mobility

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

Ahh, would that Microsoft really were adding an easy button to its Windows Mobile software. But alas, Microsoft is only announcing that it has hired one of the marketing executives behind Staples "easy button" campaign.

Todd Peters, who has also worked at Intel, joined Microsoft on Monday as corporate vice president for Windows Mobile Marketing, reporting to mobile-business head Peter Knook. Peters fills the spot created after Suzan Del Bene left last August.

"Microsoft is gaining a real foothold with its mobile products and services in the consumer world," Peters said in a statement. "I … Read more

If we were editors for a thesaurus, "brag" would become a synonym for "concept." Companies tease consumers all the time with digital renderings of products that never see the light of day. This is why it came as quite a surprise that Polymer Vision, a spinoff from Dutch company Philips, has committed to selling its Readius mobile phone with a rollout display.

This mobile phone is not much bigger than your average candy-bar handset but still manages to include a 5-inch display that can be folded out to one side. The screen is a monochrome one (… Read more

If you frequent trade shows or spend a lot of time making new business contacts, you invariably wind up with stacks of business cards and the tedious task of adding the info to your contact manager. A card scanner can speed up the process considerably; now's your chance to scoop one up for $16.99, shipped, after a $60 mail-in rebate.

The Plustek OptiCard 820 is a portable color scanner designed for business cards and photos up to 4x6 inches. It weighs just under 7 ounces and draws power from your PC's USB port, so there's no … Read more