Ananova is a digitally-rendered fully-animated internet newscaster and information provider using text-to-speech technology and providing advanced search capabilities.

Ananova is to be a key player in Oranges international internet operations. The computer-generated character was developed by the Leeds-based new media division of the Press Association the National News Agency.

Ananova is programmed to deliver breaking news faster than any human equivalent 24 hours a day.

Ananova is a key element of our plans to develop our overall portal platform which will take wirefree communications beyond what is available today reaching customers in the countries where we have a physical presence and beyond said Orange chief executive Hans Snook.

The event recognises successful retailing from bricks and mortar e-commerce design and product development to customer care and marketing.

What The Carphone Warehouse has achieved across Europe over 800 stores in 14 different countries including several number one market share positions is truly staggering. Moreover they seem to have done it without sacrificing their legendary customer service said judging panel chairman Mark Phillipson.

The flip-open handset launched in Korea this week can take 20 pictures.

A macro mode allows for photographs of written text to be taken. Standard accessories include a CD-ROM with picture-editing software and a data cable to connect the phone to a PC.

Samsung expects the phone to be able to be used to record emergencies or unexpected circumstances.

To take pictures the user presses the Camera Mode button on the side of the unit. A camera lens is located on the reverse side of the phone. The subject is viewed on the 1.5-inch LCD display.

The battery lasts for up to 200 minutes during picture taking with high-capacity batteries the Camera Phone delivers 170 minutes of talk time and 10 hours on standby.

The Camera Phone is the fifth multi-function mobile developed by Samsung after the MP3 Phone WAP phone Watch Phone and TV Phone.

Instead by speaking in an articulated but natural voice it will be possible to scroll through menus and to activate the dialling of directory entries and other commands.

These are the claims from word recognition specialist Domain Dynamics which has licensed European Telecoms new subsidiary ET Voice Limited to develop word recognition and speaker authentication services for mobile phones.

ET Voice will market word recognition applications later this year establishing technology transfer arrangements and licences with mobile phone and chip-set manufacturers worldwide. Instead of dialling a number or having to search through a handset directory the technology will allow users to activate voice dialling without the need to press buttons.

ET Voice now has worldwide exclusive rights to use Domain Dynamics TESPAR technology in mobile product development.

TESPAR is a signal processing technology which uses algorithms which require very little training time to recognise the sound of selected voices words or numbers and performs well in noisy environments.

The technology is said to be able to copy with varying speech speeds and pitches and can accommodate both temporary and permanent voice changes.

TESPAR accuracy is claimed to be better than that of existing products and about to double the capacity of the personal voice directory.

The sponsorship package will comprise 15 seconds of opening and closing credits for all movies until the end of December with Siemens-branded trailers.

Siemens will also have sponsorship rights to the Sky Movies web site and Sky Digitext available from November.

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Levi Cranston (18) is charged on eight counts of robbery with violence in the space of a month.

He is accused of robbing passengers of mobile phones and other personal belongings in April.

Afrinetworks owns the Eho chain which has 15 per cent of Moroccos cellular market. Emanuel made his money selling DX last year to BTCellnet for 42 million.

BTCellnet will be providing 8000 of the new Siemens C35 WAP-enabled mobile telephones to approved heating engineers. Following the launch in September the new service will initially be used by 8000 installers of Caradon Ideal Boilers. There are plans to further extend the service in the coming months by making it available to an increasing number of heating engineers. Plumbers and heating engineers will also be notified of new job opportunities via their WAP phones.

Vodafone was not found to be cross subsidising its service providers.

BTCellnet said the seven-year-old formula used by Oftel was an anachronism that has passed its sell-by date as a method of measurement.

A network spokesperson said:

Oftel has also decided to apply it using only one quarters market data wholly unreasonable in the highly competitive and changeable mobile phone market. BT Cellnet firmly believes that it does not unfairly cross subsidise its service provision activities said the network.

The major reason for imbalance in the mobile phone service provision market is due to regulatory decisions made by Oftel which permit Orange and One-2-One greater freedom and flexibility in promoting their own service provision

Until this imbalance is addressed BT Cellnet considers it is unreasonable for it to be subject to additional complex and obscure monitoring and enforcement procedures.

Orange and One-2-One have been acquired by substantial overseas networks There is no conceivable reason why these operators should need more favourable regulatory treatment than BT Cellnet the BTCellnet spoeksman said.

Oftel said BT Cellnets service providers are not covering their costs on services supplied to customers and would have been making a loss without subsidy from BT Cellnet.

Oftel director genreal David Edmonds said:

If BT Cellnet charge service providers too much for wholesale airtime customers will face an unbalanced choice when shopping around for a good deal

Oftels review of the mobile market in 1999 found that competition was increasing. BT Cellnet should take action to ensure that competition continues to develop. Lowering their wholesale price would be a very effective way of doing this.

Mobile advertising enabler Spotcast Communications and network SingTel Mobile have launched the service whereby customers can access information on a wide range of topics including music sports fashion the hottest entertainment news and even check out their daily horoscope.

Spotcast AdSpot systems are already in operation with Hong Kongs Peoples Phone and SmarTone mobile networks.

These give advertisers a way to precision target mobile users based on their personal preferences location and demographic information.

The first group of advertisers who have signed up to advertise on SingTel Mobiles 1911-FreeCall includes Motorola and Twentieth Century Fox Film.

SingTel Mobile CEO Lucas Chow said:

We are bombarded with thousands of advertisements every day. 1911-FreeCall allows advertisers to reach their target audience efficiently while at the same time customers will appreciate the information on services they are interested in.

Washington DC company Spotcast Communications developed an advertising-sponsored mobile phone service technology that allows advertisers to precision target advertising based on a callers mobile location demographic profile lifestyle interests and time of call.

SingTel Mobile has more than one million customers on its GSM networks. It was the first operator to introduce WAP in Singapore.