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Nokia announced today it is developing a smart home platform, Nokia Home Control Center. The platform is open allowing third parties to integrate their own smart home solutions and services; its core consumer value is the plug and play experience across all solution areas with high security levels built in. All solutions based on the platform can be used through a smart phone or PC locally or remotely. Consumers can monitor and control their electricity usage, switch devices on and off, and monitor different objects, such as temperature, camera, and motion. In future, entire systems within the home can be connected to the Nokia platform, including security, heating, and ventilation systems.

“We see there is growth potential in the smart home market”, said Teppo Paavola, Vice President, Head of Corporate Business Development, Nokia. “The home of today has intelligence everywhere, but to date there has not been a solution that is interoperable with wide range of home systems that can easily be controlled. We want to create an open solution where external partners can develop their own solutions and services on top of our platform. We believe that the mobile device is an ideal interface to control home intelligence, especially when the user is not at home.”

Nokia today also announced a partnership with one of Europe’s biggest energy companies, RWE. The co-operation aims at developing a comprehensive solution for managing energy consumption and CO2 footage at home. This cooperation combines RWE’s energy competence with Nokia’s technological know-how.

With this in mind, the first joint solution from Nokia and RWE on late 2009 will focus on home heating management. The product consists of a central control unit together with remote-controlled thermostats for the actual radiator. The user interface will be the PC and the mobile phone. In addition, a separate display will be available. RWE is also planning special offers combining these devices with new energy supply contracts. In a second step, Nokia and RWE are planning additional services in connection with smart meters beyond 2009. These services will provide consumers with real-time information about their energy consumption and allow them to control their energy bill remotely.

Nokia Home Control Center will be part of Nokia’s home offering. The solution will be demonstrated at the Nokia World event in Barcelona, Spain, on December 2-3, 2008 and is expected to become commercially available by the end of 2009.

Just in time for the holidays and all the photo-friendly activities that come with the season, Sprint and VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media announced today an enhancement to Sprint Picture Mail that allows Sprint customers to send digital photos and videos straight from their phones to popular social media sites, including MySpace, Photobucket and YouTube.

The Picture Mail enhancement uses the VeriSign Xoomerang platform to provide uploads from the user’s Sprint phone to a variety of social media sites. With Xoomerang, Sprint Picture Mail subscribers can easily capture and publish videos and pictures to some of their favorite destinations.

“Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to stay connected with their friends while on the go, and we are excited to be working with Sprint to make mobile social networking as quick and easy as possible,” said Warren Faleiro, vice president, Multimedia Applications, VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media. “As Sprint continues to innovate and enhance its mobile offerings, Xoomerang will play a key part by enabling Sprint subscribers to publish to their favorite sites in a click of a button.”

In addition to MySpace, Photobucket and YouTube, Sprint and VeriSign also plan to add other destinations to the service in the coming months.

The Picture Mail feature for posting photos to MySpace, Photobucket, YouTube and other social media sites is available on more than 30 Sprint phones, including the popular Samsung Instinct, Rumor by LG, MOTORAZR2 by Motorola, Katana DLX by SANYO.

Possibly the next innovative way of getting a large display screen with a smaller phone body size, Samsung SDI has presented their foldable AMOLED display prototype during the FPDI 2008. There are 2 pieces of thin AMOLED displays placed side by side, creating a almost perfect large WQVGA display screen. You can only see a very thin line at the joint of 2 AMOLED displays. Check out the video here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via oled-info]

PocketGear announced the launch of AndroidGear.com. The new app store offers a wide range of freeware and commercial applications for Android-powered smartphones based on Google’s open source operating system, Android.

PocketGear is celebrating the launch with a 25%-Off site-wide-sale at all of its app stores, including PocketGear.com, PalmGear.com, SymbianGear.com, RIMGear.com, Mobile2Day.com, and of course AndroidGear.com. By entering the voucher code “SALE25″ users save 25% on all apps purchased until November 30, 2008. The sale code is also valid on all of PocketGear Germany’s sites.

In addition to the launch of AndroidGear.com, PocketGear also announced today the launch of the first German-language Android app store, AndroidGear.de, and the UK-version AndroidGear.co.uk.

Heading out to holiday dinners, get-away vacations, or just being away from home no longer means missing out on your favorite television programming. That’s because TiVo launched TiVo Mobile, a free mobile phone-optimized Web site that allows subscribers and non-subscribers alike to browse, search, and discover television shows, regardless of mobile platform, carrier or browser. TiVo subscribers have the option to schedule recordings on their Series2 or Series3 TiVo boxes directly through the site, bringing a new level of ease to recording TV.

The new mobile site, located at m.tivo.com, lets television fans stay in touch with their TiVo DVR when they are away from the living room, giving them the power to schedule recordings directly to their TiVo box from their mobile phone. Site visitors can also search for programs by actor, title, director, and keyword, with additional functions including Daily Recommendations and Most Popular.

M.tivo.com is in beta and will be available on a wide scale within a few weeks.

[via slashgear]