Mobile

Nokia announced Friday that it will acquire Motally, a small, privately held mobile analytics firm in San Francisco.

Staffed by a team of only eight people, Motally offers mobile app developers a service for tracking the usage of their software. The goal is to help developers enhance and optimize their apps by understanding how people use them.

Looking to support developers selling apps through Nokia's Ovi Store, Motally's service will be adapted to work with Symbian, MeeGo, Qt, and Java, said Nokia. But support will continue for Motally's current customers.

"The acquisition underpins Nokia's drive … Read more

Google's strategy to get ordinary folks to buy its Nexus One phone flopped, but apparently it's a different story with Android programmers.

Google scrapped its plan to sell the Nexus One through its own store in July, six months after trying to rewrite the phone market's rules. With Android developers, though, to whom Google still sells the phone, it's become a bit too desirable at least measured by Google's inventory.

"We blew through the (substantial) initial inventory in almost no time," said Android developer evangelist Tim Bray in a blog post Thursday.

They … Read more

They say patience is a virtue. But it's certainly not easy, especially when you are waiting for the latest and greatest in technology.

This week I try to answer one reader's question about when he can expect to get Fios TV in his neighborhood. He's seen the fiber trucks and fliers promoting the service, and now he wants his Fios TV. But laying the fiber is only half the battle, especially in densely populated cities such as New York City where everyone lives in an apartment building.

If waiting for Fios wasn't bad enough, another reader … Read more

In designing its new Places geolocation service, Facebook seems to have learned from its past privacy blunders. The new service has multiple layers of privacy control, but as with other aspects of Facebook privacy, users need to put some thought about whether and how they want to disclose their location. Facebook has also created an extra level of privacy for its under-18 users, prohibiting them from displaying their location to anyone other than their friends.

The first thing to know about Places is that it's not fully automatic. You have to "check in" or be tagged at … Read more

Apple will close mobile-advertising company Quattro Wireless at the end of September, it announced Thursday.

"We believe iAd is the best mobile-ad network in the world, and starting next month, we're going to focus all of our resources on the iAd advertising platform," Apple wrote in a statement on the Quattro Wireless home page. "We are no longer accepting new campaigns for the Quattro Wireless Network, and we will soon begin winding down existing campaigns. As of September 30, we will support ads exclusively for the iAd Network."

The statement also includes a link to … Read more

Engineers from the University of Washington are working to optimize network bandwidth consumption during video calls. The aim is to bring the data rate down to 30kbps while optimizing video signals such that they are clear enough for deaf or hard-of-hearing users to decipher sign language.

Led by the MobileASL team, the video compression project increases image quality around the face and hands to better allow users to understand the semantics of the American Sign Language (ASL). The technology also uses the motion sensor to detect if the person is signing in order to reduce battery drain during video calls. … Read more

Five years after Sprint merged with Nextel, the deal remains a controversial topic in the financial world. Not only has the combined company struggled through several difficult quarters, but also Bloomberg recently named the acquisition as one that "never should have happened."

In a review published last Thursday of the 100 biggest takeovers since 2005, Bloomberg ranked the Sprint-Nextel deal as the third worst for shareholder value. According to the report, though Sprint paid $36 billion for Nextel in 2005, the carrier now is valued at $30 billion, including dept. The two transactions that fared worse were McClatchy'… Read more

NEW YORK--Verizon Communications is prepping a new live TV streaming app for tablet PCs like the Apple iPad, a move that could eventually eliminate the need for a home set-top box and set the stage for true "TV everywhere" viewing.

At a demonstration at the home of Verizon CIO Shaygan Kheradpir, Verizon executives showed off a slew of new features for its Fios TV service, including the live TV streaming application on an iPad.

The new app allows Fios TV subscribers to stream live TV from their service onto an iPad over a home Wi-Fi connection. Initially, the … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--After about a month of using a Windows Phone 7 device with no extra apps at all, it was fun to get my hands on some games.

On Tuesday I had a chance to play with a handful of the titles that Microsoft just announced would be coming to Windows Phone 7 when it launches later this year.

Though just a small sample, the quick look showed that Windows Phone 7 is quite a capable platform for games. That's important, because games in general--and the phone's Xbox Live tie-in specifically--will have to be a key selling point … Read more