If you thought Nokia's partnership with YouTube and Reuters was big, you have no idea how much bigger the loop of friends gets for the mobile handset giant. The company has announced through a press release that it now has deals with fellow giants CNN, IBN, Jamba, Sony Pictures, RooftopComedy, ROK, and Versaly Entertainment.

Under the deal, all of these media and film firms will have content on Nokia's Video Center placed on display, ready to be accessed by N-Series phones via 3G, Wi-Fi, or PC.

The alliance expands the Nokia Video Center's content capabilities and gives Nokia N-Series users one simple place to stop and get content in order to satisfy their video cravings. Be it news, copyrighted clips, or user content, users will find something they like here.

Seems like the iPhone has acquired quite a following. It has even attracted the intense focus of more than 300 hackers who have gathered last weekend in San Francisco.

The iPhone was released last June 29 and since then has become so popular that a recent survey found it more popular than cars. A device that combines the iPod music player with a mobile phone that allows internet surfing, the iPhone is naturally the source of a lot of people's interests, even those who want to maximize its potential even if they go through unconventional means. Like a weekend camp designed for hacking.

In an effort to get what Apple won't give them, 300 (plus) brave hackers set out to find the limits and capabilities of the iPhone. Organized by Chris Messina, the iPhoneDevCamp was held in a borrowed office complete with its own message board projected on a big screen. The event was not sponsored by Apple and efforts by Adobe to make participants sign nondisclosure agreements were met with a quick boot.

Hackers at the camp have produced a number of unusual and interesting results. One found a way to make iPhones yell out like Chewbacca when dropped. Another figured out how to flip through the top 10 photos on Flickr with the touch of a finger. A useful program also went out to make the iPhone function as a baby monitor. One program that got some hype allowed customized home pages with iPhone icons. "For example, a user can put an icon for the cable station CNN on their home page if they want to go to the site every time they turn the iPhone on."

By the end of the camp, 45 new programs for the iPhone were demonstrated, not including those that the more secretive programmers have chosen to develop by themselves. Perhaps we may yet see more things spark in the future from the endeavors of the 300. We should also see more from the developers of the iPhone themselves and third party developers now that the public has shown so much interest in it.

Imagine a totally wireless future. We're not just talking about wireless internet and stuff, too. When we say wireless, that includes the power cords that are connecting your PC to your electric socket, giving it power so that you can read these words on this website right now.

It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but startup company Powercast is already starting to make leaps and bound in this field of research. According to a report from CNN Money, Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are already set to launch their first device powered by - brace yourself - electricity broadcast through the air. Here's how it works:

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product.

A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

The first joint product from Powercast and Philips is a wirelessly powered LED light stick which will hit the market this year. Powercast says it has also signed deals to develop products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of gadgets ranging from cell phones and MP3 players to medical implants.

PCs and laptops could also be added to the list of Powercast-powered devices in the future. Right now, PC power consumption is still too high for the Powercast to handle, but these consumption rates are rapidly dropping.

CNN's new mobile service will be making its debut at the 3GSM show in Barcelona later today, February 12. This service is the first fruit of CNN's collaboration with Ericsson and will cost a whopping NOTHING.

Yep, the service will be delivered free to consumers. According to Broadband TV News, the service goes live at 12:00 CET when correspondent Jim Boulden will file a "live via phone" piece for daily news show Business International.

This new mobile internet service will include "In the Field" blogs from the network's international correspondents, a searchable 14-day news archive with over 2,000 stories as well as a breaking news service and an hourly made-for-mobile hourly news update.

CNN mobile will work on all WAP-enabled mobile and handheld devices (it doesn't matter which operator you have a subscription to) and is accessed on the CNNmobile.com website.

It probably won't replace the keyboard, but it can certainly speed things up. CNN reports on the growing trend for voice recognition technology in tech, and how this trend is starting to get even big players like Google and Microsoft vying for a piece of the pie.

According to CNN, the market's starting to become a billion dollar industry, with everything from the call center industry to the mobile phone and automobile sectors. This next generation of voice recognition is meant to be implemented in just about everything. As they note:

The market for server-based voice-recognition technology to power call centers and the like reached nearly $600 million in 2006 and is expected to double by 2009, according to Opus Research....

The market for speech technology embedded in devices such as phones and auto dashboards - worth about $125 million in 2006, according to research firm Datamonitor - is expected to quadruple to $500 million by 2010... Ultimately, some experts say, voice-recognition systems are likely to be built into almost every gadget, appliance and machine that people use.

We'd feel bad for the folks looking for some way to get what they want but can't talk. So long as there's a market for people who can't speak though, we're quite sure we won't be relying on voice recognition on everything we own anytime soon. Besides, if future voice recognition software can't be placed on a belt and can't turn people into superheroes, then we'll stick to keyboards for now.