Mobile Software

Hello, hello. It's me, the Beselo worm calling, and, man, do I have a new trick for your Symbian-based phone.

But security researchers are advising users of the Symbian S60 second-edition phones to just hang up.

The Beselo.A and Beselo.B worms are in the wild, looking to lure Symbian S60 users into clicking on their incoming malicious files, according to a warning issued Tuesday by F-Secure.

The Beselo worms are tricky, in that they use common media file extensions, rather than a standard SIS extension, in sending their malicious payload.

Like the Commwarrior worms, the Beselo worms … Read more

Photo-sharing and -storage sites Picasa Web (click for Picasa's PC download) and Photobucket announced new mobile interfaces this week. While m.photobucket.com and picasaweb.google.com/mobile (or via Google's new mobile interface: mobile.google.com) grant access to online albums from any mobile browser, the interface on iPhone's full Safari browser is still a special case. iPhone's large, sharp screen is ideal for viewing slide shows, but bars users from directly uploading iPhone photos to Web sites.

While this essentially leaves Picasa handcuffed as a mobile photo viewer, Photobucket's site provides an account-linked … Read more

Three programs with big names have recently released some minor updates. Take a look at what's changed in the Opera Web browser, the remote access app LogMeIn, and Orb, which gives you the power to stream your music just about anywhere.

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Of the photo solutions mentioned in the BlackBerry forums I've been visiting lately, SplashPhoto and Ascendo Photos were the two most-often mentioned. That's just the kind of head-to-head challenge I like, and I threw in one more, ITookThisOnMyPhone, for flavor.

Ascendo Photos Desktop ($29.95) gathers JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and PNG photos on your PC in a crisp, smart interface. The photo organization is reminiscent of Picasa--sibling images in a folder are horizontally arranged, with folders scrolling vertically. Photos drag and drop into an emulator, which you use to center the photo and perform basic editing--rotation, flipping, and color correction. Three sizing choices determine if photos appear cropped, shrunken, or alarmingly large. A button click transfers photos from desktop to device.

On the BlackBerry, Ascendo Photos shows transfered images clearly, but not quite cogently. It requires a click too many to see your photos, and the app wastes an opportunity to corral snaps taken from the cell phone. However, there's good file information; options to save to phone or SD memory, add galleries, and assign icons; and the ability to e-mail photos.… Read more

There are awkward times to answer an incoming call, and equally awkward ways to silence it. I can think of a few scenarios where fumbling to locate the ringer or off button is as disruptive and stressful as the constant ringing.

Taking advantage of accelerometer technology, the very same used to reorient phone and camera displays horizontally or vertically, is FlipSilent. With FlipSilent, quieting a call is simple as flipping the phone from its back to its face.

FlipSilent currently works with Symbian S60 phones outfitted with motion-sensing accelerometers. Users willing to make a donation with PayPal can try out … Read more

For consistent 15 percent tipsters living in municipalities with a 7.5 percent dining tax, generating the perfect 15 percent tip is as simple as doubling the tax. If that's not you, Oh Arithmetic-Challenged One, you've got a bum deal. (See below for a quick computational technique.)

It's for this set, and for diners who frequently split a bill, that Ilium Software developed Tipster. The free, simple app for Palm, Windows Mobile smartphone and Pocket PC hurriedly computes your tax and total.

Tipster calculates tax in 5 percent increments up to 30 percent, and can evenly split … Read more

Checking Web sites by typing in the URL feels like firing up a rickety 56k baud modem and logging on to CompuServe. It gets the job done, but really should only be used under extreme duress or nostalgia. Syndicated feeds bring the Web site to you, and when NewsGator made all its RSS clients free on Wednesday, they suddenly made a top-notch suite with tools for Windows, Mac, mobile, the Web, a podcast manager, and a Microsoft Outlook extension incredibly appealing. And by appealing, I mean you might not be able to imagine feeds the same way afterwards. It's that good.

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I got a demo at CES of FlyTunes, an Internet radio aggregator whose CEO, Roy Smith, is pitching as an alternative to Sirius Satellite Radio.

It's a stretch to compare it with Sirius, but FlyTunes is a worthwhile idea. A service designed for Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, it displays a curated list of Internet radio stations, and, over Wi-Fi, streams and records the stations you listen to. What's cool is that it can work when you're not online. It will record streams for your favorite stations. Then you can dock your iPhone or iPod … Read more

As part of the Consumer Electronics Show extravaganza in Las Vegas this week, Yahoo has opted to announce the next iteration of its mobile offering, Yahoo Go. The new beta product arrives at a time when just about every other huge name in tech--Google, Apple, you name it--is making a bigger push for the handset market, and (slightly) smaller brands like Facebook and MTV have been tweaking their mobile products.

Yahoo, however, isn't about to put out a Yahoo Phone. The new Yahoo Go 3.0, rather, is a free downloadable application compatible with about 30 different handsets so … Read more