News about what is happening in technology today!

In another acquisition announcement, Sprint Nextel said it will buy Velocita Wireless, a wireless data service company that provides e-mail, messaging, vehicle location, point-of-sale and other services to about 400,000 enterprise and government customers.

The acquisition brings Sprint Nextel much-needed spectrum in the 900MHz band to fill in gaps in the IDEN Walkie-Talkie-like network built by Nextel through dozens of acquisitions of small, mobile radio operators.

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A ha! Stuff we want. inno is the first portable XM2go radio with 1GB memory (says Pioneer). You can listen live, record live, and will store and play MP3 and WMA files. It’s a very nice looking unit, but the built-in storage seems way too low for the $400 purchase price. When it shows up in March, you can make a decision for yourself. However, the ability to record and listen to XM while mobile is excellent.

Motorola is showing off their tiny, in-ear headset at CES. The wee fella is about as big—and cute—as a button and doesn’t have a strange boom mic hanging off of it to add to my “moron on the go” look.

The H5 sequesters itself into your ear canal and picks up audio via the bones in your head, leaving your hands free for driving and slaughtering the Spring lambs.

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Grabbed some hands-on time with Samsung’s i830 smartphone—and had trouble putting it down. It’s a quad-band Windows Mobile unit outfitted with EVDO. It has 64MB internal memory / 128MB Flash and an expansion slot. The screen is 2.8-inches and 65K color TFT, touch-sensitive too. Slide the 5.2-inch top vertically to reveal the full QWERTY keyboard. The keys are a bit smaller, I think, than the ones on the Treo 700w. The i830 is a bit thinner (.6-inches) and the same weight (6.4 ounces) as the Treo 650, but it lacks a camera (!!) and has a slightly lesser screen at 240 x 320 pixels. But if I was considering buying a Treo 700w, I would take a serious look at the i830 first. It’s available January 12, pricing TBA.

French Magazine Linux Pratique recently published an interview with General Brachet of the Gendarmie Nationale. In the interview he discusses why they have moved over 100,000 personnel over to Firefox and Thunderbird (70,000 and 45,000 respectively). This follows on last year’s switch to OpenOffice.org so it seems like the French Military Police are enjoying the success of open source.