Hasta La Gadget!

The highest mountain in the world now has a better cell signal that your apartment. Nepalese wireless company called Ncell (owned by Swedish telecom giant TeliaSonera) has installed a 3G base station on the mountain at 17,000 feet, close to a Gorakshep village.

The 3G wireless coverage will reach all the way to the peak of the mountain, allowing hikers to make video calls. Pasi Koistinen, the head of Ncell told the press, “Today we made the (world’s) highest video call from Mount Everest base camp successfully.

Mountain climbers, naturally, are psyched. “The erratic and expensive satellite connection that many times does not work for days will be replaced with this service, making it possible for all climbers to keep in touch with their organizers and family,” International Mountain Protection Commission member Ang Tshering Sherpa told the press.

TeliaSonera is set to invest some $100 million over the next year to cover 90 percent of that country’s popular. The company, incidentally, also runs the lowest 3G base station–some 4,595 feet below sea level, located in a European mine.

Chalk this one up to wishful thinking. The Web this morning is awash with rumors about the Google Nexus Two, this morning, the follow up to the not-especially well-received HTC/Google team up, the Nexus One.

Now perhaps it’s precisely because of that device’s lukewarm reception that these latest rumors actually have Samsung producing the Nexus Two–A Galaxy S-like device. Given the evidence available at present, it’s hard to put too much stock in the rumor.

As if that weren’t enough to process this morning, here’s another weird level to the story: a site called ITProPortal is putting forth the suggestion that the Nexus Two is actually the rumored PlayStation Phone. It’s a two-for-one in the rumor mill this morning.

The suggestion (and, really, it can’t be called anything else–well, okay, “wishful thinking” works, too) is that Sony Ericsson, having been given–and subsequently turned down–the opportunity to produce the Nexus One, is now working on the follow up (because the first one did so well?). And that follow up is the PlayStation Phone.

What we know is this: those early leaks of the purported PlayStation Phone have the handset running some form of Android (Gingerbread, apparently). And, yes, it fair to say that Google is losing the casual gaming fight to Apple’s iPhone.

Oh, and Google did partner with Sony for one of the first Google TV units, “so don’t be flabbergasted if the Japanese giant goes ahead and extends its partnership with Google to the Playstation brand as well,” writes the rumor site.

It’s a nice thought, sure, but it’s not really based on any in particular–just some seemingly unconnected bits and pieces from around the Web.

You can spend all the money in the world, but an acquisition isn’t really complete until everything has been sufficiently re-branded. By that measure, it’s time to officially welcome Palm into the HP family.

Goodbye orange dot, hello branding afterthought. The new HP Palm logo looks as though someone slapped the word “Palm” onto the thing last second. It all seems a bit…mismatched… At least this puts to rest early speculation that the company might more or less abandon the Palm name.

It doesn’t particularly instill us with confidence about the company’s aesthetic future, however.

Now they’re just teasing us. Earlier in the week we got some pretty solid visual verification about the existence of an Android-based PlayStation Phone. Now a Sony executive is all but admitting that such a device is in the works.

During an interview with CNN, Sony SVP Peter Dille wouldn’t actually come right out and confirm that the PlayStation Phone was coming, but he did admit that the PSP’s Wi-Fi connectivity just isn’t enough these days. “People are used to having always-connected devices,” he told the channel.

He added that, while the PlayStation 3’s lifespan is expected to be ten years, things move faster in the mobile world. For one thing, the PSP doesn’t make calls or send text messages. Also, the iPhone and other subsequent smarphones have that whole app store things going for them. Though Dille was quick to write off most smartphone games as “time-killers.”

The exec also expressed concern that the PSP isn’t living up to the multimedia promise of its home-based couterpart, “I don’t think we fully realize that vision with a Wi-Fi device,” Dille said. “If it’s not connected [to a cell network] then it does sort of limit people.”

And what about the speculation that the PlayStation Phone will run a version of Android? A spokeswoman fro Sony told the press, “We have relationships with Google.”

The Captain Ahab analogies are proving more and more apt as time goes by. Looks like Apple’s proverbial white whale is being delayed again.

The company issued a statement apologizing for yet another pushback in the device’s launch, writing, “We’re sorry to disappoint customers waiting for the white iPhone yet again, but we’ve decided to delay its release until this spring.”

Apple hasn’t issued much in the way of details surrounding the delay of the phone. Word is that the delay has to do with a slight color mismatch between the phone’s faceplate and the home button–heads would almost certainly role around Cupertino, should such an aesthetic mismatch ever make it into the wild.

This is the third time the white iPhone has been delayed since it was first announced alongside the black iPhone 4, back in June. Shortly after, Apple announced the device’s first delay, stating that the phones, “have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected.”