A former Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Inc. employee who downloaded nearly 450,000 files of secret source code to his home computer before quitting to take a job with rival Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Corp. was sentenced to three years’ probation Wednesday for stealing trade secrets.

Michael Laude, 47, had code that represented “virtually all of Qualcomm’s product line,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego.

A thorough investigation produced no evidence that he shared the code with his new employers at Nokia, a major Qualcomm rival, said Mitch Dembin, an assistant U.S. attorney, though Laude “had enough information to bring Qualcomm to its knees.”

A Nokia spokesman, William Plummer, said Nokia was unaware of the theft and never benefited from stolen information. Nokia cooperated with the federal investigation.

Qualcomm, which licenses technology for mobile phones and manufactures semiconductor chips that run them, is embroiled in legal and trade disputes with Nokia and other companies that contend Qualcomm extracts excessive royalty payments for its devices.

Source: Sign On San Diego

Ouch! Corporate espionage … they can’t make a compelling video game from such a plot. Would be fun to see a game developer try though! But in all seriousness he got what he deserved. It would be like a Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) employee defecting to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and knowing all the trade secrets.

Kaj Haggman from the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Widsets team links to a whole lot people talking about his teams project.

Check it out:

It und Business-Blog describes WidSets in an article called Best example of Web 2.0 on phone. It gives a very good overview of the various widsets we have in the Library, as well as the main features, so if you want to read a good article in German, here you are.

Here’s another great review, in the Hebi Flash Blog, in French. This article covers not only the Library, but also the Studio, as well as the Skin Editor, and how to create widsets out of Templates, easily.  There are some great screen shots, as well as a video, check it out!

Here’s a review in English, in case you can’t read German or French. Well, I have to admit that I’m not very good at that, either, but I do my best. And fortunately I have people that I can ask, if I need a full translation.

Dan Taylor has analyzed the widget market more widely, that is, not only on the mobile. The article is called 2007: the year of the widget? Naturally WidSets is the example, when talking about mobile.

Benoit Darcy writes about WidSets in BusinessMobile.fr, as well as shows some statistics from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Trends when it comes to widgets. Benoit works for Cnet France. I also had the pleasure to meet Benoit in person at Nokia World, where he interviewed me when I gave a presentation about WidSets. So, if there’s anything you’d like to know about WidSets, but didn’t dare to ask, just check out the video. I warn you, though, you will have to put up with watching me and my out-of-synch mouth Oh, the video is also in YouTube.

I had the pleasure the meet Stuart Dredge at Nokia World, where he interviewed me about WidSets. This is another great review, covering lots of aspects and even some history, when it comes to WidSets. There’s only some slight misunderstanding in the end when it comes to the focus of Nokia and the focus of WidSets, but that’s very minor. Great reading!

When it comes to Nokia World, it was a great success for WidSets. Not only did we have huge amounts of people at the WidSets stand, lots of new contacts, and interviews with the press and industry analysts, but we were also mentioned in some of the keynotes. As an example, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, mentioned WidSets in his speech, and so did Anssi Vanjoki, EVP & Head of Multimedia at Nokia. Jyri has covered all the keynotes and speeches in his excellent blog, so check it out!

Source: Widsets

I’m going to have to wait for a native S60 version to come out since I didn’t have a pleasurable experience with the Java version. Not to mention creating my own Widset brought upon a lot of headaches.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) may stop providing handsets to US electronics retailer Best Buy’s
store in China, according to a rumor reported by National Business
Daily. The report said that Best Buy was selling Nokia handsets at
prices lower than the minimum limits set by Nokia. Best Buy is also
facing a similar problem with Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), said the report. Best Buy
denied rumor. Best Buy opened its first store in China on December 28,
2006.

Source: Pacific Epoch

It’s just a rumour, but I can see why Nokia would want to stop doing business with a company pulling a stunt like that.

Source: Neteco

It’s brief, but it’s content!

Smartphone Summit, the official conference and trade show of the Smartphone industry will be hosting “Smartphone Enterprise Solutions 2007″, a one-day exclusive conference that will be held at the Orange County Convention Center as part of CTIA WIRELESS 2007 during March 26-29, 2007. Smartphone Enterprise Solutions 2007 is dedicated to providing the top smartphone-based enterprise solutions for all smartphone OS platforms including Symbian, RIM, Palm (NSDQ: PALM), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Linux.

Read the full article »

The weirdest things come to you late at night, and right now it doesn’t get any later than 4:06 in the morning.

Why can’t we have widgets on our standby screen? I mean check out a screenshot I posted earlier:

Look at how half of my screen isn’t being used for anything! I wish I could fit a line of text in there that told me the weather. Or even a scrolling line of text that would read me CNN headlines. Stock quotes? Anything really!

I see the standby screen as half empty, not half full. Same can be said about the screen saver (can’t really take a screenshot of that) which only has the time and date … wow big deal! There is so much potential for more information to be displayed.

It kills me to have to link you to this. Why should users have to hack their phone in such a fashion just to get the latest and greatest features their device is capable of?! I loathe Nokia (NYSE: NOK) does this, wouldn’t you if you knew a better phone was just a software update away?

Full instructions at The Nokia Cell Phone Blog:

My Nokia N80 has been doing some wacky things lately (random reboots, slow image/video loading, out of memory errors, etc) so I decided to do some research on some firmware upgrades.

The Nokia N80 Mobile Blog has a very well done article on how to update your precious N80 to 4.0623.0.41. However, you can go one step further: install the Nokia N80 Internet Edition firmware on your (stock) N80!

You’ll need to follow the directions on this page, as well as download most of the fairly large files involved in such an undertaking: Link here.

You’ll also need to download the correct region Internet Edition firmware to be flashed. These were uploaded by Mr. Nokia N80 Mobile Blog Guy (I think), so don’t blame me if they go down.

European Firmware
European Firmware Update
APAC (Asia-Pacific Region Firmware)

What’s the benefit of the Internet Edition over the standard N80 firmware? Mainly VoIP. I believe VoIP software doesn’t function properly on stock N80’s, but it seems to work very well on the Internet Edition firmwares. VoIP basically lets you utilize the WLAN connection to make free calls with a very slight decrease in call quality.

I still have yet to try this, but it seems from the comments that there are enough happy users to give it a go. I plan to at least.

Ed takes a look at WorldMate 2007, and generally likes the application. I can’t say that’s the case for me however. I used the 2006 version on my E61 and was left less than impressed, especially since it costs 30 euros. I admit, it’s nice having all of these features in one convenient application, but really you can just setup a few bookmarks in your mobile browser of choice to access the same data.

Check out his preview/review at e-series.org

Now millions of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) users around the globe, the Middle East and Egypt can benefit from easy, fast and direct search access to the YellowPages.com.eg website through Nokia Mobile Search. The release of the Nokia Yellow Pages search plugin strengthens both Egypt Yellow Pages and Nokia’s dedication to bring extensive Arabic and English local directory information directly to your pocket with Mobile Search.

‘You can get lost in many parts of the world now, but connect to Mobile Search and you’re soon on the way to your destination, whether it’s a restaurant, business or other local destination. We’re thrilled to be adding so many new local search providers to our Mobile Search offering, it certainly reinforces our dedication to provide local Internet services directly to your pocket,’ said Neil Gordon, General Manager, Middle East Africa, Multimedia, Nokia.

Mobile Search has already seen a tremendous increase in users across Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the markets where Mobile Search was initially launched. The addition of Egypt Yellow Pages will more than likely have a similar effect in the Middle East region. The UAE Yellow Pages search plugin was officially launched at this year’s Gitex 2006 event in Dubai and the Saudi Arabia Yellow Pages search plugin launched simultaneously with Egypt.

Source: AME Info

I’m going to make sure my next smart phone has GPS, that feature on top of mobile search would rock my world 6 ways to Sunday.

Check out Nokia Mobile Search for yourself

I’m hesitant about posting too many phone reviews. Yes phones are important but I don’t want to come off as yet another cell phone blog in an already saturated market. With that let’s have some highlights:

Yes, it’s a bit boxy and a little bulky (3.6 by 1.9 by 0.8 inches), but it’s lighter than it looks (3.6 ounces), and ultimately it’s a form factor that deserves closer inspection.

Our only quibble–and this is a small one–is that the 5300 feels somewhat top-heavy when the slider is up.

Our only complaint was that the backlighting on these keys is a bit dim.

The camera lens sits on the back of the phone, with a self-portrait mirror, but we’re disappointed there’s no flash.

Our only real design complaint concerns the placement of the Micro SD card slot. You must remove the battery cover to access it, so make sure you sharpen your nails. Though you don’t have to remove the battery as well, it’s still a bit annoying.

Image quality was pretty good for a 1.3-megapixel camera phone. Object outlines were distinct, but colors were somewhat faded.

We felt the volume could be a bit higher; it was a little harder to understand conversations in noisier environments. Callers didn’t report any significant problems, but voice-response systems had trouble understanding us unless we held the phone very close to our mouth.

Music also sounded great over the included wired headphones, but the headset connection was a little loose. We liked, however, that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) chose a standard 2.5mm connection.

Source: CNN

They like the 2.5 mm connector?! Are they mad!