North Korea has been described as a failed or pariah state by many independent observers, where most of the power and wealth are all concentrated in the ruling military elite. Having said that, the country seems to care more about the pursuit of weapons rather than to make sure its citizens are well fed, and the latest development would be preparation of mobile Internet service, albeit not for residents. It is just one month after cell phone access is made available to foreigners living inside the country, and it is nice to know that 3G mobile access to the Internet will soon arrive, although residents will have to give this a miss.
It is said that 3G service will be operational within North Korea’s borders by the time March 1st rolls around, although North Koreans will be unable to enjoy such a facility. Koryolink, a 3G mobile provider that is partially owned by the North Korean government, will soon open up subscription to monthly data plans for foreigners.
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We know that the world of robotics has clearly crossed paths with everyday life, and just as an example, Mark Stibich was greeted by the Star Wars theme song when he walked into the boardroom of a Florida hospital in June last year, thanks to Stibich’s germ-busting robot that does resemble the famous astromech droid, R2-D2. Stibich’s robot runs on wheels, and emits a pulse of ultraviolet light which will help disinfect rooms through the elimination of viruses and bacteria.
French mobile operator Orange does have a presence in other countries as well, and they have just announced a trio of spanking new Android-powered smartphones. While these three handsets will not shatter your world by occupying the high end side of things, they are certainly decent enough to use as a workman’s device. A couple of these will be powered by Qualcomm chips, although the San Remo relies on a MediaTek chip. The most affordable of the lot would be the Nivo, where it sports a 4-inch 800 x 480 display, a 5-megapixel camera, a dual-core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 processor, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
We have definitely seen our fair share of rumors concerning the next flagship from South Korean smartphone powerhouse Samsung, where among them include a 
BlackBerry 10 is meant to be the messianic operating system for the company formerly known as RIM (all right, enough Prince references for now, we shall just call a spade a spade; BlackBerry), but a lot of that vision will also depend on famous development houses rolling out compatible apps for the new BlackBerry 10 platform. So far, BlackBerry World already has luminaries such as Skype, Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds Star Wars, with others due to arrive as well, but a major name remains off the list – that is, Instagram. Yes sir, Instagram with over 90 million users using it each month, has been seen by certain quarters to be a deal breaking for not jumping over to the BlackBerry 10 platform.
Necessity is the mother of all invention, but what about building stuff just for fun, or out of interest as your hobby? I suppose enthusiasm as well as the constant striving to improve oneself is there in this bunch of Russians, who actually forked out around $1,500 in parts to construct this two-legged Ostrich robot from scratch. You can basically ride on this robot, and we do wish that it resembled more of a Chocobo than an ostrich for that added Final Fantasy element.
A new software update is always more than welcome by hardware owners, but if and only if the software itself has been thoroughly tested to make sure that it runs smooth as butter without causing more headaches. After all, an update ought to come with its fair share of bug fixes, so to hear news of Skype for Windows 8 being bumped to version 1.5.0.109 surely brings more than just a smile to our faces. Of course, there will be new features thrown into the mix, but do not expect anything groundbreaking or earth shaking here.