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At about 18 and a half minutes into a panel I was co-hosting at the Under the Radar: Mobility conference on Wednesday, things began to get ugly. Our panelists on the "No filters: Ask the carriers anything" session were representatives from U.S. wireless carriers Verizon Wireless, Alltell, T-Mobile, and AT&T. We took an audience question from an entrepreneur who was trying to start up an SMS-based business. He was frustrated because he had to jump through hoops to get the carriers to look at his service before he could roll it out. He appeared to reflect a general dissatisfaction that entrepreneurs have with the carriers for all mobile apps: They're gatekeepers.

Rupert Young of AT&T started to answer his query by talking about the value of shielding customers from bad SMS services, and that was bad enough, but he got himself in real trouble when he started to justify the roadblocks the carriers put in front of apps developers who are trying to get their code put onto the wireless networks.

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"The thing to remember...is support," he said. People don't get tons of SMS spam in the U.S., because the carriers restrict businesses from accessing consumers directly. "Some would say it's protecting the consumer, some would say it's stifling innovation. The same is true with applications. And the end of the day, today, we take the call. If the customer installs an app on their phone that doesn't work, we take the call, not the app developer."

You could put the support cost back on the developer, as Verizon is doing. He didn't seem ready to adopt that scheme for AT&T, though. As Young said, you can "change the model and be more open to letting more innovative apps on your phone. Other than the fact that you still have to be concerned about...does the app burn the power levels on my phone? Does the app use tons of network and hit my usage caps and I don't know it? We work very closely with developers to make sure the user has a very good experience. That may slow down innovation, but I think it produces a better experience for the customer who has a limited device."

But I found the answer unsatisfying, and I said so. "You're gating innovation," I said. The audience applauded--which I was not expecting. Young, in reaction, said Apple also gated innovation, which is true, but the audience wasn't having it. Young smiled uncomfortably and barely moved his body out of the insouciant slouch that he had adopted at the start of the panel. One got the impression he knew he could not win the argument with entrepreneurs and didn't want to make himself into a target any more than he had to.

Later on in the session, we discussed a potential alternative to the restrictions that the carriers like AT&T put on new mobile apps. We talked about Where.com, an platform masquerading as an application. Developers who want to put quick geo-based apps in front of users can write widgets for the Where.com app. Users then choose those widgets from the Where.com site and their mobile phone gets access to them.

It's a workaround, but it does let developers who want to get on the mobile platform deal with a middleman developer who has already done the hard work of getting carrier approval for installation on phones, instead of having to get approval directly, which is, as Young indicated, not so easy. Plus, you don't have to deal with Young.

For developers, of course, tying one's fortunes to the success of a middleman app is not a strategy for the long term. But it is a decent way to get some exposure and to experiment with features while you wait for the carriers to figure out how to open up their platforms.

And to be fair, Young admitted that as handheld devices become more like "real computers," the support model will change and customers will take to installing and removing their own apps, as they do on the iPhone.

In the meantime, some of the carriers just aren't going to budge. If you want to get your cool new app on all the mainstream phones, there's no easy way. There are, though, other opportunities to work with the mobile carriers, if you're looking for a business to start. Watch the video for some hints.

Crowdsourcing worked for restaurant reviews, so it's got to work for testing mobile apps around the world, right?

That's the premise behind Mob4Hire, which presented at Under the Radar on Wednesday.

The pitch began with a compelling use case: You need to test the app on 20 handsets in another country where you don't have an office. Mob4Hire's Web site connects testers all over the world with developers who need their apps tested on multiple handsets and operating systems.

Mob4Hire takes a 15 percent cut, PayPal takes its customary 2.9 percent service fee plus 30 cents per transaction. The testers get paid to run the app on their phones and report what they find. With all the fees, testing this way will still cost much less than deploying a company's ranks to set up testing in other locales.

Mob4Hire doesn't have a certification program yet for testers, but that may come. Mob4Hire also has a contract with LogMeIn for letting testers get to a remote emulator.

The session judges admired the business model, but wondered if carriers would come up with their own centralized models for testing those apps they ship on phones. Here's my red flag: a shallow pool of testers who give poor feedback in uncontrolled environments for pocket change.

Buying things with your phone can be difficult. Even on modern day devices like the iPhone and the G1, you're still required to have your credit card information on hand, or use a service that lets you skip that step like PayPal or Google Checkout. Three mobile monetization companies presenting at Wednesday's Under the Radar conference are trying to change that with solutions that could make it easier to make and spend money on mobile devices.

Both Billing Revolution and Toro are trying to change the way people pay or access payment information with their devices. Billing Revolution's offering lets retailers manage payments through them, complete with mobile-friendly sales pages that are formatted for small screens. Its system is already in use on some mobile gaming services like Gameloft, Yahoo, and Jumptap, and allows for developers to add additional payment methods within their mobile applications.

Toro, on the other hand, is working on something that could be immensely useful for phones of the future. It uses near field communication (NFC) to let people pay for things and access information just like they would with the Mastercard PayPass debit cards. Phones with an NFC chip, which Toro's creators expect to hit a 30 percent market share by 2012, will simply be able to emulate systems like PayPass with customer credentials and act like a portable wallet. More importantly, it would be used in marketing to let customers opt in to ad campaigns to get discounts or special information from nearby retailers.

Mojiva, the third and final company in the panel, was the one presenter attempting to tackle mobile ads. It's a location- and keyword-based ad platform, meaning different ads can be delivered based on where you are and what you're looking at. Essentially, it's going where Google has not with its AdSense service, as well as trying to get in the door for serving up ads in both iPhone and Android applications.

To watch these companies pitch in real-time, be sure to check out the Under the Radar UStream channels, and our CoverItLive live blog.

If Bambuser's mobile live broadcasting app sounds familiar, it's because it's trying to unseat Qik.

As one of the companies presenting at Wednesday's Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA, Bambuser is trying to convince investors and future partners to propel their business forward. Like Qik, Bambuser broadcasts the contents of your view finder from your mobile phone, which viewers can watch live online. Also like Qik, Bambuser viewers can chat with the filmmaker when the video is live. However, Bambuser throws in recording and geotagging from the Webcam in addition to the phone.

As an extra touch, you can set it to update Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku when you begin a new broadcast. That makes Bambuser more feature-rich, but it has an uphill battle to unseat the rival favored by tech blogger elite Robert Scoble.

Bambuser is in public alpha mode for Symbian and Windows Mobile phones, where Qik is strongest. You can look for your model here and get started with your broadcasts.

BlackBerry users feeling left out can start video streams from Qik.

VuClip, a start-up presenting at Wednesday's Under the Radar Conference, has a simple concept, but a good one: start with any Internet-ready phone. Search for a video by keyword, then select the video from the list of returned results. VuClip transcodes the video on-the-fly for your specific phone--screen size, video format, bit rate, and so on.

Right now, two things set VuClip apart from competitors: the fact that it's designed to search for any video hosted on the Web, and that it focuses more on mass market Java phones than it does on high-end smartphones, unlike most of the content companies presenting this morning. To this end, VuClip has a native app for Java phones in addition to a mobile-optimized site you can navigate to from any phone with Internet.

In addition to searching with VuClip, you'll be able to browse by a few categories or narrow the search to a specific site by keying in the site's name before typing the search term.

I tried a quick search, and about three videos show up per page, which makes sense with screen size allowances, but which also makes navigating a bit time consuming. It's better to be specific and hope your keywords match up with your target video.

Part two of VuClip's plan is to sign up partners on the API; that will let any carrier or content provider use VuClip's service.

VuClip has harnessed about 17 million video views since launching in January 2008.

The business apps panel at Wednesday's Under the Radar mobile conference had four companies trying to solve two big problems in business: communication and sync between multiple machines.

Of the four, one of the most attractive upcoming solutions for SMBs is Phonetopp. This takes standard desktop Web demos and meetings and shrinks them down to your mobile phone. This means road warriors could get the visual part of a Web meeting without having to fire up their laptop or hunt around for a hot spot.

Phonetopp is set to hit BlackBerry and iPhone users in early February and will let you control meetings using hardware-specific shortcuts. For the iPhone, this means you can use gestures like pinch and rotate to control PowerPoint presentations. Eventually the company hopes to sync up with Salesforce, and work on Windows Mobile and Android devices.

Fellow presenter Apisphere is also onto something big for road warriors; more specifically, the people who are keeping an eye on them. Apisphere's platform can keep track of employees and their habits based on information from their mobile devices. Don't think of it like spyware though. Founder and CEO Craig Harper explained that his system could be used to track a truck and the person driving it, so if you notice one is moving without the other you can take action--like calling the police.

Two other companies from the conference are doing exciting things in sync--both in data and contacts.

Soocial, a company that features David Hasselhoff as its unofficial mascot, is trying to make contact sync for mobile phones better. It works with popular tools like Apple's address book, 37signals' Highrise, and Gmail to let you manage and sync your contacts across multiple devices. Today the company announced support for Microsoft's Outlook.

Likewise, My Boo--an OS in the cloud solution the likes of Ghost, has a different value proposition: sync that data with the computer you're using. This means if you're using your cloud OS from a coffee shop or other public computer, it will sync over all those files to your usual machine and visa versa. That's just plain smart. The service is launching in January.

We've got more hot mobile companies coming later today. Be sure to keep an eye on our CoverItLive live blog to get the tidbits as they happen.

DialPlus was one of more original start-ups presenting this morning at Under the Radar in Mountain View, Calif.

DialPlus is a native mobile app that pulls visual information from the Web before, during, or after a call to your Internet-ready mobile phone. When a friend calls you, for instance, you'll be able to see some social networking information. If you call a business, its Web site details should surface.

While it's not listed as a criterion, the app won't be of any use if you're not using an earbud or Bluetooth headset, because the contextual details display on your screen.

As one additional perk, you can send the data you see to a friend; a restaurant menu or directions were two use cases. While DialPlus will prompt your pal to download the app, contacts can also view the HTML data in their browser. Ads will be one revenue model.

I'm not loving the interface--it isn't especially attractive and looks like it could require some extensive scrolling as data fills the screen--but I do like the idea a lot. So did the judges, who rightly requested that the service more importantly pull in information about callers you don't know, like an on-the-fly caller ID. This would be immensely useful if DialPlus can find and deliver at the very least a person or organization's name before your phone kicks the call to voice mail.

DialPlus has an alpha version available for Windows Mobile phones (5 and 6) that you can download right now.

Natali Del Conte and I will be moderating some sessions at the Under the Radar: Mobility event today on new mobile app companies. You can watch the event live on this post (after the jump), or at the event organizer's own site. Or check out our livestream below for ongoing team updates from the pitch sessions.

Of the 26 new companies presenting at the show, I like almost all of them. It's a really good selection. But, as always, there are a few companies in the group that I find especially interesting. These are the five outfits I'm most interested in learning more about:

DialPlus: When you make a phone call, it retrieves information about the person you're calling from the Web (including social networks) and displays it on your screen.

iVisit: A push-to-talk video phone that works across mobile devices and standard computers.

My6sense: Takes in your social feeds, ranks them for you, and displays what it thinks will be the most relevant information from your social network on your smartphone's screen.

Nextivity: Extends cellular coverage to inside the home. Several companies are trying to win the dominant share in this market. It's more important than ever as consumers continue to dump their landlines.

Smule: This company makes dopey iPhone apps, like the Sonic Lighter, but is also developing apps that leverage its audio technology, which allows iPhones next to each other to communicate via audio tones. Like dolphins, perhaps.

The event runs from 9:00 a.m. Pacific time to 5:30 p.m. There will be two parallel tracks of presenters. Natali will be moderating Track 1 at 10:15 to 10:45 a.m. Companies in her group are Apisphere, MyBooo, PhoneTopp, and Soocial.

I'll be moderating two sessions in Track 1 from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Companies in my group: Billing Revolution, Mojiva, Toro, GotVoice, Iotum, Mobivox, Vello, 911ICE, Mob4Hire, Nextivity, and Torch Mobile.

I'll also be a judge of the one-minute Pitch Session at 1:00 p.m. and one of the co-hosts of the "Meet the Carriers" panel at 4:30.

Here's the live blog. We'll be updating it from 9:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

Live video streams after the jump...

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I saw CrowdSpring present at a recent Under the Radar conference I was moderating. I like the service a lot, because it simplifies the process of licensing creative works, and it levels the playing field so anyone can play. What it does, in a nutshell, is let people who need design work done put their requests up on the site. Then creatives compete for the jobs.

It sounds familiar, doesn't it -- like TaskMarket, Elance, and other task boards?

It's not. CrowdSpring has a radically different cashflow model. It works like this: If there's a job you want done -- say, the creation of a logo for your startup -- you post that on the site. And you pay CrowdSpring in advance, before any contractor has even seen at your req. Wait, it gets better.

The creatives who want to earn the fee don't go through the process of marketing themselves to you to earn the right to work on your project. Rather, they do the work up front, submitting their work, in public, to the job page that's on the site.

Once you pick the work you like, rights to it transfer to you and the artist gets paid.

Let's review: Clients pay for their work up front. Artists do the work before they have the contract. CrowdSpring collects the float.

It's the ultimate in weasel economics. But it works. Check out some of the closed jobs on the site - the quality of the work is quite good, there's a lot of variety to choose from, and customers are paying bargain prices.

I wouldn't recommend CrowdSpring for complex jobs or secret projects, but it's a good tool for simple creative tasks. And if you find a contractor you like on the system, you are of course free to hire them for a longer engagement.

I hope, but am not convinced, that CrowdSpring can stay as good as it is today. An existing and larger task market, like Elance, could add a CrowdSpring-like assignment option, giving designers and clients exposure to a larger selection of business partners. CrowdSpring does have two things going for it, though: First, a purity of purpose that shows itself in a simple and easy-to-use marketplace. And second, there are apparently people out there willing to do creative work based only for the hope of getting paid. I'm wondering now how many other new businesses can be built to leverage this desperation.