With pro-democracy campaigns engulfing many parts of the world, triggering rampant crackdowns by security forces in the respective countries, a news application is being developed that will let people wipe out the address book on their phones and send emergency alerts to others.

The ‘panic button’ App is being developed by the government of USA.

According to reports, the special application can be activated if the smartphone is confiscated by security authorities.

“If the Secret Police starts firing tear gas grenades and breaking down your door, you can run the panic app, and your cellphone will send out a message to your networking letting them know that you’re in a bit of a pickle. It will then wipe out all your personal data to keep your friends safe, and lock itself out with a screen displaying a picture of Uncle Sam giving the finger,” a report read.

Cell phones have played a crucial role in the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

The USA wants to equip activists with new tools to fight their repressive governments and is targeting countries from the Middle East to China, according to the Daily Mail.

Only a few cellphones can send an emergency SOS message to others now and this feature is limited as well. SOS signals from such phones can only be sent to a few chosen persons.

The rebranding effort by Nokia has begun with a new font. Earlier, the company was using the font Nokia Sans which has now been replaced with Nokia Pure, said the company in a blog post.

“The letters flow into each other somewhat, creating the impression of forward movement. The idea of flow and movement appears frequently in the new branding,” Nokia said in the blog.

The new font will be displayed through advertisements and Nokia devices this year itself.

The new typeface was designed by Bruno Maag, a typographic designer based in London. The Nokia Pure font has specially been designed for cellphones and other digital display devices.

Nokia perhaps is trying to create a trendy outlook of itself with the changing world. The old Nokia font was very simple, and the only problem with it was that it quickly became outdated.

The ideas for the font were drawn by the Nokia team along with Bruno Maag, and what came out is a simple but different typeface.

The style of the font has been kept such that even when the Nokia name is written in Arabic, the users should be able to recognise the company from the font style itself.

Putting an end to all the speculations, Nokia has finally announced that it will be moving away from Symbian operating system.

In an open letter to the developer community, Purnima Kochiar, vice president, forum Nokia and developer community, has recently unveiled Nokia’s strategy and road map for the years ahead.

So no longer Symbians will be the operating system for the Nokia devices. Nokia will be focusing more of Windows mobile as its choice for mobile operating system and will also consider it as its primary smartphone platform.

Although Nokia has not revealed the official date for discontinuing Symbians for their devices but the Finnish handset maker is considering the period of 2011 &#151 2012 as a transition phase and this is when they expect changes to happen.

“Although Windows Phone will become our primary smartphone platform, we will continue to deliver a great deal of value from Symbian. We’re making investments that will help us to engage and attract existing and new Symbian users and allow us to launch new competitive smartphones.” Said Purnima.

As far as Nokia’s plans about India are concerned, it plans to sell Symbian devices alongside Microsoft based smartphones for the time being. The company is also promising support for the Symbian devices in the future even after discontinuation.

As of now Nokia plans to carry on with the usual business while continuingly upgrading and enhancing the user experience of Symbian devices.

Days after Spice launched its projector mobile phone, Indian handset maker Intex has come up with a new projector phone, the V.SHOW Mini Theatre (IN 8809).

It is the successor of Intex V.SHOW, which according to the company, was “India’s first mobile phone with in-built projector”.

The phone is a dual GSM SIM handset with an in-built projector that can display films, videos, photographs, and web portals apart from Office files (Power Point, Excel, Text and PDF).

It has a 3.5 mm jack and external converter cable to connect it to speakers.

The GPRS and WAP enabled phone also has an FM radio and Bluetooth with A2DP. Its Internal Memory of 87 MB is expandable to 16 GB.

Other features of V.SHOW Mini Theatre include video playability in multiple formats (3GP/MP4/AVI up to 25 frames per second), video recording (AVI up to 10 FPS), audio player (MP3, AMR or WAVE) and an Intex Zone comprising of Facebook, Google, a mobile tracker, auto call record, answering machine and games.

At the launch, Rajendra Gupta, general manager of telecom sales at Intex, said, “Intex V.SHOW Mini Theatre IN 8809 &#151 our second offering in the market with in-built projector presents an ideal combination of entertainment and utility. Catering to a wider range of audience, the phone is capable and highly affordable to strike a chord with the masses for their communication, entertainment, training and information sharing needs.”

It is priced at Rs 6,300.