What's happening with mobiles? Well, Macromedia Flash is on its way to them. You just knew it had to happen sooner or later. Yes, all of those annoying banner ads and moving pictures and so forth will be hitting your cell phone screen now as well. According to Nokia and Flash, the brains behind the move, this will all be in aid of allowing developers to create compelling Flash content and applications for mobile phones. I just hope it's not more adverts.

As part of the agreement, Nokia and Macromedia will also be providing developers with integrated tool sets to help them on their way to getting those ever so pretty flash introduction pages done. The two companies can also be expected to work together to provide technical documentation and support.

In other news, Microsoft is making a new bid for mobile phone dominance. This should not come as a shock to anyone. Microsoft, who just love it when something becomes popular (so they can take it over), plan to make their mark in the mobile phone world with a new Windows Mobile based reference platform codenamed Peabody. This new platform will be able to use a wide range of different formats with Windows Media Player and offers seamless integration with Microsoft desktop applications such as Outlook email, calendaring and contacts.

The product was announced at the 3GSM World Congress 2005 alongside co-developer, the Singapore based Flextronics. The Peabody is being touted as a high volume, low priced device with sufficient flexibility so that a wide range of models can be built from the same reference platform.