mobile

What do you do if you're billed as a business professional's Facebook, and a substantial portion of your more than 19 million members are jet-setting business types with fancy mobile phones and jobs that lend themselves to schmoozing? You build a mobile Web site so they can invite contacts as they meet them or identify in real life those they already have.

That was the impetus behind LinkedIn's mobile beta. (That and the fact that all the other social networks have mobile Web sites, too.) It's a good move for the social network, whose CEO, Dan … Read more

Mobile phone maker Motorola has named Paul Liska, a former private equity executive, as chief financial officer, the company said late Thursday.

Liska, who had been a partner for private equity firms including MidOcean Partners, CVC Capital Holdings and Ripplewood Holdings, will take the top finance spot at the company starting March 1. He will replace acting CFO Tom Meredith, and he'll report directly to Chief Executive Officer Greg Brown.

Brown became CEO in January after former CEO Ed Zander was forced to step down amid pressure from investors due to the company's worsening financial situation.

Motorola has … Read more

T-Mobile USA said Thursday it's testing a new Internet telephony service in Dallas and Seattle that will replace consumers' wireline home phone service.

Subscribers will be able to connect any regular home telephone to a T-Mobile router that will send calls over the Internet much the same way as services like Vonage operate. The service costs $10 a month plus taxes and fees for unlimited domestic local and long distance calls. But customers also have to be signed up for a T-Mobile wireless service costing at least $39.99 a month. The required router, which also provides access to … Read more

If fashion designers are willing to stake their reputations on cable boxes, audio servers, and hard drives, then it should be a no-brainer to do a phone for kids. And thankfully, France-based Sagem didn't fall back on the usual cheap toy look that curses so many children's gadgets.

Instead, it commissioned artist Lulu Castagnette to design the My411C handset, which looks pretty much like a grown-up mobile phone except for an external display that's cut out in a teddy bear silhouette. As Uberphones points out, the rest of its features are anything but remarkable, though that obviously … Read more

Regardless of how one feels about pink, there has been a glaring omission from the mobile phones shaded in that most popular of pastels. This dire circumstance has apparently been remedied, however, with the unveiling of the "Pink iPhone."

It's a custom job, which is reflected in its $800 price, though Gizmodiva notes that it may just be hype for a marketing campaign that's supposedly giving one away for free. Still, given the popularity of pink handsets, it probably wouldn't have too much trouble selling if it's legit. Yet one can't help but … Read more

I wish I could say that Diet.com's new Nutrition on the Go service only appeals to obsessive health nuts. But if that's true, then I am one. I was pretty excited about the possibilities...until I tried it.

The concept is pretty simple: You text the name of a restaurant and the menu item you're interested in to DIET1, or 34381. In theory, the site returns the nutritional information for the food you entered, including calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein. If you're doing Weight Watchers, you can add "Points" or even "pts&… Read more

I like Cellfire, a mobile coupons app that's optimized for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, and has a WAP site for cell phones (www.cellfire.com from your phone's browser.) They've got a smart business plan, good partnerships, and wide accessibility to users through support for multiple carriers and platforms.

Too bad some of the national offerings are so pedestrian, such as Cellfire's partnerships with Supercuts and Extreme Pita, announced Wednesday. That's only mundane if you're a snob like me. If you're most people, Cellfire's deals with local, regional, and national retailers … Read more

Today, we actually get it right! We sucker in Tom Merritt to talk about Amy Winehouse's drunken badness, a guy gets denied an all-star game marriage proposal, unlimited cell phone minutes, and N+, like stick figure lemmings...but for Xbox 360, and Pimp My Ride for Wii. Listen in on the fun!

Listen now: Download today's podcast

If you want to see people get lit up about a service that they hate, but can't live without, ask them about their mobile phones.

Never mind the dropped calls or the death-grip lock-in, just the outrageous cost is enough to send people into a rage. So, today when Verizon and T-mobile both introduced new flat rate price plans (which are very appealing to heavy users) I would have thought that this would be viewed as a good thing--helping to retain the more valuable customers. Instead, analysts whined that this would undercut pricing. To an extent it will effect … Read more