TerreStar has announced the successful launch of TerreStar-1 - the world’s largest, most advanced commercial communications satellite. Today’s launch is a major achievement in TerreStar’s strategic vision of delivering voice, data and video services on an all IP next-generation mobile broadband network that combines the power of TerreStar-1, an all-IP  core network, and the latest in smartphone technology.

Launched by Arianespace from Kourou, French Guiana, TerreStar-1 is the foundation for TerreStar’s satellite communications network; ensuring network resiliency and availability during times of critical communications need.

“With the successful launch of TerreStar-1, we are redefining the mobile communications landscape,” said Dennis Matheson, CTO of TerreStar. “We are creating a new paradigm in mobile broadband network services and devices that will leverage our integrated satellite and terrestrial communications components to enable true ubiquity and reliability – anywhere in the United States and Canada.”

“Today’s launch is just the beginning of the TerreStar story,” said TerreStar President, Jeff Epstein. “We believe there are tremendous opportunities ahead – in both the commercial and government sectors – and we remain focused on our promise to help solve the critical communications and business continuity challenges faced by government, emergency responders, enterprises and rural communities.”

Prior to the launch of TerreStar-1, the Company, with its partner EB (Elektrobit), introduced the world’s first quad-band GSM and tri-band WCDMA/HSPA smartphone with integrated all-IP satellite-terrestrial voice and data capabilities. Similar in size to today’s mainstream mobile devices, TerreStar’s dual-mode smartphone will allow users to seamlessly and securely stay connected to TerreStar’s satellite and terrestrial network.

TerreStar’s network will operate in two 10-Mhz blocks of contiguous MSS spectrum in the 2 GHz band throughout the United States and Canada – with a spectrum footprint that covers a population of nearly 330 million.

To watch or download video coverage or images of the TerreStar-1 launch, or for more information about TerreStar, click here.

Flirtomatic has announced the launch of its Flirt-word service. The new service gives users the opportunity to buy the rights to a certain word for a 24-hour period, giving them the chance to be ‘hot’, ‘cool’, ‘London’ or anything else for the day.

For the last six weeks, Flirtomatic has given users the ability to profile search, generating over a million Flirt-word searches. Now it’s expanding the search by giving users to chance to buy targeted exposure and attach themselves to a word in order to be found quicker by other users.

Purchasing a word makes users appear at the top of every search of that specific word, much in the same way as a sponsored link appears at the top of results in any of the major search engines on the web. For example John might buy the exclusivity to the word ‘London’ and if anyone performed a search on Flirtomatic for the word ‘London’ John would appear at the top of the search results for 24 hours.

Obviously some words are going to be more popular than others and to account for this, Flirtomatic has built an automated pricing adjustment system. The price of words will be calculated on a day-to-day basis in relation to customer demand. So the most sought after words should naturally move to a higher price point. In addition, the Flirt-words service will provide users with extra value by automatically producing banners promoting users and their exclusive word across the network. For example one could read – “Look who’s ‘hot’ today”.

Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic commented: “We know that users love to advertise themselves on the site and the Flirt-words service gives them a new and targeted way to get instant exposure. Think of it as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Adwords for the flirtatious. I’m planning on buying Chelsea.” Mark added: “It’s an extremely interesting experiment for us and as the majority of our users seem to realise the value of screen real-estate on mobile it seemed like a natural progression in profile search capability. It’s a simple concept over perhaps a bidding system, but let’s see what our users think of it!”

You can check out more about Flirtomatic here.

Now that the iPhone 3.0 OS is live, we’re starting to see a flood of updates for the existing apps. One of the most popular to-do list management apps/services, Remember The Milk, is no exception and it now supports push notifications, enabling “instant task reminder alerts to your device.”

Aside from this important and way useful feature, the updated Remember The Milk app also improves stability and performance and fixes some bugs. For instance, the “swipe to complete” feature is back!

And that’s about all we can report about the updated RTM. If you still haven’t used it, now may your chance to do so. It’s arguably the single best task management service on the Interwebs, and a personal favorite of mine. AppStore link is here.

NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) is joining the mobile money market with its own remittance service. Starting from July 21st, individual users (as opposed to corporate customers) of the carrier’s i-mode service will be able to remit up to 20,000 yen (about $208) per transfer by simply inputting the payee’s mobile phone number. The payee then receives a mail notification on its mobile phone and is given the option of depositing the money in a domestic bank account or having the amount credited to their monthly phone bill. The payee can receive remittances totaling up to 200,000 yen (about $2,080) per month.

Best of all, the service doesn’t require any registration or opening of a specific bank account!

Cost wise, the charges per payment (including consumption tax) will be 105 yen for the payer and 65 yen for the payee. The payee is not charged, however, if the remittance is deposited into a Mizuho Bank account or credited to their monthly phone bill.

GyPSii has announced that it has secured EU-wide “friend finding” patent, which describes the transmission of location-based information between devices and the subsequent publishing of that information for viewing on a map.

From the press release:

This significant Friend Finding patented technology enables GyPSii users to locate and share information with friends to view on a map, and further protects intellectual property enabling key features such as pushing user generated place content or requesting a friend’s location so they can meet-up, on mobile devices. The company uses the patented technology in the friend finding capability to allow users to share their location over a mobile device. Users can request or share their location and a favorite place location with one or many friends, from mobile device to mobile device, and view the location on a map on the device(s).

GyPSii’s announcement goes on suggesting this is only the first of 6 patent technologies they have developed. This capability can also be applied in other uses such as Fleet Management, Field Operations and Emergency Services.

Now, the question is how this will impact other mobile social networks. Will GyPSii start suing other services that use the same approach? “Waiting and seeing” all we can do at this stage. I only hope it won’t negatively impact the industry…

Wattpad keeps conquering new mobile platforms. After BlackBerry and iPhone, the popular “YouTube For Ebooks” is hitting the Android world, too.

A dedicated application is available in the Android Market, using which users can discover new ebooks, share their collection with the world, and download ebooks other people have shared.

According to Wattpad, each month over 10,000 stories are published by thousands of passionate writers, including many well-known writers such as John Gregory Betancourt, whose story Alien Still Life was first published online on Wattpad…

Some time ago we wrote about SHAPE Services’ trip-trackin’ app GPSed for the iPhone. Well, it has been updated recently, not just for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s handset, but for all other platforms supported — including BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), Java ME and Windows Mobile.

Among the features GPSed 1.4 packs are:

• Ability to attach a photo directly from the application.
• Improved user interface.
• Dialog for posting to social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Blogger.
• Improved code that makes the app run faster.
• iPhone version is optimized to sing along iPhone OS 3.0.
• Many other fixes and improvements.

And that’s it. To grab the latest version of GPSed, simply search for it in your smartphone platform’s  application store, or visit GPSed’s website…

The folks behind the popular mobile social networking service, GyPSii have been busy these days. As a matter of fact they had few news items to share with us:

• There’s now an English version of GyPSii JavaME mobile app, which works on feature phones;
• BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) and iPhone apps have been updated;
• GyPSii now lives in Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Ovi Store, too

You see the point here, right? The idea is to reach as many users as humanly possible, by making GyPSii mobile app available for all platforms. As I pointed earlier, if I were at Samsung, LG or some other major handset maker, I would strongly consider acquiring the GyPSii…

Vringo and its partner, Innova Group, have announced a partnership with Armenia’s leading mobile operator VivaCell-MTS. Through the partnership, Vringo’s video ringtone service will be available to more than 2,000,000 mobile subscribers of VivaCell-MTS in Armenia through a co-branded VivaCell-MTS-Vringo online platform and will constitute the first deployment of such innovative and stimulative technology in CIS countries.

The VivaCell-MTS-Vringo service, rolling out on a subscription basis, will provide access to Vringo’s video ringtone application and its library of 4,000+ video ringtone clips. For a fee, subscribers may download this premium content.

“Through this arrangement with Vringo and Innova Group, VivaCell-MTS is now able to offer our subscribers more multimedia content and more stimulating ways to use that content than ever before,” said VivaCell-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian. “We believe Vringo’s fun and captivating video ringtones will be an extra tool in our efforts to keep our subscribers updated with the latest technologies.”

“Vringo is thrilled that VivaCell-MTS is joining our growing family of carrier partners,” said Vringo CEO Jon Medved. “This exclusive agreement will enable VivaCell-MTS to use Vringo’s suite of customizable tools to engage its customers through the most important pivot on the mobile device: the ringtone.”

This is the fourth custom-built in-language carrier platform Vringo has created for an international mobile partner. Others include platforms in Vietnamese for Viettel, in French for Bouygues Telecom, and in Turkish for mobile provider Avea.

In addition to carrier partners, the company also maintains relationships with content providers (including Turner, Discovery Mobile and Agence France Presse) and handset manufacturers, such as Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), which is including a direct online link to Vringo on its new Sony Ericsson Walkman phones.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has just launched three new SMS services geared specifically towards Africa: Search, Trade and Tips. There are already plenty of SMS Google services available in North America and elsewhere, but Africans’ needs require a little bit of tweaking. Tips, which can be accessed by texting 6001, is broken down into three subections: Clinc Finder pulls up a list of services and the phone number of nearby clinics; Health Tips focuses mainly on sexual health; and Farmer’s Friend helps with planting advice and dealing with pests. Trader is an interesting new option that basically works like Craigslist - you can search for, buy and sell goods entirely by SMS. Since they’re gearing these services primarily towards developing contries with limited internet access, this reminds me a lot of Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Life Tools, and will hopefully do just as well. MTN Uganda is the only supporting carrier right now, but with any luck, it’ll spread across the continent. To get started with Google Africa’s SMS tools.

[via Official Google Blog]