Nokia boss admits crisis

Nokia's new head has sent an outspoken and frank memo to his staff that suggests the phone giant is in crisis, says BBC News.

Stephen Elop describes the company as standing on a "burning platform" surrounded by innovative competitors that are grabbing its market share. In particular, he said, the firm had been caught off guard by the success of Google's Android operating system and Apple's iPhone.

BBC News has verified that the memo is genuine. "The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience," chief executive Elop wrote in the note that was distributed to the Finnish company's staff and was first published by technology Web site Engadget.

Microsoft has released the first service packs (SP1) for its flagship server and desktop operating systems, Windows Server 2008 R2 (WS 2008 R2) and Windows 7, notes Computing.co.uk.

In the continuing battle for mastery of the desktop virtualisation market, SP1's main feature on the server side is RemoteFX, which is software targeting firms wishing to improve consolidation of Windows 7 desktop systems when moving to virtualised desktop infrastructure (VDI).

RemoteFX improves network bandwidth and processing requirements for VDI, allowing firms to run more virtualised desktop systems on their WS 2008 R2 installations.

The economic recovery seems to be bypassing Cisco Systems, which is facing growing competition, while struggling to sell its computer-networking equipment to cash-strapped governments - from local to federal, reveals the Associated Press.

Shares of the world's largest maker of networking gear plummeted almost 9% in extended trading after it provided another outlook yesterday that disappointed investors.

Cisco says it expected earnings, excluding items, of 35c to 38c per share in the current quarter, which ends in April. Analysts were expecting 40c per share.

Robots could soon have an equivalent of the Internet and Wikipedia, reports BBC News. European scientists have embarked on a project to let robots share and store what they discover about the world.

Called RoboEarth, it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones.

Researchers behind it hope it will allow robots to come into service more quickly, armed with a growing library of knowledge about their human masters.