Chinese Professor: Controversial TV Advertisement.

This is in the ‘plus some’ category of the blog. As an economist seeing the below advertisement was interesting when I saw it on TV, its actually banned by certain networks for being too controversial. Coming from a mainly Austrian Economics points of view the US path of government spending, and trying to be everywhere at once while getting deeper in debt, will have its consequences in the near future.

The founding fathers stressed on having a non-intrusive government, with the people going about their business and the government not being too involved in everyones affairs (a lesson learnt from the British rulers). The rate of government policies that are expanding their influence is unbelievable.

People of course always point out to Wall Streets greed as they have done in the past, however, that in it self was caused by various factors that led up to it, which was induced by earlier government policies. There are various blogs by great professors that talk about these issues such as Cafe Hayek and Marginal Revolution. Both these blogs have great insights with unique ways of communicating ideas and they are great professors.

Regarding the video, it gets it point across however, the tone near the end where the Chinese are laughing undermines the whole objectivity of the video. The point that should be made is simply that government expansion has been increasing, and as they try to solve various issues by getting into the private sector, the economy as a whole will get less efficient due to the inefficiencies governments bring.

Wikipedia released for Windows Phone and Marketplace hits 11k apps

Just a heads up for all you folks that do a lot of research on a the go, a new Wikipedia app is available in the market place. This has been out for a week, I just tested it out. It is actually pretty cool and is fully part of the ‘metro’ UI.

You will have to shell out a $1.29 for it, which may be a tad bit expensive given the mobile version is hardly unusable. But it has definite improvements as you would expect a stand alone app to have, and this does not disappoint. You can trial this application, t decide if you are on the fence but for all you hardcore Wikipedia users I would recommend.

Features are:

– Browse the pages in Wikipedia mobile version
– View summary
– Show all images of a page with a built-in viewer, including pinch to zoom.
– Search with autosuggestion
– Complete Metro Interface
– Manage favourites
– User interface in English and French
– Using Wikipedia in 50 different languages

Good to see the app market growing at a rapid pace. In addition, the marketplace reached 11,000 applications on Wednesday. Which is an awesome growth rate, given it hit 10,000 just a short time ago, which is a faster rate of growth than any other marketplaces at this stage of maturity.

Go to the marketplace to download it now and I will keep a look out for neat applications, hit the links for more details.

Via

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Nokia Astound Video Hands on Collection

MyNokiaBlog has put together a great selection of videos about the upcoming T-Mobile Nokia Astound (C7) handset. It includes many of the expected features from PR 2.0 including the split keyboard.

I think that the C7 is a great start to entering the US, especially with the inclusion of PR 2.0 features, in addition to operator billing (like AT&T), a great price and a handset with a quality feel to it. Hopefully this helps in altering the general perception of ‘cheap’ in the US regarding the ‘Nokia’ brand.

MyNokiaBlog

Windows Phone 7 ‘NoDO’ Update starts to roll out

Just a heads up to all the Windows Phone owners out there. You should be seeing the ‘NoDo’ update within the next few weeks. If you are still waiting for the ‘pre NoDO’ update then assured that this update includes it.

Main features are copy/paste, better search results in the Marketplace, improved WIFI performance, improved application load time in addition to Outlook, messaging, Facebook, audio and camera improvements.

Patience is a virtue with phone updates, and this is no different. Hope it rolls out relatively soon for all given the lack of fragmentation, and this time with no issues.

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“Our go-forward smartphone platform for CDMA will be Windows” – Nokia US VP

According to an article by Forbes, Nokia will be looking to make CDMA phones in addition to GSM according to USA Vice President and General Manager Mark Slater. This is a change under Elop, helped by the end of the legal battle between Nokia and Qualcomm that holds most CDMA patent.

To succeed in the the US they would initially need to address the CDMA market given the 2nd largest carrier (post the T-Mobile and AT&T merger) is Verizon and 3rd Sprint. Given the expansion of LTE, and the investments all the providers are making, it should not take very long for all carriers to be on the same page and all have SIM cards (yaay!).

Nokia’s latest phone in the NA market, the C7, is an awesome entry. Slater asserts that is not positioned as high, which is apparent with the price but is extremely good value.

Other comments by Mark are below:

Nokia will continue to be very, very aggressive around Symbian even as it adopts Windows Phone and even though Nokia intends to make Windows Phone devices that are more affordable than the current crop. We will have high-end Windows smartphones, but with Nokia’s scale, Windows will have to play in all parts of our portfolio.

Mark Slater, Nokia US VP and GM

Read on for the full article

Rumor: “4 Windows Phone devices + 1 Tablet in Nokia R&D”

According to the infamous Eldar Murtazins tweet, there are 4 Windows Phone devices and 1 Tablet presumably Windows 8 in Nokias labs.
This could of course be true. Nokia is exploring their options for tablets and Microsoft would be a potential partner given their partnership. Of the 4 Windows Phone, Eldar says that 2 devices are Chasis 1 i.e. minimum 1 GHZ processor, capacitive screens and two Chasis 2 devices that are 800 MHz with resistive screens.

I would guess that the high end phones would be released first, followed by thee Chasis 2 phones in 2012. This supports Elops assertion that Windows Phones could be pushed to lower price points very quickly indeed.

Take this with a grain of salt, Eldar was the same guy that said Android is coming on Nokia phones soon and Nokia had no money for a booth at MWC.

Nokia Tablet may not be Microsoft–considering Meego + other alternatives

According to Reuters, Nokia is still considering the OS to use for its Tablet strategy. They have not necessarily decided to go with Windows, and are looking for options including Meego.

If true I would guess it is because there will be no differentiation with all the Windows 8 tablets out there. Going Meego would be interesting but given the talk about it being for ‘future disruption’ only it seems unlikely.

According to the post:

But Nokia wants to get its first tablet right rather than rushing to join the party at this late stage, and hopes to come up with something distinctive that will also help it with strategies for other screens including televisions.

Reading the above, you would wonder why they didn’t stick to Meego since it would unify the phone, car, TV and tablets, much like Android is doing.

Hit the source to read the full article.

Source

New Footage of Internet Explorer 9 in action

TNW has a video of Internet Explorer 9 SXSW. The footage shows what we glimpsed earlier at MWC. The main change besides the much improved rendering quality is that the address bar is located at the bottom instead of the top. I for one appreciate this, especially when having touch screens as large as the HTC Hd7 and it is of course similar to Maemo and Symbian, but much slicker.

The interface looks as slick as usual but it must be noted though that we can expect other changes since this is an early preview. I hope it isn’t long before we see a multitasking demo with the usual of actual backgrounds not some neon green.

Source

Paypal App released

Paypal has released their application in the Ovi Store. It is very similar to the Android app and there are some problems with ‘exiting’. But besides that good to know Symbian is still getting love, despite being shelved. Nokia has to make sure the developers are happy in order to ease their transition to the WP platform. Some manufacturers have openly criticized Windows Phone saying it is not popular enough and Microsoft is not ding enough.

Good to see more mainstream applications entering the Ovi Store, curiously on searching the Windows Marketplace I could not find the app.

Head over to here to download now the application now and share your thoughts in the ‘review’ section to give feedback to Paypal.