Lucas van Grinsven

Kai Oistamo, the chief executive of Nokia's main Mobile Phone division, shows his new navigation phone with built-in GPS satellite tracker and explains why he thinks it's a killer application. This video was shot at 3GSM in Barcelona on Feb. 12, during an interview with Reuters correspondents Tarmo Virki and Lucas van Grinsven. (Video shot with videocam phone by Lucas van Grinsven)

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Pumpkins, peanuts or coconuts are not just for eating.

It turns out you might also use them to power a mobile phone network. This microplant, shown at 3GSM, but already in action in Nigeria and Tanzania, processes biodiesel from oils squeezed from crops. This unit (pictured) produces 2,000 litres per day, enough to fuel up to 40 cellular base stations.

Ericsson has developed it because in remote areas in emerging economies there is no electricity grid, and trucking fossil diesel fuel to the base station power generator can be a long, hazardous and costly affair -- in some cases it even requires a helicopter trip and guards to protect the fuel.

Motorola is also on the road to renewable energy with prototype base stations running on a combination of wind and solar-power. Motorola says it's cheaper than fossil fuels, and all the associated costs. Sounds like a good idea, no? Such a good idea, in fact, that local farmers have started stealing the solar panels which are worth several thousand dollars each (you need four to run a base station). The plan is to put the solar panels on high poles and fence the whole unit off with high voltage fences -- powered by the solar panel, indeed...

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Efforts by the mobile industry to save the planet do not end with support for biodiesel and windmills.

Here's Motorola's new idea in mobile phone charging: a bicycle dynamo. OK, it's not so new. Bike power is about as old as Motorola itself (1928).

Yet Motorola thinks this could do well in emerging economies where a mobile phone is the only electronic device in some households. There must be a pretty big market in the Netherlands and Denmark, too, but Motorola should figure out a way to easily detach the holder or inadvertently create a market in stolen chargers. Watch video

Demonstrators in Barcelona rallied against cell towers and radiation outside the fenced-off 3GSM, the world's largest wireless trade show.

About 100 protesters carried placards and chanted: "Don't just talk business, talk about health as well."

Where are the tin-foil hats when you need them?

Anti-GSM at 3GSM makes the point reasonably well.

Sometimes it seems like Samsung never encountered a product category it didn't like. From mobile phones to TVs to refrigerators and air conditioners, the Korean consumer electronics giant is into little bit of everything.

Which is why some visitors to the 3GSM mobile industry trade show in Barcelona this week could be forgiven for thinking that Samsung has entered a major new market.

Hotels. Yep, hotels.

Samsung, which is famous for its in-your-face advertising at global trade shows, has out done itself this week and completely plastered the inside and outside of the posh Hotel Rey Juan Carlos in Barcelona with its branding.

The picture at right shows a Samsung banner, a mere 12-stories high or so, inside the hotel's atrium.

Photo: Reuters/van Grinsven
(Updates to fix typo in headline)

Sony CEO Howard Stringer (pictured, right) made a surprise appearance at the 3GSM trade show in Barcelona, the world's biggest wireless communications trade show.

The teddy bear of the consumer electronics industry who is staring ahead at several more quarters of expected losses from his PlayStation video games consoles group, jumped at the opportunity to bask in the sunshine of his company's mobile phone success story.

Sony Ericsson is the world's fourth biggest handset producer in units and the second most profitable one after Nokia, helped along by the Sony halo from its Walkman music and Cybershot camera brands.

"I want to associate myself with a winner," he quipped when he joined the stage with Sony Ericsson president Miles Flint (middle) and Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg (left).

And the winner in the category "where geeks meet health freaks" is the Spark from Expresso Fitness, a stationary fitness bicycle with an integrated LCD screen with a video of the track and other cyclists to overtake.

Now here's an invention that turns a boring workout into something beginning to resemble the real thing. The computer which powers the electronics is hidden in front, and can be hooked up to the Internet to race against friends. It's not exactly a brand new product, as it can already be found in many fitness centres in California and elsewhere, but it's a popular feature in the "personal health" section of Intel's booth at the Consumer Electronics show.

If you can't spare the $5,000 for the bike, the display and the computer hidden underneath, you can of course also turn to Performance Bike for their Travel Trac
RealAxiom v2 cycle trainers. At $550 you have to bring your own bicycle, computer and monitor, but the device which varies resistance does give you the option to cycle some real world climbs, such as the European road courses the Limoges climb from the 2004 Tour de France and the 2004 Verona World Championship course. Resistance changes based on the course and rider input.

Or if you would rather climb to the top of the time trial killer Mont Ventoux, or cycle the one-day Alps marathon Marmotte while watching the real footage, go to Tacx.

Anyone who has ever attended a speech by John Chambers, the preacher-in-chief of network equipment maker Cisco Systems, knows the routine.

The smooth-talking West Virginian native can stay on stage only so long before he is seized with the need to wade into the audience, a revivalist in search of lost souls to save.

Dressed in semi-formal black and grey, the one-time IBM salesman used his appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show to spell out his company's ambitions to be a major force in consumer living rooms.

Not only is it already the world's biggest communications gear maker, having won over both corporate customers and telecoms operators, but now Cisco sees fresh opportunities in the residential market.

"This is a three-to-five-year vision," Chambers said afterward. "We'll take this to where we think the consumer market will go, just like the enterprise, just like services providers," he said, using the industry jargon for markets serving corporate customers and networks operators.

Read the Reuters story on Chambers' vision of building "human networks" -- where devices are intelligently networked together to revolve around users rather than making users adapt to the way the devices work.

(Photos: REUTERS/Lucas van Grinsven, Rick Whiting)

Motorola's CEO Ed Zander did his bit to combat global warming during his speech at the Consumer Electronics Show by cycling on a yellow surfer bike in order to charge up his Motophone on the bicycle's dynamo.

He actually had a serious message in Las Vegas -- where cyclists are barely tolerated on public roads -- because the Motofone is designed for emerging markets where power lines and cars can be rare and a bicycle dynamo is a practical way to charge a cellphone.

Just a few days after his company shocked the financial market with a whopper of a profit warning, Zander made light of his stock price: "You're joining with a good share price," he joked on stage to a new Motorola recruit, who had joined the company a few days earlier.

On Monday, bigger rival Nokia unveiled a new flip phone that was finally thinner than the RAZR, Motorola's flagship phone, which had set off an industry craze for thinner handsets when it was introduced several years ago.

Zander said it was time to declare the next big trend. "Now everybody decides to do thin. So weve decided to do this," and he pulled out a first generation, 20-year-old Motorola cellphone the size of a brick.

"Fat is back," Zander said.

(Photos: REUTERS/Rick Whiting, Motorola handout)