On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

As Nokia steps away from Intel's MeeGo project, other handset makers are set to fill in its shoes-- including LG.

Reuters reports LG's joining a working group including the likes of ZTE and China Mobile. Its task? Developing a handset version of the OS.

Nokia was supposed to roll out MeeGo-based devices by this year, but is currently concentrating on Windows Phone instead, following its partnership with MS.

Will MeeGo have any chance in an already overcrowded smartphone market? One will have to wait later this year,  when actual MeeGo devices-- possibly from LG-- should hit the market.

Go MeeGo Sees Interests from Others After Nokia Shift

3 Sweden debuts "LiveShop", an e-retail system where customers not only shop online, but also interact with actual salespeople over webcams as they view product offerings.

For this task, sales staff use a custom-built touchscreen machine, complete with Flash-based interface that could come out of the film Minority Report-- allowing them to drag, drop and scale product images and options on screen for their customers in real time.

The entire system connects to 3's e-commerce backend, so when done customers can checkout with their purchases.

For now LiveShop runs only in Sweden, but it will obviously roll out in other European countries should it be successful-- not to mention other retailers' imitating the system in the future.

Watch 3 LiveShop

Go 3 LiveShop (Swedish)

Altec Lansing's latest take on the iPod dock, the Octiv 650, not only lets customers pipe their tunes through the room but comes with a free Mood Music app, preloaded with relaxing sounds and videos.

It comes in a slim, wedge-shaped design and carries x2 3" full-range drivers and a nested 4" subwoofer. Users can also watch video content on their iDevice from the dock, since it also has component and composite video out jacks, as well as a second audio device through aux input.

The package includes a remote control, for audio and video control.

Go Altec Lansing Octiv 650

The 80's are making a comeback-- Commodore USA launches a new version of the classic C64, looking just like one remembers, complete with beige-gray body and chuky keyboard.

Of course the innards are new, as it carries a 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, NVidia Ion 2 graphics card and 2/4Gb of DDR2 memory (as opposed to the original's 64k).

Instead of cartridge and joystick ports customers will find HDMI and USB ports, with DVD/blu-ray drives as an additional option.

The machine ships with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as OS, although nostalgic users will be happy to know it also contains a C64 emulator and classic game package. Meanwhile Commodore USA plans to update other classic Commodore machines, including the VIC-20 and the now-legendary Amiga.

Go Commodore 64