We'll make this brief. Orange spokesperson Therese Wenger told the SDA news agency that it has secured rights to release the iPhone (3G version, presumably) in Switzerland and more than 10 other countries -- take that Swisscom! Other countries include Austria, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, and Romania. And France of course where it's already on sale. See, that was quick and leaves room for a dozen or so other iPhone related announcements today.

Update: Official Orange press release now out.

[Via 20minuten, thanks Pascal M.]

Read -- Reuters' take
Read -- Nokia response in full

Many of us have a reason to give thanks to Bill Gates, whether it be for the PowerPoint presentation that got us our last promotion, the Word spell checker that helped us avoid an embarrassing double entendre in our thesis paper, or the ol' Xbox 360 that has drained our productivity, consumed all of our free time, and driven our sweethearts into the arms of other men. But Romanian president Traian Basescu has a bigger reason than most to owe the Microsoft founder a debt of gratitude: he claims that rampant software piracy in the Eastern European nation was the single biggest factor in developing a healthy IT industry. Yes, believe it or not, a head-of-state actually stood up in public -- at a press conference to celebrate the launch of a Microsoft global technical center -- and told Gates face-to-face how illegal copies of Windows "helped the young generation discover computers...set off the development of the IT industry...[and] helped Romanians improve their creative capacity..." Indeed, nearly 70% of all software used in Romania today is pirated, according to some experts (pirates even peddle their wares to legitimate businesses, reportedly), despite the anti-piracy legislation passed some ten years ago. Amusingly, Basescu justified his countrymen's ridiculous levels of IP theft by claiming that "it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and Bill Gates." Being the experienced political that he is, Gates chose to keep his mouth shut instead of using the president's provocative comments to launch into an anti-piracy tirade -- though we're sure that the world's richest man had to practically bite off his own tongue to do so. Still, after the press shindig -- while the two men were in private enjoying some traditional placenta pie plăcintă -- Gates reportedly dropped the Mr. Niceguy facade, stared Basescu coldly in the eyes, and uttered a single word: "Viodentia?"

[Via The Inquirer]

RoadRover, RoadRover -- send some GPS right over! This Chinese navigation company has just released the ENV1200, a new navigation device that comes in a sporty (and Commie) red color. It's got some pretty good hardware too, with a 400MHz processor, 128MB of NAND flash memory, and 64MB of RAM. Further, it'll keep you headed in the right direction with its P30 GPS receiver, which apparently is very similar to the SiRF Star III that we've come to know and love, says Navigadget. As you'd expect, the ENV1200 plays the normal host of media files, including AVI, MPEG, WMV, MPEG-1/2/4, WAV, MP3 and WMA as well as the standard still formats. However, a new feature that seems pretty simple to add, given that its running Windows CE 5.0, is the ability to display text files, PDFs, and even Microsoft Office documents. And finally, as expected, all the maps come loaded up on a 1GB SD card. Despite the fact that the specs appear to be more or less standard, there are a couple aspects of this that we're a bit confused about. First, Navigadget reports this device will not be available in North America or Europe for the time being, although the map on the screen clearly shows the eastern part of Romania and the northern part of Bulgaria. Second, the site also says that the ENV1200 comes in a trio of colors: silver, grey (are those two really all that different?), or black -- but makes no mention of the red that's pretty obvious in the press photo. Once we find out what's going on here, including the ENV1200's price, we'll let you know.

[Via Navigadget]