Nokia N97 devices around the world.

Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer programme, challenges mobile and web application developers and designers in Thailand to submit your best Web Runtime widgets for the brand new Nokia N97!

From now to 6th June 2009, Forum Nokia invites submissions for apps/widgets that could make their way to N97 devices

Nokia recently announced the latest productivity-optimised device in its Eseries, the Nokia E52 mobile device. This new device, based on S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2, lets users write messages with intelligent text input, send instant messages, use a variety of e-mail solutions (including Lotus Notes Traveller and Mail for Exchange), and view Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, and Word documents. The Nokia E52 device’s other features include an exceptional battery life that gives users up to eight hours of talk time, a 3.2-megapixel camera, built-in global positioning system (GPS), a compass and accelerometer sensor, Nokia Maps, and Ovi Files.

Also recently announced is the Nokia 6600i slide, a Series 40 5th Edition, Feature Pack 1, device that features a 5-megapixel camera, brushed-steel covers and chrome centre key, and discreet tap commands to light the display, set snooze alerts, and silence or reject incoming calls. This new device also includes an accelerometer sensor, Nokia Maps, Image upload service, stereo FM RDS radio, Flash Lite 3.0, up to 20 MB of user storage, and as many as 15 days of standby battery life.

Sony Ericsson has been made aware of an online email campaign claiming that Ericsson will give away a free laptop computer to users who forward the promotional information. The same campaign includes a photograph of the Sony Ericsson logo and mentions an Ericsson contact name and email number.

Sony Ericsson confirms that this email campaign is a hoax. In addition, Sony Ericsson confirms that the Ericsson contact name does not exist.

Alone in a room in his home in Bonn, Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper.

As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters.

That became Hillebrand's magic number -- and set the standard for one of today's most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging.

"This is perfectly sufficient," he recalled thinking during that epiphany of 1985, when he was 45 years old. "Perfectly sufficient."

The communications researcher and a dozen others had been laying out the plans to standardize a technology that would allow cellphones to transmit and display text messages. Because of tight bandwidth constraints of the wireless networks at the time -- which were mostly used for car phones -- each message would have to be as short as possible.

Before his typewriter experiment, Hillebrand had an argument with a friend about whether 160 characters provided enough space to communicate most thoughts. "My friend said this was impossible for the mass market," Hillebrand said. "I was more optimistic."

Nokia recently introduced the Nokia 6216 classic, a fully integrated, SIM-based Near Field Communication (NFC) device that lets operators build NFC services on the subscriber identity module (SIM) card. With one tap of the device, consumers can share mobile content with other Nokia 6216 classic phones and compatible NFC devices. For example, a consumer could store credit-card information on a device's SIM card and then make a quick payment by waving the device in front of a compatible contact-free terminal.

The Nokia 6216 classic is based on Series 40 5th Edition, Feature Pack 1, and it implements the Contactless Communication API (JSR-257). Additional features include support for 8 GB microSD cards, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, Bluetooth stereo, Flash Lite 2.1, and MIDP Java 2.1 with additional Java APIs. The Nokia 6216 classic will ship in selected markets in the third quarter and retail for around 6,900 Baht.

Thailand's plan to auction new licenses for third-generation mobile phone services may be delayed from this year if its political crisis drags on, the industry regulator said on Wednesday.

"We have to admit that political instability could affect the plan and there is a chance it will be delayed," Prasert Apipunya, deputy secretary-general of the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC), told reporters.

But the NTC should be able to issue the 3G licenses by the fourth quarter of this year, as planned, if the political problems did not escalate into more violence, he said.

The regulator was expected to choose a consultant in May to study how to auction the licenses and it should take around three months to complete the study, Prasert said.

The BlackBerry® Enterprise Server version 5.0 launch is just weeks away! We've met with the product experts to create a series of articles about new features, migration planning, manageability, and other topics to help you prepare for the transition. Here, we cover the areas that will see the most significant new features in version 5.0: manageability, reliability and high availability.

Manageability

Web-Based Interface and Role-Based Administration

In BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0, the admin console will switch from a desktop administration client to a web-based client, allowing for greater flexibility in how and where the BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution is managed. All administrator permissions and domains are set based on a system of flexible user roles in order to support a much wider range of administrators and help desk personnel. For instance, with the new functionality, you will be able to create a junior administrator role that has access to only a certain group's profiles—your sales team, for example—and can create and modify user profiles but cannot set group-wide IT policies.

Record videos in an instant on the Sony Ericsson S312. From spotting a celebrity on the street, to your friend’s dancing in a club, the S312 allows you to capture these moments in two quick and easy steps.

Want to highlight the moment with a picture instead? The two megapixel camera can be used horizontally and with the help of the illuminated imaging shortcuts on the keypad you can change the settings and get the shot you want quicker. Not quite what you were after? Use the integrated Photo fix function to get the best picture quality in one step – picture taking has never been this easy!

“Capture life’s spontaneous moments the easy way with the S312 and its instant video recording.” said Quentin Cordier, Marketing business manager at Sony Ericsson. “The S312 also allows you to get organised and keep track of your hectic lifestyle by ensuring that you never miss another birthday or appointment again – store all you important dates, add reminders – then sit back and relax.”

Attention, Flash Lite applications developers: Two funding opportunities from Forum Nokia and its partners could offer you a real win-win.

First is the $10 million Open Screen Project Fund, which makes grants to developers of applications and services for mobile, desktop, and consumer electronics devices using the Adobe Flash® platform. The initial areas of focus are: entertainment, social networking, productivity, gaming, news, and information. Those projects with the broadest appeal — and that make the best use of Nokia's platform capabilities — are likely to catch the interest of the combined panel of Nokia and Adobe experts who are reviewing the entries. Requests for funding will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.

Developers have new opportunities for creating applications and content for three Series 40 devices recently introduced by Nokia.

The new Nokia 6700 classic mobile device offers a thin, streamlined design and is based on Series 40 6th Edition. Its main features are an assisted global positioning system (A-GPS) receiver and Nokia Maps, 5-megapixel auto-focus camera, uplink noise cancellation, HSDPA and HSUPA for faster downloads, Flash Lite 3.0, and WebKit Open Source Browser. The Nokia 6700 classic will retail for 235 euros and ship in the second quarter.

The Nokia 6303 classic mobile device, also based on Series 40 6th Edition, is designed to help consumers stay informed, connected, and in touch with friends and family.