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RIM's BlackBerry App World is slowly but surely gaining ground as a storefront for distributing BlackBerry applications. eBay is the latest major company to forge a presence in the storefront, in the form of an eBay app for BlackBerry auctioneers in the U.S. and Canada.

The official eBay for BlackBerry application, which was co-developed by eBay and RIM, includes features to search for, track, and buy an item from the smartphone. Unsurprisingly, the eBay app accepts PayPal payments--PayPal has not only been an eBay company since 2002, it is also currently the only payment system for purchasing BlackBerry apps through the App World.

(Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

In addition to letting users search and buy, the eBay app will notify you of your bidding status, including when you've won or lost a bid. It can also schedule auction-related reminders in the BlackBerry calendar.

eBay's app isn't the first of its kind for the BlackBerry platform. Earlier this year, Bonfire Media released U.S. and international versions of its app, Pocket Auctions for eBay. Since Pocket Auctions doesn't include hooks into the phone's native calendar, and costs $10, we're guessing that most eBay fans will easily pick the free, official app over Bonfire Media's third-party offering.

We got a brief demo of the then-under-wraps eBay app at the BlackBerry Developer Conference earlier this month. We liked the ease of the PayPal integration, but we won't really know how well the app works until we've spent some time with it. Tune back for our first impressions.

Google coupons now available on the go.

(Credit: Google)

Google has been giving companies in its business listings ways to offer digital coupons to visitors since 2007. It wasn't until this week, though, that Google could bring the same coupons to mobile users.

It works like this: Businesses add a coupon to their listing in Google's Local Business Center. When you search a Google local listing from your Internet-enabled phone, any available coupons show up. As with other mobile coupon sites and applications, you'll simply present your phone face at the check-out stand. The checker will enter in the coupon bar code and you'll get your discount.

Google's mobile expansion of its digital coupons brings the search and advertising giant in direct competition with coupon providers like Coupons.com, Coupon Sherpa, Cellfire, and Yowza. With the exception of Yowza, which is a mobile-only application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, each service has a mobile coupons site and at least an iPhone app. Yelp has also jumped into the mobile deal business by letting businesses place special offers to Yelp users on Yelp.com and in its iPhone app.

Users' biggest complaints with mobile coupons tend to boil down to one thing: variety. While national chains are easier (and generally more effective) for a coupon service to sign, millions of other shoppers may prefer discounts for local or specialized brands, restaurants, and stores. Any business model that can capitalize on a self-service coupon sign-up for local and national businesses should have the upper hand.

So long as mobile shoppers navigate to Google's site from their cell phone browsers, Google's coupon business should grow. After all, Google isn't creating a brand-new business for digital deal distribution, but extending one that's already in place.

(Credit: HP)

This post was updated on 11/24, 12:33 p.m., PT with pricing after rebate.

Well, here's a name we haven't heard in the smartphone space for a while, HP. The company announced on Tuesday the upcoming availability of its latest smartphone, the HP iPaq Glisten, which will arrive in the "coming weeks" for AT&T and cost $179.99 with a two-year contract and after a $50 mail-in rebate.

Designed with business users in mind, the iPaq Glisten runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Edition and features a 2.5-inch AMOLED touch screen as well as a full QWERTY keyboard. The smartphone also offers 3G support (UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2100), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

Despite the business focus, you do get a 3.1-megapixel camera with HP Photosmart Mobile software for editing photos. A Facebook app is also preloaded on the device so you can upload photos directly to the social-networking site or post them to the Web via Snapfish.

Other highlights include Voice Commander software, a 3.5mm headphone jack, 32GB of expandable memory (256MB SDRAM/512MB Flash), and a high-capacity 1590 lithium ion user-replaceable battery.

The HP iPaq Glisten will be sold through AT&T business channels, HP, and third-party online retailers.

Samsung Omnia II

(Credit: Samsung)

On Monday, Verizon Wireless announced that it will offer the Samsung Omnia II starting December 2 for $199.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

First introduced in early June, the Omnia II will take over for its predecessor, the Samsung Omnia, and brings a number of enhancements and new features, such as a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED touch screen and Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Edition.

The Omnia II will sport Samsung's TouchWiz interface, allowing you to customize the home screen with various widgets and shortcuts and includes a similar 3D cube interface like the Samsung Behold II. In addition, Samsung has included a virtual QWERTY keyboard with Swype technology, which allows you to input text with a continuous swiping motion onscreen. (Check out a video demo here.)

Other goodies of the Samsung Omnia II include a 5-megapixel camera, support for DivX and Xvid movie files, 8GB of internal memory (expandable up to 16GB), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Opera 9.5.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Last Sunday, Palm and Sprint released their second WebOS device together, the Palm Pixi, for $99.99 with a two-year contract.

In the grand scheme of things, $100 for a smartphone is a pretty darn good deal, but when you consider the fact that there are other products out there with more power and more features (for example, Wi-Fi) for the same price or lower, it makes the Pixi look foolish. Fortunately, thanks to third-party retailers, you can now get the entry-level smartphone for much less.

Both Amazon and Wal-Mart have lowered the price of the Palm Pixi by 75 percent, so now the smartphone is only $24.99. You will still need to sign up for a two-year service agreement, but it's certainly a much more enticing offer. In addition, the Palm Pre is now available from Amazon for $79.99, which is $70 less than Sprint's price.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

The Twitter service with the cutesy raccoon mascot is making a new home on BlackBerry and Google Android phones. The free Seesmic, like its proliferate rivals, lets you read, manage, and compose Twitter messages much more flexibly than you can do from Twitter's Web site. We crash-tested both mobile versions as soon as we heard the news.

Seesmic on Android
Seesmic 1.0 for Android is available from the Android Market app, which is located on the smartphone. It takes up just over 1MB. The interface spreads four tabs along the top in both landscape and portrait mode, one each for the timeline, replies, direct messages, and your profile. There's also a ribbon on the screen that you can tap to refresh the feed. Click to open a tweet and you can save it as a favorite, retweet, or reply as a public "@" message or as a private posting. From the menu button, you can refresh, compose, or tinker with the settings.

Although Seesmic's Android interface is much more stripped down than its desktop AIR app for Windows and Mac, the app manages to remain flexible by giving you a choice over the kinds of notifications you'd like to receive, and over the partner services you'd prefer to use to send a photo, video, or shorten a URL.

Sure, it's blurry (blaming the BlackBerry camera), but squint hard enough and you'll see that Seesmic associated a picture with my account that's not actually my face.

(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The biggest flaws we've noticed so far? ... Read more

Starting Friday, Verizon Wireless customers can purchase the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530 in stores and online for $99.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

As the CDMA kin to the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520, the Curve 8530 is more of an entry-level device so you won't find some of the higher-end features found on the BlackBerry Tour, such as world roaming capabilities and a high-resolution display.

However, the Curve 8530 certainly brings some worthy upgrades to the aging Curve 8330, including a next-gen processor, an optical trackpad, and dedicated media controls, and one key feature that even the Tour lacks: integrated Wi-Fi.

On paper, it seems RIM has another crowd-pleaser on its hands, but we have some reservations about the phone's design and Verizon also happens to have another capable messaging smartphone in its lineup, the HTC Ozone, which offers the same features plus world roaming and costs $50 less.

RIM shipped us a Curve 8530 to check out, but it didn't include all the software that would ship on the final version, so we'll hold off on posting a review and verdict till we get a final product. In the meantime, however, you can read some of our first impressions in our hands-on photo gallery below and get a better 360 view of the phone in our First Look video. Stay tuned for more.

Verizon RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530 (photos)

How do you like this screen size?

(Credit: Photo by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Strap an Apple iPhone to Dr. Frankenstein's slab and you might wind up with something like this larger-than-life "iPhone" we spotted Thursday at a tech event in Silicon Valley.

Mellmo, the company behind the Roambi (review) spreadsheet visualizer app for iPhone, commissioned an undisclosed designer to give life to this giant faux-iPhone. Although we're not sure who the mastermind is, we do know a bit about the construction. The mammoth touch-screen device is made of a large touch-sensitive computer encased with plastic that's been cast in the shape of the iPhone's rounded-rectangular body. Mellmo runs the Flash version of its Roambi app on the screen.

While the iPhone's classic home screen dimple isn't operational on this massive build, event-goers can walk right up and navigate the screen with their hands. Sorry, guys, no pinch and zoom.

Mellmo wouldn't say how much it costs to supersize an iPhone, but we're pretty sure it isn't subsidized by AT&T.

(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET)

For those of you who have been chomping at the bit to get your hands on the Nokia N900, your wait is over. We just hope you've been saving up for it this whole time.

The highly anticipated Nokia N900 is now on sale in the U.S. for an unlocked price of $649. It's available at Nokia's flagship stores in New York and Chicago as well as online from Nokia and other retailers, such as Amazon.

Running on the Linux-based Maemo platform, the N900 is the next evolution of Nokia's Internet Tablet series and offers a heap of new features and functionality. For one thing, unlike previous devices such as the N810, you now get phone capabilities as well as 3G support (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; WCDMA 900/1700/2100). It also has one of the most powerful browsers we've seen with support for Adobe Flash Player 9.4 and AJAX.

In addition, the compact slider offers a full QWERTY keyboard, a 3.5-inch WVGA (800x480) resistive touch screen, and four customizable home screens. Other highlights include a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and multitasking capabilities that rivals those on the Palm Pre.

We got a chance to check it out in person at CTIA Fall 2009 and were instantly enamored with the device. Since then we've been begging and pleading Nokia for a review unit and the company has assured us that it's coming soon, so we hope to have a full review for you shortly. In the meantime, you can read some of our hands-on impressions in the photo gallery below.

Nokia N900 photos