Nokia to bring Ovi Maps to other platforms, support the competition?

*Time to get the salt shakers out ladies and gents.

Have a certain “thing” for Ovi Maps but absolutely despise the overpriced (or rather average) nature of their higher end smartphone lineup? There may just be hope for you yet if Greig Williams, Nokia’s General Manager for South East Europe has his way. In response to a question lobbed by german site “Die Presse” as to whether Ovi Maps would expand to other platforms or not, Mr. Williams simply replied: “That will be the next step”. Score!

Well, score if you love Ovi Maps. Truthfully, Ovi Maps does have something going for it. The maps are stored locally which means as long as your phone has real GPS, even the lack of a cell signal shouldn’t hamper your miniaturized navigation device. Other than that, besides UI differences there really isn’t too much of a difference between Ovi Maps, Google Maps/Navigation or any other mobile navigation software out there. (You can only instruct someone how to get from point A to point B in so many ways and styles)

The only question that remains now is will Nokia charge other platforms for Ovi Maps or will they keep it free? Free would be nice and actually warranted given the fact that Google Navigation is already free (and awesome) and going global as the months progress. A fee-based scheme will pretty spell failure from the start if mass adoption is what they’re gunnin’ for.

But it’s all rumor and heresy for now. My how I love a good rumor. Think it’ll pan out?

Engadget

Cross-carrier video calling coming to Canadians.

What’s on the top of your “cellular carrier wishlist”? For some, faster speeds. Others — coverage. If I mentioned cross-carrier video calling, how would you shuffle around your list to include it? For many subjects, the whole video calling thing would probably sit pretty low. For the lucky Canadians up north however, video calling appears to be a pretty big sought after feature — at least to the telcos anyway.

With join collaboration between Bell, Rogers, and Telus, video calling will now be easier than ever not only to persons on the same network as you, but on the other two networks mentioned as well.

I personally can’t say I’d be too excited. I absolutely hate talking on the phone. Adding video to it would probably be even more annoying. Though I can see certain instances where it would be helpful and warranted (long job trips away from significant other/kids, etc.) I’m but a single human walking across the earth. Canadians: Are you excited?

BGR

Get out the oven mitts: Nexus One OC’d to 9GHz!

I may toot the MOTO DROID horn from time to time and brag about how overclocking said device to 1GHz is impressive — considering 2x the stock clock speed is nothing to scoff at, especially for a smartphone. It appears however the Snapdragon processor in the Nexus One among others is far more capable, with quite a bit more headroom for overclocking shenanigans. So how high would you normally figure Snapdragon could be OC’d (ignoring the fact it’s in the title already): 2GHz, 2.5GHz, 4GHz?

Try 9GHz! 4x stock speed for a mobile device is insane. 9GHz is just….I don’t know really. Words fail me at this point. The kernel allowing such speeds hasn’t been released yet, but if testing goes well and no one (or Nexus One) spontaneously combust, look for it to start hitting N1 forums in soon. What exactly do you do that you need 9GHz power in your phone? More importantly, how long would it last running at that speed, 5 minutes? Hope you like outlets…

Redmond Pie

NBC won’t keep me down: Conan O’Brien joins Twitter, amasses 200k+ followers in mere hours.

The last 6 months just haven’t been good for NBC have they? First, they completely botched the whole Late Night thing with Leno and Conan. Feeling they hadn’t screwed enough people over enough, they decided to go epic and destroy the Olympics. Well, they surely succeeded there as according to my IP address for the last week, I live in Canada. Hey, you do what you gotta do.

Moving back to Conan, what’s he been doing on his extended vacation? Job interviews and other PR stuff abound I’d assume. Above it all however, he apparently found time to start a Twitter account (twitter.com/ConanOBrien). As of writing, Conan had well over 200K followers — pretty impressive.

With as much outspoken anger and hatred at NBC there was during the the last days of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, it’s no surprise that he’s garnering so much attention on Twitter. What will be interesting to see however is how he plays the Twitter card. Is he merely dabbling in this new fangled social networking stuff that the younger generation is so connected to or is it more of a PR move to gain a social following for any new shows he has coming in the future? Only time will tell. I for one can’t wait to see and hear more of Conan’s jokes on TV again.

Oh yeah, his first Tweet was funny, echoing the same dire circumstances as his last comments on the days leading up to the final Tonight Show:

“Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.”

Hurry back Conan…

Cnet

About that ridiculous claim that flash for mobile will kill battery life…

You may recall Steve Job’s now infamous quote many days back stating that if Adobe Flash were supported on the iPad, the battery life would fall from 10hrs. to 1.5hrs. A bold claim to make and one that I can neither confirm or deny being that I don’t actually have an iPad to play with. Even still, such a drop in battery life doesn’t seem very plausible. Flash on mobile devices has been known to kill batteries rather quickly, but that quickly?

Flash aficionado Mark Doherty whipped up a little 17-minute video showing off Flash — the entire 17 minutes mind you. When all was said and done, a quick trip into the battery status window showed that over those 17-mintues, the battery fell by only 6%. Even with the screen dimming for most of the video, having an active screen and active WiFi connection for the video, 6% doesn’t seem too bad, does it?

Mr. Doherty also goes on to say that Adobe has been flogging mobile Flash in house with H.264 results brining in a solid 3 hours on WiFi meaning most of even the longest movies in movie history should be viewable on a single charge. Suddenly I’m a bit more excited again. Anyone else?

For those needing a bit more proof (skip to the end…)

Video

Battery Performance with Flash Player 10.1 on the Nexus One from Mark Doherty on Vimeo.

AndroidCommunity

On again off again on… Apple removes “Explicit” category from iPhone dev tools.

Well, that was a short lived “fix”. The new explicit App Store category that was displayed yesterday has been effectively killed, for now. To many who were part of the 5,000 victims of the boobie ban of 2010, such a category seemed like a warm welcome. It seems that at this point however, Apple is fresh out of “warm loving feelings” for the “others” in the App world. To fall back on, there is that comment Gizmodo garnered from Apple in response to a distraught iPhone developer that stated: “if we do add an Explicit category, it won’t be anytime soon”. So that’ how it is, huh?

Naughty iPhone devs: are you ready to get off this raging roller coaster of emotion?

Macnn

HTC Incredible launch all but imminent. Spied in VZW internal systems.

By the time we start seeing unannounced devices showing up in carriers’ retail inventory systems, an imminent launch of said product is usually a given. With the HTC Incredible in mind and it’s awesome Android goods stuffed inside, we can only wait…impatiently. For the record, the Incredible will become the new “flagship” Android device on Verizon once it drops in the near future. The biggest talking points of course being the 1GHz processor and Sense UI, giving Android a prettier, yet darker face.

While it’s not a concrete, “Hey, the Incredible is coming on *insert date here*”, it is nonetheless, another drop in the bucket. Any early Android adopters (read: Droid owners) going to say sayonara to the DROID in hopes of taking the new hotness for a ride?

BerryScoop