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Electronista: Perfect Curve today released its simple Socket Pocket wall charger for handheld devices. Just wide enough for the iPhone and full-size iPods, the holder fits next to a wall outlet and keeps most devices safely on a vertical surface while they charge rather than resting them on a counter or desk, where they might be damaged by a knock to the ground or crushed by a larger object.

A bottom port also provides the space for the Dock Connector’s power cable or any other AC adapter to run directly to the nearby outlet.

Each package ships with two of the pockets to provide room for a second device or spare items such as pens and accessories.

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Engadget: Sony took the wraps off its Network Walkman NWD-B100. The featherweight player is landing in Europe come August, and has a 3-line color LCD.

The player comes in 1GB (NWD-B103 / B103F) and 2GB sizes (NWD-B105 / 105F), and features an FM tuner, mic / voice recorder, up to 12 hours battery life, and perhaps best of all, it’s now ATRAC-free (MP3 and WMA only) with mass-storage mode, meaning you can officially throw out your copy of SonicStage.

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VNUnet: Symantec has warned of an exploit in circulation that can crash Nintendo’s Wii gaming console.

The problem concerns the use of Flash files on the console. Adobe patched the Flash flaw on 12 July, but the Opera browser used by the Wii is still vulnerable. 

“The most interesting thing is that it is a cross-platform vulnerability,” said Liam OMurchu from Symantec’s Security Response team.

“Due to the fact that Flash can run in different browsers and on different platforms, the discovery of this one vulnerability could leave all Flash-enabled operating systems and devices open to the attack, including some advanced smartphones.”

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Product Reviews Net: This is a weather forecasting umbrella that illuminates the base of its handle to alert you to approaching inclement weather.

The handle on the umbrella has got a built-in radio receiver that operates on a proprietary wireless network, so it won’t suffer from interference from other wireless devices.

Once the umbrella is opened it has a 58″dual-canopy that is design to resists gusts.

So if you ever want to know what the weather might be just use your umbrella.

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NaviGadget: Takara GP4 is a budget GPS system for Europe that sells for €190. Unlike your standard budget satellite navigation solution that has a 3.5″ screen, Takara GP4 features a whopping 3.6″ screen.Other features include the ability to view maps in 2D or 3D either in day or night mode, voice guidance through the integrated speakers, and pedestrian mode that makes it easy to follow directions on foot.

Takara GP4 displays a compass on screen and shows the local time, altitude, remaining distance as well as arrival time. The maps comes on an SD card which is preloaded with maps of United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

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Just Another Mobile Phone Blog: This phone is a candybar and available already. It has a transparent back cover and under that a solar panel. Here are some specs.

- 2.6 inch 260k QVGA touchscreen
- 1.3 mega pixel camera
- microSD support
- stereo speakers
- bluetooth
- measures 115.5×52.5×15 mm
- weighs 100 grams

The solar panel part of the phone looks nice. You can charge your phone without a charger and outlet…

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eFluxMedia: RIM’s BlackBerry 8820 will feature Wi-Fi connectivity features that will add even more value to the already highly-praised handheld.

Currently RIM’s thinnest smartphone design with a full and highly tactile QWERTY (also available in AZERTY and QWERTZ configurations to support different language groups)  keyboard, large and bright display (320 x 240), user-friendly trackball navigation system and voice and data functionality, the BlackBerry 8820 also includes built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), RIM’s latest media player enhancements, and a microSD / microSDHC (microSD High Capacity) expandable memory slot that can support current and future generations of microSD memory cards up to 32GB.

The BlackBerry 8820 is a quad-band GSM/GPRS and EDGE-enabled smartphone that provides global wireless voice and data capabilities through UMA (unlicensed mobile access) for fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) service offerings from various wireless carriers around the world.

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Bloomberg: « TomTom NV agreed to buy digital-mapping company Tele Atlas NV for about 2 billion euros ($2.77 billion) in cash.

“The takeover makes strategic sense,” Marcel Achterberg, an Amsterdam-based analyst at ING, wrote in a note. “TomTom is in a commoditized and maturing market and the vertical integration with one of the few leading map content providers opens up new opportunities and raises the barriers to entry.”

TomTom had revenue of 380 million euros and profit of 68 million euros in the second quarter, the company said in a separate statement today. The results beat analysts’ estimates. »

EngadgetHD: As if there wasn’t enough shameless Blu-ray promoting going on of late, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is now adding fuel to the fire by offering “revenue sharing on Blu-ray Disc releases through Rentrak Corporation.”

Starting this September, Sony will reportedly make “all of its new releases and select catalogue titles on Blu-ray available under the agreement, which expands the studio’s DVD revenue-sharing deal with Rentrak.”

Interestingly, neither firm has been willing to disclose the terms just yet, but SPHE president David Bishop did note that he felt it was important to “make sure that the rental component of the Blu-ray launch was covered.”

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Reuters: Samsung, the world’s third-largest plasma display panel (PDP) maker, posted a worse-than-expected quarterly net loss on Friday, hurt by tumbling prices of its television screens.

Results at the South Korean firm, which sells both PDP screens and traditional cathode-ray tubes (CRT) for TVs, are unlikely to improve significantly soon as the sectors will continue to see weak pricing and margins.

Samsung expected a slower fall in plasma screen prices in the second half.

The company was the world’s top producer of PDPs in 2005, but has been overtaken by Japan’s Matsushita (Panasonic) and home rival LG Electronics last year as it grappled with reduction problems and declining sales.

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CNet News: Nokia last week launched a service that it said will cut the time a GPS-enabled cell phone takes to pinpoint its whereabouts, opening new opportunities for location-based online services.

Nokia hopes the service, available for people who own its flagship N95 smart phones, will cut the start-up time to one minute, from up to three minutes currently.

The slowness has so far hampered interest in cell phone navigation. Analysis firm Berg Insight has forecast annual shipments of handset-based personal navigation devices in Europe and the United States to reach 12 million units by 2009, compared with 1 million in 2005.

While most assisted-GPS technologies use mobile carriers cell sites to find locations faster, Nokia’s new service bypasses operator networks, using data from a SIM card and new software that helps the phone to catch satellite signals.

Nokia’s N95, with a €700 price tag, is not within reach of the wider market, but the Finnish company aims to bring GPS chips to a wide array of its phones.

All of Nokia’s GPS-enabled phones will have the new service. Nokia bought into the navigation industry last year through its acquisition of German firm Gate5 and started to offer free maps and routing data in February, while charging extra fees for navigation.

While a few years ago personal navigation device makers like TomTom shrugged off possible rivalry from the handset industry, they have now acknowledged the potential risk to their business.

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Electronista: Hitachi is preparing what should be the world’s first camcorder to record directly to Blu-Ray.

Currently without a codename, it will record to three-inch BD-R/RE discs, each capable of storing 7GB; substantially less than the 25 to 50GB of full-size Blu-Ray, but still more than comparably-sized DVD media.

DVD discs inserted into the camera will only allow playback.

Critically, the device should actually be able to take advantage of Blu-Ray, due to a 5.3-megapixel CMOS sensor that captures images in 1080p.

The camera is further equipped with AVC/H.264 MPEG-4 encoding for better HD compression, and MPEG-2 serves as an SD fallback.

Hitachi is unsure of the exact release date for the camcorder, but it should be out in Japan between fall and the end of the year.

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