Personal communications

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Research In Motion launched its application store--dubbed BlackBerry App World--and the pricing model will immediately draw comparisons to Apple's App Store setup. That comparison, however, only goes so far.

For starters, App World's pricing model has raised a bit of a ruckus because it veers a bit from Apple's scheme. But a business audience isn't going to sweat a $2.99 application compared with a 99 cent minimum-price app. And RIM's audience is likely to even pay higher prices, if the App World … Read more

Palm may have wowed the public with the demonstration of the Pre, but unfortunately for the company, no one can buy it yet.

The company announced Tuesday that its third fiscal quarter will be dismal, as had been expected. But it will be even worse than Wall Street had thought: Palm expects to record between $85 million and $90 million in revenue for the quarter that ended last week. Analysts had been expecting Palm would take in $157 million during the quarter.

It's a simple story for Palm: although it debuted to rave reviews, the Pre isn't ready, … Read more

It's no secret that Sprint isn't enjoying the best of the times at the moment. Though the carrier narrowed its loss in the fourth quarter of 2008, it lost 1.3 million subscribers during the same period.

As that loss is far from an isolated incident, it's not surprising Sprint is now offering existing customers a $100 referral fee for bringing new subscribers to the carrier. All you need to do is enter the names and e-mail addresses of up 12 of your friends on a special Web site. Sprint will send the chosen few an e-mail … Read more

An iPhone app developer is donating to a nonprofit for each sale made, in what is believed to be a first.

Appropriately, the app is called ShiveringKittens and the charity is the ASPCA, which works to protect cruelty to animals.

For every sale of the $2.99 app during March and April the developer, GiantCrayon Games, will donate $1 to the ASPCA.

In the game, players arrange falling blocks to rescue animated kittens who are stuck in a Minnesota winter and win points. A video preview is on YouTube.

If only rescuing real kittens were that simple.

T-Mobile is being a bit cagey on the subject, but everyone else is saying that the carrier is expanding its $50-per-month unlimited voice plan. It will now be available on a nationwide basis for customers who have been with T-Mobile 22 months or longer.

Launched just two weeks ago, the plan originally was available to San Francisco customers only. T-Mobile has yet to make a formal statement acknowledging the expansion, and a carrier spokesman wouldn't confirm the move with RCR Wireless News, but two of the publication's reporters were able to sign up for the plan in different … Read more

Updated at 10:15 PST Tuesday, March 3, with comment from Nokia.

Technical problems with the U.S. version of the newly launched Nokia 5800 music mobile phone have led flagship stores in New York and Chicago to pull the model, according to PC World. For now, U.S. customers have to settle for a European version instead.

Nokia announced the new Nokia 5800 Xpress Music's availability in the United States Friday. Positioned as a rival to Apple's iPhone, the phone is a music device with a touch-screen interface, priced at $399 before taxes and subsidies in the … Read more

Mobile developers who purchased an unlocked HTC G1 phone from Google discovered this week that they can't run paid applications from the Android Market.

Google is denying those developers access to copy-protected applications sold in the Android Market because developers have a higher level of access to the G1 phone than regular users, and could potentially break the copy protection on those applications, according to IDG News Service. "We aren't distributing copy-protected applications to these phones in order to minimize unauthorized copy of the applications," a Google representative said in a statement sent to CNET.

Developers … Read more

eBay's Skype Internet telephony service remains a hugely popular, highly efficient way to communicate with colleagues and family all over the world at a free or very low cost per call.

With the addition of a new feature allowing your Skype To Go number to be used to make outbound calls from any landline or mobile phone, it just got a lot easier and cheaper to dial internationally. This service also ratchets up Skype's ability to better monetize a massive but largely unpaid user base:

A Skype To Go number lets you make superlow-cost international calls from mobiles … Read more

Verizon Wireless and LG on Wednesday officially announced the LG Versa, saying the modular touch-screen phone will be available as of March 1. The Versa is so named for its promised versatility--it will come with different attachments so that you can customize the phone to your liking.

For starters, the Versa will come with an attachable QWERTY keyboard for easier texting. If you prefer to go without the keyboard, the Versa is still usable as a standalone touch-screen phone, especially with its generous 3-inch diagonal display.

The Versa's display also boasts an animated 3D interface, plus you can customize three different home screens with three different layouts of your choosing. There's also a full HTML Web browser that supports Flash(!) and RSS feeds, and you can keep up to three browser windows open at one time. The Versa also has a built-in accelerometer. The QWERTY keyboard attachment has a small, monochrome, external, organic, LED screen on the back, too.… Read more