Version 2.0 of the popular iPhone's firmware, which is due to be launched in June this year, could turn the device into an indispensable medical tool in hospitals.

Doctors are quite optimistic about the new version of the mobile phone as it could serve as an electronic alternative for the old-fashioned clipboard and X-ray light box.

According to Adam Flanders, director of informatics at Thomas Jefferson University and an expert in medical imaging, "If you could use the gesture-based way of manipulating images on the iPhone and actually manipulate a stack of X-rays or CT scans, that would be a huge selling point."

To date, such a feature has remained an impossible dream due to most smart phones' inability to handle the sophisticated compression techniques used on large medical images. Also, most phones lack the requisite memory and image-processing capabilities.

But the iPhone's reasonably powerful Samsung ARM processor, 8 GB or 16 GB of flash memory and intuitive, visual interface seem well suited to medical imagery.

Hospitals are also wary of beaming medical images all over the place via WiFi because of security concerns.

But, the iPhone's new business-friendly security features may ease privacy fears, according to physicians, and could even turn the device into an indispensable medical tool if hospitals approve the device.

Earlier this month, Apple released a software development kit (SDK) for programmers to create native iPhone applications.

The Apple team also announced a new partnership with Epocrates, the developer of a massive drug-interaction database for mobile devices.

The company said it is now working directly with Apple on a new iPhone-native version. When released, it will give doctors the ability to view drug information regardless of their location or the availability of a WiFi.

Physicians, particularly radiologists, are also excited about the prospect of accessing medical images directly on their iPhones.

According to Flanders, who regularly looks for ways to apply new imaging techniques to the radiology field, he's already seen a number of "neat tricks" with compression in recent years that can deliver hundreds of images on a handheld device, with a high resolution as well as the ability to manipulate those images.

"Such applications might actually work better through a browser-based interface," he said.

"The real beauty of the iPhone is that it offers a richer 3-D experience and more memory," said Michelle Snyder, vice president of marketing and subscription services at Epocrates.

Intex has introduced its IN 2020, a user-friendly mobile phone that claims a long-life battery with a stand-by time of 25 days, and non-stop conversation for up to seven and a half hours.

The phone is, of course, targeted at those who spend long hours on their mobile making and receiving calls. Intex claims the IN 2020 is possibly the first mobile phone in the market with such a high battery capacity. Possibly a corollary of this feature is that users don't have to charge the phone on an everyday basis. Also included are features like a blacklist facility and a phone book memory of 500 numbers.


There's also a unique feature called "Make your song your ring tone", wherein users can record up to two songs in five minutes, making those songs their ring tones. The phone comes with pre-loaded sing tones from Tips Industries' Top 20 songs listing, eight games, and twin language support to allow menu display and messaging in Hindi as well as English.

An enthusiastic Shailendra Jha, business manager (Mobile Phones) of Intex, said at the launch that with the price of the phone, they hope to strike the right chord with both mid- and lower-end consumer segments, which form approximately 60 to 70 percent of the entire mobile phone market across rural and urban areas of the country.

The Bar-shaped IN 2020 is available in Suave Red-Black and Orange-Black combos, and retails for under Rs 2,000.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A frog the size of a bowling ball, with heavy armor and teeth, lived among dinosaurs millions of years ago - intimidating enough that scientists who unearthed its fossils dubbed the beast Beelzebufo, or Devil Toad.

But its size - 10 pounds and 16 inches long - isn't the only curiosity. Researchers discovered the creature's bones in Madagascar. Yet it seems to be a close relative of normal-sized frogs who today live half a world away in South America, challenging assumptions about ancient geography.

The discovery, led by paleontologist David Krause at New York's Stony Brook University, was published Monday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

``This frog, if it has the same habits as its living relatives in South America, was quite voracious,'' Krause said. ``It's even conceivable that it could have taken down some hatchling dinosaurs.''

Krause began finding fragments of abnormally large frog bones in Madagascar, off the coast of Africa, in 1993. They dated back to the late Cretaceous period, roughly 70 million years ago, in an area where Krause also was finding dinosaur and crocodile fossils. But only recently did Krause's team assemble enough frog bones to piece together what the creature would have looked like, and weighed.

The largest living frog, the Goliath frog of West Africa, can reach 7 pounds. But Krause teamed with fossil frog experts from University College London to determine that Beelzebufo isn't related to other African frogs.

It seems to be a relative of South American horned frogs, known scientifically as Ceratophrys. Popular as pets, they're sometimes called pacman frogs for their huge mouths.

Like those modern frogs, Beelzebufo had a wide mouth and powerful jaws, plus teeth. Skull bones were extremely thick, with ridges and grooves characteristic of some type of armor or protective shield.

The name comes from the Greek word for devil, Beelzebub, and Latin for toad, bufo (pronounced boo-foe).

The family link raises a paleontology puzzle: Standard theory for how the continents drifted apart show what is now Madagascar would have been long separated by ocean from South America during Beelzebufo's time. And frogs can't survive long in salt water, Krause noted.

He contends the giant frog provides evidence for competing theories that some bridge still connected the land masses that late in time, perhaps via an Antarctica that was much warmer than today.

STOCKHOLM: Scientists plan to launch 60 tiny fish on a zero gravity rocket ride from above the Arctic Circle on Monday to try to plumb the secrets of motion sickness.

Tomas Hedqvist, project manager for Sweden's Esrange Space Centre, said the baby cichlid fish will head 260 km into the air on an 11-metre two-stage rocket, where they will experience six minutes of weightlessness.

Experimenters Reinhard Hilbig and Ralf Anken of the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim in Germany will train six video cameras on the fish, each of which will be housed in its own aquarium, to see how they react.

"Fish, when they get motion sick, begin tumbling around, swimming in circles and miss their balance," he said, adding that some fish do not suffer from motion sickness and seem to adapt quickly to a changed environment.

Some of the fish, which were flown from Germany to Sweden's far north in special aquariums, will be housed in a slowly turning centrifuge which will offer some gravity while others will be in a pure zero G state, Hedqvist said.

After the flight, the scientists will examine the video camera recordings as well as small balance organs — called otoliths — which exist naturally in the heads of each fish to work out what makes some sick and others not.

Toronto, February 12: A major outage hit BlackBerry users in North America Monday afternoon, cutting off wireless e-mail for everyone from busy executives to political campaign staff on the eve of three US presidential primaries.

The problem, which BlackBerry owner Research In Motion described as a "critical severity outage" affecting users in the Americas, once again raised concerns about the stability of the e-mail service 10 months after a widespread crash last April.

Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting at AR Communications, said reliability is a serious concern for companies like RIM because if problems become routine, they can drive customers away.

"It's a big issue and it's a growing issue," Levy said, adding that huge outages could prove to be "a major Achilles' heel" for RIM.

RIM's US shares fell as much as 1.3 per cent on the news, after closing up 5.3 per cent in regular Nasdaq trade. On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the shares finished the day C$4.73 higher at C$94.62.

RIM notified its clients of the outage in an e-mail, but officials at the Waterloo, Ontario-based company were not immediately available for comment.

"This is an emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage," RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson said in an e-mail sent to large clients.

The notice gave no details on the cause, when service might be restored or how many people could be affected.

The last big outage in April 2007 provoked an angry backlash from more compulsive users, who have dubbed the device "CrackBerry" due to its drug-like addictiveness. At the time, co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said such incidents were "very rare" and RIM was taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

RIM's worldwide subscriber base reached about 12 million people by late last year, mainly executives, politicians, lawyers and other professionals who rely on the BlackBerry to send secure e-mails. Sleeker new models are also catching on with students and others outside professional circles.

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, said, "While the outage did confirm our widespread addiction to BlackBerry service, fortunately it did not cause more than a temporary inconvenience."

Voters go the polls on Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, the latest battleground in a tight race between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in November's election.

By about 7:00 p.m. Eastern time -- about three hours after RIM notified customers of the problem -- some users said a few e-mails were trickling through. Others, however, continued to be without service.

U.S. mobile phone service provider Verizon Wireless said the outage was affecting all carriers' BlackBerry email service in North America. It said Verizon Wireless customers can still make calls on their BlackBerry.

Some appeared to enjoy a respite from a device.

"It made my life a little bit easier, since I didn't have to reply," Liberal Party spokesman Jean-Francois Del Torchio said from Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

"But when I arrived at my desktop and I saw all the e-mails I received, I was like, 'Oh, I still need to work'," Del Torchio told Reuters.