Intel Makes WiMax Investment With South Korea's KT

Intel and South Korea's KT Corporation plan to work together to expand WiBro (Wireless Broadband) Internet service to several new areas of South Korea and and have worked to make the network compatible with mobile WiMax.

WiBro was developed by South Korea's telecommunications industry to make a flavor of WiMax that could better work with mobile devices. The technology is very similar to mobile Wimax but uses an 8.75MHz wide channel compared to a 10MHz wide channel on mobile WiMax. That's presented a barrier to roaming but WiBro is now compatible with 10MHz WiMax.

Intel Capital will invest US$20 million in WiBro Infra Co., a joint venture with KT, Samsung Electronics and KB Investment Company, as part of the deal. Intel and KT, which was formerly called Korea Telecom, are also collaborating to launch laptops and netbooks with Intel processors and WiMax chips in South Korea, the companies said in a joint statement.

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Microsoft Announced Office for Mac 2011

Microsoft has announced the launch date of Office 2011 for Mac on October 26th 2010 which is available now for pre-orders on Amazon.

Office 2011 for Mac includes lots of enhancements, according to MS Official blog:

“One of the most visually impactful features in the new suite also is called Dynamic Reorder, it gives you the capability to interactively re-order all of the layers in a document or presentation – one of the ways that we are solving a extremely real customer need with a fun experience. The new suite as well introduces a new view in Word 2011, Full Screen view which has two views: one optimized for writing and the other for reading. Allowing you to block out the distractions and focus on putting your thought on paper.”

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Facebook, Skype Poised to Enter Partnership

Facebook and Skype are about to enter a partnership, according to All Things Digital, the Wall Street Journal tech blog.

According to Kara Swisher of All Things Digital, the two companies are "poised to announce" a "significant and wide-ranging partnership." Some features of the new partnership include allowing users to SMS and call Facebook friends from Skype, as well as the integration of Facebook Connect into the Skype platform.

Swisher also reports that video chatting Facebook friends via Skype will be available, as evidenced by a screenshot sent in by an unnamed source.

The report, if true, comes just a week or so after rumors of a Facebook phone popped up. On September 19, TechCrunch reported that Facebook was in the process of building a mobile phone platform, and working with a third party to build the hardware. TechCrunch reported that Facebook was developing its own mobile phone platform because it wanted to "integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone," and it could obviously only do this if it controlled the platform.

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