Technology and Innovation

NOKIA 8270 CDMA PHONE
$175 (£125)
Even if no one calls, you’ll look incredibly stylish and popular with the new Nokia 8270 CDMA fashion phone. Weighing just three ounces, the phone comes with user-changeable Xpress-on colour covers (in orange, green, silver, white and magenta) and is the first Nokia in the American market with the signature bright blue backlight. Additional highlights include the ever-present customisable ringtone (with a special feature for individual identification tones), a standard 750m Ah lithium-ion battery, a phonebook with up to 250 entries, an alarm clock and a calendar. Nokia has also thoughtfully included a built-in mini-browser with Internet connectivity and two-way mobile text messaging.

FUJITSU SIEMENS POCKET LOOX

Slimline, high-powered, and with Bluetooth built-in. What more could you ask for in a PDA? Well, Fujitsu Siemens figure a GPRS plug-in module (coming this August for European users), a Compact Flash type II and SD/MMC card slot plus a 240 x 320 screen capable of displaying over 65,000 colours. Its the fastest PDA we’ve seen, powered by Intel’s new XScale processor which runs at 400MHz. Being Pocket PC 2002-based, the LOOX is not only ideal for syncing with Outlook but comes complete with Pocket Word and Pocket Excel too.

NOKIA 7210

THE 7210 IS THE LATEST IN A LONG LINE OF MOUTH-WATERING HANDSETS FROM THE NORDIC GIANTS

Style over functionality seems to be de rigueur with mobile phone manufacturers.  Take Motorola’s swoonsome V70, for example. This handset, with its swish swivel-cover action and white-on-black LCD screen, is a poser’s dream. Admittedly, it’s awkward to use, but who cares when it looks that stylish? Well, not to be outdone, Nokia has rolled up with an adversary, the tri-band 7210. Unmistakably Nokia, this handset may not eschew the phone blueprint as much as the V70, but it still stands out from the mobile hoi polloi. Ditching the uniform keypad format and glistening with translucent trimmings, the GPRS 7210 flaunts a 4,096-colour display and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) capabilities, enabling you to send combined text, graphic and image content to your friends on compatible phones. Supporting the Java 2 platform, the phone also enables you to download games via WAP, while the built-in FM radio provides the toe-tapping tunes. The 7210 five-continent globetrotter is available around July, and will be reviewed in T3 imminently.

Cell phones play 3GP-compressed video. This technology uses MPEG-4 or MP4 compression. Many phones now play other MPEG-4 variations as well. If you promptly lost or disposed of your camera’s user’s manual, check your phone’s Web site, as most have PDF files of the user’s manual available for download.

You’ve now got your vidcast edited and encoded into popular file type(s), now where will your new show live? Do you already have a Web site or blog dedicated to your show’s topic? Perhaps you’ve opted to deliver your shows exclusively via RSS. And what about those free video sharing sites?
With the obvious exception of free hosting sites, be sure to check into a few details from your provider. The first is your monthly bandwidth allocation. If your show is lengthy, or if you’ve encoded using a high quality setting, you will likely have a large file that people will be downloading. And if your show becomes popular, you could easily exceed a modest monthly bandwidth limit. Early popular vidcasts like Diggnation found their initial bandwidth projections were way off… and excess bandwidth can cost a lot. The second detail is to confirm with your Web host that you’ll have enough server storage space for all ol your future vidcasts. You may find you’ll need to increase this, but it is usually something you cai} do as it becomes needed.