VentureBeat

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An analyst firm, J. Gold Associates, is speculating that Google’s mobile operating system, Android, and Nokia’s mobile operating system, Symbian, will merge in three to six months. The thinking goes that the move would free Google up to focus on compelling and potentially profitable mobile applications, prove that Symbian is more than a Nokia publicity ploy, reduce the number of platforms that developers would need to build for, and promote a standard user interface across phones.

The stakes are growing in the mobile arena. Other analysts expect the mobile web advertising market to more than double each year over the next several years. Application developers seeking to exploit the opportunity are busy exploring what operating system to write to.

Symbian representatives have said they’d be “happy” to work with Google on mobile initiatives, although it’s not clear what that specifically means.

Update from Google: “Google doesn’t comment on market rumors or speculations.”

Meanwhile, Android has yet to launch, and some once-excited third-party developers are losing enthusiasm. Symbian has been live since 1998; more than 200 million Symbian devices have been sold in total, 77 million of which were sold last year. Android is built using Linux. The two systems have very different application programming interfaces. The list of potential roadblocks goes on.

Sure, Nokia bought what ownership it didn’t already have in Symbian, and just announced that it would be open-source. But that seemed like a move to counter Android, and other rivals, like Apple’s iPhone software developer kit.

But that’s the thing. Nokia’s own efforts to open-source Symbian through a nonprofit foundation are also still incomplete. From Ars Technica:

[Symbian vice president of strategy John M. Forsyth] admits that the Symbian foundation doesn’t entirely know what it is doing yet and says that they are looking to the community for advice on how to proceed. The lack of details, he says, is not a consequence of secrecy but instead reflects the fact that planning is still in an early stage. “We are not hiding anything when we talk about the plan for Symbian,” he said. “It is pretty much as it looks.”

Forsyth was also quoted as saying that the culture of Symbian developers is “intractably bound to its proprietary roots” and needs to be fundamentally redefined around open source practices.

In sum, this is an interesting idea but without further explanation about how this merger would work in practice, we’re not holding our breath.

[Image via handcellphone]

There’s a dogfight among the street-view mapping companies. Blue Dasher Technologies is launching its own virtual tourism application where you can remotely view a distant place and feel like you’re walking down a street with a 360 degree view of the scenery. The company is unveiling the technology at the CTIA show in Las Vegas today.

They’re not the first to do it, but they claim they’re the best. Typically, these companies try to produce a “you are there” sensation by driving down streets with cameras to capture still images from all directions. They then stitch those images together so that users can wander through them as if they were virtual worlds on the web. The experience of cruising through the streets of a mirror world of Paris is akin to an old Zoetrope movie.

This Miami-based company hopes to set itself apart by producing better-quality, seamless images that beat those of rivals such as EveryScape and Google’s Streetview. (our coverage). We’ll have to see how it looks when all is said and done; EveryScape boasts the ability to show scenery both indoors and outdoors.

Blue Dasher captures images at normal driving speeds on streets and highways with as much as five times the resolution of its rivals. Blue Dasher’s cameras take a picture every 10 feet or so. That allows you to zoom in on details as needed. (Privacy alert!)

You can type in an address with Blue Dasher and literally see the exact building (photo shows address overlaid on building). Google Streetview, by contrast, shows an approximate address on the street.

It promises a video-like experience for web viewers, while others deliver a “point, click, wait” experience, Blue Dasher says. Even with a DSL broadband connection, viewers can pan or zoom and “drive” down a route at a high speed.

The Blue Dasher technology works with a browser, Adobe’s Flash format, or a plug-in.  In cities such as Las Vegas, Blue Dasher has captured every public street. The company says it snapped 7.5 million images of the city by driving down the streets over a period of three weeks. They expect to cover every street in the 50-largest cities by year end. Those areas include San Francisco and South Florida.

Blue Dasher hopes that the technology will appeal to consumer sites in the real estate, hospitality, and navigation markets. Licensees can customize the Blue Dasher technology to suit their own tastes. The Blue Dasher Route service can work with any of the major mapping and navigation providers.

The company says that advertisers can embed their own ads inside the imagery. (I guess Coca-Cola could place a Coke machine over a Pepsi machine?). I guess it’s a good time to get a job as a camera-car driver.

The company was founded in 2007 and raised an undisclosed amount from friends and family. It is seeking a new round of funding now. Founders include Herman Miranda, chief scientist and a 20-year veteran of geographic information systems including Digital Matrix Systems and Largo Technology Group. Another co-founder is Marcelo Fernandes , chief operating officer and a veteran of real estate companies. Michael Reidbord is president and CEO.

The federal government said that the 700-megahertz wireless spectrum auction has come to a close. The government will announce the winners in a matter of days.

Fortune magazine’s Techland blog said that, after eight weeks, there were 261 rounds of bidding. The spectrum is becoming available in 2009 thanks to the conversion from analog TV to digital TV that will take place on February 18, 2009. It is the last major chunk of nationwide spectrum available for wireless services. The bids reached a total of $19.6 billion, higher than the $10 billion the Federal Communications Commission set as its goal. Bidders included Verizon, Google, AT&T, and Qualcomm.

The winners are to be announced after all five blocks of spectrum are sold. The D block, which was set aside for a national public safety network, failed to raise the minimum of $1.3 billion set by the FCC. .

Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the FCC, had organized an effort to bid on the spectrum through his company Frontline Wireless, which focused on the public safety and open network opportunities of the spectrum. The effort had the backing of venture capitalists John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, and others. But he said that he knew that his company was out of the running, noting that it was out of business in January. Despite the backers, Hundt said his company couldn’t raise enough money. Beyond that, he said didn’t know how everything would turn out. Hundt made the comments during his speech at the Spring Von.x 2008 conference in San Jose.

“I could speculate that Verizon got a sweetheart deal but I would be making that up,” he said. “I can’t say whether it was a failure without knowing who won. If no new entrant comes out of it with a lot of spectrum, that is noteworthy.”