Mobile Software

Microsoft's Windows Live services are living up to its name by going live, losing the "beta" label, and becoming available as a free, Windows suite of six Web-connected applications.

The suite includes Windows Live Mail, which integrates with Hotmail and supports POP and IMAP. Among the other complete desktop services are Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Writer for composing blog posts. Windows Live Photo Gallery manages picture albums that can be uploaded to Microsoft Spaces, MSN Soapbox, or Yahoo's Flickr.

Also final are Windows Live Spaces for blogging, the Windows Live Events invitation service, as … Read more

After a week or so of rumors about an exciting new "Google Phone," the Web software giant confirmed Monday the details about its venture into the mobile platform, i.e. your cell phone.

Rather than release one model of a phone, Google is teaming with 33 other participants, including carriers T-Mobile and Sprint, in the Open Handset Alliance to create a unified platform, currently named Google Android, for running software applications on mobile devices.… Read more

If you've been a smartphone user running Windows Mobile and looking to play around with GetMobio's "lifestyle portal" for various Web 2.0 widgets, there's a new version made just for you. Windows Mobile users can grab it at http://www.GetMobio.com/nowwm, which will direct you towards a small download.

Both versions offer the same selection of the dozen built-in widgets, the most notable ones being a cheap gas finder, a lightweight and good looking version of Twitter, and an integrated RSS reader that remembers all your feeds. We did a hands-on with the service … Read more

Mobile app publishers are obsessed with creating the fast, flawless mechanism to deliver content to mobile phones. That's great news for users, whose choices for accessing content through apps, browsers, or feed readers grow daily. Viigo for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 5 and 6 is a new contender. See the screenshot-by-screenshot blow in this Viigo slide show.

Incidentally, I've used Ilium Screen Capture (review) to nab my images. It's a great little program for Windows Mobile.

If you're one of those folks anxiously waiting for Google to release a mobile version of the sky layer they've got in Google Earth, you're partially in luck, because there's a comparable service called Starry Night (Download.com listing) that's launching a mobile version today. While there have been various iterations of the app in desktop and widget form for a while now, today makers at Imaginova are serving up versions optimized for Blackberry phones and Apple's iPhone.… Read more

If you're one of those folks anxiously waiting for Google to release a mobile version of the sky layer they've got in Google Earth, you're partially in luck, because there's a comparable service called Starry Night (Download.com listing) that's launching a mobile version today. While there have been various iterations of the app in desktop and widget form for a while now, today makers at Imaginova are serving up versions optimized for Blackberry phones and Apple's iPhone.

The app is dead simple to use: Just use your phone's arrow keys (or the … Read more

Culminating in a party at San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop last night, the biggest Web browser publisher from Norway--also, the only Web browser publisher from Norway--kicked off a number of beta versions. Opera 9.5 beta 1 and Opera Mini 4 beta 3 were made public yesterday, introducing a heap of new features.

… Read more

Cell phones weren't the only items giving off heat on the CTIA conference showroom floor this week. There was also the sizzling of a virtual mobile world, a preview of Guitar Hero Mobile, and really neat motion-sensor games.

Take a look at what was new and interesting in the latest video.

Talkster has been getting some buzz from fellow CTIA-goers. The new international dialing service is offering free global calls in exchange to listening to a few ads. The VoIP-based, phone-centered service feels like the perfect Skype (download) and Pincity mashup. It's free like Skype, and also relies on a VoIP backbone, but like Pincity, Talkster makes use of local numbers to initiate mobile and landline calls.

It sure sounds irresistible, and I've read a few glowing reviews, but in actuality it's a bit tricky. Talkster members enter their number and the number they're calling, and Talkster assigns a new, local number for callers on each end of the line. Say what?

If I want to call my sister in England, I enter both our phone numbers and receive a third number in my 415 area code. That's my permanent number for the phone number I just entered. My sister will get a number for me too. If I want to catch her at home, work, and on her cell phone for free, I'll need to enter each phone number and get three separate Talkster lines.

It wouldn't be so confusing if that were all, but of course it's not. Initiating a call isn't merely the result of dialing one of my Talkster-issued local numbers. There's an order to the calling system. Let's say I initiate the call to my darling sib using a Talkster phone number. I dial the appointed number in my area code and she picks up. But we can't talk yet. She first has to hang up while I stay on the line. My sister then quickly locates her local number, and while Talkster servers do some speedy math to connect our loose ends together, we both listen to an ad. Or that's the plan as soon as Talkster's ad deals are in place.… Read more