Word has it that Sony Ericsson (who I’m enjoying a lot of late with my new K800) are out to snap up symbian software developer UIQ.

Via iTWire

UIQ offers excellent technical flexibility enabling us to provide compelling features such as push email, Internet browsing, end user personalisation and enhanced music applications” said Mats Lindoff, chief technology officer at Sony Ericsson. “By acquiring UIQ Technology we will further invest and exploit the full potential of UIQ on Symbian OS for phone vendors, mobile operators, developers and consumers.”

The move would certainly benefit UIQ who would certainly gain a massive boost in the ability to compete in the software market for mobiles. UIQ itself is owned by Symbian and under the terms of the sale (with no financial details available at this time) UIQ will operate as a seperate subsidy of Sony Ericsson and, according to Business Week, “its products will be openly available, licensed on equal terms to all its licensees”. Sony Ericsson is already a licensee of UIQ.

The deal, while having been announced, isn’t expected to close until Spring next year.

YouTube, recently snapped up by Google are reportedly looking to go mobile in 2007 with Chad Hurley hoping “have something on a mobile device” by next Christmas (via). Whether the transition works or not is the next thing with YouTube trying to work out a mobile advertising option or port their existing advertising model to the mobile experience.

YouTube themselves already have a mobile service in place and creating a mobile profile when you’re signed in is a breeze, YouTube giving you a unique email address from which to send video from your phone via MMS, alas their present online service is just for uploading videos, not browsing them.

Getting YouTube straight to your mobile would be a massive achievement and if successful could open them up to another massive revenue stream. Best of luck to them too if they can pull it off.

Via MobileCrunch we’ve got news that Google have launched a great version of Gmail for java based mobile phones, allowing you all of the common features you would expect from the online version as well (reporting spam, flagging conversations etc.). You can still access Gmail via your phone’s browser directly but this new standalone application should go a long way towards speeding up everything, Mike Arrington saying it was “the best email experience outside of a Blackberry I’ve ever had on a mobile device.” Not bad going there.

Check the demo here or point your mobile browser to http://gmail.com/app to get cracking…

So today I made the bold move and switched over to an Easy Life plan with O2 having been a prepay customer for all of about six years. The joy of doing so is that I can now enjoy the use of a Sony Ericsson K800 which I may have mentioned earlier. No, I didn’t pick up the limited silver edition but I have to say that over the first day of use of the phone I’m extremely impressed.

Until recently I had been using a Motorola v360 for personal calls, standing in for my HP iPaq 6515W which I’m disappointed just hasn’t lived up to its enormous pricetag.

The improved PC Suite (in comparison to the one I picked up with the P900 many moons ago) is a delight, the USB charging extremely handy for mobility (or if like me you tend to leave your phone charger in the office) and the quality of the camera, a mobile option I’ve never had much use for before, is excellent.

More on the phone as I give it a lengthier run over the next few weeks.

Looks like the $100 laptops are going to start rolling out in the first quarter of 2007 according to PC Advisor.

The OLPC initiative is aimed at ensuring school children in developing countries keep up with their peers in modern nations by putting a laptop PC able to wirelessly access the Internet into their hands. The founders of the OLPC group hope the programme keeps people in poor nations from being left behind in the digital age. The $100 laptop PC concept has also prompted companies, including Intel, to start creating lower cost notebooks for developing countries.

It is already estimated that up to 10m laptops will be shipped with orders already confirmed in each of Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand.

The laptops will come pretty much barebones and will use Linux as their OS (you’d hardly expect Microsoft to give up 10m copies of Vista now would you?). The laptops are to be produced in Taiwan and will be sold off to various governments who will distribute the laptops on a “One Laptop Per Child” basis (hence OLPC).

More on the proposed laptop, The Children’s Machine, here at Wikipedia.