Here’s somewhat of an odd decision, especially knowing how technically-minded many Japanese are. Nokia, the largest producer of wireless phones world-wide, is scheduled to stop producing phones (apart from a small luxury brand) for the Japanese marketplace.

The decision was doubtlessly made with many facts at hand. A few that were probably prevalent are, of course, trimming down during the economic crisis, as well as the fact that eight-five percent of Japanese citizens already own a mobile phone — with many of them containing advance features.

What’s the competition up to? Well, Appple, makers of the iPhone 3G have still been enjoying some success in Japan, selling approximately 200,000 iPhone 3Gs in the two months after its release. However, while that is a seemingly impressive number, they had forecasted one million Japanese iPhone 3G sales during that period.

For me, there are few things that can match the excitment of winning an auction online — especially when I win a special item at a great bargain! A website that I have recently discovered for this purpose is Bidz.com, and I warn you, it’s addicting!

Bidz.com is a huge aution site which specializes in all types of jewelry items at fantastic prices, that you certainly won’t find in traditional stores or ecommerce websites. Auctions start at only a dollar, and a new one is on the way every few seconds!

Personally, I’m using to site to buy Christmas gifts for a variety of my friends and family — of course, I don’t think I’ll tell them how much I saved! What’s great at Bidz is that they are currently they are offering a promotion where if you win five items the shipping is free. It’s going on until the end of December, so I recommend doing some Christmas shopping there and saving money on both lovely jewelry, as well as shipping costs.

I was quite impressed with the navigation on the Bidz.com website, as their left sidebar makes it easy to sort auctions buy materials, type of products, or specific features. Also there is a handy search feature that’s especially useful when you have an clear idea of what you’re looking for.

There are ongoing rumours that Microsoft is getting ready to re-brand its Live Search service. The company has purchased the domain Kumo.com which could be the name of the re-branded site.

Kumo means ‘cloud’ or ’spider’ in Japanese.

If true, this would be another attempt by Microsoft to reposition itself in the search engine battle against Google and Yahoo.

In October newlivesearch.blogspot.com posted screenshots of a possible new interface for Live Search, which had the the brand of the search engine. There was also a quote from a Microsoft marketing manager that alluded to branding changes.

Other tips came from a reader in the UK that was able to capture some screenshots with his camera phone of a video displaying Windows LIve services ‘coming in 2009′.

IBM is launching an effort to deliver broadband Internet using power lines. The idea is to sign up electric co-ops that offer electricity to rural areas over the US.

The technology has existed for decades but broad scale application haven’t succeeded. The current goals are somewhat scaled back, combined with improved technology and the help of low-interest federal loans. IBM will partner with a company called Broadband Electric Communications to apply the idea to rural areas that are limited as far as broadband options.

Previous barriers to application of this technology involved technical hurdles and opposition from amateur radio operators who said the technology was interfering with their signals. Fewer than 5,000 customers in the U.S. have been receiving broadband access through power lines, According to a 2006 data from the FCC. These were the most recent statistics available.

The technology basically sends data on electric wires and every half a mile there is a device that sustains the signal. In homes, customers plug a modem into a wall outlet and access the Internet. Previously there has been interference from other wireless devices nearby. Ham radio operators have actually sued the FCC for it.

Current innovations involve the capacity to remotely control the devices on the power lines. This way it can be instructed to switch frequency when interference is a problem.

The total cost of the project is estimated at $70 million and IBM has offered $9.6 million for equipment and installation. The project should take 2 years to complete. Over time, Broadband Electric Communications has received $70 million in low-interest loans from the Department of Agriculture.

The Broadband company has access to 340,000 homes in Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, and about 86% of them don’t have access to fast Internet.

Basic service will cost $29.95 per month.

If you are searching for a large scale CD or DVD duplication service there are various options available. Some say that quality is more important than quantity, but what about instances where you need both? A company named veassociates.com promises to provide both.

VE associates utilizes state of the art systems for replicating CD-Rom, audio/video CD, and various DVD formats. To accomplish this, the most advanced optical disc replicators in the world are used. The uniquely designed control systems provide a reliable production and yield that rivals anything offered by the competition.

Notably, VE also utilizes the best encryption technology. Furthermore, the production equipment is operated by highly qualified professionals. The resulting media is of the highest quality, which ensures customer satisfaction on every project.

In addition to replication and duplication, VE provides more services such as packaging, printing, authoring etc’, basically any type of offering related to disc media. These projects are produced with a fast turn around, regardless whether they are short video duplication or large CD and DVD replication.

The application of the packaging can be ideal for businesses that want to creatively add their media inside magazines, an envelope for mailing, around a pop can, etc’.

Since its launch in 1986, VE has offered its services to many clients in New York, California, Texas, Florida, Washington DC, and other locations. If you require quality CD or DVD replication, keep in mind VE associates.

Cultural history from over 2000 years in Europe is becoming digitzed on a large scale.

The Europeana.eu site is a part of the European Union online library project that is set to rival Google and aims to create a centralized resouce for accessing European history, art, movies, music and literature.

Items have been collected from 1000 museums, galleries, national libraries and archives to allow users access to paintings books, audio, videos, maps and other items all in 1 site.

The site is available in 23 languages and already has 3 million artifacts, with projected growth to 10 million. In general, apparently only 1% of the known European artifacts have been digitized.

Unlike Google Book Search, this site isn’t built for commercial purposes and covers much more than books. It is also likely to encourage museum visits since it gives a good idea of what’s available there.

A new startup aims to affect the way the patenting and disputes process works in many industries. Currently, the patent office is overburdened and in some cases patents are granted although they represent dubious merit which often end up for the court system to resolve.

For instance, the Blackberry manufacturer Research In Motion is muddled in litigation with Motorola over wireless device patents. Another example, Konami Digital Entertainment, the developer of “Rock Revolution”, is pushing for a suit against Harmonix Music Systems which created the game “Rock Band” and its partners MTV and Viacom.

Article One Partners is offering a reward to anyone who can provide evidence whether these cases are valid or not. The idea is to create a global online community of experts to review patents issued by the US patent office and pay them for their time and work.

As a reward, successful community participants would receive up to $50000 and a profit sharing program. The startup hopes to make money by selling the information it gathers to parties who are embroiled in these legal proceedings as well as financial groups that wish to make market trades based on the information.

The work could nullify some patents but also strengthen others.

You might recall that a few days ago, I blogged about Clickbooth webinars. Clickbooth offers Internet publishers a variety of ways to display ads, such as static banners or rotators, email marketing, contextual pop-unders and other methods, with high payouts.

In this post, I will describe how Clickbooth maintains their relationship with their customers and publishing partners by adopting the latest technologies.

Besides more traditional methods of staying in touch using phone, email and AIM, Clickbooth utilize their Clickbooth Blog and clickbooth Twitter account.

The blog contains a variety of useful news about their affiliate network and the blog topics are easy to navigate through as they are divided to different categories, such as: Advertisers, Company Updates, Compliance, Events, Network Reviews, Philanthropy, Trends and others.

The blog mentions any industry trade shows where Clickbooth participates at as well as contests and giveaways sponsored by the company.

Also, Clickbooth has a Twitter account used to update users with up to the minute tidbits, and is available both online and in SMS. This is clearly a good tool to notify users quickly of emerging company news.

So if you are interested in advertising on your website and you’ve been looking for a good affiliate program, take a look at what Clickbooth has to offer.

A new Google search system provides a more personal touch for users by allowing them to re-order results to their favorite sites so it’s remembered if they enter the same query in the future. The feature will be called SearchWiki.

This is the first time Google has allowed alteration of the order of search results. This will not affect the search engine’s secret ranking algorithms although, in the future, user input may play a part in the search formula.

Google users will need to have a personal login to take advantage of this feature.

Users will additionally be able to open a box to type notes about different websites as reference for the future. The comments also will be shared with other users who are logged in.

Google’s version of Second LIfe, called Lively, is to be discontinued by year’s end.

Lively was launched in July without much promotion. In Lively, avatars are created and interact with each others. Users get to design and decorate their own room to show off to others, with up to 20 people occupying a room at a time.

The difference is that Second Life has continued to attract more people since it is also a marketplace. Users can create their own virtual shops and sell user-generated content and real goods.

Additionally, Lively users have reported problems with logging in  and other bugs.

No layoffs are expected from the cancellation of Lively since employees will be moved to other teams.