It’s hard to fault Nokia for the good work that has been put into the Lumia 800.

With a unibody polycarbonate shell, an AMOLED display and an eight-megapixel Carl-Zeiss lens, Nokia’s comeback phone is up against the top smartphones in the market, such as the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy SII.

I’ve been using the Lumia 800 for over a week now and the one thing that impresses me most is its curved Gorilla glass display that’s nearly flushed with the edges. Its 3.7-inch screen, which displays images with vibrant colors and deep blacks, is comparable to the iPhone’s Retina display.

The Lumia 800′s auto-focus camera takes good-looking pictures, though I had trouble focusing on nearby subjects. While you can snap photos quickly, there were times when the camera clicked before an object was in focus.

The camera also sports 3x digital zoom for zooming in on objects from a distance, but your photos could turn out to be a tad grainier than usual.

Folks who take self-portraits may be disappointed as the Lumia 800 does not sport a front-facing camera. You’ll have to wait for the Lumia 900 if a front-facing camera is top on your smartphone feature list.

The Lumia 800′s minimalist design means the only physical buttons you’ll see are volume keys, power button and the camera shutter, which are all aligned along the left edge of the phone.

Like most smartphones, the Lumia 800 has enough power to last a day of messaging and web browsing. But when the battery is completely drained, it could take over an hour for the phone to be turned on again while plugged into the power socket. This issue has since been addressed in a recent software update.

While Nokia’s flagship device is spiffy, this isn’t enough to win over iPhone and Android users. Much has been said about the qualities of the Lumia 800′s Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” operating system, but a rich app ecosystem is all it takes to dent the market share of rival platforms.

For now, there are still a number of apps (DBS mBanking, Pixlr-o-matic, Skype and TweetDeck, to name a few) I have on my iPhone and Android devices that aren’t available for the Window Phone platform yet.

That said, both Microsoft and Nokia are expected to rally developers to produce apps for the Windows Phone platform and this should also encourage other smartphone makers such as LG, Samsung and HTC to offer more Windows Phone devices.

According to estimates by iSuppli, Windows Phone devices are expected to account for 9 percent of total smartphone shipments this year, up from just 1.9 percent in 2011.

Thanks to Bluetree Electronics, we are giving away four Kube2 MP3 players in our Chinese New Year lucky draw. The Kube2 is touted as the world’s smallest touch MP3 player and sports a unique one-inch cube aluminum body. The S$45.90 doodad also comes with a 4GB microSD card.

To enter the contest:

1. Follow us on Twitter.
2. Post a tweet on any Techgoondu article that you like.
3. The URL of that article (use a link shortener service) must be included in your tweet, along with this hashtag: #TGCNY12.

This contest runs from January 30 to February 7, and we’ll pick the winners at random from all Twitter posts entered for this contest.

Rules and details:

1. Only residents staying in Singapore are eligible to participate.
2. Each tweet is eligible for one entry, so feel free to post as many tweets as you want.
3. Anyone found using multiple Twitter accounts to enter will be disqualified.
4. After the contest closes, we’ll Twitter DM the lucky winners to coordinate with you how you can collect your prize.

Happy new year and good luck!

Symantec has discovered over a dozen apps with malicious code that could cede control of your smartphone to perpetrators.

In a recent blog post, the security company said the apps, which are hosted on the Android Market, can be used to propagate a “bot-like threat that can receive commands to carry out certain actions, as well as steal information from the device”.

These threats are also known as botnets, where a collection of compromised computers can be controlled by a central server to launch denial-of-service attacks. Private information such as bank account numbers on compromised devices could also be stolen by cybercriminals.

According to Symantec, the malicious code is grafted onto the apps in a package called “apperhand”. Once launched, a service with the same name may be seen running on a compromised device. A search icon will also appear on the home screen

The malicious apps appear to be from three publishers: iApps7 Inc, Ogre Games and redmicapps. About half of the apps in question have been removed from the Android Market as of today.

Malware targeting mobile devices are expected to increase this year. The hardest hit are likely to be Android-based devices, given the operating system’s large market share and open innovation platform, said ICSA Labs, a division of Verizon Business that tests and certifies security products.

With the Evernote and Skitch add-ons, features that were once available through separate apps can now be accessed directly through the Dolphin browser.

That means you can quickly save text on a webpage to Evernote, or use Skitch’s drawing tools to annotate content without firing up the respective apps.

But here’s the catch: you’ll need to first install the apps, and the add-ons are only for the Android version of Dolphin HD.

While desktop browsers have been embracing add-ons for years, makers of mobile browsers are only starting to warm up to the idea.

Hopefully, this will be a sign of things to come as more app developers start to think about integrating their apps with others for a more seamless — rather than walled garden — user experience.

Launched in March 2010, Dolphin HD was one of the first browsers for Android devices to introduce gesture-based navigation.

The browser hit its 10 million-user milestone in November 2011, three months after it made its debut on the Apple iOS platform.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched DynamoDB, a cloud database service designed to meet the growing needs of demanding Web-based applications.

DynamoDB will allow developers to launch new database tables and moderate their database capacity without downtime and performance overheads. All data is housed on solid state drives and replicated across multiple AWS availability zones to ensure high availability and durability of data.

The service is built on SimpleDB, Amazon’s other cloud database service that launched in December 2007.

According to Amazon, traditional databases are not designed to meet the performance needs of modern applications, especially popular ones that can cause a single database to reach its maximum capacity quickly.

While the problem can be fixed by distributing database workloads across multiple servers, the process is complex and requires significant time and engineering effort.

With DynamoDB, developers can focus on improving their apps, while AWS will take care of hardware provisioning, software patching and partitioning, among other administrative tasks.

Additionally, Amazon’s pay-as-you-go pricing means you only pay for the resources you need.

“Dynamo was born out of our need for a highly reliable, ultra-scalable key/value database,” said Werner Vogels, AWS’ chief technology officer, in a blog post.

“This non-relational, or NoSQL, database was targeted at use cases that were core to the Amazon e-commerce operation, such as the shopping cart and session service,” he added.

Besides Amazon, early adopters of DynamoDB include IMDB and science information provider Elsevier, which publishes thousands of books, nearly 2,000 journals and over 250,000 articles housed on rapidly changing datasets.

Darren Person, Elsevier’s chief architect, said: “Operating a distributed data store on our own is orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive to manage than traditional databases. DynamoDB delivers a high-performance service that can be easily scaled up or down to meet our needs, helping us eliminate complexity and lower costs.”

You can get started with Amazon DynamoDB using a free tier that provides 100MB of storage, and five writes and 10 reads per second (up to 40 million requests per month) at no cost.

Additional capacity is priced at hourly rates as low as US$0.01 per hour for 10 units of write capacity or 50 strongly consistent units of read capacity, while replicated SSD storage is priced at US$1 per GB per month.

Enterprises using Equinix’s data centres in Singapore and Tokyo can now connect directly to Amazon’s public cloud service.

Through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect, Equinix customers in the Asia-Pacific region can establish private network connections with Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, paying only for the network ports used and data transferred out of AWS. Data transfer into AWS is free.

Equinix, a global data centre operator, said the connectivity option will help companies cut network costs into and out of AWS, by lowering bandwidth commitments to ISPs and taking advantage of reduced data transfer rates.

Since the initial roll out to its Virginia data centre campus last year, Equinix has been extending AWS Direct Connect to other locations such as Silicon Valley to meet growing customer demand for hybrid environments.

Carpathia Hosting, a provider of managed hosting services, is using AWS Direct Connect in Equinix data centres to allow customers such as mobile app provider Urban Airship to use a mix of Amazon cloud infrastructure, along with Carpathia’s managed hosting services.

“More and more of our enterprise customers are demanding hybrid hosting solutions that combine the benefits of both dedicated infrastructure and cloud infrastructure,” said Jon Greaves, chief technology officer at Carpathia in a media statement Friday.

“For existing AWS customers, Carpathia Hosting uses AWS Direct Connect to deliver the benefits of having their dedicated infrastructure and AWS’s cloud services managed by a single provider,” he added.

Lydia Leong, research vice president at Gartner’s technology and service providers group, said the partnership between Equinix and Amazon is good for “obvious reasons”.

“For quite some time now, I’ve been evangelising the importance of carrier-neutral co-location as a ‘cloud hub’, envisioning a future where these providers facilitate cross-connect infrastructures between cloud users and cloud providers,” she said in a blog post last year.

Leong noted that widespread adoption of this model would allow an enterprise to say, get a single rack of network equipment at Equinix, and then cross-connect directly to all of their important cloud suppliers.

“It would drive cross-connect density, differentiation and stickiness at the carrier-neutral co-location providers who succeed in being the draw for these ecosystems,” she added.

eBay has partnered with SingPost and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to offer a new shipping service for eBay Singapore sellers.

Dubbed ePAC, the service lets sellers track the delivery of lightweight goods sold to American customers within six to eight working days. This service is part of eBay and SingPost’s ongoing efforts to boost trade from Singapore to the United States.

From today, eBay Singapore sellers can start using ePAC on a fully integrated platform, allowing them take orders, print labels and track the status of shipments. U.S.-based customers can also track the status of their purchased goods through their eBay account.

Oliver Hua, chief operating officer at eBay Marketplaces in the Greater China region, Southeast Asia and Japan, said Singapore sellers are highly regarded for combining good quality products at great value, and command the second highest sales in Southeast Asia, behind Thailand.

“We foresee ePAC playing a vital role in driving Singapore’s online exports to the United States as demonstrated by a similar shipping service launched with China Post and the U.S. Postal Service in September 2010, which is already processing more than 90,000 parcels a day,” he added.

The e-commerce giant has also been offering a similar service for sellers in Thailand and Hong Kong through partnerships with local postal services.

eBay’s export business is largely led by exporters in China and Hong Kong, according to the company’s Asian Exporter Index published last August.

Large exporters with annual turnovers of more than US$100,000 have experienced year-on-year growth of 26 percent across the region, with 200 exporters – predominantly based in China and Hong Kong – recording annual turnovers of over US$1 million.

The top-selling products sold by Asian exporters on eBay include clothing, jewellery, watches, computers, cellphones and auto parts.

If IBM researchers get their way, remembering passwords will soon be a thing of the past. Big Blue has recently published a video of what it thinks will become reality by 2016, such as mind reading and generating electricity from human activities, among other predictions:

Generate your own electricity
Anything that moves generates kinetic energy, which can be converted to electricity. We can tap this energy from running water, or the rotating wheels of a bicycle to power our homes and offices. IBM scientists in Ireland are already looking at ways to understand and minimise the environmental impact of converting ocean wave energy into electricity.

Biometrics
Your biological make-up could be used more extensively to authenticate access to secured systems and safeguard your identity. According to IBM, biometric data such as retina scans and voice can be combined through software to build your unique DNA-based password. The same biodata could also be used to authenticate ATM transactions, eliminating the use of magnetic strip cards, which are prone to card skimming as we’ve found out this week.

Mind reading
Mind reading has been wishful thinking among science fiction fans for decades. But their wish may soon come true. Within five years, we’ll begin to see the applications of mind reading technology. Doctors could use it to test brain patterns, assist with rehabilitation of patients and understand brain disorders such as autism. IBM researchers are now figuring out ways to link our brains to devices so you can just call someone on a smartphone by thinking about it. In the further future, you could also type on a computer by thinking about the words to say!

No more digital divide
The digital divide will cease to exist in a global society where the wealth of economies is determined by the level of access to information. In five years, the gap between information haves and have-nots will be eliminated, thanks to the adoption of mobile technology. Eighty percent of the global population of seven billion will have a mobile device, IBM predicts. It’ll be cheaper to own a cellphone than open a bank account or buy a laptop. And because of this, rural communities are able to achieve much more than before, such as checking weather reports on their cellphones to determine the best time to fertilise their crops.

Death to junk mail
Too often, we’re flooded with irrelevant information including junk mail. In five years, spam e-mail will become personal notes. Through analytics technology, computers will be able to filter data that’s important and relevant, and bring you information that you would have asked for. Imagine your phone knowing that your favourite band is coming to town and putting tickets on hold for you to purchase.

Do IBM’s predictions sound too far fetched to you? Let us know in the comments.

Google is spreading some Christmas cheer this holiday season with an “easter egg” that will unleash snow flakes on the screen right after you enter “let it snow” in a Google search box.

Once the screen has been filled with snow, there’s a button to defrost the screen, though snow flakes will continue to make their descent on the first page of the search results.

But before you hit defrost, be sure to doodle something on the screen with your mouse cursor, similar to what you might do on a bus window on a rainy day.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!