mobile

Another day and $150 million later, another open-source company has vanished into the bowels of the proprietary world, as Nokia on Monday announced its intention to buy open-source mobile company Trolltech. Tim O'Reilly may have been right: it may well be that most of the open-source commercial world is going to dissipate into the proprietary ether.

Who will change the world if the old world devours the new world?

For Nokia, the deal opens up the mobile landscape further:

The acquisition of Trolltech will enable Nokia to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business.… Read more

Sometime around 1990, Data General (who I worked for at the time) came out with a portable terminal called the Walkabout. The idea was that it would let people check their e-mail from the road using the built-in modem and terminal emulator, while being lighter and cheaper than the portable computers of the day. It wasn't as silly an idea as it might seem today--lots of people still used terminals rather than PCs at the time--but, like the DG/One, it was ahead of the hardware curve, and pricey.

Fast forward to 2007. Palm announced the Foleo as a … Read more

China Mobile will start requiring prepaid phone customers to show ID when buying SIM (subscriber identity module) cards, the company's general manager announced.

The anonymity of phone service for Shenzhouxing (prepaid) customers, which ChinaTechNews says account for 70 percent of all users, made it important to hold on to your original SIM documentation in case you lose the phone. If you lose the SIM and its number, as far as I know, you can't get your number back.

This comes at a time when China Mobile will also begin allowing number portability among its services (but not with … Read more

Sybase hit the $1 billion revenue mark in posting its year-end results Thursday--and we're not talking the number of hamburgers served, either.

But is meeting its milestone mark of $1 billion in revenues, along with soundly beating analysts' fourth quarter revenue and earnings forecasts, (as noted by The Street.com), enough to fight off a proxy battle with one of its largest shareholders, Sandell Asset Management.

Sandell wants Sybase to consider selling off its mobility business in an IPO, or even unloading all or part of the company via a sale. And to push the issue, Sandell wants to … Read more

After being in private beta for the last three months, Playyoo is opening its doors for everyone this morning. The site is aimed at casual gamers who like playing games on their mobile phones. Like Kongregate, game developers can show off their wares and interact directly with the people playing them. Better yet, anyone without programming knowledge can use Playyoo's WYSIWYG game creator tool to create one of six game presets of simple games like pairs, tic tac toe, snake, and ping-pong. While the amount of customizations on these gaming presets is fairly limited, the titles uploaded by real game developers tend to have a little more depth. Developers with existing projects can simply port them over with a Playyoo-supplied template for Flash 8 Pro or CS3.

In terms of cost, if users find a game they like, they can download it to their mobile phones free of charge. The entire service is run by advertising, which shows up both on the site and on the games when you start them up.

What I really like about Playyoo is that it supplies each user with a customized "game stream" that can be tweaked similar to Facebook's newsfeed so that certain game genres show up more or less than others (get a peek at this after the jump). It makes it easy to discover new content as it comes in. Likewise, Playyoo users can send recommendations to one another if they come across something cool or worth playing.

Playyoo currently supports a pretty massive variety of phones. It's also nice enough to let you know how many games out of the entire library your phone can handle, along with providing a bandwidth limiter you can set to automatically cut you off of after burning through a set limit of data. While the graphics of the titles may not blow your socks off (like the upcoming Vollee service) you can't beat the price, and the potential for the game creator Web app is promising for folks like me with little to no coding skills.

More screens after the jump.… Read more

Attention Samsung BlackJack owners, starting today at 2 p.m., PST, you'll finally be able to get upgrade your current device to Windows Mobile 6. The update will be available as a free desktop download from Samsung's Web site and brings such enhancements as the full Microsoft Office Mobile Suite for viewing and editing documents, more robust calendaring, and support for HTML e-mail. You'll also get added capability for AT&T Video Share, the carrier's video-calling service.

You can download the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade here but again, please remember that it won't be … Read more

If you've been thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if Yahoo updated its mobile app, and someone made a video to point out the main features?," you're in luck, because they did, and we did. Yahoo announced Yahoo Go 3.0 beta at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in mid-January, which stands out from its predecessor with an improved interface and new capabilities. Read the hands-on review or watch the First Look video below to see what they are.

>>See all First Look videos

Article updated and corrected on January 22, 2008 at 3:10 pm PST.

Microsoft and Zumobi, a content distribution platform for mobile phones, announced on Tuesday a partnership that will preload Zumobi (download here) on select Windows Mobile phones.

Zumobi's downloadable app (available now for Windows Mobile 5 and 6) offers an interface of 16 tiles to help users access key content quickly. Each tile is a widget that's entirely programmed by developers and partners--like Amazon.com, Flickr, and AP Sports--and which is subject to advertising banners. Zumobi's big innovation is the navigation that zooms into tiles … Read more

If Sex and the City popularized the punishments of urban dating, IceBrkr, a London start-up, offers a chance to get through them less battered and bruised.

The Web site, designed to be accessed from desktops and mobile phones, keeps a guest list of IceBrkr members frequenting a select London hot spot, like pub, club, coffee shop, or bar on a given evening. Subscribing singles can spy who's coming, then send text messages to other guys and gals whose online pictures catch their fancy, and await a request to approach or to politely scram.

IceBrkr's free SMS method may … Read more