(Credit:
Samsung)

The Blue Earth: CNET Asia gets to touch it.

Of course, that’s just a sampling of the sights in Singapore. So for the full story, head on over to CNET Asia.

Every June, the bigwigs of the cell phone world journey to Singapore for the annual CommunicAsia extravaganza. Though not as big as the Mobile World Congress held every February in Barcelona, Spain, CommunicAsia stills brings us plenty of cell phone goodness from the continent where so much mobile innovation happens.

I’ve talked about analysts on this blog before, and don’t want to spend more cycles denigrating their work. Like Sam, I’ve found Forrester to be particularly good. Forrester has actively talked with Alfresco despite the fact that we’re not clients.

commentary

In other words, subsidize coverage of the startups now in order to reap the rewards later.

Sam Lawrence, Jive’s chief marketing officer, has issued a report card for two analyst firms with which Jive works. Net net? Forrester is pretty engaged with its clients (and non-clients), and Gartner, apparently, is not.

Perhaps Forrester recognizes that there’s more to a market than the incumbents (though, as Sam found, no analysts with which we’ve worked have been all that interested in actually talking to our customers). After all, we’re often the ones exerting a big influence but don’t want to spend money on buying our way onto an analyst’s report.

With Forrester, we haven’t had to, which frankly makes me all the more interested in the research a group like Forrester produces. More balanced. More complete.

Kyle Mcnabb at Forrester and Kas Thomas at CMS Watch have been particularly great to work with. We’ve also really enjoyed our interaction with The 451 Group, and on a personal level I highly respect the guys at Redmonk and the fact that they share information freely - not just with those who insert coins into their mouths.

One of these will set you back $120, $180, or $230, depending on what level of features you want. The two high-end models can accept all major memory cards and USB drives. They also play MPEG and MP3 files.

(Via Gizmodo)

Digital photo frames are really just expensive gift ideas for people you don’t know how to buy for.

(Credit:
Gizmodo)

No price has been named, but Google has made a new purchase: the Korea-based blog platform TNC, co-founder Chang Kim wrote on his blog Thursday.

TNC, founded in 2004 by Kim and Chester Roh, has created a blog software product called Textcube. An earlier TNC platform, Tistory, was sold to Korean portal Daum.

“One piece of fact that my American friends have (a) really hard time perceiving is that Google is an underdog in this part of the globe,” he said. “Korea is the world’s sixth largest market in terms of Internet users, and yet Google has a market share that can only be described as ‘minor’ in Korea.”

Google already owns a blogging platform, Blogger, which it purchased in 2003. From a technological standpoint, it’s not immediately clear why the company would want another one–although Kim likened his company to Blogger rival WordPress (and its parent company Automattic), the favorite of the open-source community, which could give a hint one way or the other. But more concretely, Kim wrote that this acquisition is in part to help Google get a bigger foothold in Korea.

There is already some evidence that all-you-can-eat cell phone plans really do entice people to cut the cord.

The trend to cut the cord is already well-established. Over 12.8 percent of U.S. households today use a cell phone instead of a traditional wireline phone in their home, according to the
CTIA, the wireless industry’s trade organization. This is up from 7.7 percent in June of 2005.

Verizon Wireless’s $99.99 plan includes unlimited voice and Internet access, and Web-based e-mail. Customers can tack on additional services for a fee. For example, for $119.99 a month, Verizon Wireless customers can get unlimited messaging. And for $139.99 a month, they can get VCast video, VZ Navigator, and Mobile E-mail functions.

As a result, phone companies have seen rapid declines in traditional land lines. Qwest Communications, which operates in 14 states, lost a total of 738,000 phone lines in 2007.

But with nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population now owning a cell phone, it makes more sense for people to simply cut the cord rather than sign up for home phone service from a cable operator. While the cable companies’ phone service offers some enhanced telephony features that the traditional phone companies don’t offer, cell phones offer complete mobility, something neither local phone companies nor cable operators offer.

But until now consumers looking to cut the cord had to be careful about using more than their allotted amount of voice minutes. These new unlimited plans put those fears to rest.

“If that holds true for AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless and Sprint, we can expect an enormous shift in customers and the technologies they use,” he said. “The lower the monthly price, the larger the number of customers will choose it.”

Indeed, consumers have a finite amount of money. And as the U.S. economy heads toward a potential recession, consumers’ budgets are likely to get even tighter. AT&T has already said that it’s seen some pressure on its traditional land-line business in the fourth quarter of 2007 because of the weakened economy. It used to be said that people would never give up their home phones even if in bad financial times. But that isn’t necessarily true anymore. Home phones may be one of the first things cut as people rely more on their cell phones, which are with them where ever they go.

Two weeks ago, Verizon Wireless was the first major U.S. wireless operator to announce a $99.99 unlimited voice plan. Within days, AT&T and T-Mobile followed with their own plans. And last week, Sprint Nextel announced its plan, which also includes unlimited data and a slew of premium wireless services.

A small regional cell phone company called Cellular South, based in Jackson, Miss., started offering an unlimited, flat-rate plan last year. Unlimited voice for regular cell phones costs $79.99 and the plan costs $99.99 for unlimited voice and data services for smartphones. So far almost 70 percent of their customers have chosen one of these flat rate plans, according to Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications and wireless industry analyst. And of those who have subscribed to the services, about 25 percent have dropped their wireline connection, which is double the national average, Kagan added.

Even at the higher prices, it could be argued that Verizon and AT&T are cannibalizing their traditional phone services with this strategy. But the reality is that regardless of whether they introduce a new pricing plan or not, people are still going to ditch their traditional home phone services. For Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, these plans give them a way to compete with the cable operators.

AT&T’s plan is only for unlimited voice calls. AT&T customers can get additional messaging plans starting at $5 more a month with an unlimited messaging plan costing an additional $35 a month on standard phones.

Cable operators have also been putting pressure on local phone companies by offering their own version of residential telephony service, which they bundle with Internet and TV services. The phone companies have fought back by offering their own bundles. Verizon and AT&T have even upgraded their networks to start offering their own TV services.

“These new plans give consumers a much more realistic option for cutting the cord on the home phone,” said Roger Entner, senior vice president at IAG Research. “Besides, voice services are going wireless anyway. Even if you have a phone at home, it’s likely cordless. And if you’re like me you have your home phone or office phone ring through to your cell because it’s always with you.”

These new plans naturally appeal to today’s heaviest cell phone users. Road warriors who are constantly on their cell phones and who consistently go over their allotted minutes every month will be among the first people to sign up for these plans. But the services could also appeal to a much wider group of consumers looking to consolidate their communications bills by cutting the cord on their home phone.

For example, Verizon charges between $42 and $47 a month for its traditional unlimited local and long distance residential calling service that includes voicemail, caller ID, and call waiting. Verizon Wireless charges $40 a month for its lowest tier of wireless service, which includes 450 minutes of anytime voice calling. If someone is already looking to ditch his home phone, he can get an unlimited plan from Verizon Wireless, which ensures he won’t be sneak-attacked with extra overage charges, for only an additional $13 a month.

Wireless operators hope all-you-can-eat pricing will prove appetizing to consumers still using their landlines.

While a $99.99 unlimited voice and whatever other cell phone services are included might sound expensive for a cell phone-only service, it starts looking like a bargain to customers also looking to ditch their home phone service.

The new pricing model could also help them in the protracted battle for customers with the cable industry.

Apple may be looking at an open-source solution as a way to get around Adobe Systems’ Flash technology.

Web applications are big these days, and developers are continuously looking for ways to improve the performance and sex appeal of their applications. To that end, they often find themselves using frameworks like Adobe’s Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight technology to save time and take advantage of flashier graphics. But once you choose to develop a Web application for one of those standards, you’re essentially locked into the browser plug-ins for that one particular standard.

SproutCore gets around that lock-in by letting more of the Web application run inside the browser, rather than in the plug-in. Apple apparently used SproutCore to build the Web applications unveiled last week as part of the new MobileMe service, which replaces the aging .Mac service.

But the basic idea would be that Apple and its software development partners could build richer “desktop-like” Web applications for
Safari on either the
iPhone or the
Mac without having to license Adobe or Microsoft’s plug-in technology. This could also allow Windows developers to create Web applications that resemble Mac applications.

Roughly Drafted was able to find a developer willing to talk about last week’s Worldwide Developers Conference sessions, which are supposed to be confidential. But these things have a way of coming to light, and one session on Friday apparently covered a technology called SproutCore that could give Apple a way to get its Cocoa development frameworks into the hearts and minds of Web developers.

According to MarketWatch, Li made the initial announcement during the earnings call for his company, Hutchison Whampoa. “Facebook is doing very well and we could have some synergy between the 3G services of Hutchison and Facebook, so the customers could use Facebook on mobile phones,” Li reportedly said.

Among Li’s other investments is peer-to-peer video start-up Joost.

Facebook was valued at an eyebrow-raising $15 billion when Microsoft purchased a 5 percent stake at $240 million.

We’ll be doing our best here at CNET News.com to ferret out more product details, but we wouldn’t say no to some help. Whether you are at Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or somewhere else in searchland, feel free to send along your tidbits to ina dot fried at CNET dot com. There’s a lot to go through, and we’re bound to miss something. Plus, not all of Ray Ozzie’s thoughts get filed with the SEC.

“We are now in vision phase for Windows Live wave 3, working to get that out later this year,” division President Kevin Johnson told employees during the Webcast.

Microsoft is planning a new release this spring of its Live search product, code-named Rome.

Also, I forgot to mention this, but CFO Chris Liddell noted at this morning’s financial analyst meeting that Microsoft would likely have to raise money–a first for the company–to finance its Yahoo purchase.

Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t share much on what can be expected with Rome. Microsoft updated its search product last September, although the company has continued to remain a distant third to Google and Yahoo in the search market.

That tidbit was mentioned Friday as part of the software giant’s employee Webcast to discuss the Yahoo bid. Microsoft filed a transcript of the employee meeting on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This is just the first of many product tidbits one can expect as part of the regulatory filings being made in conjunction with the offer.

Apply formatting via keyboard shortcuts
I thought I knew all there is to know about pasting, but then I found out that you can copy and paste only the formatting of a selection, not the selection itself. To do so, select those items with formatting you want to copy, press Ctrl-Shift-C, choose the items you want to apply the formatting to, and press Ctrl-Shift-V.

Add a Save All option to Word 2007
Whenever I have Word open for more than a few minutes, the chances are good that I’ve got more than one file active. When quitting time rolls around, Word 2003 lets me save them all simultaneously by pressing the Shift key as I open the File menu, which converts the Save command into Save All.

Start where you left off
When you reopen a document in Word, the cursor appears at the very beginning. To jump to the place where the cursor was when you closed the file, just press Shift-F5.

Create outlines out of lists
Word 2007 adds a handy outline list to the standard bullet and numbered lists available on Word 2003’s Formatting toolbar (the Paragraphs section under the Home tab of Word 2007’s ribbon). You can create an outline from an existing list in either version by placing the cursor in the line you want to indent (or outdent, as the case may be) and clicking the Increase Indent or Decrease Indent buttons just to the right.

Shift your paragraphs around
It’s not unusual to need to rearrange the paragraphs in your document. Rather than the trial-and-error cut-and-paste method, you can move an entire paragraph up or down by pressing and holding the Shift and Alt keys and then the up or down arrows.

You can use Microsoft Word for years and still find new ways to get more work done in less time. Here are a handful of fast-and-easy productivity boosters.

Add a Save All icon to Microsoft Word 2007's Quick Access Toolbar.

To add this function to Word 2007, click the Office button, choose Word Options in the bottom-right corner, click Customize in the left pane, select Commands Not in the Ribbon under “Choose commands from,” and make sure “Show Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon” is checked. Now scroll to and select Save All in the list of commands on the left side of the main window, and click Add and OK. The Save All icon will appear on the aforementioned toolbar.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Click here for more coverage of Ceatec 2008.

(Credit:
Erica Ogg/CNET News)

We don't watch much video on our cell phones in the U.S., but the Japanese do. This Sharp phone features Dolby Mobile, 5.1-channel surround sound for the phone. Click on the above image for more pictures from the first day of Ceatec.