Nokia to enter PC industry with first netbook - Nokia Booklet 3G

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world's top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it would start to make laptops, entering a fiercely competitive but fast-growing market with a netbook running Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Nokia had earlier this year said it was considering entering the laptop industry, crossing the border between two converging industries in the opposite direction to Apple, which entered the phone industry in 2007 with the iPhone.

Nokia has seen its profit margins drop over the last quarters as handset demand has slumped, and analysts have worried that entering the PC industry, where margins are traditionally razor-thin, could hurt Nokia's profits further.

"We are fully aware what has the margin level been in the PC world. We have gone into this with our eyes wide open," Kai Oistamo, the head of Nokia's phone unit, told Reuters.

"There's really an opportunity to bring fresh perspective to the PC world," he said, adding that Nokia would introduce extended battery life and continuous connectivity.

Nokia has produced PCs before, but divested the unit in 1991 when it started to focus on the mobile phone industry.

But Nokia's first netbook, the Nokia Booklet 3G, will use Microsoft's Windows software and Intel's Atom processor to offer up to 12 hours of battery life while weighing 1.25 kilograms. Netbooks are low-cost laptops optimised for surfing the Internet and performing other basic functions. Pioneered by Asustek with the hit Eee PC in 2007, netbooks have since been rolled out by other brands such as HP and Dell.

"The question is: How will Nokia differentiate? This is already a crowded market. If they manage to differentiate it's going to give them competitive advantage," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. - www.reuters.com

Plug that folds flat: Sleek new design for the laptop generation

By Colin Fernandez
15th August 2009

Over the decades, many of the appliances it powers have become slimmed-down, compact or flat.

But the British three-pin plug has remained exactly the same size – very bulky.

Until now, that is, as an enterprising design student has come up with a folding plug that tucks away snugly to a quarter of the size of a standard one.

Its three pins can be folded flat and the sides turned-in.

It is intended to be used with laptops, mobile phones and digital cameras, where the normal size would be too bulky and the pins could scratch the device.

The plug is just 1cm thick compared with the standard 4.5cm size.

Designer Min Kyu Choi, from Bayswater, West London, came up with the idea after a plug damaged his laptop.

He said: ‘I bought a new laptop that was advertised as being thin enough to carry in an envelope but it came with a bulky three-pin plug.

‘I carried the laptop with me to university but when I took it out I was disappointed to find the plug had scratched the computer.

‘I thought it would be a good idea to create a plug that could be folded flat so the pins would not cause any damage and also to make it as thin as the laptop itself.’

Min, 29, said it took a year to perfect his idea. He added: ‘I hope that one day it will come as standard on all portable electronic devices so that others do not have to experience the same problem as me.’

He has also created an adaptor that allows three of the plugs to fit into one standard socket

Min is looking for investment to put the plug into mass production and has entered the design into the James Dyson Award in the hope of winning £10,000.

The British three-pin plug dates from 1947. Its design was chosen by a committee headed by Lord Reith, the minister of works and planning.

The standard plug and its socket replaced a variety of different designs, and included the safety feature of shutters in the wall socket to stop children poking their fingers in.

The three-pin plugs are in use in many parts of the world where there has been a strong British influence, such as Cyprus, Malta, Malaysia and Singapore. - www.dailymail.co.uk

Happy birthday to … the seatbelt

Safety invention: An original 1959 poster shows people how to use their seatbelt safely

Invention thought to have saved a million lives is 50 today

It's an invention that is thought to have saved a million lives since its inception half a century ago today. You may very well have belted up today without a second thought to the seatbelt's inventor, Nils Bohlin.

It took a few attempts to get the standard V-type three-point safety belt right. Former aircraft engineer Bohlin, who was used to working on catapult seats, was drafted in by Volvo to help out with its designs for a safety harness in cars.

Photographs: Volvo

Patented in 1958, the first seatbelt — as we know it — was fitted to some vehicles in Volvo's Nordic market. Within five years, front seats across the US and Europe carried the belts, and a further four years later passengers in the rear joined in.

In the promotional shot above, Bohlin demonstrates his belt while a passenger relaxes smoking a pipe in the rear. Clearly it was a few years before the dangers of smoking were emphasised.

In equally typical early sixties advertising, it seems nothing could be sold to the public without being demonstrated by a long-legged, mini-skirted blonde. - www.guardian.co.uk

Nikon's new camera: point, shoot... and project?

by Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Wednesday 5 August 2009

Cameras in your phones; phones in your iPods; iPods with Wi-Fi; Wi-Fi in your cameras. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called convergence.

Sticking the features of one gizmo inside another seems to be the continuing trend in modern life, as we veer speedily towards a world where we all tote around one single, enormous gadget that handles all our entertainment, communication and probably even teleportation. Except, it seems, that even this is not enough convergence for the Japanese camera giant Nikon.

To whit: the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj, which boasts among its coterie of assets a 12 megapixel sensor for still images, the ability to capture standard def video, and a built-in projector.

Yes; instead of showing your granny those family photos on a tiny LCD screen, you will be able to throw your snaps onto a nearby wall using the patented pico-projector. Handy, perhaps, but I can't but feel it's a step too far along convergence road. What's next? Washing machines with built-in iPod docks ?

- www.guardian.co.uk/technology

Boy, 7, steals his father's car and becomes involved in a 40mph police chase...

The police cruiser's dashboard camera captures the moment the youngster jumped out of the car and ran off

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 12:08 PM on 01st August 2009

A boy of seven in the US was so desperate to avoid going to church he stole his father's car and sped off - leading police on a wild chase.

Dispatchers received reports of a child driving recklessly . Weber County Sheriff's Capt. Klint Anderson says one witness said the boy drove through a stop sign.

Anderson says two deputies caught up with the boy and tried unsuccessfully to stop the Dodge Intrepid in an area about 45 miles north of Salt Lake City.

The youngster ran through a stop sign and almost smashed into another vehicle.

The car reached 40 mph before the boy stopped in a driveway and ran inside a home.

Video taken from the dashboard of a police car in pursuit shows the lad pulling up in his driveway, then jumping out of the car and running at top speed indoors.

An officer can then be seen giving chase.

Anderson says when the boy's father later confronted him, the boy said he didn't want to go to church.

The boy is too young to prosecute and no citations were issued, although police did urge the father to make his car keys more inaccessible to children.

video of the pursuit