The news is flowing hot and heavy from Barcelona, and the latest succulent tidbits to land in our laps are these. First up, a fresh version of Nokia Maps is on tap, which includes "a number of new features such as high-resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps, as well as a new route overview during routing and during Drive, the purchasable turn-by-turn car navigation guidance." Furthermore, users will find new options such as access to real time information (camera alerts, safety spots, traffic information, etc.) and Wcities event guides that give real time information for events and movies in over 450 destinations. Next is Nokia Messaging -- which is bringing popular IM services to the majority of Nokia handsets -- and Mail on Ovi, which enables PC users to "create and access Ovi email accounts as well as gain cross access to other Ovi services with just a single sign-on account." Plunge into the links below for more details on each.

Read - Nokia Maps update
Read - Mail / Messaging

While we were led to believe that Nanovision's MIMO line of diminutive LCDs would be stuck in South Korea for the foreseeable future, it appears that a trio of 'em are now shipping to North America. While not christened with any SideShow labeling, this 7-inch UM-710 mini monitor was designed to operate alongside your laptop and / or desktop monitor in order to give you more space for those little-but-necessary applications. Critics at Technabob were quite fond of the 800 x 480 display, noting that it was perfectly clear, incredibly useful and darn near impossible to live without after a solid hour of usage. Setup was relatively painless with Windows Vista, and OS X drivers (for Intel-based Macs, that is) were said to be bundled in as well. Sure, we'd prefer the $129.99 price tag to be a little lower, but if you can't stand to lug around a low-end 17-incher, this might not be a bad travel companion.

Yep, it's a done deal. On the same day Nokia chose to unveil its new flagship N97, the outfit also announced that it had "completed its offer to acquire software company Symbian Limited." As of now, "all conditions to Nokia's offer to acquire Symbian Limited have been satisfied and it has received valid acceptance of greater than 99.9% of the total Symbian shares that Nokia did not already own." Nokia's not saying much else about the changeover just yet, but we are told that every last Symbian employee is expected to wear a Nokia badge come February 1, 2009.

When Pioneer first introduced its unicorn-like 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray Disc, we weren't sure if the thing would make it beyond the drawing board, let alone be compatible with existing BD decks. Over at the IT Month Fair in Taipei, Pioneer showed up to showcase the capacious disc, and better still, a DigiTimes report asserts that these are indeed compatible with Blu-ray readers already on the market. Currently, the 400GB disc is slated to hit mass production sometime between now and 2010, while rewritable versions won't hit until 2010 to 2012. Not like it really matters though -- a 1TB disc is on track for 2013, and you know you'll be waiting for the latest and greatest.

If you're like us, you haven't seen nearly enough of the N97 yet... right? Well fear not, faithful reader, as our intrepid comrade from Engadget Spanish, Drita, has nabbed a tasty hands-on with the phone in question. As you can tell from the pics, it's not quite as thin as its nearest competitors, but fairly sleek and stylish all the same (metal bezel and all), and that QWERTY keyboard looks practically edible. We're salivating at the thought of getting one to thoroughly put through its paces, but until then, let's all just sit back and soak in the handsome gallery below.

A fortnight after going on sale, Apple's shiny new 24-inch LED Cinema Display has been acquired, unboxed and photographed for your drooling pleasure. Not much to say here outside of what's told in terrific detail by the pixels above, but just like the new MacBook family, there's lots of gloss to go around. Check the read link for a few more looks.

Revision3's own Daniel just couldn't sit idly by watching portable N64 after portable N64 pass him by while doing nothing, so he decided to gut his own console and shove it into a battery-powered unit that can be taken practically anywhere. Sure, it's one thing to read through a step-by-step guide that you barely understand, but it's another to see the whole process broken down for you on video. Check the read link for the perfect holiday project, and yes, you can actually play the re-gift card here and not got scorned.

Now this is a fight worth waiting for.

[Photo courtesy of Robert Scoble]

Details are in, Nokia has a new flagship phone. The N97 packs a 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (that's a 16:9 aspect ratio) resistive touchscreen display with tactile feedback and QWERTY keyboard into this sliding communicator with an "always open" window to favorite internet or social networking sites. Nokia calls it the "world's most advanced mobile computer." To back up the claim they've dropped in HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios, A-GPS, a 3.5-mm headjack, 32GB of onboard memory with microSD expansion (for up to 48GB total capacity), and a battery capable of up to 1.5 days of continuous audio playback or 4.5-hours video. 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass and "DVD quality" video capture at 30fps, too. The specs are certainly impressive, let's see if the S60 5th Edition OS can support it. The N97 will launch with a retail price set at around €550 ($693) excluding subsidies and taxes, phone to ship in H1 2009.

Update: Hah, Nokia just boasted on stage at Nokia World that the N97 was the scoop "Engadget didn't get." O RLY??? Sure looks like the device codenamed Eitri that we broke to the world last month.

Update 2: Video demonstration after the break.

Update 3: Thanks for the widget love, Nokia (pic after the break, and thanks Eric).


Read -- Press Release
Read -- A bit more detail
Read -- Even more detail

In a move that will undoubtedly increase its street cred among technophiles and tinkerers alike, Atheros announced that it's releasing the specs to allow open source drivers for its ATH5K and ATH9K chip families. The move comes after Atheros first released some open source drivers for newer 802.11n chipsets and now the company is finally opening up its HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to developers, even using Linux as the reference public code base. No word on when any of this stuff will be released, but rest assured, we'll be on the lookout for more info -- we're sure the hackers out there are champing at the bit.

The amount of power consumed from appliances and such left in standby mode is certainly up for debate, but what's not is the fact that they'd all be better off, um, off. That's according to Spanish inventors who have developed a technology to automatically detect when gadgets fall into standby mode and then shut 'em off completely; the best (read: differentiating) part, however, is that devices won't have to go through their boot-up sequence again after rising from the grave. Of course, this technology is worthless with devices such as security systems and DVRs, which obviously require at least some power at all times in order to effectively answer the call of duty. Still, the elaborately named Good for You, Good for the Planet is hoping to get its tech into power strips and individual gizmos soon, with one hotel chain in Spain already testing a prototype. Here's hoping these thoughtful entrepreneurs aren't squeezed to death by all of the collective hugging from trees that's surely going down.

[Via WalletPop, image courtesy of GavinBell]

While this isn't the first device we've seen of its kind, new images of a wireless-capable, ruggedized la Fonera router have surfaced on the FON head honcho's personal blog. CEO Martin Varsavsky clearly states that "this is not a product announcement," and that the pictured devices are part of an R&D project, so pricing and availability info are certainly out of the question. Still, it's promising to see FON working to extend the reach of its network beyond the current Fonera / Fontenna combos. Just let us know when this one hits the market, okay Mr. V?

[Thanks, Joas]

We're still not over Sony's trickeration -- which led us to believe the version 2.53 firmware update was hitting prior to the US Thanksgiving holiday -- but we're not ones to turn down a free update under any circumstances. As of now (as in, right now), Sony's PlayStation 3 can support full screen embedded Flash videos courtesy of the latest firmware, so there's really no excuse for you not firing up the System Update and sucking it down. Get to it!

[Via PS3 Fanboy, thanks to everyone who sent this in]