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France Telecom pulls the plug on Minitel, the internet-before-the-internet that made France the most connected country in Europe (if not the world) in the early 80s.

Launched in 1982, the telephone line-based service connected France to a number of pre-internet online services while the rest of the world looked in awe. The French, as they tend to do, beamed in pride as back in 1997 President Jacques Chirac gloated "today a baker in Aubervilliers knows perfectly how to check his bank account on the Minitel. Can the same be said of the baker in New York?"

According to the BBC, Minitel serviced around 25 million users and 26000 services through the 9 million chunky beige terminals installed all over France at the peak of the service.

But now, exactly 30 years after it was launched, Minitel is no more.

Minitel services were varied-- from a telephone directory, to banking, stock prices, weather reports, travel reservations, exam results, university applications, state administration access and, yes, even porn... apparently around 400000 Minitel terminals were still active just before the service was killed, with users including farmers.

France Telecom attempted to sell Minitel to other countries, but only managed to do so in Belgium. But you might remember other, also dead, services similar to Minitel-- the British Prestel, Bildschirmtext from W. Germany, or the S. African Beltel.

Adieu, "Little French Box!"

Go Minitel: The Rise and Fall of the France-Wide Web (BBC)

Fresh reports emerge on what Amazon is apparently working on these days-- new Amazon smartphone rumours and Kindle Fire upgrade, the better to take on both Google and Apple with.

The latest Amazon smartphone report comes from Bloomberg. According to "people with knowledge of the matter" Foxconn is making the device while Amazon keeps itself busy buying wireless technology patents.

Amazon even has new help with the patents acquisition-- Matt Gordon, former senior director of acquisitions at Intellectual Ventures Management, the company founded by ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold and owner of over 35000 patents.

Patents make for valuable ammunition in the legal wars surrounding the smartphone market. Amazon was already involved in 20 patent-related cases in 2011 and 5 more in 2012.

Meanwhile AllThingsD has news on the second Kindle Fire-- it will launch in Q3 2012, is "thinner and lighter" and has a built-in camera and a higher resolution (1280 x 800) display.

As a positive buzz surrounds Google's Nexus 7 and Apple supposedly develops its take on the lower-end tablet, Amazon has to work harder than ever to retain its (shrinking) tablet share.

Go Amazon Said to Play Smartphone (Bloomberg)

Go Amazon's Next Kindle Fire Will Ship in Q3 (AllThingsD)

A collective of ex-Nokia employees and MeeGo affacionados form Jolla-- a Finand-based mobile company aiming to continue what Nokia started with the MeeGo smartphone OS.

COO Marc Dillon leads the company, who has an 11-year history with Nokia including a stint as principal MeeGo engineer. A number of Jolla members are "directors and core professionals" from the Nokia MeeGo N9 division who left the company earlier this month.

"Nokia created something wonderful - the world's best smartphone product," CEO Jussi Hurmola says. "It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story."

Named after a kind of sail boat, Jolla says work on "a new smartphone product and [MeeGo] OS" has been going on since the end of 2011 and it will reveal a MeeGo-powered product "later this year."

MeeGo is an open source Linux-based mobile device OS merging Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo projects. It was cancelled in September 2011 in favour of Intel-Samsung co-development Tizen.

By that time Nokia managed to make 2 devices carrying the OS-- the interesting N9 smartphone (the only consumer MeeGo device to date) and the beta-only N950 developer handset.

Go Jolla (Linkedin)

Will Apple join Google and Amazon in the fight for the lower end of the tablet market? According to Bloomberg, Apple may announce "a smaller, cheaper iPad" sometime around October 2012.

If the Bloomberg sources are correct, the "new" iPad will be similar to the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire-- a 7-8" device lacking a Retina display, smaller than the standard 9.7" iPad size. It would also (perhaps obviously) cost less.

Never mind the late Steve Jobs was skeptical (to say the least) of small tablets, saying the iPad size is the minimum for the best user experience... and that small iPad rumours have been around since the very first Apple tablet hit the market.

Currently, the chief Apple competitors are going for the opposite ends of the market. Microsoft's Surface tablets might cost even more than an iPad ($500+) as the company targets the ultrabook and enterprise markets. Meanwhile the newly revealed Asus-made Nexus 7 costs around $250.

Apple however has one big advantage (other than an immense app library) over both Microsoft and Google-- retail. So far Google sells Nexus 7 tablets exclusively through the Google Play online store, and Microsoft plans to sell Surface tablets through its 20-strong store chain. In comparison Apple owns over 360 retail outlets.

Go Apple to Plan Smaller iPad to Vie with Google Nexus (Bloomberg)