Free Cell Phones

KTLA Reporter Eric Spillman went down to the local iPhone line on Friday to cover it for his station. His version of coverage consisted of standing next to the line and asking hard hitting questions such as "Have any of these people ever seen a naked woman before?" not to anyone in particular, but to the camera. Not that I'm against making fun of geeks, but such an unoriginal and unfunny approach just set him up to be called out. When he finally did approach someone in line, the whole thing got a little more awkward. Kudos to the guy in line for making Spillman look even more stupid. [Eric Appel]

It's not even a year old, but the Treo 755p is already being axed by Verizon to make way for the Centro. However, it will not die in vain. You can now score the phone from Verizon for $100 with a 2-year contract. [Verizon via Treocentral]

It seems like common sense—if drivers have two hands on the wheel they are less likely to get in an accident on the road. Therefore, all states should adopt a hands-free law when it comes to driving and cellphone use. However, there are studies out there that suggest hands-free driving with a Bluetooth headset is as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. Whether that is true or not, there is still the problem of implementing the law in such a way that it becomes a truly effective deterrent. So, despite these potential shortcomings, do you support hands free laws?

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If you have been busted by the hands-free law, Bluetooth headset companies are already doing promotions aimed at offenders. (Although, you can type in any random number in the citation box and still get the deal.)

Today Sony Ericsson added three handsets to its Walkman lineup of phones. All three feature quad-band GSM/EDGE radios, stereo Bluetooth and FM radios. They will be available in select markets in the fourth quarter. W902: This high-end, bar-style music phone ...
(follow link to read)

A few months ago while talking about the rumored BlackBerry Niagara we mentioned the Javelin. And now it looks like a RIM insider has managed to sneak a few photos of a prototype copy of the phone. It's a standard quad-band GSM/EDGE cell, with 480 x 360 LCD, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3.2 megapixel camera and it'll run the 4.6 OS. It's slated for release "next year" apparently, which sounds like a pretty long way away for something that sounds like a dumbed-down Bold. [BGR via Pocket Lint]

Several telecom companies met with the FCC this week to voice their disapproval of the FCC's planned auction around free mobile broadband services. AT&T, Motorola, T-Mobile and Texas Instruments were among the few that commented on the idea. T-Mobile ...
(follow link to read)

Boy Genius has word that T-Mobile's Sidekick 2008 is coming out on July 30th. The phone has Sidekick like features, and a 2.6-inch WQVGA screen, A2DP stereo Bluetooth streaming and those interchangeable faceplates we've been hearing about. The phone's OS should feel appropriately aged but at the right price, as the Sidekick's always been a crowd-pleaser. I'm just not sure if that crowd is this crowd. [Boy Genius]

It looks like the Sony-Ericsson W350a is coming to AT&T later this year. One of the handsets has appeared mysteriously on eBay with AT&T branding. It's not a super-new phone, but the fact that it's got the AT&T logo is something interesting. Was this a demo phone? A loaner from SE? Will AT&T carry the phone in the near future? We don't know, but Sony-Ericsson fans have just perked up their ears. [PhoneNews]

I have been keeping up with the Zumobi browser platform since it was launched last year, but up until now the tile-based UI was only available on Windows Mobile devices. However, the Microsoft-backed company announced today that it will deliver the application for 81xx, 83xx, or 88xx Blackberry devices with OS 4.2 or later. The browser is free, so it is worth trying out at the very least. Hit the Zumobi website to pick up the download. [Zumobi]

Zumobi Now Offers Innovative Mobile Widgets Application to BlackBerry Users

Award Winning Mobile Widgets Now Give Brands Direct Connect to a Broader Mobile Audience

SEATTLE, WASH. – July 17, 2008 – Zumobi (www.zumobi.com), the innovative mobile widget company, today announced the launch of its application for BlackBerry devices. As the profile of Smartphone users expands to include more than just business users, Zumobi has developed its BlackBerry product to enhance the user experience by providing easy access to small “bites” of customized Web content via mobile device. The Zumobi platform, which is ad supported and gives a fully-branded experience to users, is an ideal medium for advertisers and content providers to directly reach consumers in an engaging and highly-targeted manner.

With an already robust library of widgets (Zumobi calls them “Tiles”) to entice users of Windows Mobile and BlackBerry with news, sports, weather, entertainment, games and more, Zumobi now offers even more new Tiles for users including NPR, AP Olympics report, Major League Baseball as well as social media sites Facebook and Twitter. Users can also create their own Zumobi mobile widgets from just about any Web content with the new Tile Creation Wizard now available on Zumobi's website.

Popular industry weblog BlackBerry Cool will launch a branded Zumobi Tile to extend its brand to the mobile space. “BlackBerry Cool is the first choice for timely news, opinion and reviews of the BlackBerry space, delivered to an audience that expects updates when they are available,” said Douglas Soltys, editor-in-chief of Blackberry Cool. “Until now, there have been few options to do this successfully over mobile. With Zumobi available now on BlackBerry devices, we will be able to reach our audience directly with news that is important to them while they are on-the-go.”

The unique design of the Zumobi application provides the user direct access to what they want, when they want it, with cached content for quicker retrieval of fresh information. This puts content at their fingertips, and allows for a more engaging and immersive experience for brands. In the new age of mobile marketing, this direct contact with consumers is ideal for brands looking to deliver products and services that are tailored to a specific audience.

“By adding BlackBerry as our second major mobile platform, Zumobi significantly expands our reach for brand and content partners. We're thrilled to introduce Zumobi to Blackberry's data-savvy users, and look forward to providing them with a highly-engaging mobile experience,” said Ken Willner, vice president of Market Development.

This announcement follows closely on the heels of the release of an updated application for Windows Mobile announced in June. For a tour of the Zumobi mobile widget platform or to download the mobile widget platform for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry, please visit http://www.zumobi.com or get.zumobi.com on the mobile Web.

Three of the best mobile browsers that act like grown up ones are Mobile Safari, Skyfire and Opera Mobile 9.5. Even though the latter two (both for Windows Mobile) are still betas, Laptop Mag decided to toss them all into a race anyway, seeing which could deliver piping hot content the fastest. They ran Opera and Skyfire on an AT&T HTC Tilt, so everyone was surfing on the same 3G network with beefy hardware. Spoiler: Skyfire delivered pages in one third of the time it took Safari or Opera. It's because Skyfire cheats.

Unmentioned in Laptop's piece is that the Skyfire browser actually shows you a page that has been pre-crunched by Skyfire's servers, so it's essentially showing you an image. And yeah, since the browser itself isn't doing any heavy lifting, it's going to fly. But stuff like text entry is annoying, since you have to input text, send that back to Skyfire, and then it comes back to you. Flash works the same way, but hey, at least it does flash. We're not really sure what's up with Opera Mobile 9.5 taking twice as long as Safari to render a page, but maybe that's 'cause it's big boned feature packed. [Laptop Mag]