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Sling Media has introduced a version of SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian/S60. This application gives Slingbox owners the ability to watch and control their home TV from their smartphone. Earlier this year, this company launched Symbian support in Europe with mobile provider 3, and it is now available to anyone. New features in this version of SlingPlayer Mobile include Wi-Fi support and a fullscreen landscape viewing mode. In a related story, Echostar Communications has announced plans to have its subsidiary Dish Network acquire Sling Media for $380 million dollars in cash and Echostar stock. Dish Network is a satellite television provider, with the third-largest number of pay-TV subscribers in the U.S., and the company has investments in Internet access over DSL and satellite. Echostar was previously an investor in Sling Media since 2005. It's unclear what the long-term implications of the buyout will be, but Echostar has previously experimented with mobile video in the form of a mobile viewing device that allowed users to download content from the company's digital video recorders. Echostar CEO Charlie Ergen said that the acquisition would "allow [Dish Network] to offer innovative and convenient ways for our customers to enjoy their programming on more displays and locations, including TVs, computers, and mobile phones, both inside and outside of the home." Analysts speculate that the company may plan to integrate the Slingbox mobile video functionality into its set-top receivers.

Windows cell phones, hoping to claw back market share it has lost in the tough, top-end smartphone race to chief rivals, Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Samsung and Google’s Android software. But some analysts say it may be too little, too late, for the world’s top mobile phone maker. With price tags of 420 ($580) and 270, the Lumia 800 and 710 are based on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 7 software and come eight months after Nokia and the computing giant said they were hitching up. “Lumia is reasonably good ... but it’s not an iPhone killer or a Samsung killer,†Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said. “But where Nokia does stand out is on their price it looks like they are going to be very competitive.†Lumia 800, with Carl Zeiss optics and 16GB of internal memory, will be available in selected European countries in November, including France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Britain. It will be sold in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the year-end. Lumia 710, with a 1.4 GHz processor, navigational applications and Nokia Music, mobile music-streaming app will first be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year. The company’s share price jumped almost 3 per cent to 4.96 ($6.90) in otherwise depressed market in Helsinki. Nokia also unveiled four cheaper smartphones aimed at emerging markets, the Asha handsets priced 60 to 115 with cameras, navigation applications and fast downloads, in a bid to help “the next billion†users connect to the Internet, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said at the Nokia presentation in London. Equipped with QWERTY keyboards and some with the popular dual SIM cards, the Asha handsets will be shipped globally in the fourth quarter or early 2012.

The newly introduced iPod Touch bears striking resemblance to the iPhone, aesthetically and functionally. It uses the same multi-touch screen, apparently runs a scaled down version of OS X that runs Safari and a YouTube application, uses WiFi, has an accelerometer that allows the display to shift based on physical orientation, and uses the same "SpringBoard" interface to launch its applications. There are, however, some important differences between the devices: There is no email client on the iPod Touch There is no Maps application on the iPod Touch There are no Stocks or Weather widgets on the iPod Touch There is no built-in camera for the iPod Touch There are no Blutooth capabilities for the iPod Touch The iPod Touch has a differently styled "Dock," with a reflective surface -- akin to the Dock that will debut with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) While the iPod Touch is sleeping, the user can tap the home button twice to bring up touch controls on the screen -- a feature the iPhone currently lacks The iPod Touch has a separate Contacts app -- it's built into the Phone application on the iPhone The iPod Touch has separate Video and Music apps, whereas the iPhone has a single "iPod" app that contains these functions There is apparently (and obviously) no microphone on the iPod Touch, though it will be interesting to see if such audio-in capabilities could be enabled via a third-party device. The iPod touch's headphone jack is on the bottom of the device The iPod touch lacks a built-in external speaker The iPod touch's screen appears to be of a slightly higher quality than the iPhone, with 163 pixels per inch to the iPhone's 160 pixels per inch.