Because you’re not cool unless you’ve got an app store, Nokia is reportedly set to join the ranks of Apple , Palm , BlackBerry , Samsung , and pretty much everyone in opening a software portal for its Symbian OS. According to Mobile-Review editor Eldar Murtazin, the Finnish phone maker’s already got it running and is testing behind-the-scenes, with a formal announcement to come at the Mobile World Congress. While we’ll have to wait until Barcelona to find out with some degree of certainty, at this point we’d be more surprised to see a company not open up an online app shop. [Via Unwired View ] Filed under: Cellphones Nokia launching a Symbian app store at MWC? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:31:00 EST

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Nokia launching a Symbian app store at MWC?

We didn’t know much about Dell’s XT2 convertible tablet before, but now what appears to be a full specs sheet has leaked, including a possible release date this Wednesday, February 11th. Vital specs: – 1.2 or 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU – 12.1″ multitouch display (yes!) – up to 5 GB memory – WiFi and mobile broadband – 80/120 GB HDD or 64 GB SSD If it can improve on the already promising XT , we’ll be looking forward to this one for sure. [ Engadget ]

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More Dell Latitude XT2 Specs Leak: Release Date This Wednesday? [Dell]

The official Street Fighter 4 launch is just 9 days away, but there are some gamers who can never get enough, and that is why we have the opening cinematic for your viewing enjoyment after the break. Seriously, if you watch one video today, this should be it. It’s way better than the last trailer we showed you

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Street Fighter 4 Opening Cinematic

China Mobile introduces the Sumsang, a Samsung Omnia clone that boasts a “320 x 240 resolution display, an MP3 player, a 13 megapixel camera, USB connectivity, and a sure-to-be-counterfeit version of Windows Mobile running the show.” Of course, this abomination will only set you back a buck twenty, and hey — at least this version comes with dual SIM slots. [via Engadget ]

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China Mobile Clones Samsung Omnia, Calls it Sumsang

Who needs printers, when you can just use miles of extension cords and print the screen directly via a copy machine? While it may not most efficient way of doing things, this shows that the person was definitely thinking outside the box — or is just plain crazy. [via Break ]

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PrintScreen

It slipped under the radar this past week, but Dell and Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced a partnership that’ll see Dell donate $5 to the foundation for every new Promise Pink laptop it sells. Most of Dell’s line is available in the new hue, including the various Inspiron Studios and Minis, the XPS m1330 and m1530 — hell, even the Latitude E4200 for all you trendster suits out there. Dell’s committed to raising at least $250,000 through the program, so it apparently thinks these are going to be quite popular — we’ll know for sure if this dude trades up to Promise from Flamingo

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Dell Promise Pink laptops fight breast cancer

TotalMusic, the digital music distribution initiative created by Sony BMG and Universal Music Group, appears to be on life support – or worse. In the last few months the company has seen the two music executives who spearheaded the initiative jump ship, followed by a round of layoffs that included senior personnel. Yesterday Ruckus, a music streaming company acquired by TotalMusic last year, abruptly shut down. Repeated attempts to contact Michael Bebel, Ruckus’ CEO, have gone unanswered. It may be too soon to definitively put TotalMusic into the Deadpool, but things are not looking good for the company.

The history of TotalMusic is dramatic, filled with failed deals, major strategy changes, and an antitrust lawsuit. Since forming, the company has proposed two new revenue models for music: the first was to offer end-users a large library of music for ‘free’, by building the cost of the music service into their music devices. That plan didn’t exactly work out – in early 2008 the Department of Justice launched an anti-trust probe which derailed the idea.

Then, last summer, the company came back from the dead. The second new model was meant to serve as a departure from the way music has traditionally been licensed on the web. Historically, the major record labels have charged sites per-song fees for streaming, badgering everyone into submission with threats of lawsuits and steep penalties. Major sites like MySpace and imeem are held under this kind of agreement, as are many smaller sites which are having trouble sustaining themselves because of the high fees (even Pandora, a streaming music site that had the most popular iPhone application of 2008, has worried about having to shut down).

In contrast to these per-song fees, TotalMusic was supposed to offer free streaming to sites in return for user data and all associated advertising revenue. In particular, the initiative was built from the start with Facebook in mind, offering the social network a chance to implement a music service for free while all of its competitors were paying hefty fees. But Facebook didn’t bite. The exact reason why is hazy – UMG and Sony were able to bring EMI on board, but were unable to get Warner, the last major label, to agree. We’ve also heard that Facebook was unwilling to hand over user data and ad revenues.

Since the Facebook deal fell apart, the company has taken a turn for the worse. When we investigated the company last summer, we noted that four TotalMusic software engineers listed on LinkedIn had previously worked on MusicNow, another streaming music service that changed hands from Circuit City to AOL and ultimately had its customer base sold to the ‘legit’ Napster (presumably they had been brought in to apply their expertise to the new service). In the last month, two of the four employees have changed their profiles to indicate that they no longer work with TotalMusic.

We’ve also heard that one of the company’s lead engineers was laid off in the last few days, prompting the sudden shutdown of Ruckus. Ruckus was quietly acquired last year by TotalMusic, and was meant to act as the foundation for the service’s backend. The operation closed down so quickly that some of the service’s participating universities weren’t even notified of the upcoming change (many campuses have been actively promoting Ruckus for years to try to curb piracy).

But there has been some progress. Last month TotalMusic soft-launched a new site called TunePost, which apparently offers streaming music through widgets. The service is in a private beta, but the company’s VP of Product Management, Jason Herskowitz, has been embedding widgets into his personal blog.

This may be a sign that TotalMusic still has a pulse, but we’ve also heard that the company’s remaining employees are shopping around its technology to outside buyers – the embeds may simply be a way to show off the technology they’ve built. In any case, it’s hard to believe that in the current economy the music labels will continue to funnel money into what boils down to a music widget that has yet to launch to the public.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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The Record Industry’s TotalMusic Experiment Is Sinking Fast

Reader Maggie directed us to an interesting piece of artwork that was created entirely from a Windows error in XP, by Xubor. For those wondering, the sound effects were added in later. Continue reading for the video.

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Painting with a Windows Error

While we’ve yet to see a BlackBerry snow sculpture, someone has already taken building an icy version into their own hands. It was shown at Ottawa’s Interlude Festival. No word yet on pricing or service plans. Who says Canada sucks for gadgets?

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Incredible BlackBerry Ice Sculpture

So it’s not exactly a giant Game Boy turned costume, but rather a fan-made creation that consists of a laptop running an emulator, with the controls mapped to giant buttons. Video after the break. I do find it a little creepy that you have to press the buttons on the guys’ waistline in order to move the blocks around. [via Technabob ]

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Functional Game Boy Costume Lets You Play Tetris