First Commercial LTE Network Goes Live

TeliaSonera moved its Long Term Evolution deployment schedule up and debuted the service in central city areas of Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway Monday, laying claim to being the first service provider in the world to offer the 4G service. The company said Ericsson was providing the infrastructure in Stockholm, and Huawei in Oslo. The commercial introduction of the service is a prelude to its planned deployment in three Norwegian cities and 25 Swedish cities in 2010.

Via InformationWeek

How Oracle Disarmed EU Critics

Oracle edged closer on yesterday to winning approval from the European Union for its long-anticipated acquisition of Sun Microsystems by pledging to take steps to minimize the anticompetitive repercussions of the deal. Oracle (ORCL) made 10 specific "commitments" to support the open-source database software MySQL, which is owned by Sun (JAVA) and competes with Oracle's own database product. After the announcement, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she is "optimistic" that Oracle's Sun acquisition can be completed while protecting competition in the database market.

Via BusinessWeek

Google phone would break industry model

With Google's disclosure over the weekend that it would launch its own cellphone, the online giant is staking claim to a piece of the fast-growing mobile marketplace and making a direct challenge to Apple's swift rise in the sector. Google said in a corporate blog on Saturday that it has developed a phone based on its Android mobile operating system and distributed it to employees to try out. Soon after, pictures of the phone surfaced on the Twitter feeds of employees and outside bloggers with details that the device would be launched next month and sold directly to consumers. The new phone would be capable of operating on any network, according to a source.

Via Washinton Post

Google and Facebook launch URL shorteners

URL shorteners have taken the web by storm over the last year or so, coinciding with the rise of Twitter, which limits messages to 140 characters. As a result, people don't want to waste those characters on URLs, so sites like TinyURL and Bit.ly have risen to provide the shortest possible URL for a link. Now, Facebook and Google have both seen the value of operating in that market, and have launched competing URL shortening tools.

Via Pocket Lint

Tool Use Found in Octopuses

After years of surprising scientists with their cleverness and smarts, some octopuses appear to also use tools. Veined octopuses observed off the coast of Indonesia carried coconut shell halves under their bodies, and assembled them as necessary into shelters - something that wasn't supposed to be possible in their corner of the animal kingdom.

Via Wired