Burning Hot: Microsoft buys Nokia, elearning startups, gadgets for TV stars

The tech sphere was dominated by news of Microsoft’s plan to buy mobile giant Nokia this week, but that’s not the only thing that happened. BlackBerry’s future outlook got a bit darker as it continued with its strategic review, Yahoo! got a new logo after 18 years, Samsung launched a smart watch and um, we rounded up some gadget suggestions for our favourite fictional TV characters.

In the latest episode of Burning Hot, Stuart Thomas rounds up some our favourite stories this week. They include Nokia’s impending €5.4-billion sale to Windows Phone ally Microsoft, which sees the two companies teaming up to offer a bigger challenge to iOS and Android and cement their place as the third smartdevice ecosystem. The move is also particularly interesting considering Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s recent announcement that he is retiring, which now has the rumour mill suggesting Nokia’s Stephen Elop could be next in line for the job.

Over on Ventureburn, we took a look at some of the startups innovating in green technology and elearning, and why they’re an important addition to the startup landscape. Gearburn also had some fun with narrowing down the perfect gadgets that popular TV characters never knew they needed. From a life-proof Galaxy S4 Active for Dexter‘s star, to some serious artillary to help The Walking Dead‘s Daryl Dixon fend off all those zombies, it’s online fantasy shopping with a tech twist.