Everest gets 3G connection, you can make video calls from the top of the world

Mount Everest in Nepal now has 3G coverage, allowing hikers and tourists to use mobile internet and make cheaper cellular calls. The only possible connection until now was via expensive satellite phones.

If you plan a vacation to Mount Everest you may take your 3G cellphone too. Thanks to Nepali telecom company Ncell, the world’s tallest mountain now has 3G coverage and you will be able to make calls, send emails or browse the internet.

Just don’t expect to make calls on the top of Everest, the coverage is concentrated only around the base camp and its vicinities.

The new network setup also made possible the world’s “highest” videocall – connected successfully on 5300 meters.

Nepal is the poorest country in South Asia and only 30% of its population is covered by a telecommunication network. The Ncell primary shareholder, TeliaSonera, plans to invest 100 million US dollars next year in an effort to expand the network to cover 90% of the Nepali population.

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Wi-Fi Direct can connect two devices without a router, could spell the end for Bluetooth

When you try to connect two devices in a local wireless network, you usually have to choose between speed (Wi-Fi) or ease of connectivity (Bluetooth). But the Wi-Fi alliance has launched Wi-Fi Direct, which combines both advantages into one technology…

Wi-Fi offers plenty of bandwidth but you need to have a wireless network set up wherever you need to connect the devices (so a router is a must). That’s not always desirable, sometimes even impossible. Wi-Fi Direct, as the name suggests, makes a direct connection between two (or more) devices with no middleman required.

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Nokia unleashes its short movie, shot exclusively on the Nokia N8 - GSMArena.com news

Nokia presents The Commuter, a funny short film, starring "Slumdog Millionaire" Dev Patel with a cameo by Pam Anderson. Beside the stellar cast, the other thing that's intriguing about the flick is the fact it's shot exclusively on the Nokia N8.

The Commuter is yet another proof of the Nokia N8 camcorder skills. Well, contrast could have been better in some scenes but still, you can hardly tell that the 720p HD movie was shot with a mobile phone.

Now, get the pop corn and dim the lights, will you?

Just don't expect you can grab a Nokia N8 and go shoot something like that. The team behind the movie has used some expensive pro-level accessories. We bet they've used at least a tripod with a fluid video head, a steadicam-type stabilizer adapted for cameraphone use and some specialized video lighting.

Other than that the Nokia N8 shoots some great clips, as you can see from our detailed review.

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Windows 7 Service Pack 1 release candidate available for download

In software development terms, Release Candidate is the final stretch. The first Service Pack for Windows 7 is pretty much all the updates released so far collected in a single package, plus improvements to virtualization and remote desktop use…

Service Pack 1 will bring Windows 7 computers up to date if their auto-update was off all this time (some companies do that in their offices, in case some update turns out to be faulty). The two new things that SP1 brings are RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory.

Dynamic Memory will improve memory usage if you use Hyper-V virtualization. RemoteFX is slightly more interesting – it’s imbues remote desktop connections with support for Aero, full motion video and playing 3D games. You can read more about it here.

Anyway, the more impatient among you can get the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 from here (it works for Windows Server 2008 R2 too). The rest will have to wait till Q1 of 2011 when the final version of SP1 comes out.

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The latest Doritos ad treats you to a new Rhianna single and some wild 360-degrees videos

You won’t hear me praising ads too often (though I do favor ad-supported apps as opposed to paid ones) but credit has to be given where it’s due. In this particular case the well deserved pat on the back goes for Doritos and their Late Night promotion.

If you go to doritoslatenight.com you will treated to a bunch of interactive 360-degrees music videos. Interactive in this case means you can literally use your mouse to look around while the video is running and the lead singer is singing, walking or whatever. It may not be the best quality footage but the idea is certainly quite innovative.

And to add that extra bit of glamor, Doritos has scored a deal with Rhianna to debut her new single on the same page. To get access to that though you will need a Doritos Late Night special-edition bag (preferably empty) and a web camera.

You can find one of the videos on the Doritos UK YouTube channel. There’s even a behind the scenes video there that shows the rig they’ve used to film the whole thing. Unfortunately, for Rhianna you still have to get that bag of Doritos.

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OTECH F1 phone has Quad SIM support, probably glows in the dark, too

Well, here’s something curious that popped into our email inbox – the OTECH F1. You might want to sit down for this – it has four SIM cars. Yep – four, 4, f-o-u-r. But wait, there’s more! All four cards are active all the time, not just one or two…

This is getting ridiculous – safety-razor level of ridiculous. It started of with one razor blade, uh sorry, SIM card, then came dual-SIM, then triple SIM and now this. Check the photos below – 4 SIM cards, 4 signal strength indicators and little use for such a thing.


Four – count them! – four SIM cards, all of them active

The OTECH F1 is interesting in a “Did they really do that?” kind of way. The looks (and QWERTY keyboard) borrow heavily from BlackBerry, but 2.4” screen is touch enabled. Take that, Torch.

The OTECH F1 subtly looks like a BlackBerry

Oh, and there’s a built-in TV receiver – PAL/NTSC/SECAM. FM Radio and Bluetooth are also available but it seems there’s only GPRS for Internet connectivity (shame, quad-3G would have been fast).

Look closely at the back – do you see the label next to the camera? Yep, it says “12.1”. I wouldn’t count on 12MP photos though.

12.1MP camera… label, but probably VGA camera • The menu looks familiar

I only wonder one thing really – have they got a SAR rating for this thing?

Opera 11 Alpha out now, finally brings extension support

The reason why many people still prefer Mozzila’s Firefox over Chrome or Opera is the huge variety of add-ons that ad or change features on the browser. Google has already launched the Chrome’s extensions, but it’s just today that Opera adopts the long awaited in-browser apps.

The new Opera 11 looks much like the latest Google Chrome, especially when you add some extensions around the address bar. In addition to that, Opera 11 raises the speed once again and tweaks the mail panel and the bookmark manager.

Opera 11 Alpha

You can get the Opera 11 Alpha right here. The developers are welcomed to start building extensions, but first you may want to check the dedicated tutorial.

Nokia N8 is behind the shooting of this wonderful stop-motion short movie

CellScope is a mobile phone holder/attachment that turns an autofocus cameraphone into a high-resolution digital microscope. The following stop-motion video was shot with Nokia N8 and CellScope. You can see the shooting rig in the final seconds of the clip.

And by the way, the tiny running girl is only 9mm in height. Awesome!

For you information, these type of videos, called stop-motion videos, are made by stitching multiple still photographs into a movie. You can learn more about them here at Wikipedia plus there are tons of those at YouTube as well.

You probably remember the ninjas unboxing the Nexus One as well – that was stop motion video as well.

Feast your eyes on this full-length HTC Desire HD promo video

HTC was only unveiled recently. Now we get to see a 7-minute promo video of the new smartphone as an appetizer before you actually get to play with it in the store.

The HTC Desire HD is the GSM version of the US-dwelling HTC Evo 4G. It runs on Android 2.2 with the latest Sense UI and it’s got a 4.3 inches of touchscreen and 8 megapixels worth of a camera that sports 720p video recording.

I’m sure that will be enough to whet your appetite. If you want a bit more, you can check out our hands-on preview from the unveiling event including a nice video of the smartphone in action.

Nokia and AT&T give 10 million US dollars for the best Symbian apps for the US

Today Nokia USA and AT&T announced the North American Calling Innovators Contest with 10 million US dollars prize. Symbian developers from all over the globe are invited to create Nokia N8-compatible apps and games for the US market.

The developers will participate into 17 categories – six gaming and eleven different general application one (business, entertainment, imagining, video, social and location). Three winners will be picked for each category by a special Nokia and AT&T jury.

Every winner will get a 150 000 US dollars award, while the category prize winner will receive additional 100 000 US dollars bonus to those.

The software developers have the full Nokia and AT&T support and the opportunity to upload their apps to the Ovi Store.

The Qt dev tools have been available for a while and now seems a good time the developers start building some killer Symbian apps.

Nokia

The Mozilla Seabird phone concept is a glimpse in the future, and has a nice video demo too

Mozilla Seabird is a conceptual phone, unfortunately. After watching its video, you will want a time machine for sure.

Dual pico-projectors and a detachable Bluetooth-headset that can be used as IR-based 3D controller – those look very cool. Everything used in this concept is already invented, but there is one problem though – the size. We are still a few years away from that level of tech miniaturization.

Enjoy a glimpse into the future.

If you have a pair of 3D glasses, you will surely like to see the 3D version of this video.

Already want one? Me too.

Mozilla Labs

Watch two cellphones go head-to-head Transformers style

Here’s a video that doesn’t need much introduction. It’s impressive as a videographer’s first attempt in DSLR video creation. The characters and the 3D animation are cool, as well. The video was shot mainly with a Canon 550D but they’ve included a Nikon D5000 as a sidekick as well. The second camera was used so that the author can shoot a scene from two angles simultaneously. The whole shooting was done in 2 hours, post took a good month.

And that Lada they’ve got there… It can easily put a Black Volga to shame, that’s for sure. Enjoy the video.

Nokia N8 gets a pretty impressive panorama feature

There’s little doubt that Nokia N8 is a pretty great photography tool, but one feature it notably lacks out of the box is Panorama shots. Luckily the Finns are going to add that with a separate app that should hit the Ovi store soon.

In the sample above it’s incredibly hard to detect where the three stitches are (the panorama was created from four shots and measures 4306 x 1280 pixels at full stretch).You can check out the full-res version over at Flickr.

When you zoom in to pixel level, the image sharpness is hardly spectacular, and there are some evident compression artifacts but I’m hoping they get it straight before they release it in the Ovi Store. I’m also hoping that the app will be available to a wider range of devices and not just the N8.

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Parrot AR.Drone goes on sale, can be yours for 300 bucks (in various currencies)

Remember the smartphone-controlled quadricopter that stroke us with its awesomeness back in February? It missed its target launch date by a week but it’s already hitting the shelves and is waiting for you to go and get it.

The lucky fellas who live in the USA can snatch a shiny new Parrot AR.Drone for a penny under 300 dollars from Brookstone, Amazon or the company’s own online store.

On our side of the big pond the AR.Drone is priced at the way heftier 300 GBP (480 US dollars) price point in the UK or 300 euro (420 dollars) in the other European countries. You can find the dealer closest to you by following this link.

Greenpois0n is out, jailbreaks iOS 4.1 even better

The greenpois0n jailbreak is now available and does its magic to every iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad and 3rd and 4th generation iPod Touch. It implements the GeoHot’s exploit used in hislimera1n jailbreak tool that was released this weekend.

The limera1n jailbreak was released only a few hours before the promised premiere of greenpois0n. That was the reason for its delay – the Chronic Dev Team that’s behind greenpois0n didn’t want to reveal its exploit to Apple and saved it for the next time.

The Chronic Dev Team implemented the limera1n exploit in the greenpois0n tool instead and it’s now available for public consumption. They claim greenpois0n is safer and more user-friendly, than the limera1n.

It’s compatible with Windows only (a Mac version is coming) and jailbreaks successfully iOS 4.1 on each and every iGadget.

Be aware that this won’t unlock your iPhone and for now, you should stay away from it if you already rely on hacking tools to get a carrier unlock.

You can get the greenpois0n from here.

You can safely update your iPhone 4 to iOS 4.1 without losing unlock capabilities

If you are already tired of waiting for a carrier unlock solution and want iOS 4.1 on your iPhone 4 right now, you can have it. There is a way to update your phone without updating the phones’s baseband along the way.

iClarified has a complete walkthrough for the update process. You need a regular iPhone 4.1 firmware, the application TinyUmbrella and iTunes. The method works on both Windows and Mac. Check the iClarified tutorial to see how it’s done.

When you’re finished, you can jailbreak your iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1 with either limera1n orgreenpois0n and then you can unlock the regular way with ultrasn0w.

Skype 5 final version out now, brings Facebook integration

The Skype 5 beta has been available for quite some time now, but only today it reaches its golden status. And the best part is it’s already available for download.

Skype 5 brings small visual and design changes, but nothing spectacular. The new features you’ll discover is automatic recovery of dropped calls and Facebook News Feed integration.

I was expecting a bit more than just to see my News Feed page right in the Skype window – Facebook chat would have been nice. Unfortunately, besides viewing the latest updates, you can only “Like”, comment and change your status.

You can get Skype 5 here. The group video chat is still in beta and works only on Windows-running computers.