Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced that it has begun working with Tim Kring, creator and executive producer of HEROES, to develop “innovative, new content for the Ovi Store.” As part of the deal, the Finnish giant has signed on as a “strategic partner and technology enabler” for a project created by Kring – codenamed TEVA. We don’t know much about TEVA at this stage except this: “The multi platform narrative will be an immersive experience with elements of individual action and group participation.”

On its side, Kring will be utilizing the Ovi Store as an initial channel, and the two parties will launch the first mobile phase of the project in the Summer of ‘09 and rolled out regionally.

Commenting on the announcement, Nokia Services’ Tero Ojanperä said: “Tim Kring is a Hollywood visionary and masterful storyteller who truly understands that the reach of the Ovi Store is a powerful way for millions of people around the world to experience the new forms of entertainment he is seeking to create.”

Those not familiar should know that Nokia will officially open Ovi Store in May.

Buzzwire has recently announced that it has spiced up its mobile website, m.buzzwire.com, with fresh content from the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Interested users can visit the optimized-for-mobile site to access the best mobile tournament sites to check scores, see video highlights, get analysis and much more — all while on-the-go.

The Buzzwire March Madness mobile portal bursts with content and includes special sections such as:

• The latest news, scores, videos and highlights
• Expert analysis of the tournament and predictions from the leading college basketball authorities
• Advice and data from office pools to Vegas Odds and everything in between.

Enough said. I believe Buzzwire has done a decent job and deserves some credit. If you’re a NCAA fan, this is one mobile website to bookmark.

mSpot has recently opened virtual doors of its consumer website, mSpot.com, featuring the company’s Make-UR-Tones service that allows users to edit, purchase, and download custom ringtones directly to their mobile devices.

From the official release:

To purchase ringtones, customers first select a favorite song from mSpot’s vast song collection, then employ the Make-UR-Tones intuitive editor to select up to 30 seconds of the customer’s favorite part of the song. That edited cut can then be downloaded as a high-quality customized ringtone for $2.99.

Overall, there are more than 400,000 songs in mSpot’s catalog from major labels like EMI, Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music, Ingrooves and IRIS. In addition to songs, mSpot.com also features lyrics, artist bios, recommendations, and more.

Now I could go on and on describing the service, but you’ll get the real feel when you try it for yourself. Simple hop over to mSpot.com and take it from there. The service is currently accessible to Sprint (NYSE: S) and AT&T (NYSE: T) customers, and will soon be available to customers from other major carriers…

Steamezzo is all proud to announce that Samsung has selected them to develop, deploy and run the electronics giant’s rich Internet mobile portal.

Samsung Rich Internet application, natively embedded on multiple Samsung devices, allows subscribers to access to a large variety of free and premium services such as news, ringtones, music, video-on-demand, and games. Special announcements or latest news from Samsung are also directly accessible from this portal. The service offering is continuously extended and provisioned over the air, without requiring any software upgrade on the devices.

Streamezzo’s CEO, Olivier Avaro, was unsurprisingly excited, commenting: “It’s highly rewarding to work with a forward-thinking organization like Samsung who looks beyond the status quo and strive for high valued services for their customers. Putting Streamezzo’s experience at the service of Samsung’s vision confirmed our capacity to deliver in short time compelling mobile applications despite the fragmented environment.”

The first releases of the rich Internet portal were in Russia, Germany and United Kingdom. Several other countries are planned to be rolled-out in the coming months…

Here’s an ultra-cool theme, which I doubt will be installed on Mac-owning iPhone users, despite the fact that it looks and works great. The so called VistaPerfection 4.0 is probably one of the most complete themes for the jailbroken iPhones we’ve seen to date. Virtually all elements of the interface have been customized — including icons, sounds, categories, and dialer. Moreover, inside the theme you’ll also find two skins – Windows Media Player 11 and Word 2007, both of which rock…

Want it? Look for it in Cydia on your jailbroken iPhone, click install and take it from there. Alternatively, there’s a thread on MMi forums with more details.

[Via: JustAnotherIphoneBlog]

Samsung and Paramount Digital Entertainment recently announced the availability of a 2-gig microSD card preloaded with the Mission Impossible Trilogy, which comes free of charge with the purchase of the Samsung Delve from Alltel Wireless.

The idea is not novel, and in that sense we’ve already seen Nokia (NYSE: NOK) bundling such movies as The Da Vinci Code and Mission Impossible 3 with some of its devices. Still, I like the idea of adding value without creating a price impact for the end users.

Commenting on the announcement, Samsung Mobile’s CMO, Bill Ogle, said: “We are excited to bring an action-packed movie series like the Mission Impossible Trilogy to people who buy the Samsung Delve. When you combine this incredible content with the Delve’s full set of powerful features, it’s easy to stay entertained and connected no matter where you are.”

The microSD card with Mission Impossible Trilogy is available with the purchase of the Delve through April 16, from participating Alltel stores and authorized dealers. Customers who purchase the Delve can send in a mail-in redemption card to receive the microSD within four to six weeks…

[Via: slashphone]

Popular mobile ebook sharing community, Wattpad, teamed up with Five Mobile to bring its service to the iPhone/iPod Touch users. As a result, a dedicated Wattpad application along with an extensive library of user-generated and public domain ebooks, is now available as a free download through Apple AppStore.

Those not familiar should know that Wattpad is a YouTube-like community for reading and sharing ebooks on mobile devices that provides users with access to hundreds of thousands of novels, short stories, fan fiction, essays, jokes and more.

Commenting on the announcement, Wattpad’s Allen Lau said: “We combine the large touch screens of the iPhone, our proven reading technology and huge collection of user-generated ebooks to provide the best possible user experience on mobile devices for free. Best of all, you don’t need a dedicated ebook subscription service or device, like Amazon Kindle or Sony eReader, as your mobile phone is always with you.”

Our friends from Discretix have recently announced that their CryptoCell security technology has been chosen to provide integrated protection for LG’s new LTE (Long Term Evolution) chipsets, to “ensure a trusted environment for the coming era of high-definition video and streaming, ultra-high speed downloads and much more.”

From the official release:

Discretix’ CryptoCell will provide a robust and far-reaching solution for LG Electronics’ LTE chipsets. As the world’s most widely deployed embedded security technology for mobile devices, CryptoCell offers an outstanding level of security while overcoming the challenges of performance, power consumption and silicon footprints. The flexible technology is designed to support the growth of DRM, device management, secure protocols and commerce, and can be deployed across a wide range of products and operating systems to meet changing market requirements for security.

Commenting on the announcement, Discretix’ Edo Ganot said: “Wireless mobile devices are obviously becoming a personal digital companion for watching movies, listening to music, browsing the Internet, connecting with friends and much more. The demands that are driving LTE development-higher bandwidth, faster downloads and uploads, and more content choices-also drive the need for a suitably advanced security environment. CryptoCell is one of the very few platforms that can support such rigorous specifications.”

Here’s one more news from the Mobile World Congress we’ve missed. It’s from Discretix, the good folks who sponsored my first trip to the event back in 2006.

They had two announcements in Barcelona:

• First they’ve announced support for the Android platform. More precisely, they said that their complete suite of mobile content protection solutions is available for Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s mobile OS, offering handset vendors a pre-integrated solution, lower development risk and reduced time to market. Discretix’ official release is available from here.
• The second news deals with mobile TV. Along with DiBcom and Expway, they’ve debuted an end-to-end, standards-based mobile TV reference design. The vertically integrated and secure receiver/ESG package can reduce both risk and time-to-market for mobile device OEMs interested in capitalizing on the ongoing mobile TV revolution. Again, if you want to know more, there’s the official release.

Guess we’ve cleared the MWC news now. I hope, at least.

Need a new theme for your Symbian S60 smartphone. Here’s a cool solution made by Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Ovi team, which will certainly make your device look “ready for the spring.” Yap, that’s the way I see it. The theme is called “Ovi Blue” and it looks clear and fresh — I can’t find better words to describe it.

As expected — since it’s made by the Ovi team — the theme sports the Ovi icons, and also comes with its own ring and message tones, as well as a cool screensaver.

Finally for those of you with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic smartphone, you’ll be glad to know it can also work on your favorite touch-enabled device.

Enough said – here’s a link from where you can grab the “Ovi Blue” theme. Enjoy it!

[Via: Nokia Conversations]