The Tony Hawk video game series has overall been a phenomenal commercial success. The franchise continues to grow. Its grown at times through improvements in gaming capability and sometimes through better, trendier, funnier story boards.

It would appear that the next Generation of Tony Hawk video Games will be driven by imrpovements in technology.

Page Popularity for Site: 12% [?]

Nokia is racing to beat Motorola to market on a new wave of cellular products. A product that could literally require every cell phone user around the world to upgrade their phone. What is the product?

Is it a new 8.0 mega pixel phone? ………….No
Is it a camcorder phone?………….No
Is it a 3d phone?………….No
Does the phone have a projector built in to it?………….No
Will it pay your taxes?…………. Almost! and then some.

The killer product is a cell phone that is an electronic wallet. Picture a phone that allows you to literally leave your wallet at home. No credit cards or debit cards to carry. No need for much cash. Its all accessible via the phone.

This is by no means a new idea, but no one has been able to launch it successfully yet. The first signs of such a product that I can trace (outside of science fiction) date back to CES 1994. At that time, Bill Gates provided a demo where he promoted the concept of a wireless mobile device that would function as a cell phone and an electronic wallet.

The combination has proved to be almost as illusive as the holy grail. Motorola actually demonstrated a concept product that could do just this at CES in 2005. At the time, they were only looking internally and had not partnered with the larger payment transaction companies. As such the unit on display seemed to lack the key requirement - Very Strong Cryptography.

Now its more than a year later. Nokia, whom undoubtedly saw what Motorola was working on, has unleashed a product that will ‘turn cellular handsets into electronic wallets’.

They’ve done it right by partnering with Visa. Essentially, this is the largest credit card payment company working with the world’s largest cell phone company. They are piloting a project in Malaysia.

Nokia will gain bragging rights for being the first in the ‘market’. The serious question to ask though is, “Who can be first in Europe and North America?”

Motorola has not offered up any progress in this category since 2005. Nokia is going public with this pilot. Motorola is strongest according to Motorola in North America, and Nokia is stronger in Europe. Nokia holds market share leads in both areas.

PayPal just recently released a technology that allows wireless payments to take place using a PayPal account. This is a very interesting start as PayPal’s service is capable of processing transactions from other card processors, however, even though their services are widely accepted on the internet, physical merchants are not ready to accept payments from a PayPal account at the cash register.

Will Nokia trump Motorola in North America? Will Motorola make it to market with a concept they demonstrated first again?

We’ll watch and see if history repeats itself.

For more information on Electronic Wallets, see our three part series on ‘The Dark Side of Electronic Wallets’

Nokia, Visa launch phone payment project - Wireless World - MSNBC.com

Page Popularity for Site: 11% [?]

Your the number one cell phone maker in the world. Your closest competition, the former number one cell phone maker in the world, has been having a mostly great season with a serious hit product on their hands.

What do you do? Go on the offense.

That’s exactly what Nokia has anounced.

“Nokia plans to open a ‘flagship store’ in Chicago on June 21, with a New York store in the ‘Fifth Avenue region’ opening before the end of 2006,” according to David Watkins the Nokia Director of Multimedia Computers.

Motorola’s headquarters in Libertyville, IL are just a few miles outside of Chicago in the burbs. Chicago is the stomping ground of Motorola and has been for three quarters of a century. Sure Nokia phones have been sold in Chicago just like every major American city, but Chicago is not necessarily a strategic move unless you want to send your competition a message, like ‘We’re number one world wide and we’re coming to own your hometown next!’

With the anouncement Nokia also anounced that they will offer their ultra high end N93 Camcorder Phone, which will retail for approximately $682. The phone offers camcorder recording at 30 frames per second, 3.2 mega pixel stills, wifi, email etc, etc. It looks more like a camcorder than a cell phone does these days, however Nokia has had some success at selling ultra high end phones that are shaped like a brick, especially in their European stomping ground.

The question shall be, will Motorola be able to fight off this offensive round, or will Nokia own the windy city?

Nokia To Open Store and Bring High-End Phones to US

Page Popularity for Site: 11% [?]

Some Firefox zealots are prompting visitors to their websites to fight against Microsoft and Internet Explorer by downloading and using the new Mozilla browser called Firefox (available from this site as well.)

This group is promoting Firefox’s heavier level of security which can stop Spyware, Viruses, and in the words of the authors of ‘explorerdestroyer.com’ helps to end Microsoft’s monopoly.

They are seizing on Google’s incentive to web publishers and providing code that checks visitors web browsers to identify explorer users and prompt them to switch or at least try Firefox.

If you want to see what all the hype is about you can try Firefox by downloading it from Google here. (Note Google benefits because their toolbar is installed with Firefox.)

iTWire - Firefox zealots offer users money to switch from IE

Page Popularity for Site: 17% [?]

Mindjet has released Service Pack 1 (build 6.1.809) for use with MindManager Pro 6 and MindManager Basic 6.

MindManager users can access this update from their MindManager program by navigating to the Help Menu and Clicking on Check for Updates or by going to the link below and selecting the update to download according to the program version that they are running themselves.

Mindjet: Software for Visualizing and Managing Information

Page Popularity for Site: 6% [?]