iBend The phone stand

File this under 'Why didn't we think of this?'. We love a good phone stand, especially now we use our handsets for watching videos and the like, but never before have we seen such a beautifully simple one as the iBend - purportedly for iPhone but any handset of a similar size should work too. Check out the video below for a demonstration of how satisfyingly easy it is.

Like Flat Stanley, the iBend stand is super thin so it'll fit easily in your pocket, diary, wallet or iPhone case - perfect for taking on flights or train journeys. There's a range of designs from the simple black and white (above) to the more colourful artist series featuring custom designs. And the stands are a snip, at just £5.00 for two (international shipping included).

Multitasking phone is their anything like that???

Multitasking has always been a much-needed feature by smartphone users and some of the major operating systems have had it throughout the years. When the Apple iPhone came out, it really redefined how a smartphone should work. However, as all things under the sun, it was not perfect, and one of the biggest argument of its critics was the lack of multitasking. So now that Apple has just announced that multitasking is coming with iPhone OS 4, which will be launched this summer, the most heavily-attacked drawback seems to have become the device's strongest weapon, as it promises fluid system performance and good battery life. But the war is not over yet. Some people say that what Apple demonstrated was actually not a real multitasking, but some limited workaround that will just present a solution for the most popular services. The reason we came up with this article is because we wanted to answer the question of whether or not the Apple iPhone 3GS and the newer models (because the 2G and 3G won't support that functionality) will actually be able to multitask. So here it goes...

Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 are two of the most popular platforms, and one of those operating systems, which have the ability to run multiple third-party processes at the same time. Indeed, these platforms have had multitasking for some time, but there have always been issues with this. Try loading more than two or three heavier 3rd party apps and the phone is a goner. Or worse, it would simply display an "insufficient memory" message and refuse to start the app. Or even worse, it may freeze, so you'd need to waste your time restarting it. It might even require you to remove the battery, as the device won't even restart. Even though these may seem like extreme cases nowadays, this was a common experience maybe just a year ago.

Then we have Android, the platform that is now prospering thanks to its quickly-improving open-source model and high-quality smartphones like the Motorola DROID and Google Nexus One. Of course, Android has multitasking, but let's take a closer look at how it implements it. You can easily reach a total of six currently opened apps. While this limits you, six apps is not that bad.

Glow Phone Concept

Imagine if the whole of your iPhone or BlackBerry glowed different colours when you received a call or text message. Recently Eastman Chemical Company went along to a "design storm" session at Art Center College of Design to come up with ideas on how Eastman's Tritan copolyester, a clear plastic, could be used in consumer electronic devices. Josh Nakaya, Kory Victor, Marcus Koosmann and Grant Poznick came up with the idea of using Tritan to create a 'glowing phone'. By treating Tritan with an optical brightener it would glow when ultra-violet LEDs strike it. As you'll see in the video above, the glow can be limited to the edges of the phone or cover the entire surface. For more info visit the Eastman innovation lab site.

Mobile phone will detect whether you are drunk or not..........

They were originally designed to simply make phone calls without tying callers to one location. But today's cell phones can do so much more, from snapping digital photos to sending text messages to playing video.You can add one more feature to the list: a sobriety test.That's right, cell phones with built-in Breathalyzers are set to hit the U.S. market. So after a night of too much to drink, you can pull out the device to see if you're fit to get behind the wheel.

South Korean manufacturer LG will introduce the LP4100 to the U.S. market sometime in the near future -- though no date is set. The company placed several models on the market in that country last year and already has sold more than 200,000 units.
The phones were previewed at the annual Consumer Electronics Show -- CES -- in Las Vegas earlier this year.Here's how it works: Users blow into a small spot on the phone, and if they've had too much to drink the phone issues a warning and shows a weaving car hitting traffic cones.So they test it and it says don't drive so they leave their car or call the taxi," explained Sung Mee Cho of Seju Engineering Inc.

The company also sells plug-in Breathalyzer adapters for some phones. None of the models tell you exactly how much you may be over or under the legal limit, but it can keep you from making other alcohol-related mistakes.The LP4100 also allows users to set up the phone so on certain nights and after a certain time they do not call certain people in their phone book. Think ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend.
If you have a blood alcohol level over .08, the phone will not let you dial that person. So it not only promotes sobriety, but chastity -- and probably your dignity, as well.

.Net will support Nokia N60 platform

It seems like every year we relay the announcement that the .NET platform is going to be available on the Nokia S60. In 2007 the now defunct Red Five Labs was talking about Net60, a version of the .NET Compact Framework. Then in 2008 Nokia announced that Silverlight 2 would be demonstrated at the MIX08 conference. It has been two full years since then and we are just now seeing a public Silverlight for Symbian beta.While the rest of the world is gearing up for Silverlight 4, developers targeting the S60 platform are limited to Silverlight 2. This means going back to Expression Blend 2 and sticking with Visual Studio 2008.

And even in the context of Silverlight 2, the platform is severely limited. Looking at the list of unsupported features, this appears to be more of a tech preview than an actual beta release.

* Cryptography
* Deep Zoom
* DLR
* Digital Rights Management (DRM)
* Expression trees
* HTML DOM bridge
* JavaScript programmability
* LINQ to SQL
* Localization of Silverlight resources
* Reflection
* Sockets
* Visual Basic
* Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

And these are just the completely unsupported features. There are many common scenarios that lead to undefined behavior or outright browser crashes including having multiple plug-ins on the same page. One can’t even use a single Silverlight plug-in until 200 milliseconds after the onLoad event fires.

Between Silverlight and the S60 operating system is the .NET Compact Framework. Unfortunately developers will not be able to use it; the framework is restricted specifically to running Silverlight plug-ins. And unlike Windows Phone 7, there will be no support for S60-specific features or XNA-based games.