Thanks to all our readers for making IntoMobile’s iPhone 3G S Launch Day Giveaway Bonanza a smash hit!As we get ready to hit the streets and wait in line for our iPhone 3G S, let’s take a moment to congratulate two (2) of our iPhone 3G S winners.

Drum roll, please:

Our winning commenter is - Rob Werther!
Our winning Twit is - deanna_j!

Note: Don’t see your name here? Worry not, we’ll be picking ONE MORE winner at midnight tonight during our iPhone 3G S launch live-cast! Make sure to keep checking IntoMobile for details!

Winners:

• You now have five (5) days to contact anyone on the IntoMobile team.
• If you’ve won (or suspect that you’ve won) email any IntoMobile editor or team (at) intomobile (dot) com with the subject: “I won an iPhone 3G S!!”

Update: Stefan here, I’m turning off comments to this post since the contest is over. Will is going to get in touch with the three winners once he recovers after 12 hours of camping for the iPhone 3G S. Thanks to everyone who participated!

What could be better than a faster, more powerful iPhone launching this Friday?

A faster, more power-packed iPhone 3G S for FREE!

Whether you’re still bitter about AT&T (NYSE: T)’s decision to penalize current customers with an iPhone “loyalty tax,” or just cringing at the $199 entry-price for the 16GB iPhone 3G S, IntoMobile is here to help.

You still have time to enter, but you’d better enter quick! The first two iPhone 3G S winners will be announced at 4PM PST (Los Angeles time). We’ll announce the winners on the front-page (either in this post or a separate post). You can continue to enter until 11:59PM - we’ll be announcing the winner of our BONUS iPhone 3G S live from IntoMobile’s iPhone 3G S launch live-cast. We’ll be live-streaming the launch-day crowds at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Store starting later tonight!

[Update]
Two winners have already been selected. Congratulations to Twitter user deanna_j and commentor Rob Werther on winning an iPhone 3G S! (Now all they have to do is contact IntoMobile)

The final winner of our one remaining iPhone 3G S will be picked tonight, live from Santa Monica Third Street Promenade Apple Store. We’ll be covering the launch festivities (and lines) live, so make sure to tune in tonight for our live-cast!

Read the full article »

We recently told you about Phanfare’s Photon iPhone application that let’s you order photo prints directly from your iPhone or iPhone 3G. The service is so damn convenient that we just had to give IntoMobile readers a chance to win some free prints. To celebrate the Photon iPhone application, we’re giving away 100 FREE prints each to 10 lucky winners!

Think about what you could do with Photon for iPhone and 100 FREE prints! You can finally send Grandma that birthday picture you took with your iPhone. Maybe you’d like to ave  hard-copy prints of that anniversary party shipped to your door. Or, if you’re like us, you’re going to order a year’s worth of those party pics you uploaded to your iPhone.

Each of the 10 randomly selected IntoMobile readers will receive 100 FREE photo prints from Phanfare, including free shipping within the US. The contest is open to our non-US readers, but international shipping will be the responsibility of the winner. You don’t have to have an iPhone to enter, but it sure makes the process a whole lot simpler!

Winners will be randomly selected from the comments section as well as Twitter mentions (@replies). You may enter the contest twice - once in the comments section and once in Twitter. You can choose to enter the contest via Twitter or comments alone, but you’ll be getting half the odds of winning.

Winners will be selected on April 24.

Here’s how to enter:

1. Download and install Photon for iPhone (iTunes link)
2. Register for a Phanfare account (Photon will take care of this step for you)
   • Non-iPhone users may register directly on Phanfare’s website.
3. Leave a comment below with your Phanfare username
   • Don’t forget to include your Phanfare username!
4. The all-important Twitter step:
   • Follow @IntoMobile
   • You must Tweet your Phanfare username and the following message exactly as it appears: “Hey, @IntoMobile! Give me my 100 FREE prints from Phanfare! -  http://bit.ly/1IM4oD”
   • Remember to include your Phanfare username!
5. Sit back and cross your fingers. 10 winners will each get 100 FREE prints from Phanfare, so you’re chances of winning are pretty good!

Good luck! And don’t forget to check back next week to find out if you’ve won!

Free stuff!

Okay, now that we have your attention, IntoMobile is proud to celebrate Opera’s latest mobile browser milestone. In case you haven’t heard, the venerable Opera Mini mobile web browser is now a go on the Android platform. Opera has gone final with their Opera Mini 4.2 browser for Android users (most likely T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1 user). You’ll find the new Opera Mini browser hanging out in the Android Market as Opera Mini 4.2.

We’d like to congratulate Opera on their latest achievement by giving away free designer t-shirts (on Opera’s dime)! Lovingly crafted by the designers at Moods of Norway, these t-shirts aren’t just for wearing to bed or washing a car. Geeky-chic and fashionable, these Moods of Norway shirts are sure to turn heads wherever you go, seriously.

Want to qualify for our FREE shirt giveaway celebration? Just leave a comment and include your shirt size! We’ll be contacting the winners via email, so make sure you include a valid email address when posting your comment.

m.intomobile.com on an iPhone 3G

We’ve been a bit unsure about how to display IntoMobile on the mobile-screen. On the one hand, we’re big fans of web-capable smartphones with full-HTML browsers. On the other hand, a mobile-optimized version of IntoMobile is just quicker and more convenient. So, we thought, why not give out readers a choice?

IntoMobile is proud to announce the our mobile-optimized page. IntoMobile’s far-reaching coverage of the mobile space has been slimmed down and streamlined for viewing on your mobile phone’s display. Simply point your smartphone’s web browser to m.intomobile.com to get at the leaner, meaner version of our daily news feed.

Yeah, we’ve taken our sweet time getting into Twitter, one of the most popular mobile social networks out there, but we’re now all hooked into the twittosphere, with a little help from twitterfeed. By following us on Twitter, you’ll be able to get SMS alerts of IntoMobile’s latest headlines, complete with link to the article, In addition to that, Twitter will be the vehicle of our ground-floor coverage at conventions, so expect plenty of spur-of-the-moment tidbits, info and conversations to be happening there. Already have Twitter? Follow us at twitter.com/IntoMobile. Never heard of Twitter? Hit the jump for a video explanation.

Read the full article »

Nope, it’s not your eyes. What you’re seeing is IntoMobile’s new design. The IntoMobile team has been toiling away behind the scenes to bring you a refreshed look, and it’s a bang-up job, if we do say so ourselves.

Take a gander at our new navigation structure and you’ll notice that there are some new categories to check out. Rumors are important because they can give us an idea of what kind of future the mobile world has in store for us. When it comes time to pull the trigger and buy yourself a new mobile toy, hardware reviews can really come in handy. A rundown of the hottest hardware on market always makes for good reading, and it’s nice to keep abreast of the latest new mobile gadgets. As such, you can find all the “Latest News,” “Rumors,” “New Hardware,” “Hottest Hardware,” and “Reviews” categories under “All News.”

IntoMobile’s fledgling podcast, The Signal, is now listed under “Sections” - right next to dedicated sections for photo galleries, videos, and live event coverage. Why dontcha give the new navigation menu a spin? Try not to let the new IntoMobile logo distract you too much…

Oh, and rest assured that we’re working to bring our readers even more functionality in the near future. So stay tuned! (And, feel free to let us know how much you like the new design. It makes our ego feel good.)

It’s been one helluva ride since IntoMobile got its blogging-legs and started exploring the mobile blogosphere. We’ve grown up quite a bit since last year, and it’s all because of you, our readers. Kudos to all of you for making IntoMobile one of the premier online resources for mobile phone content.

You may have noticed a couple new faces featured on IntoMobile’s front-page. Seeing as how IntoMobile has come so far, we thought was high time we expanded our team and brought on some additional editorial perspective.

James Falconer

James Falconer is our co-resident iPhone freak. James started off as a bona-fide web and graphics designer about 15 years ago, but has since branched out and co-founded CrackBerry.com and currently runs Mactropolis.com. With James’ experience in all things web and mobile-related, he’s bound to have an interesting perspective on the mobile world. We’re glad to have James on the IntoMobile team and can’t wait to read his take on the current state of the mobile ecosystem.

Simon Sage

Simon Sage comes to us from BlackBerryCool.com where he flexed his blogging-muscles as Senior Editor. He hails from the land of poutine and RIM’s home-turf - Canada. Expect Simon to deliver a balanced perspective and thoroughly thought out opinions on the the mobile world. We’re looking forward to seeing Simon’s thoughts on anything BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) related, and we’re even more excited to see what he thinks about the rest of the mobile world.

And, what better way to celebrate our newly expanded team than to be named the #1 Cellphone Blog on the web. Cellphones.org has put together a Top 20 list of mobile phone blogs across the web-o-sphere and they’ve given IntoMobile the hat-tip as the top-blog in our niche. The Top 20 Mobile Phone Blogs list reads like a who’s who of cellphone blogs on the web, and we’re proud to sit at the top of that list. Excuse us as we pat ourselves on the back.

Cellphones.org Top 20 Cellphone Blogs

My team and I (well mostly them really, huge props to Tom, Marc and Yoeau) have been slaving under a hot stove to bring you a new delicious treat. It’s called the Thumb Report and it’s a site I’ve been planning in my head for a while and now I’m happy to finally see it go live.

Here at IntoMobile Will, Dusan, Ben and I cover the news in as much depth as possible giving you plenty of background information around a piece of content in an attempt to help you digest it better. The Thumb Report is not about that. The Thumb Report is about fitting as much information as possible into 160 characters of text, the size of a standard text message.

I’m doing this because I’m tired of looking at a piece of news and wondering to myself “Gee Wiz, should I blog this or is it too insignificant?” and lately my news consumption and sharing habits have moved on to microblogging services such as Jaiku and Twitter and even social networks like Facebook.

The Thumb Report isn’t for everyone. The language is going to be very laconic and sometimes if I need to pull some characters out of a hat I’ll start using sms-language. You know what I’m talking about, “b there @ 8″ comes to mind. I’m also going to be covering things that may seem insignficant to you, but like I said earlier, I found them interesting but couldn’t bring myself to writing 100 words about it.

I hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think in the comments below or on the first post at Thumb Report!

Welcome to a new weekly piece at IntoMobile - Freebie Fridays!

Who doesn’t like free stuff? We thought so. Every week we’ll bring you free offers on magazines, white papers, software, podcasts, and more. The new stuff will be posted next Friday (hence the clever title), so keep an eye out for more freebies from IntoMobile!

Here’s a taste of the free stuff in store for our readers:

• Windows Mobile Business Resource Kit
• A Good Mobile Experience
• Essential Managers Guide: Communications Tools for the Effective Worker
• Optimizing Users and Applications in a Mobile World