The holidays are here, and that means mobile enthusiasts like us will soon flock to their favorite retail or online store to spend some hard earned money on a new mobile gadget. To help you on your quest to empty your wallets in search of the hottest mobile gadgets on market, IntoMobile is proud to introduce TopTechGifts.com. In partnership with some of the hottest gadget blogs on the internet, we’ve compiled a list of the Top Tech Gifts of 2009, complete with reviews and expert ratings. Whether your in the market for a friend or loved one, or just looking to score the coolest mobile-related gear available today, Top Tech Gifts should help you with your next purchase.

You can find IntoMobile’s EIC Will Park putting in his couple cents in the Top Tech Gifts mobile section here. Or, for the entire gadget breakdown, hit up TopTechGifts.com.

If you’ve got a thing for scoping out mobile technology start-ups while they’re still young and in the “up-and-coming” stage of their business, you’ll want to make sure you get yourself to the “Under The Radar” conference in Mountain View, CA. this week. On November 19, 2009, mobile start-ups will take the stage at the Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Conference Center to pitch their ideas to mobile-minded attendees. You’ll get to see what’s hot in the mobile space, what’s going to be hot in mobile, and maybe even catch yours truly on stage as a judge at the FAST PITCH mobile app talent search. And, to make it even easier for you to attend, IntoMobile is proud to give our readers a special $100 discount to the event.

Just follow this link and register as a “VIP” to get your $100 discount on “Under The Radar” show passes. It really doesn’t get any easier than that. See you at the show!

Under The Radar
$100 VIP discount

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.

Some of you may already have heard that IntoMobile is now in the SF Bay Area. We’ve relocated to the heart of the tech universe, and we’re unabashedly throwing ourselves a welcome party! This Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 6:45PM, IntoMobile will be hosting our “Drive-Up Meet-Up” in the Bay Area. Come hang out and chat with mobile geeks from around the Bay Area, eat some of our food and get some free stuff.

The location is still TBD will be the Tesla Motors Menlo Park dealership parking lot (300 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA. 94085), but rest assured it’ll be a blast and it’ll be centrally located in the Bay Area. And, to sweeten the pot, we’ve teamed up with Waze, the new crowd-sourced real-time traffic navigation application, to give away two brand-new iPhone 3GS’s at the event! We covered Waze here, check it out.

Remember to mark August 20, 2009 in your calendar. The even will start at 6:30PM PST, but we’ll give commuters some time to get to the event before raffling off prizes and iPhones. If you have any questions, leave a comment below.

Update:
We’ve secured our event location! The Drive-Up Meet-Up will be held at the Tesla Motors Menlo Park dealership parking lot at 300 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA. 94085.

RSVP in the comments below or the comments system in this post.

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!

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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.

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