Thousands of skis are stolen every year, right on the slope. Theft Deterrent System for Skis (TDS-S) offers a new high tech solution against this problem - it binds the boot to the ski using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

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Some mobile phones like the N95 feature pretty impressive loudspeakers, considering their small size. Even though they sometimes offer simulated 3D sound, it's of course not comparable to real surround solution through multiple loudspeakers.

Stefan Damm and Arnold Ahrer are now enabling real surround sound on mobile phones - through turning four phones into (more intelligent) loudspeakers. All of them are connected to a central server, which allows to move the virtual sound source. The phones, which are connected to the server through WLAN, adapt the sound volume. This leads to a full surround sound experience.

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In many countries, all-inclusive phone tariff plans are very popular. In Austria, every operator now has a large amount of included minutes in all of their major tariff models. On the other hand, there are still many plans where you have to pay money per minute, especially when calling to different operators.

By far not a finished application, but a working prototype nevertheless, Auto Call Back is a new automated service that can automatically call back contacts that you define. You simply put the people where it's better if you call them than the other way round in a special callback-group. Whenever the application detects a call from somebody in this group, it will automatically decline the call and call back a few seconds later.

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Even though HourPower is probably the smallest application available for download at symbianresources.com, it is nevertheless in the top three of the most popular applications. Now, it has been updated to v1.5.0 - the biggest update ever.

Download HourPower v1.5.0

Changes:

- New language: (Brazilian) Portuguese - thanks to Thiago Martins for his support with the translation!

- Settings screen upon first startup

- Supports differentiation between 12-hour clock and 24-hour clock

- Automatic mode adapts time format to the current phone configuration

- .ini file to store preferred time setting

- Extended to speak terms like "2 o'clock in the morning" for German and Portuguese

On a sidenote, I'll be on holiday until August - but there are still some projects in the release queue, so remember to come back!

The research project CrystalMe tries to evaluate how far you can go with publishing all your personal information that is available on the mobile device to the web through the use of the Nokia Mobile Web Server. It just won at the Forum Nokia Mobile Web Server Challenge, now the project page about CrystalMe is online.

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