We’ve almost missed this one. It’s important so we’re going with it nonetheless.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has recently opened its online music store in Poland. Like they do in other markets, Polish store too combines music from local artists with major labels. As a result, more than 4.5 million songs are available for download.

Price wise, individual songs cost PLN 3.49 (0.78 EUR) whereas full albums are PLN 34.9 (7.8 EUR)… The store could be reached from music.nokia.pl.

[Via: Unwired View]

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has quietly launched its music store in India. Still in beta, the store allows users with a special PIN code to listen 30-second previews of songs, only, but I guess it will be fully operational in the near future.

Nokia’s head of marketing for India, Vineet Taneja, told to MediaNama that “the pricing mechanisms for India are currently being worked out.” What this seems to mean is that they are negotiation with labels to drive the song price down and make it affordable for Indian consumers.

In the meantime, you can try it out for yourself by pointing your browser to music.nokia.co.in and take it from there…

[Via: Symbian-Freak]

If you’re a hard-core fan of Tolkien’s work, you certainly have some kind of related mobile content on your mobile. If you’re an iPhone user, unfortunately you can’t have your device branded with the Lord of the Rings content. Actually, you can, but your device needs to be jailbroken.

That said, we’ve spotted a new theme for the iPhone and iPod Touch called One Ring. As you can see from the screenshot above, the main idea of the theme is Sauron’s ring, which is made to “rule them all.” Icons are shield-shaped, which I don’t like that much, but then again, I’m sure Tolkien fans won’t mind it at all…

More information is available from here, and the theme should be available for download through Cydia.

[Via: JustAnotherIphoneBlog]

SIRIUS XM Radio has recently announced that it can compete with the likes of FlyCast, Radiolicious and Pandora on the iPhone. Actually, they said their iPhone app has been downloaded over 1 million times from the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) AppStore, and that milestone was achieved within 2 weeks of availability.

The application was originally introduced on June 18th and quickly became the top free app in the Music category. Those who still haven’t downloaded it should know that it allows users to access 120 channels of popular talk, sports and entertainment shows, as well as commercial-free music.

Among the programming that’s available on SIRIUS XM are Oprah Radio, MLB Home Plate, Martha Stewart Living Radio, SIRIUS NFL Radio, NHL Home Ice, PGA TOUR, Opie & Anthony, Mad Dog Radio with Chris Russo, Playboy Radio, The Foxxhole comedy channel presented by Jamie Foxx, Blue Collar Comedy Radio, CNN, Fox News Talk and NPR…

Convinced? AppStore link is here!

Ok, we get it. Every media outlet wants to have its own iPhone app. Latest company to join the trend is Arabic TV news station – Al Jazeera. They’ve launched a dedicated application in English, “covering the world, bridging cultures and setting the news agenda.”

To use the app, all you have to do is press the button “Watch live now” at the bottom of the screen, and that’s about it. The streaming video will start with the latest news from The Middle East. They say both 3G and WiFi connection will work, though some people have complained video quality on 3G can’t come close to the one on WiFi. Guess, they haven’t tried it with the faster iPhone 3GS.

Anyway, Al Jazeera English app costs 3 bucks ($2.99) and you can grab it from here. (iTunes link)

[Via: textually.org]

Wikipedia has officially launched the mobile version of their site with support for the iPhone, Android devices, the Kindle, and the Palm Pre. This news was a long time coming, as the ‘alpha-beta-development-maybe-kind-live mode’ (as Wikimedia puts it) site was up for around 6 months already. If you own one of the devices mentioned above, simply hit up mobile.wikipedia.org and you should be instantly redirected to the new-and-improved mobile-licious version of the site.

For full details check out the official post from Wikimedia… And be sure to check it out on your iPhone, Android device, Kindle or Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre… Let us know if this is a thumbs up or a thumbs down for you. I’m checking it out on my iPhone right now… she’s pretty easy to use. So far so good.

[Via: Lifehacker]

China Mobile’s app store looks almost live now. Although they said the official opening of the store is set for September of this year, a dedicated site is/was accessible for few days now. From there, we could see the main categories include games, themes, software, music, reading (ebooks?) and videos. The site looks nicely designed and I guess it’s now in the fine-tuning and mobile content submission phase. We’ve heard the world’s largest mobile operator in terms of number of subscribers will ask for 50% cut of all sales, but I doubt that will stop content developers in submitting their apps. The potential is too huge to be missed…

[Via: Engadget Mobile]

Apparently the folks at News Corp are considering a change for its Wall Street Journal App for iPhone and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM). The change? New features and options? Nope, the change would be making the app a paid one.

WSJ.com has been surveying users regarding willingness to pay for the app, but any results from these surveys is unclear. The WSJ has a policy of ‘never sharing results publicly’, so I suppose we’ll assume the results land on the free side of things, that is, up until the app goes paid, if it ever does. No potential pricing structures are available for the WSJ App, but I would imagine we’ll hear more about this soon.

Interestingly enough, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has added some new billing options with the 3.0 Firmware update. Subscription payments are now very much a reality. Also, developers and publishers can charge for additional content found within an app. I’m yet to notice this first-hand from any of the apps I’m currently running… But rest assured the newspaper apps are looking into these options diligently.

This is a tough one for me. I know there will be a segment of die-hard users that enjoy the WSJ app so much that they’ll unquestionably pay for it… But for myself, saying ‘yeah, take it for free, and use it as much as you want!’… And then a year or so later pulling the ‘OK, now you’ve gotta pay for it, $2.99 per month please!’… That just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Either charge me up-front for it, or offer an initial ‘lite’ version with limited features that tempts me to pay up for a full version if I like what I see. Hopefully if News Corp makes the move to paid, the current version of the WSJ app turns into a ‘lite’ version, with fewer features and options than a new, paid version.

I better stop here or I’ll ramble on forever…

Your thoughts? Would you pay a flat fee and/or a subscription for full use of the WSJ app? Or would that turn you off completely?

[Via: PaidContent]

NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) announced that its European subsidiary, DoCoMo Netherlands, has launched Europe’s first mobile service for downloading Japanese Manga comics.

The service called MANGA MODE will initially launch in France, and is expected to appeal to the growing number of Manga lovers in the country.

Customers of Bouygues Telecom will be able to use the service to download French translations of famous manga comics into their mobile phones and view them panel by panel using a dedicated reader app. Bouygues Telecom has posted a dedicate page on its mobile web portal from where customers can sign-up for the service…

[Via: slashphone]

At the recently ended Computex ‘09 in Taipei, Taiwan, embedded security solution provider Discretix announced that its robust, flexible Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution is now available for Intel’s MID platform. The solution features Discretix’ Multi-Scheme DRM client, and is optimized for Intel’s second-generation MID platform, codenamed “Moorestown”, and Linux-based Moblin OS.

Discretix’s Multi-Scheme DRM client is a versatile solution to protect the distribution and consumption of premium content across a range of mobile devices. With today’s announcement, MIDs based on Intel’s Moorestown platform will be able to support the major DRM schemes in use today – OMA DRM v1.0, OMA DRM v2.x and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) WM-DRM 10. PCPRM, OMA BCAST or new schemes may also be added as they become available. As one of the world’s leading embedded security technology for mobile devices, Discretix’s solution delivers an outstanding level of security while overcoming the challenges of performance, power consumption and silicon footprint.

Commenting on the announcement, Discretix’ Raanan Tzemach said: “Discretix’s Multi-Scheme DRM offers a robust solution to MID system manufacturers and meets the most stringent requirements of operators. In combination with Intel’s Moorestown platform and Linux-based Moblin OS, it will help support a broad range of business models and offerings for a superior user experience. As a company, we’re excited to be working closely with Intel to make such advancements possible.”