Virgin Media has confirmed that it will be offering the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play in its range of handsets. The Virgin mobile network will offer the PlayStation-certified handset pre-loaded with six games this month. The phone will be available for no extra cost on a 24-month £40.85 contract (ouch) bundled with 1,200 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of mobile data. It will also be available on a range of other two-year and 18-month contracts.

Windows 8 is set to include its own native PDF reader, signalling the end of forced Adobe Reader integration. A thousand weary PDF perusers are no doubt crying tears of happiness at the mere thought of never again having to update their PDF reader eighty-four times a day. Hopefully the proprietary reader will also see an end to the almost-mandatory desktop shortcut that Adobe Reader drops on your desktop every time you update - but then again, this is Microsoft so we wouldn't bet on it.

High street fashion retailer New Look has launched a fully transactional mCommerce site, designed and built by mobile and digital communications business, Mobile Interactive Group (MIG). The site integrates with New Look’s back end systems and uses Javascript, CSS3 & HTML5 to offer what MIG calls: “the ultimate mobile shopping experience”. The challenge of most mCommerce sites is to give customers the confidence to buy via mobile, says MIG. For this reason, the focus of the project was to launch the most engaging and seamless transactional service of any high street fashion retailer to date, one that would encourage New Look’s mobile savvy customers to buy.

Vodafone New Zealand has deployed Alatel-Lucent small cells to power its new 'Sure Signal' service in the country.  Vodafone Sure Signal is the company's 3G network solution to the increasingly demanding mobile voice and data requirements of residential and business users in New Zealand. "Some of our consumer and business customers have been frustrated in the past when they find they don't have indoor coverage and that the technical options available to improve their coverage were either too expensive or simply weren't up to the task," says Hamish Sansom, head of mobile data at Vodafone NZ. "The introduction of Vodafone Sure Signal using the Alcatel-Lucent femtocell solution means that we can now end the frustration for these customers. The installation and launch of the solution went very smoothly and we now have ecstatic customers with five bars of coverage where they once had none."

In August, the rumor was that Facebook planned to pack its first custom-built data center with ARM servers, abandoning traditional x86 chips from the likes of Intel and AMD. The trouble was that the rumor arrived via a site calling itself SemiAccurate, and Facebook promptly told the world it wasn't accurate at all. But on Thursday morning, Facebook will unveil a change to both the hardware and software running its back-end infrastructure, and it seems that the company will finally tell us what will go into its first custom-built data center, a facility under construction in Prineville, Oregon. Facebook may not be using ARM servers, but judging from comments the company has made in the past, we can't help but wonder if it's taking at least a small step towards the new breed of server based on low-power processors – and possibly towards massively multicore servers, machines that cram hundreds of cores into a single chassis.

First the website, now the royal wedding mobile app. The Royal Collection, which normally deals in exhibitions, has broken new ground by releasing the first royal app, telling the story of nuptials in the monarchy through the ages, or at least since Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. The monarchy already has a website for this month's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, not to mention Flickr and Facebook accounts, both introduced last year, a Twitter site launched in 2009, and the Royal channel, which has been on YouTube since 2007.

The world's banks, mining, drug and other companies should invest much more in foreign aid, Bill Gates, the world's leading philanthropist told European MEPs on Tuesday. Gates, who is touring Europe celebrating the success of US and other aid programmes, said that private philanthropy only contributed 2% to world aid flows but that this could be increased. "We could grow it. Philanthropy contributes more than its proportional share. It will never offset anything done by big governments but … you would expect people of wealth to do it more. We need more philanthropists – drug companies, banks, mobile phone, mineral companies," he said.

Mountain View giant, Google, is said to be considering a move into mobile phone credit card payments, according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal. Reports suggest that the search engine is poised to forge bonds with MasterCard and Citigroup so that Android users will have the ability to pay for purchases with the help of NFC. At the launch of the Nexus S, allusions were made to such a move, and fans of Android are welcoming the development. NFC mobile payments are also rumoured to be making their way to Apple devices in the near future, with many expecting subsequent iPhones to be equipped with NFC chips, while Orange has already joined forces with Barclaycard with the aim of offering contactless payments.

Nortel Networks entered into a “stalking horse” agreement with Google, covering the sale of Nortel’s remaining patents and patent applications, for a cash purchase price of US$900 million. The move is said to follow a “confidential, multi-round bidding process involving several interested companies and consortia from around the world.” While Google is currently the first in line for the assets, an auction will be held (expected in June 2011) which will provide a chance for “qualified bidders to submit higher or otherwise better offers.” The transaction will also be subject to regulatory approvals. The intellectual property under the hammer includes “approximately 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patent portfolios.”

 

Sony is the latest high-profile name believed to be entering the tablet space, lining up an Android-based tablet for launch this summer. According to a report in The Nikkei, which cites comments by Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer (pictured), the new device will run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) – the version designed specifically for tablets – and will launch in the US market first. It is unclear if the new tablet will come from the Sony, Sony Ericsson or PlayStation camp. The long-awaited 'PlayStation phone' (Xperia Play) was launched at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in February, and the firm has also been rumoured to be working on a 'PlayStation tablet' version running Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset and featuring a 9.4-inch display. It has also been reported that Sony is planning a similarly-sized tablet based on Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS.