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Apple iPhone now has its own exclusive space in the new Land Rover LRX. Following in the steps of pioneer car manufacturers Audi, BMW and Jaguar, the British based Land Rover Company yesterday announced its latest Land Rover LRX concept car.

The vehicle offers a space in the center console where drivers can insert an iPhone to essentially make the cellular handset a part of the car's electronics. The slot is angled to allow both the driver and passenger operate the touch-screen interface while on the road, providing hands-free phone calls along with access to the music library and Google Maps, among other features specific to iPhone.

The car comes with a second touch-screen area for LRX's iPhone docking facility. This luxury car is designed for people who desire a compact model with larger space.

Motorola has announced a strategic relationship between its RFID division of the Enterprise Mobility business, and Intelleflex, a provider of RFID platform, to deliver extended capability RFID solutions.

The companies will undertake cooperative development activities, combining their respective technologies to create new product platforms to be offered by both companies, enabling each to deliver a powerful set of new RFID solutions to customers worldwide. In addition, Motorola Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Motorola, invested in the Series C financing round in Intelleflex along with new investor Arcapita Ventures.

Finnish designer Ristomatti Ratia apparently admitted that he is working on a concept model for Nokia and Tommy Hilfiger, but when the journalists contacted him he would not confirm nor deny the allegations. That is a sure fire way of saying "I can't say yes, but my answer is yes."

Samsung has Armani, LG has Prada, Samsung has Levi Straus, Motorola has Dolce and Gabbana, about time Nokia got some fashion sense.

Piotr Staniaszek, a 22-year-old oil and gas well tester in rural northwest Alberta, became a figure of international media attention this week when his father went to the press to complain about the size of his son's bill.

Staniaszek's father, also named Piotr Staniaszek, said his son thought he could use his new phone as a modem for his computer as part of his C$10 unlimited browser plan from Bell Mobility, a division of Bell Canada. He quickly connected the phone to his PC and hit the web. He downloaded movies and other high-resolution files unaware of the charges they would incur.

The worst part? Bell Mobility just let him keep racking up the charges. "The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like $100 over. Here, I'm $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on," Staniaszek told CBC News.

Staniaszek explained to CBC News: "I told them I wasn't aware that I would be charged for hooking up my phone to the computer. I'm going to try and fight it because I didn't know about the extra charges. Nobody explained any of this to me."

Bell has since made a "goodwill gesture" and reduced Staniaszek's bill to a mere $3,243, calcluated on charging him "the best data plan available for using cellphones as a modem", as company spokesman Mark Langton explained.

Langton added that Staniaszek "should have known that using the cellphone as a modem wasn't part of his data plan, and that it wasn't 'accidental'". He concluded: "When the customer downloaded the software to do so, a warning came up that said there would be additional data charges on top of the mobile browser plan."

The successor to Motorola's svelte and dated MotoMING A1200 MING PDA phone has been a long time in the making. Motorola's original A1200 MING was a great idea, but it just never quite captured a significant following in the US - although you can still find some brand-new (albeit years-old) A1200 MING handsets in some cut-rate third-party retailer storefronts. Well, now we're hearing that Motorola is prepping the successor to the A1200 MING with their new MotoMING A1600 MING 2 smartphone.

The new A1600 MING 2 will sport essentially the same design philosophy of its forebear, but will be packing in the goods - 3.2 megapixel camera (with autofocus and LED flash), quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM radio, WiFi, AGPS, talking dictionary (the A1200 was a hit with the Chinese set, after all), and a faster CPU.

The new MING 2 will boast a 17.5mm-thick profile and a new Linux-based touchscreen UI.

Motorola will be launching their A1600 MOTOMING 2 in February, so the wait won't be all too unbearable. With 3G, GPS, and WiFi, we're certainly looking forward to getting a MOTOMING 2 in our hands.

Apple is working on improving the iPhone's support of Microsoft's Exchange email platform, which could finally deliver true syncing capabilities, a new company job posting has revealed.

"You will join a dynamic team responsible for qualifying the latest iPhone products," the company wrote. "Your focus will be testing Exchange and Outlook functionality with Apple's innovative new phone."

Thus far, the iPhone's official support of Exchange has been limited to IMAP functionality under certain conditions. The lack of full support for the Microsoft platform is commonly cited as one of the primary barriers to adoption of the Apple handset by businesses, as Exchange is widely deployed as the email solution of choice amongst the corporate world.

Though speculative, Apple's reference to sync engineers may indicate that work is being done to deliver support for ActiveSync, which would allow the iPhone to synchronize email, calendar items and contacts with Exchange servers. Potential iPhone buyers who rely on Exchange in the workplace have have singled out the omission of ActiveSync support as the limiting factor in their decision to hold off on purchasing the Apple handset.

One independent software developer is hard at work on a Sony Playstation emulator for iPhone, which will allow iPhone owners to play original Sony Playstation games on Apple's cellular handset. The author says the software will support both the iPhone and iPod touch, and that a beta testing stage is due to arrive in the near future that will allow users who donated money to receive a pre-release test version.

Separately, the creator of the iMatrix 2d code recognition program for iPhone has added a feature that allows users to export contacts from Address Book to iMatrix. The update can instantly jump to code view for the last exported contact, according to iPhoneWorld.ca, making it possible to transfer contacts from one iPhone to another as easily as exchanging photos.