Daily Marauder

WIRELESS

Move over, Nokia N97. Your bigger, badder, unannounced brother is on the way – and one of our sources at Nokia has just clued us in on all of the details, from worldwide launch targets to hardware specs. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/05/24/exclusive-everything-there-is-to-know-about-nokias-next-tablet/  5/24)

Nokia’s very own centralized application marketplace, dubbed Ovi Store, today officially made its way to the public arena as expected. It will have to stand up and fight against other notable mobile content stores such as Apple’s App Store, Windows Mobile Marketplace and BlackBerry’s Application Center. Nokia is rolling out the app and content store globally (with credit card support), but current reserves operator billing for customers in Australia, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ireland and the UK. Additional countries and languages will be added throughout the year, with AT&T planning to make Ovi Store available to its customers in the U.S. later this year. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/26/nokias-ovi-store-opens-for-business-10-must-downloads-to-kick-off/  5/26)

The iPhone is quickly becoming the platform of choice for nostalgia-inspiring classic games, with releases like Myst and Wolfenstein now landing on a regular basis. The latest addition, and the one that may strike closest to home for those console gamers of the early 90’s, is Sonic The Hedgehog. The game is now available for a reasonable $5.99, and you can download it here. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/24/sonic-the-hedgehog-races-onto-the-iphone-but-do-its-fake-buttons-slow-him-down/  5/24)

If you’ve got an iPhone, there’s a good chance you’ve got Tapulous’s Tap Tap Revenge installed – the game is ranked as the iPhone’s most popular game of all time. Tonight the latest update to the game lands, adding a handful of new features including themes, “battles”, and a new song import feature. The features are part of the latest update of Tap Tap Revenge 2, which you can download for free here (if you already have the app you can just update it). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/22/tap-tap-revenge-25-hits-tonight-takes-steps-to-consolidate-popularity/  5/22)

Airlines are starting to equip their fleets with Wi-Fi systems, which could bring changes to in-flight entertainment. Movies and other entertainment programming could be packaged on the ground and piped to planes for viewing on passengers’personal electronic devices. (Iwantmedia 5/26, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/business/26road.html  5/26)

Viacom’s MTV Networks is filing an $11.6 million lawsuit against Kajeet, a cell phone service for children, accusing it of failing to follow through on a licensing deal. Kajeet is charged with dropping MTV to enter a competing deal with Time Warner’s Cartoon Network. (Iwantmedia 5/26, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1m9EpfuudI8  5/22)

With the Japanese market in a severe slump, cell phone manufacturers Panasonic and Sharp said they were looking overseas to regions that have yet to be oversaturated with high-end handsets. Panasonic indicated its preference for open-source platforms such as Android four years after abandoning foreign markets, while Sharp said it was eyeing entry to Brazil and may sell a phone that can pick up live TV signals. The Wall Street Journal (5/22) , The New York Times/VentureBeat (5/22)