Nokia's Trolltech acquisition approved by European Commission

The European Commission has announced unconditional approval of Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech. Nokia can now proceed with the final stages of acquisition, which are expected to be completed quickly. Trolltech's Qt, a cross platform graphics/GUI tookit, is the principal reason for the acquisition and will be an important part of Nokia's cross platform development strategy.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 Now Available

All platforms: The Mozilla developers want to get the next Firefox milestone just right, so they've issued another release candidate for your testing pleasure. Firefox 3 RC2 includes bug fixes from RC1. If you haven't dipped your toes into the Firefox 3 pool, the RC2 water is warm—it's the most stable testing build they're likely to issue before the official release, which is on schedule to drop this month. Check out our complete field guide to testing Firefox 3. Firefox 3 RC 2 is a free download for all platforms, meant for willing testers only.

Download Firefox RC 2 [Mozilla]

Yahoo! Address Book API now open to 3rd party developers

One of the most valuable features of any good email or IM service is the contact list. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, and other companies that provide online communication tools also give you a place to store information about your friends, family, colleagues, and people who you met years ago and have completely forgotten about.

Yahoo! is making that much more useful by launching the Yahoo! Address Book API, which will let 3rd party developers create applications that can interact with your contact list. For example, you can use the API to develop an application that will scan your contact list to find other users who already belong to the social network you're signing up for, or a list of people you may want to invite. The API also supports contact synchronization, which could come in handy if you want to develop a tool that syncs online contact lists with Outlook or Thunderbird.

The API also provides the ability to create, modify, or delete contact information, which sounds a litle scary. But Yahoo! says write-acess is "available on a case by case basis," so developers will need to contact Yahoo! before creating a utility that has the ability to wipe out your address book.

Plaxo and LinkedIn have been using the API for a while, but Yahoo! is launching it publicly today.

Sony Ericsson slips down to fifth place, Nokia remains on the top

According to a recent report by Gartner Inc., LG has been able to surpass Sony Ericsson gaining the fourth place on the worldwide mobile phone market. LG, which only had a 6.2% market share in Q1 2007 has grown by 1.8% to get a market share of 8% in the same quarter of 2008 while slipping Sony Ericsson down to the fifth place in the market. Sony Ericsson, which had a 8.4% share in the market in Q1 2007 has fell down to 7.5% in Q1 2008. Motorola has fallen by 8.2% to a 10.2% market share while still retaining its third place. Samsung grew by 2.2% in the same period to a 14.4% share of the market while still leading the way, Nokia grew by 3.6% to a 39.1% market share, over the 35.5% share it had on the year ago period, retaining its spot as the number one mobile phone manufacturer.

Source: Gartner Inc..

Ubuntu Netbook Remix gets real official

At any given time on the planet, there's a technology trade show in progress. Some are more significant than others, and there's no formula to figure if any given one will be worth the airfare. We're guessing that a few ultraportable laptop manufacturers, as well as a few of us (cough) normal folk, are a little intrigued with the news emerging from the Computex exhibit halls today.

Canonical let slip some further information and screen shots of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the Ubuntu derived operating system for ultraportables. The quick and dirty information: it looks suspiciously as if the Ubuntu image is made to work solely on Intel Atom processors. How radically different is that from the other Intel processors used previously in ultraportables? Will it be a significant enough difference that it won't run with other Intel chips? Are VIA machines left in the dust? Maybe, maybe not, but we're guessing it'll affect performance on some level.

It seems that Canonical and Intel are working with various manufacturers to get Ubuntu Netbook Remix into our hot little hands, but it probably won't happen much before late 2008. They were so kind, however, as to release some screenshots of the demo version.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix looks... well, a little bit like the "Easy Mode" settings in the Eee PC's customized Xandros. Maybe not quite as simplistic, but we have this funny feeling that many people picturing "Ubuntu on an ultraportable" were thinking more along the lines of the traditional look with a few GUI tweaks. We're not sure if this is really a good or bad thing, as yet. Ultraportables are different animals, and used in a different manner than a desktop. Perhaps a different looking user interface is enough of a disconnect to make it all work (and keep us from trying to install the sorts of things on our ultraportables that they aren't intended to run due to processing limitations).

What will be interesting, and promises to push Linux on ultraportables to the next level, is all that scary stuff on the backend. The most intriguing bit of this conversation seems to focus on the use of Moblin, and the push for developers to get Ubuntu packages to work well -- really well -- with the specific requirements of the processor and ultraportable hardware.

All the software needed to create an Android device will be 100% open Source

Confusion about Google's intentions with the open sourcing of Android is starting to rise, especially since we just started the second half of 2008, the time frame given to look forward to the first devices hitting the market. Ed Burnette attended the Google I/O conference and asked 3 separate Google employees what was up and they all said what we've heard before. The Apache license will be used when it can, otherwise the GPL or EPL will take its place. Some applications included with Android such as GMail will not be open sourced since Google does not yet have an API to deal with their email service and I'm sure we will see more examples of this as time goes on. As long as the bits needed to make a phone call, send an sms and browse the web are free then people will be happy and the world will rejoice.

Nothing new to see here folks, the source isn't going to publish until the first devices are going to ship either. Looks like we're all going to be sitting on our hands in anticipation.

Two Indian companies enter the handset market

Two Indian companies have announced plans to enter the country's fast-growing mobile handset market by launching low-cost devices.

According to India's Economic Times, the electronics and home appliances company Orpat is launching two new GSM handsets based on NXP Semiconductors' chips. It will promote the devices at its 50,000 retail outlets and is targeting sales of 2 million units this year.

Meanwhile, The Times of India reports that the Calcutta-based computer and motorcycle manufacturer Xenitis Group has created a new unit called Xenitis Telecommunications that will also launch entry-level handsets priced as low as Rs499 (around $12). Xenitis' Santanu Ghosh said the company was looking at a number of options — including selling the devices under its own brand, acting as an OEM for other vendors, or selling the device in partnership with carriers. He added that the company has already received orders for around 160,000 handsets from operators and manufacturers…