Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...
Peek, makers of the email-only wireless device that bears its namesake, has just launched a spin-off for Twitter fans. Dubbed TwitterPeek, the new device from Peek features an LCD display, QWERTY keyboard and wireless data connection that should give hardcore Twitter users dedicated access (no email, no web, no SMS) to their favorite micro-blogging social network. For $99, Peek will give you a TwitterPeek device with unlimited use of Peeks’ service for six months. After that, you need to pay Peek $7.95 for each month of service. You can also plunk down $199 for a TwitterPeek and unlimited Peek service for life.
Of course, anyone with a smartphone and data plan can access Twitter from their handset. Even featurephones can get busy with Twitter through the mobile website and SMS text message notifications. Are you willing to pony up a C-note and $8 a month to keep tabs on the Twitter-sphere? Pick one up for $99 or $199 at Amazon.com or TwitterPeek.com.
Do you develop mobile apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian or webOS? Well, we want to hear from you! We’ve partnered up with “Under The Radar” to find cool mobile apps that will blow our minds. We’re asking any and all mobile app developers to submit their app for the “FAST PITCH” mobile app talent search, where your app will vie for a chance to be showcased in front of an audience of global dealmakers and start-ups. Even if we don’t pick your app for the talent search, you’ll get some serious recognition for your app (and possibly prizes, like handsets).
Interested? Here’s what you need to know:
You must be able to attend Under the Radar (in Mountain View on Nov 19)
If you’re selected as a finalist, you’ll get a free conference pass
Your app has to be live and available for download
We welcome any and all apps for iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, etc
Your app must be unique and new – no tip calculators or sudoku apps, please
You must be able to pitch your app in 2 min (and 4 slides) on stage
We’re going to make it simple for you to submit your app for consideration in the “Under The Radar” FAST PITCH mobile app talent search. Interested mobile devs need only leave a comment or tweet @IntoMobile with a quick one-liner pitch for your mobile app – Twitter is limited to 140 characters, so choose accordingly. Please make sure to include a link to your app’s download page (or homepage) and your Twitter handle with your submission.
Your app will be judged for its “uniqueness” and the all important “awesomeness” metric. We’ll be accepting mobile app submissions through Friday, Nov. 6 Monday, Nov. 9 (deadline extended). The 6 lucky finalists will be contacted directly through email and/or Twitter.
The iPhone AppStore is a wonderful place filled with tens of thousands of really nifty and useful iPhone apps. It’s also cluttered with iPhone apps that make fart noises and calculate tips for your waitress. How is anyone supposed to find their way around this crowded mess? With an iPhone app specifically made to pull app recommendations from your friends, of course. Enter Chorus for iPhone. [iTunes link]
Chorus is a free iPhone app that looks and works a lot like the AppStore you already have on your iPhone. But, instead of spamming you with thousands of useless apps and hundreds of useful apps you really couldn’t care less about, Chorus finds what your network of friends are using and suggests apps that it thinks you might like. The app is powered by envIO Networks’ Social Genome technology, which takes into account how you interact with your friends and infers how much credibility you’re likely to give your friends for various app categories. And, that’s where the app shines.
You don’t have to click through dozens and dozens of app reviews, tediously indicating which apps you like and which apps you think suck. Chorus learns from your interactions with your friends and picks up on your app preferences automatically. The app also features expert app recommendations and reviews from its AppMavens service as well as reviews from bloggers like us – so even if your friends don’t give you good app suggestions, at least you can look to the experts!
We’re going to let the screenshots and demo video show you how the app works in more detail:
Chorus is free, and once its user-base hit critical mass, it’ll revolutionize the way you discover iPhone apps. Give it a download here.
The Motorola CLIQ is hailed as Motorola (NYSE: MOT)’s first stab at reclaiming some of their lost mobile phone market share, and it just might be able to live up to expectations. Motorola and T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) announced the CLIQ a little over a month ago, showing off the Android phone’s innovative MOTOBLUR interface and its ability to magically update its homescreen widgets with information from your social networks and news feeds. Today, T-Mobile has gone all official with the Motorola CLIQ in the US. No more pre-order, folks – the CLIQ is live!
T-Mobile’s CLIQ has the distinction of being Motorola’s first comeback handset as well as the company’s first Android phone to hit market. The CLIQ is decidedly more curvy than its evil brother, the Motorola DROID, but it packs a cutesy-punch. The CLIQ sports a 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, GPS, WiFi, 3G data, 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot. But, the CLIQ’s highlight feature is its MOTOBLUR UI. Motorola created its custom MOTOBLUR Android UI to work with special MOTOBLUR servers to constantly monitor your social networks and news feeds. When something new happens or someone posts an interesting (sometimes not so interesting) tidbit to their profile, MOTOBLUR pushes that information to one of your homescreen widgets. Social butterflies, take note, MOTOBLUR will help you stay connected!
And, to help celebrate the Motorola CLIQ’s launch, Motorola and T-Mobile have announced a contest for college students. The college to sign-up the most Facebook fans to T-Mobile’s fan page will win a free campus concert by Weezer, and up to $25,000 for their school. Even better, you don’t even have to buy a CLIQ to enter the contest! Find out more here.
Fans of Motorola’s curvy Android phone can walk into any T-Mobile USA retail store or go online to nab their very own Motorola CLIQ for $199.99 with new 2-year contract and mail-in rebate. The CLIQ comes in your choice of White or Titanium color schemes.
The Motorola CLIQ is hailed as Motorola (NYSE: MOT)’s first stab at reclaiming some of their lost mobile phone market share, and it just might be able to live up to expectations. Motorola and T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) announced the CLIQ a little over a month ago, showing off the Android phone’s innovative MOTOBLUR interface and its ability to magically update its homescreen widgets with information from your social networks and news feeds. Today, T-Mobile has gone all official with the Motorola CLIQ in the US. No more pre-order, folks – the CLIQ is live!
T-Mobile’s CLIQ has the distinction of being Motorola’s first comeback handset as well as the company’s first Android phone to hit market. The CLIQ is decidedly more curvy than its evil brother, the Motorola DROID, but it packs a cutesy-punch. The CLIQ sports a 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, GPS, WiFi, 3G data, 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot. But, the CLIQ’s highlight feature is its MOTOBLUR UI. Motorola created its custom MOTOBLUR Android UI to work with special MOTOBLUR servers to constantly monitor your social networks and news feeds. When something new happens or someone posts an interesting (sometimes not so interesting) tidbit to their profile, MOTOBLUR pushes that information to one of your homescreen widgets. Social butterflies, take note, MOTOBLUR will help you stay connected!
And, to help celebrate the Motorola CLIQ’s launch, Motorola and T-Mobile have announced a contest for college students. The college to sign-up the most Facebook fans to T-Mobile’s fan page will win a free campus concert by Weezer, and up to $25,000 for their school. Even better, you don’t even have to buy a CLIQ to enter the contest! Find out more here.
Fans of Motorola’s curvy Android phone can walk into any T-Mobile USA retail store or go online to nab their very own Motorola CLIQ for $199.99 with new 2-year contract and mail-in rebate. The CLIQ comes in your choice of White or Titanium color schemes.
Collecting business cards can be a good thing – expanding your professional network usually is. It can also suck. If you ever have the chance to wade through a stack of business cards and add those contacts by hand, give it a try, you’ll see what we mean. For those of you that share our pain, check out SHAPE Services’ Business Card Reader for iPhone. With a simple snap of your iPhone 3GS’s auto-focus camera, Business Card Reader injects contact information directly into your iPhone’s address book. It’s not free, but at $5.99, it’ll easily pay for itself after your next new business card.
The new app basically scans your business cards and analyzes the text using character recognition technology. But, the really nifty thing is the way Business Card Reader integrates with LinkedIn and your iPhone. It’ll automatically distinguish between home and mobile phone numbers, office address, website URL, job title, company and, of course, the first and last name. Once scanned, you’ll have the option of automatically adding a new contact, merging the data with an existing contact, or look up the information on LinkedIn.
Of course, the app is bound to make some mistakes. After testing five business cards, we had to specify one company name and break up a couple long first names into their respective first and last names. You’re also going to want to use this app on an iPhone 3GS. The auto-focus camera makes all the difference. The app isn’t perfect, but it’s way (way) better than the alternative.
Wanna see the app in action? Check out our demo video!
You know that future we keep talking about? The one where everything in your life is controlled by what we know today as mobile phones? Right, well, that future inches closer today with the launch of Parkmobile’s “Pay by Phone Parking” service in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Like the name suggests, the new service allows residents and visitors to pay for their metered parking space with nothing more than a couple key presses on their cellphone.
The “Pay by Phone Parking” service isn’t an app, or even a webpage, it’s a dial-in service that works with any and all cellphones. Once you’ve registered your phone number with Parkmobile’s system, all it takes is a simple phone call to start paying for your meter. When you get back to your car, call Parkingmobile to stop the “meter.” It’s really that simple.
We’re not told when or where Parkmobile will be expanding the “Pay by Phone” service, but we hope it’s soon and everywhere, respectively.
When considering your next smartphone acquisition, it sometimes makes sense to take into account the “total cost of ownership” (TCO) associated with your hardware. One phone may cost less at the checkout counter, but may end up costing you more through monthly rate plans and data services. The difference can sometimes add up to a decent chunk of change over the course of a couple years. What about Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless, and how does it measure up against the iPhone 3GS? According to the cost comparison gurus at BillShrink.com, Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid costs about the same as the iPhone 3GS.
As you can see in BillShrink.com’s handy-dandy comparison chart, the Droid goes round-for-round with the iPhone 3GS. Both phones boast almost identical feature sets (although iPhone multi-tasking is sadly missing), identical pricing structures and average rate plan costs. Taking all that into account, both the iPhone 3GS and Motorola Droid will end up costing the average customer $2,830 over the course of a 24-month contract.
It’s clear that Motorola has the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone 3GS squarely in its sights. The Droid isn’t just going up against the iPhone 3GS with high-end features, it’s taking the fight to the TCO battlefield. The Droid has higher-end hardware (better display and camera), but the iPhone 3GS has the iPhone AppStore. Which will you choose?
With the HTC HD2 set to go official in a matter of days, we can almost taste its massive 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen and 1Ghz Snapdragon processor. HTC’s latest Windows Mobile phone isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but for fans of Windows Mobile 6.5, the HD2 is as good as it gets. And, it looks like the HD2 will launch with some cool features. New screenshots show the HD2 getting down with multi-touch, compass mode, MP3 editing, WiFi router (routing?), car-kit mode and video playback at 1.7Mbps!
The HD2’s capacitive touchscreen makes multi-touch possible, and we’re glad to see pinch/stretch zooming in Acrobat PDF reader. HTC has also loaded a ringtone maker onto the handset, allowing the user to edit their favorite MP3 into a ringtone. And, there’s a “WiFi Router” mode that allows you to share the HD2’s 3G data connection with WiFi-enabled devices around you.
As for video playback at 1.7Mbps, it’ll go a long way to give help the HD2 realize its full potential as a multimedia monster. High-quality video usually hints at hardware video-acceleration, so that’s another plus. Unfortunately, we’ll be stuck watching said video on the ancient-looking Windows Media Player.
Check out our HTC HD2 hands-on coverage here, and make sure to check back on November 4th!
China isn’t just some foreign country with a penchant for censoring their citizens into oblivion and peddling counterfeit handsets on the cheap. The land of dim sum and stubborn Communist politics has become the latest country to launch the iPhone. As expected, the iPhone is now ready to cater to the single-largest wireless market, by way of China Unicom’s network (China’s No. 2 wireless network). The 8GB iPhone 3G will cost $732, with the 32GB iPhone 3GS commanding a $1,025 price tag.
Now, considering how all that hard-earned cash will only buy a China Unicom iPhone that lacks WiFi support, it’s hard to see the handset making it big in China. There are gray-market iPhones that cost less, come unlocked and actually support WiFi. Good luck, China Unicom.
Do you develop mobile apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian or webOS? Well, we want to hear from you! We’ve partnered up with “
Collecting business cards can be a good thing – expanding your professional network usually is. It can also suck. If you ever have the chance to wade through a stack of business cards and add those contacts by hand, give it a try, you’ll see what we mean. For those of you that share our pain, check out SHAPE Services’ 
You know that future we keep talking about? The one where everything in your life is controlled by what we know today as mobile phones? Right, well, that future inches closer today with the launch of Parkmobile’s “Pay by Phone Parking” service in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Like the name suggests, the new service allows residents and visitors to pay for their metered parking space with nothing more than a couple key presses on their cellphone.
With 
China isn’t just some foreign country with a penchant for censoring their citizens into oblivion and peddling counterfeit handsets on the cheap. The land of dim sum and stubborn Communist politics has become the latest country to launch the iPhone. 
