According toBloomberg’s Businessweek,NokiaCEO Stephen Elop has been talking with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about a partnership that would put Microsoft’s mobile OS on Nokia phones. The rumored partnership tailsyesterday’s published memofrom Elop to his employees that the Nokia “platform is burning.” For a company in crisis, finding the right software could help pull the cell phone manufacturer out of the fire. Sources were quiet as the talks are still underway, but BW reports that Elop also held talks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about using Google’s Android software, but a source said those discussions are unlikely to lead to an alliance....

The Microsoft/Nokia deal is still being hammered out, but that is not stopping Microsoft from hiring the people who it will need to make the partnership work. Ajob postinghas shed some very interesting light on an importantsection of the deal: how will the WP7 app marketplace function? Many assumed that Nokia would have a section inside of the current WP7 marketplace, giving it a prime location, but still a derivative spot....

So, after a week of speculation and rumour, it’s true. Nokia and Microsoft haveconfirmedthat they’re teaming up to take on Apple and Android with a “Third ecosystem”. The news will transform the mobile industry battleground, as its biggest hardware manufacturer and the biggest software brand in the world combine forces. Yet it all may be a case of the right move… far too late. On paper, it’s the perfect match At this morning’sCapital Markets Day press event, the two companies’ CEOs talked about a ‘Best of both worlds’ situation....

Nokia and NASA’s 4G lunar network will mess up radio astronomy Network interference Radio frequency interference (RFI) is the long-term nemesis of radio astronomers. Jodrell Bank – the earliest radio astronomy observatory in the world still in existence – was createdbecause of RFI. Sir Bernard Lovell, one of the pioneers of radio astronomy, found his work at Manchester hampered by RFI from passing trams in the city, and he persuaded the university’s botany department to let him move to their fields in Cheshire for two weeks (he never left)....

As the smartphone market continues to boom, with iOS and Android devices leading the charge, both Samsung and Nokia – the world’s second and third largest smartphone manufacturers by volume – have decided to amend the way new handsets are classified and named, introducing new naming policies to help “reduce consumer confusion” and clarify the quality of devices they are releasing. Nokia has ditched letters and returned to an all-number naming system which it hopes consumers will be able to use to determine how feature-rich and costly a new smartphone would be....