mobile

What Skyfire's Symbian beta means for Opera

Editors' note: Since this article published, Skyfire has offered the first hundred CNET readers immediate access to Skyfire's Symbian beta program. (Note: Only U.S. phones at this time.) Enter the promo code CNET100 in the sign-up page. Once you have signed up for the Skyfire Symbian Beta with the beta code, an SMS message will be sent to your mobile phone prompting you to create a password. Once you enter a password, you will be presented with a download link.

On Thursday, mobile browser start-up Skyfire announced the opening of a private beta for the Symbian Series 60 (S60) platform--nearly a week after a Symbian users Web site busted the news.

Skyfire is positioned as a resource-light Web browser that relies on Web servers to deliver a desktop browsing experience. I covered Skyfire soon after its initial Windows Mobile release and agree that it has a nice design and good potential; however, with rendering and crashing issues, it's not nearly ready for open beta. That's too bad because adding an identical build for Symbian means that Skyfire has two platforms in private beta with some tall performance hurdles to leap.

Going global (and taking on Opera) Skyfire's Symbian beta program is the mobile browser's second platform, and its entree into the European market, where it will be rolling out later this year. This move improves Skyfire's competitive position against Opera Mobile, whose release of a free version 9.5 beta for Symbian is also scheduled for "the near future."

Opera Mini, Opera Software's build for Java phones and BlackBerry, has pretty much dominated alternative browsers in Europe, but Skyfire could destabilize that position. As a direct competitor to Opera Mobile 8.65, which sells for $24, Skyfire's free beta brings a few advantages to the table. It's true that Opera Mobile 9.5 beta is also currently offered for free, but with its Symbian build also in development, there could be an interesting battle over Symbian owners.

Pricing isn't the only point of comparison between Opera and Skyfire. Opera wants to bring Symbian owners the "authentic" desktop experience through a rich client and Skyfire will attempt to do so by pulling data from its servers. That makes Skyfire lighter on system resources, but it won't have as many search and linking capabilities out of the gate as Opera Mobile 9.5 beta, which integrated some tricks from the desktop browser. Conversely, Opera's cell phone browsers verge on cluttered, so there's a benefit to Skyfire's pared-down look.… Read more

Tapulous and the shadow social network

Sometime in next day or so, Tapulous will announce that it has accumulated 1 million users for its free iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge. That's an accomplishment, but what's really interesting about the company is its overall strategy, since Tapulous is not, ultimately, a games company. I met recently with Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem and COO Andrew Lacy and to learn more.

The company is a social networking play. As Decrem said with glee as he demo'd the two-player version of Tap Tap Revenge with me (when you play, you and your opponent take up position on … Read more

Digg's recommendation engine boosting traffic, social networking

Social news site Digg just posted some preliminary results from the site activity since launching its recommendation engine last month. According to a post on the official Digg blog from engine creator Anton Kast, all-around voting on the site has gone up by 40 percent since launch.

Other numbers that have gone up include commenting (an 11 percent increase) and some of the social networking, which went up nearly a quarter within the past 30 days. Part of the reason for the additional "friending" and profile views are due to the recommendation engine's suggestion of not only … Read more

T-Mobile gives parents more control

Though T-Mobile doesn't offer any cell phones specifically designed for kids and teenagers, the carrier on Thursday announced features that will allow parents to control how their children use their phones.

With the Family Allowances program, parents with a family plan can give their kids and teens a monthly allowance for using their cell phone. The allowance works on any T-Mobile phone and can cover all services including calling, messages, mobile Web browsing, and downloads. Once the allowance is used up, those particular features will stop working. However, kids will still be able to call any "always allowed&… Read more

Motorola surprises Wall Street with profit

Correction, 10:20 a.m. PDT: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect quarter for the iPhone 3G's release. It was released in the third quarter of the calendar year.

Motorola surprised Wall Street Thursday by reporting a small profit and steady market share in its beleaguered handset business for the second quarter of 2008.

The key to Motorola's success for the quarter was cost-cutting and strong performance from businesses other than its handset division. As a result, the company was able to squeak out a $4 million profit, or less than 1 cent a share, … Read more

Microsoft misses Windows Mobile goal

Microsoft conceded Wednesday the it missed its targets for Windows Mobile, shipping 18 million copies of the cell phone operating system in its just-ended fiscal year.

For some time, executives had been saying the company would ship more than 20 million copies in the 12 months ended June 30

Andy Lees, who recently took over the mobile unit from Pieter Knook, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that some phone makers shipped devices later than Microsoft had expected. Lees declined to name the manufacturers in question.

Dialed In 42: Hot topic: Cell phone radiation

Nicole Lee's back from vacation, just in time to discuss the possible dangers of cell phone radiation and what you can do to reduce exposure. Plus, lots of handset announcements to discuss this week, including the new T-Mobile Sidekick and Samsung Innov8, and more listener questions answered. Listen now: Download today's podcast Slick Motorola U9 on sale in U.S. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10001900-1.htmlT-Mobile 'Gekko' officially reveals itself as T-Mobile Sidekick http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10000989-1.htmlSamsung unveils 8-megapixel camera phone http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9999207-1.htmlCasio G'zOne Boulder launched http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10002819-1.html… Read more

Would you like your printer in a box or in a bucket?

Last month we reviewed the Canon Selphy CP760, a cute little dye-sublimation printer that won us over with its simple menu, quick prints, and most importantly, its small-ish price tag; $100 is a fairly easy price to swallow for a single function printer, especially when we've got so many inkjet printers that can not only print out similar quality photos, but can also print out text on standard 8 1/2 inch by 11 inch paper! In either case, we were impressed by this little guy's ability to churn out excellent quality prints in a short amount of … Read more

Apple: MobileMe e-mail issues are behind us

Almost three weeks after it launched, Apple is finally able to tell MobileMe customers that everything is working as it should.

The latest update to its MobileMe status blog posted by the mysterious David G. says that all is well with MobileMe, Apple's replacement for .Mac that offers subscribers e-mail and access to Web-based contacts and calendars for $99 a year. "We have completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members. Thank you all for your extreme patience during this trying time."

Almost right from the launch hour, MobileMe was … Read more

T-Mobile 'Gekko' officially reveals itself as T-Mobile Sidekick

It's so hard to keep a good secret these days. Just ask T-Mobile. Word of its new Sidekick model, code-named Gekko, got out months ago and was all but confirmed about a week ago when the ruthless blogosphere got hold of some internal T-Mobile documents about the upcoming model.

Well, today, the wraps were officially taken off the new model. Simply called the T-Mobile Sidekick (more on this new, puzzling naming scheme below), it's the first Sidekick to debut since device manufacturer Danger was acquired by Microsoft.

The Sidekick isn't a revolutionary, new product, but we think … Read more