Latest News

Crikey!! The Globe & Mail is reporting that the Ontario Securities Commission is seeking a record $100 million penalty from RIM’s co-CEO’s, Jim Balsillie & Mike Lazaridis for their role in a 1996 stock option accounting controversy.

If a full $100 million is to be paid out, this would rank as the largest penalty paid by individuals to the OSC.

“In 2007, a special committee of RIM’s board investigated the back-dating issue, and determined the company had backdated more than 40 per cent of stock options granted to employees since 1996. It also concluded that 12 of the 16 option grants made to Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis between 1996 and 2006, to acquire a total of two million shares, were priced using an incorrect date.”

Our friends over at BBSync sent us a message with some solid news that TELUS will release the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 in Black and Pink around the middle of February. No pricing or other details were included.

For those curious if Bell will be launching this… the answer is yes and it will be in Q1 2009 for sure.

With Rogers announcing the “io-traffic” the other day, I was curious what else was out there. The purpose of “io-traffic” is to help you avoid high traffic areas. Information is gathered by the GPS from your mobile phone and tracks where you are and assists you to avoid those traffic areas. However, it communicates the info back to via the radio, currently only Rogers owned 680News… not to your mobile phone.

Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto has been testing “Traffic Works”, basically what they call your Personal Travel Assistant “who tells you the perfect time to hit the road based on where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and how you’d normally go there”.

The program is being tested on 100 cars and shows you the shortest way by comparing the routes with real-time traffic flow data and communicates info to your mobile phone.

The leaked BlackBerry Storm 9530 updates are coming fast and furious… seems like every week now we have a new OS, this time it’s version 4.7.0.90. This is not an official release from RIM, so update at your own risk here.

From what I read the updates include: Portrait mode QWERTY keyboard,  Accelerometer is faster, smoother scrolling in applications. No more fading in/out. Larger font on keys in landscape QWERTY mode.

After announcing quarterly earnings, Apple’s acting CEO Tim Cook said 17 million iPhones have been sold to date and when asked about his competition: “We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does. I don’t want to talk about any specific company. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off.”

In addition, he commented on the lingering rumours of the iPhone Nano: “You know us, we’re not going to play in the low-end voice phone business. That’s not who we are. That’s not why we’re here. We’ll let somebody do that, our goal is not to be the unit share leader in the phone industry. It is to build the best phone.”

With Rogers launching the 2 new devices today, the Samsung Rugby A836 and ZTE Rock F165. I was curious what else was new over at Samsung Canada. Low and behold I found the Samsung f266 will be launching with Fido shortly.

I called Fido a couple times to confirm and they have never heard of the Samsung f266 (SGH-F266). From the description it’s a slider with : “Sleek and skinny from the outside—and jam packed on the inside! From music to movie clips, the SAMSUNG f266 lets you do it all. Store up to 8 GB of your fave songs with expandable memory and play it all back on the built-in MP3 player. Take photos and video with the 2.0 megapixel camera and Bluetooth® lets you almost-instantly share clips with friends. You’re always in the loop with the f266.”

No word on pricing or when this is coming out… but from the best of my knowledge this could be one of the first products (other than the upcoming BlackBerry 8100) to dawn the newly created Fido logo.

It has overall dimensions of 97 x 48 x 13 mm and weighs in at 99 grams. Other key features are that it has a 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, internal display of 2.1 inches with a screen res of 176 x 240. Standby time of up to 300 hours, talk time of 5 hours, Bluetooth compatible, MP3 Player plus the standard basic features like a calendar, alarm clock, to do list etc…

More info to come.   ***UPDATE*** We have been told that this is launching on February 10th. More here

I always remembered the past Mayor of Toronto Mel Lastman saying “Toronto is the greatest City in the world”… I believe it’s the greatest city within Canada, but New York City is truly the center of the world. With this said it’s easy to get lost within the streets and crowds.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg worked with Google to create www.nycgo.com, a dedicated website to help visitors navigate within New York by Google Maps, specifically on your mobile device via Google Maps for Mobile.

You can find hotels, restaurants, subway routes, concerts. The video after the jump shows “NYCGo” in action with Google Maps and the Street View option in use to get your directions easier.

This is a great app for your iPhone if you love teasing your dog!

Conveniently named “Dog Teaser” this app give you opportunity to watch your dog go absolutely crazy by a number of different sounds… Choose from: high-frequency dog whistles, Bark, Howl, Growl, Cat Fight, Cat Meow, Door Bell, Squeaky Toy and Fireworks.

The app can be purchased here for $0.99

With Chinese New Year coming up on January 26th (the year of the Ox), Sony Ericsson Canada is offering free ringtones, themes and images here to celebrate the occasion.

The rumour of Microsoft officially announcing their latest OS, Windows Mobile 6.5, at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is coming on strong. DigiTimes reports their source says “Although a number of Windows Mobile 6.5-based mobile devices are expected to hit the market in the third quarter of 2009, most makers are likely to launch their Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets in the fourth quarter for the year-end shopping season”