mobile

When you want to convert a long link to a short one from your computer, all it takes is a visit to one of these 10 link-shrinking sites. From a Windows Mobile phone, prospects are much more limited. Thank goodness for ceSnipURL, a free, basic mobile application that threads your gargantuan URL through SnipURL's service and quickly returns a much shorter, more manageable bite. There are a few time-saving tricks packed into this link-swapping puppy, and they're all laid out in the video above.

Each February, the GSM Association (GSMA) organizes the world's largest cell phone trade show in Barcelona. And after a couple years of advocating to go to the GSMA World Congress, Bonnie Cha and I attended the show this year where both of us were astounded at the cool cell phones we saw. As the show has a global focus, it has a wider range of products, companies, and services than the CTIA show can offer. The only trouble is, you have to go all the way to Barcelona to see it.

But this week the GSMA is dipping its … Read more

Update 3 p.m. PT: T-Mobile confirmed its Android phone is still on track, too.

Google denied a report Monday that phones using its Android software have been delayed to 2009.

The Street reported the delay, citing an unnamed source. But Google denied the report.

"We're still on track to announce Android-powered phones this year. Some of our partners are publicly stating that they plan to ship Android phones in the fourth quarter," Google said in a statement.

That's little surprise, given that Android leader Andy Rubin last week said phones using the soon-to-be-mostly-open-source software will … Read more

It's hard to believe that no one in the "Me Generation" beat them to it, but Apple has apparently registered Me.com as a possible replacement for its .Mac service.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has assembled a list of evidence that Apple is holding onto the domain, with the likely scenario that the company wants to launch a new Internet service. The domain is currently held by a company called MarkMonitor, but the administrator of Me.com bears an Apple e-mail address. Last month, Network World noticed that Apple had snapped up a bunch of Montenegro'… Read more

Motorola's Good Technology group hopes its latest update will eliminate the moment of terror experienced by a traveling salesperson who realizes the slide deck got left back at the office.

Good 6.0 will now allow Windows Mobile smartphone users to access corporate applications and their companies' shared network resources over the same secure connection that delivers their e-mail. This would eliminate the need for VPN (virtual private network) software on smartphones, said Dan Rudolph, director of product marketing for Good.

Good's software allows Windows Mobile and Palm users to get their corporate e-mail on their handhelds, as … Read more

Nvidia is doubling down on its budding processor business for the next generation of mobile computers.

This week at Computex, Nvidia plans to show off its new Tegra brand for mobile application processors. Earlier this year, the company unveiled its first processor for smartphones, the APX 2500. It's now adding two processors to its Tegra brand, with plans to target the emerging Mobile Internet Device category, according to Mike Rayfield, general manager of the company's mobile business.

Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors, of course, but has been taking steps toward a mobile future since its … Read more

Cell phone subscribers in the U.S. are spending more on their wireless handsets, another sign that the smartphone revolution has arrived.

On average cell phone subscribers are spending about $101 on new devices. This is $9 more than they spent on handsets just six months ago, according to a J.D. Power and Associates survey released Thursday. This is the first substantial increase in the average sale price of mobile devices in two years, the consumer survey company said.

What's driving this price jump? Smartphones and other feature-packed phones. Devices, such as Research In Motion's BlackBerry and … Read more

The Touch Diamond hasn't even gone on sale in most countries and already, another new version has been announced. T-Mobile Germany launched three new MDA phones (its name for the HTC devices) and one of them is the MDA Vario IV, which is the rumored HTC Raphael. The other two are variants of the Diamond and Advantage.

This PDA-phone is largely similar to the HTC Touch Diamond but comes with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard like the TyTN II. According to Netherlands-based site Mobile Phone Helpdesk, the Vario IV has all the features of the Diamond but comes with 256MB … Read more

Google's Gears platform is still fairly young as far as Web tools go. A year after its launch (today is the one-year anniversary) it's still found only in a handful of Web apps. Its real power is for mobile users, laptop road warriors and, in the case of mobile phones, for people who are in and out of range of cellular data networks. That is, as long as developers spend the time to build Gears into their sites.

At the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Charles Wiles and Andrei Popescu, who work on the Google Gears … Read more