Webware

(Credit: Google)

Google released a new version of the free Google Mobile App for Symbian Series 60 (S60) phones on Monday. The update gives phone owners the ability to press the Talk button and speak search terms into the phone. While a new feature to the S60 operating system, users on other platforms, like BlackBerry and iPhone, have been able to turn speech into search results for some time.

The new Google Mobile App shows up as a shortcut widget on the Nokia home screen, which makes sounding out searches on those Nokia N and E series handsets faster than on other mobile platforms, where you must open the Google Mobile App to begin a search.

Whether you talk or type, Google Mobile App uses GPS or cell tower triangulation to fill in your location and find the closest whatever-it-is nearby. This is consistent with Google Mobile App for other platforms, though Windows Mobile is the only other one that also uses the home screen plug-in.

In addition to adding digital ears to search, Google has made them more global. Mandarin Chinese has joined Google's speech recognition database, so Nokia seekers can speak queries in English or in Mandarin. Google warns that the Mobile App is better at distinguishing certain accents better than others; a Beijing lilt may search more successfully than southern-flavored speech, for instance.

Mandarin recognition is currently only available for Nokia phones, but Google says in an official blog post that they're working to expand the capability to other mobile platforms, like Google Android and iPhone. Also, not every S60 owner can take advantage of the new Google Mobile App, only those running version 3. The app is not yet supported on touch screen phones, which run version 5 of the system software.

You can download Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 by pointing the mobile browser to http://m.google.com.

The mobile browser space is heating up again, with some significant new releases such as Opera Mini 5 beta and Internet Explorer Mobile 6. Mozilla jumps in, too, releasing Fennec 1.0 beta 4 for Maemo this week.

If you haven't heard of Maemo, it's Nokia's platform for Internet devices. This Fennec beta brings us ever closer to a stable version of the in-development Firefox mobile browser for Nokia Internet Tablets. Nokia's Internet devices are just the beginning, though. Support for the legions of Nokia's smartphones would presumably follow, as would work on the version of Fennec for Windows Mobile phones, currently in an inchoate alpha 3 stage.

The beta 4 release adds some specific adjustments and bug fixes, especially around the add-on, bookmark, and download managers. Here's the full list, courtesy of Mozilla:

• Improved touch-friendly theme
• Improved panning and zooming performance and behavior
• Add search providers from the site identity panel
• Manage search providers from the Add-ons Manager
• Simplified the Download Manager (removed searching and find file on disk)
• Streamlined the bookmarking process
• Simplified the bookmark management
• Pop-up notification when background tabs open
• Bookmark list now displays the URL and tags associated with a bookmark
• Added a product information page (about:fennec or use the button in Preferences)
• Support for add-ons options in the Add-on Manager
• Support for updating add-ons
• Support for the HandheldFriendly meta-tag (support for the viewport meta-tag is coming)

Nokia announced Monday that it has acquired "social atlas" service Dopplr for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition isn't much of a surprise. Last week, reports surfaced claiming the deal was already done, but neither Dopplr nor Nokia would confirm it at the time. Those same reports suggested that Nokia would acquire Dopplr for $15 million to $22 million, but the official announcement did not mention an acquisition price.

Neither Dopplr nor Nokia immediately responded to request for comment.

Dopplr allows users to create trips and share them with friends. The service also provides users with help on each leg of their trip, providing tips and advice on hotels and restaurants. Aside from a Web site, Dopplr is available as an iPhone app. It's also integrated into social services such as Flickr and Twitter.

Nokia said that it doesn't plan to alter Dopplr. In a statement announcing the acquisition, Nokia said that "the acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service." Dopplr founder Marko Ahtisaari echoed that sentiment.

Dopplr's CEO, Marko Ahtisaari

(Credit: Dopplr)

TechCrunch is reporting that Nokia has just acquired social travel start-up Dopplr. The rumored acquisition price is between 10 million and 15 million Euros, which is around $15 million to $22 million.

In an effort to stop the bleeding at the cell phone giant, Nokia has been acquiring a string of smaller companies. With intense competition from Apple's iPhone and RIM's Blackberry, Nokia has been struggling to keep pace in the mobile industry. Om Malik compares the acquisition spree at Nokia to what we have seen at Yahoo in the last few years.

It will be interesting to see how Dopplr as a service fits into Nokia's strategy. It's unclear at this point if it wants the business as it exists, its technology, or its talent. Dopplr has a fairly small, but hardcore user base and has intense competition from companies like TripIt, so it is a curious acquisition choice. If it keeps the service intact at all, look for Nokia to roll out a mobile version of Dopplr out as an exclusive app on their devices.

A chief rival to Opera Mobile in the cell phone browser space, Skyfire has released a new version for Windows Mobile (touchscreen | non-touchscreen) and Nokia's Symbian-run E or N series phones. Version 1.1 makes some minor, but still welcome, improvements to navigation and performance.

My favorite is that you'll now be able to punch the "2" and "8" key on keypad- or keyboard-equipped phones to navigate up and down. Pressing the asterisk (*) will jump you to the joint address/search bar. Of course, this may not work identically on phones with nonstandard keypad arrangements.

Web surfers will also notice that Skyfire may now show a Web site's mobile version more often than before. Behind the change are new WAP features that detect mobile sites better. In addition, Skyfire's browser will zoom in on the page automatically, saving you a step. The new treatment won't work for sites, like Yahoo's mobile.yahoo.com, that use "mobile" as part of a URL intended to be viewed from the desktop.

Behind the scenes, Skyfire's mobile browser also received updates for Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight, all which give the browser the edge in streaming videos. Other tweaks and fixes are designed to speed up the time it takes for a page to load, and quicken scrolling on Nokia phones. Skyfire's blog has a full list of changes.

Skyfire mobile browser is free to all users. You can also download it over the air by pointing a different mobile browser to http://get.skyfire.com. If you're an existing user who can weather a short wait, Skyfire will push the update to your phone. This should save you having to reconfigure all of RSS and social networking feeds.

Article updated at 12:15 am PT with a clarification on how mobile site detection works.

Nokia has signed an agreement to acquire Cellity, a small German company that creates social-network contact management and address book aggregation services for mobile devices.

Cellity's 14 workers will become Nokia employees. But the service will be shut down and existing user accounts will not be transferred to Nokia.

Cellity, which was founded less than three years ago, is based in Hamburg.

Terms of the deal have not been made public. The acquisition is expected to close in the current quarter.

Acquiring small start-ups is nothing new for Nokia. It acquired Plazes last year while the locator start-up was still in private beta, for example. The mobile conglomerate also has a history of willingness to rebrand. After acquiring a media-sharing site called Twango several years ago, Nokia ditched the start-up's moniker and folded it into a new software division called Ovi.

Imagine uploading your photos from your digital camera and from your mobile phone to Facebook and Flickr using the same software interface. Now imagine downloading a YouTube video to your phone by clicking a browser bookmarklet. You can do both in Dazzboard, a new media Webtop in open beta that fast-tracks your photos, songs, and videos to and from your mobile device to your computer or the online world.

There is a catch: the USB leash. You've got to plug the device into the computer via USB. The trade-off is being able to manage the phone's media content from a computer dashboard, which is infinitely more comfortable than managing it from the device's tiny interface. If you're not on the move, dashboards like Dazzboard offer most of the convenience of mobile management, and are overall much easier on the eye.

Here's how Dazzboard plays out. After registering for a free account, plug your device--like your mobile phone, digital MP3 player, or Sony PSP (or all three in succession)--into the computer by way of a USB cable. You may need to switch some devices, like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones, into mass storage mode for this to work (see FAQs). Dazzboard's "universal" device manager recognizes the device and lets you bilaterally interact with music, photos, and videos. You can upload content to the Web or to the PC, or quickly transfer media from your computer or from the Web to your device.

Songs on the Android G1.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Article updated 6/5/09 at 8:05am PSTwith more information about countries of availability.

(Credit: Google)

Nokia S60 users can finally bypass the browser and start Google searches from the same application that most other smartphone users have been using for months. The free Google Mobile App has arrived on Nokia S60 phones.

As with CNET Editors' Choice winner Google Mobile App on BlackBerry, this Symbian build places a search bar at its heart. The search bar supports search suggestions, history, and edits to the history, all of which saves you typing on subsequent searches for similar topics. Submitted searches return results in the default browser.

The search bar is flanked on the top by icons for Gmail, Google Maps for Mobile, YouTube, and Picasa Web albums. Clicking either of the first three will launch each separate native app if you've got it installed, or will install it for the first time if you don't have it. A 'more" button fast tracks you to online versions of Goog 411, Google Reader, Google SMS, and Orkut.

The final feature in this approachable and endlessly useful app is the My Location feature that uses the phone's GPS or cell tower triangulation to guess your general neighborhood. With it activated, Google can automatically localize your searches, which takes typing your city or zip code off your hands.

You can launch Google Mobile App from Nokia's Today screen by pressing the phone's "back" key. Users can opt out by disabling the quick launch hot key in the app's Setting menu.

Get Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 by visiting m.google.com from your mobile browser, or mobile.google.com from a desktop. It is available for handsets used in Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russian Federation, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Finland, Hong Kong, Macao, Norway, Portugal, Taiwan, and Sweden.

(Credit: Skype)

BARCELONA--Skype is racking up deals with mobile handset makers here at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009.

On Tuesday, the company, which is owned by eBay, announced a partnership with Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, to put the Skype Internet calling software onto its phones. Nokia will initially offer Skype on its high-end smartphones, the N-series. The N97, Nokia's flagship device that goes on sale in June, will be the first to have Skype embedded. The Skype feature will start shipping on the device in the third quarter of 2009.

Skype will be integrated into the N97 address book, enabling users to see when Skype contacts are online. It will also let people use Skype's instant-messaging client. Most importantly, N97 users will be able to make free and low-cost phone calls over the Internet whether they are on a 3G cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. The Skype-to-Skype voice calls are free. And the SkypeOut service, which allows calls from Skype to landlines and mobile devices, offers low rates.

Nokia's not the only handset maker to announce a deal with Skype at Mobile World Congress. On Monday, Sony Ericsson announced it would be offering a Skype "panel" on the Windows Mobile Xperia1 device.

Adding Skype to smartphones is a great benefit for consumers, especially people who travel internationally or have friends and family overseas. While pricing on domestic voice services has been dropping like a brick from a third-story window, international rates have remained high.

As a consumer who likes to travel and who happens to be traveling internationally right now for this trade show, I am annoyed and almost angered at the outrageous prices mobile operators charge when customers roam in other countries or make international calls from the U.S. They all try to sell "international" plans to help defray the cost, but the plans themselves cost consumers an extra fee every month regardless of whether they're traveling that month or not.

Skype and other VoIP services offer users a more cost-effective alternative. And Skype on a mobile phone, when accessed on a low-cost data network, could help people who travel frequently or make lots of international calls save tons of money.

Of course, the two smartphone makers Skype has announced as partners here are manufacturers that are already struggling to get their high-end devices on American mobile networks. And my guess is that adding Skype won't do much to convince these operators to offer these phones and subsidize them so that American consumers will buy them.

The reason is pretty simple. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA know that a wide-scale deployment of Skype on their phones could cannibalize their international voice services and potentially hurt their domestic voice service.

So if by chance, Nokia or Sony Ericsson manages to win approval from a U.S. operator to get these phones on their networks, I wouldn't be surprised if the Skype feature is stripped from the device in the U.S. version.

That said, AT&T is allowing some voice over IP applications to appear on Apple's iPhone App Store. And Skype users are able to make free and low-cost calls through applications, such as Truphone. But for now, AT&T and Apple seem hesitant to allow Skype's powerful brand, which has more than 400 million registered users, to make it onto the iPhone.