Amazon launches iPhone application

Amazon has launched on the Apple App Store an iPhone application that makes it possible to take a picture of a product and then send it to the online retailer, which will try to match it with products in its inventory.

Amazon said its new mobile application was made available on the App Store on Wednesday. The software is meant to simplify shopping on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, which can access the Web through a Wi-Fi hot spot.

The application offers access to other retailers, such as Target and Macy's, but its features, which include "one-click" shopping, are focused on Amazon.

The app is a quick and easy way for iPhone and iPod Touch users to shop, browse, and buy with Amazon. Customers can build visual lists of things they want to remember, buy, or even learn more about.

Amazon in April introduced a mobile service called TextBuyIt that lets customers with Amazon accounts find and buy products by sending a text message to the online retailer.

Users only have to reply to the response and confirm the order in order to purchase items.

London hospitals systems infected

Three London hospitals whose computer systems were infected with a relatively old worm are now almost back online.

Around 5,000 PCs at St Bartholomew's, the Royal London Hospital and The London Chest Hospital were hit in mid-November by an infection of Mytob, a worm that e-mails itself to other PCs and can be used to put other malicious software on a machine.

About 97 percent of those PCs are now clear of Mytob, according to a statement issued Friday. The remaining PCs, which are located in non-clinical areas, should soon come back online.

As a precaution, all of the PCs were shut down after the infection was discovered. The infection affected computers used to admit patients, and the hospitals diverted emergency patients to other facilities for a short time.

The PCs did have antivirus software made by McAfee installed. McAfee, which received a sample of the Mytob strain infecting the hospital's PCs, said its up-to-date products do have the have the right signature to detect the worm.

It remains unclear how the PCs were infected. Mytob was discovered in early 2005, and most security products can detect it. A spokesman for the hospitals said on Monday an investigation is ongoing.

Source: YahooTech

Nokia to pull out of Japanese market

The world's largest cell phone maker is pulling out of one of the world's biggest cellular markets. Nokia said on Thursday that it will stop developing handsets for NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, effectively ending a push that began five years ago when Nokia re-entered the Japanese market with the launch of 3G services here.

The current global economic conditions pushed Nokia to withdraw from the Japanese market, said Thomas Jonsson, a company spokesman. Faced with lower demand for cell phones the company is examining its operations worldwide and decided that development for the Japanese market is not a priority.

Nokia will keep a research and development center open in Japan and continue its procurement activities. The plan also won't affect its high-end Vertu brand handsets. A recent press report, which Jonsson declined to comment on, said Nokia would launch an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) next year through which it would provide service for Vertu.

Nokia's decision probably says more about the Japanese market than it does about Nokia. Handsets from NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic and other domestic makers, which are typically developed in close cooperation with carriers and highly tuned to local tastes, are most popular here and no foreign phone maker enjoys the same level of popularity here that it does in other major markets.

The Blockbuster set-top box is here

Blockbuster has officially entered the "battle of the boxes" with the launch of its new set-top box today.

The box will serve movies to TVs over the Internet and is going against Netflix's set-top box solutions (Xbox, Roku, and Tivo). Blockbuster's MediaPoint box allows users to watch thousands of movies without the need of a monthly subscription.

To get the MediaPoint player, made by 2Wire, Blockbuster subscribers will have to pay a one-off $99 fee, which also includes 25 pre-paid movies. After that, users pay between $1.99 and $3.99 for each DVD rented, without a monthly subscription fee.

Netflix's box also costs $99, besides your chosen monthly subscription. But unlike Blockbuster's 2500 "of the best, biggest and most current movies available", Netflix offers its whole 10,000 DVD collection for rental through its box.

The major difference between the MediaPoint box and Netflix's is that Blockbuster does "progressive playback" in comparison to Netflix's streaming, meaning that the video quality is independent of you broadband's connection speed. By progressively downloading the movie on the box (up to five movies storage capacity), Blockbuster's solution can offer a much more consistent video quality. In comparison, Netflix's service which can reduce the movie's quality if your Internet connection slows down

Is BlackBerry Storm better for business than the iPhone?

The Storm is obviously a response by RIM and Verizon Wireless to the runaway success of Apple's iPhone, which is offered exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T.

Features such as a touch-screen-only interface and automatic switching between landscape and portrait modes are sure indicators of that. But the Storm also has some appealing advantages over the iPhone, such as the ability to read and edit Microsoft Office documents.

While Apple has taken steps to make its iPhone enterprise-friendly, RIM has far more experience in that regard. For example, the Storm's e-mail capabilities are basically the same as other current RIM smart phones.

Besides connecting to personal e-mail accounts, Storm works out of the box with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and, of course, BlackBerry Enterprise Server. And many IT folks are already familiar with BlackBerry's e-mail capabilities, making it easy to integrate the device into existing setups.

The Storm comes with two other significant advantages for enterprise users. The first is DataViz's Documents To Go, which enables you to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

A longtime staple on Palm smart phones such as the Treo, this application provides seamless access not only to Office documents uploaded from your desktop computer, but also to e-mail attachments. In addition, the BlackBerry Storm has support for cutting and pasting, a significant shortcoming with the iPhone.