Nokia exist now as a cautionary tale to the likes to Google (and by extension Samsung), and of course to Apple. Cast your mind back ~10 years, and the Nokia 3310 and 6210 were simply the mobiles you bought. Why? They were well built, easy to use and everyone knew that Nokia were at the top of their game.

What went wrong? With hindsight, it seems they just utterly failed to build on their good brand and reputation. They started facing some competition from Motorola and a few others who offered (imho) poorer UI's, but better looking hardware. And I think that is the key part - Nokia not only failed to keep ahead of the curve design-wise, they seemed to completely miss the shift in what people wanted. Good solid hardware and features, with good battery, were no longer enough. Mobiles became a fashion accessory, and the likes of the Razr offered far more interesting designs than the Nokia bricks. Oh sure, there were snap-on cases for Nokia phones, but they didn't cut the mustard for long.

They had the potential to get ahead of the curve again with the N-Gage. It could have found a solid niche for itself, but some bizarre usability choices (holding it sideways to make a call, so you look like a buffoon?) killed it on arrival. While they flapped around on this and continued to fail to deliver what people actually wanted, Apple (and others) continued to eat into their market share. Nokia seemed to completely fail to see the touchscreen/smartphone tsunami.

It's a sad tale, but as I said at the outset, every manufacturer should study Nokia's downfall to help mitigate their own demise.

From the summary: "...It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes..."

...that's unfortunate phrasing.

The Stand by Stephen King - I avoided it for a long time as I wouldn't be too fussed with his other works, but I found this book genuinely excellent. Long though!

Grab yourself a Zimbra appliance from http://www.turnkeylinux.org/email - up and running in a few minutes, and it should give you most of what you'd expect coming from Gmail.

Hope missing the lucrative Christmas window doesn't hurt them too much - mom and dad might be tempted to buy a Kinect or Move instead of waiting for 3DS...

As long as a sperm whale and a bowl of petunia's don't suddenly flicker into existance when I power it on, I'm all for it.

While I applaud any effort to bridge the gap between rural and urban internet access, two things strike me here:

1) No mention of price in the article - if current 3g broadband setups are anything to go by, don't expect to see much of a GB allowance compared to standard 'wired' dsl
2) Apparently it can scale to a maximum of 7.2mbps, with a claimed rural 'average' of 2.8mbps - is there much point in a network investing in rolling out these sorts of standards if the average speed is going to be pretty slow? I understand that in rural area's its better than nothing, but the limitations of speed and download allowance I suspect makes this sort of broadband access not very appealing. Frankly, I'd prefer a group scheme using line-of-sight where you are at least going to get a reliable, fast connection. My 0.02 lampsie

In the name of spurring on independent production, are there any programs out there like SEUCK (Shoot'em'up construction kit) that average joe's can use to create games? I know SEUCK was limited, but it did give power to the average joe who could'nt program. In particular, I'd love to see a construction kit for SCUMM-type adventure games like the Monkey Island games. Perhaps open source to the rescue?

My only knowledge of space elevators is probably what I've read on Slashdot and the occasional pop article, so for now it seems like a pipe dream - however, its a pipe dream that seems likely to come true at some point. Most articles fail to get passed the concept however, so I have some questions:

1) How would one get the opposite end of the "tether" into space after its been bolted to the Earth?
2) What kind of payloads are the likely going to be capable of carrying?
3) Will the tether and the space-end of the tether need regular augmentations? (e.g. alignment, raising, maintenance etc)
Thanks :) lampsie