Tech talk

Remember the Abhishek Bachchan ad where he reaches students in far off areas through the mobile? Well Indira Gandhi National Open University is making it come true.

What an idea!

Remember the Abhishek Bachchan ad where he reaches students in far off areas through the mobile? Well Indira Gandhi National Open University IGNOU is making it come true. Teaming up with Communication and Manufacturing Association of India CMAI, IGNOUE will provide textual, audio and visual educational content to students on cell phones. Word is that even appearing for examinations may go mobile. The mobile education campaign hopes to reach 29 million students in 2009 and double the number in the following year.

Serve it right!

Nokia has introduced seven new mobile handsets along with two new services. Amongst Nokia 1202, 1661, 2320, 2323, 2330, 5130 XpressMusic and 7100 Supernova, Nokia 1202 and 1661 are claimed to be their lowest cost mobiles that will offer flashlight, extended battery life and multiple phone books. Nokia has also introduced two new services 8211; Mail on Ovi and Nokia Life Tools. Mail on Ovi is enabled on Nokia8217;s Symbian 40 series based phones will offer easy to set-up and use email access. Nokia Life Tools aims at providing agricultural information and education knowledge, and is targeted at the rural and small town sections in the emerging markets.

Get chatty

Google has recently launched SMS service for its popular GMail chat courtesy Gmail India labs. Users will soon be able to send messages from the left navigation pane on the Gmail chat window. For this the user will be issued a resolute pseudo phone number. Google has made it quite a functional computer to phone SMS feature. This will also be accompanied by a host of other features like emoticons, gmail gadgets that were released by google a while ago.

Mapping India

Microsoft has announced a 8216;Made in India8217; product to cater to the locals. The new Live Search maps for India is developed by the Microsoft India Development Centre MSIDC based in Hyderabad. It will give users access to detailed business listings across 29 cities and street maps for nine cities. The Live Search Maps is powered by Nokia owned NAVTEQ and pits against the likes of Google maps and Yahoo maps. Live Search Maps has a subtle and fast user interface with a 8216;Suggestion Box8217; appearing unobtrusively to enhance user search. Live Search Maps is accessible from mobile phones as well.