SmartPhones

While the mainstream press is focused on the new Microsoft-Yahoo deal, we'd like to talk about the Microsoft-Nokia deal: in particular, what will it do for smartphones?

For one, it will bring a Microsoft Office enterprise version to Symbian smartphones. Plus new Nokia devices will ship with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile built in. Also, the new team-up plans to use Exchange ActiveSync to optimize corporate customers' data access.

But in the live teleconference call yesterday in which the partnership was announced, a Microsoft exec professed that this was by no means all there was to the arrangement.

In a much larger context, Microsoft hopes to dislodge RIM and its Blackberry from its domination of the mobile enterprise market. Plus, Microsoft is eager to benefit from Nokia's 200 million subscriber base while Nokia is eager to benefit from Microsoft's U.S. presence.

Strange, though, is that Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS and Nokia's Symbian mobile OS will still compete with one another in the platform wars.

written by SmartPhoneWizard \\ tags: ActiveSync, Blackberry, enterprise, Exchange, Microsoft, Nokia, Office, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile

Want a web cam? Well, have you ot a smartphone? If so, then you've already got a web cam in the making.

A company named Ateksoft has recently released WebCamera Plus v2.0, a downloadable software application that transforms most modern PDAs and smartphones into web cameras, now with audio recording capabilities as well.

Other features incorporated into the version 2.0 update not available in previous versions of the program are wireless microphone capabilities and the ability to share streams simultaneously through several programs.

With WebCamera Plus v2.0 you can record or stream audio/video content to:

• Yahoo! Messenger
• Skype
• Windows Live Messenger
• MSN Messenger
• Windows Movie Maker
• Virtual Dub
• and more!

Whatever your type of connection - 3G, Bluetooth, LAN, GPRS, Wi-Fi, USB, ActiveSync - WebCamera Plus will work for you, and it's compatible with almost every smartphone and PDA currently on the market.

To learn more about Web Camera Plus and Ateksoft's other cool picturesque product CoolCamera, and to download one or both of these killer apps into your PDA or smartphone, visit the Ateksoft site .

written by SmartPhoneWizard \\ tags: 3G, ActiveSync, Ateksoft, Bluetooth, Cool Camera, CoolCamera, GPRS, LAN, MSN Messenger, PDA, Skype, smart phone, smartphone, USB, Virtual Dub, web cam, Web Camera Plus, webcam, WebCamera Plus, WebCameraPlus, Wi-Fi, Wifi, Windows, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Movie Maker, Yahoo, Yahoo! Messenger