mobile

When it comes to recording concerts, lectures, or interviews, sometimes you just need to break out the big guns. Over the past few weeks, I've been testing out some of the best sub-$1,000 pro-audio portable recorders on the market, including the Edirol R-09, Korg MR-1, and Sony PCM-D50.

If you're in the market for a serious mobile audio recorder, then take a look at our product roundup.

There's no real killer app yet for retrieving listings information on your mobile phone, but there could be soon.

On Aptil 11, FreeMobile411 launches the consumer version of its carrier-offered services. Visting FreeMobile411.com from your mobile browser gets you a decent-looking ad-supported WAP site that simplifies directory search and helps you avoid long waits while listening to ads from dial-in services like 1-800-FREE-411.

Enter the search term--it can be a business name ("Blockbuster"), business type ("video store"), or person ("Bill Blockbuster"). Then select the search type, and fill in either the city … Read more

At the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai this week, the buzz was about the Atom processor, mobile Internet devices, and Linux. What wasn't buzzing? Microsoft.

Welcome to the brave new world of computing sans Redmond.

At IDF, there was little media focus on Intel's next-generation Nehalem chip and even less on the Centrino 2 processor--both of which will run Microsoft software.

The focus was on devices that won't necessarily or exclusively run Microsoft software: Handheld-size MIDs--shorthand for mobile Internet devices--and Netbooks. Netbooks will run both Microsoft Windows and the Linux operating systems, but the MID category … Read more

I'm looking at a cell phone screen and four faces are looking back. It's CTIA 2008, the biggest wireless and cell phone trade show of the year, and the CEO of iVisit, a multiparty video conferencing app for PCs, Macs, and mobile phones, is demoing the product, iVisit Teleport. I must say, the slick, feature-rich app looks pretty cool on Orang Diamaleh's large-screen smartphone.

The simplest way to think about iVisit Teleport is as a P2P social network that lets you call, chat, video conference, and transfer multimedia for up to 8 contacts at a time. You … Read more

Quite a few services on the market offer some variation on the theme of making inexpensive international calls. Fring and EQO dress it up with IM and a social networking aspect that grants free international calls between registered friends and cheap calls to everyone else. Likewise, there's Skype to Go and Talkster, which both require you to punch in local access numbers to get cheap rates. However, Packet8's MobileTalk has risen above them all as a mass market solution that sheds the extra messaging frills, money-making ads, and prep time to make the call. (Note: Give yourself a … Read more

Google says it participated in the recent wireless spectrum auction not with the goal to win, but to help drive bidding high enough to ensure that open-access rules it had pushed for would be adopted.

"Google's top priority heading into the auction was to make sure that bidding on the so-called 'C Block' reached the $4.6 billion reserve price that would trigger the important 'open applications' and 'open handsets' license conditions," Richard Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel, and Joseph Faber, corporate counsel, wrote in a posting Thursday on Google's Public Policy Blog.

"We … Read more

Yahoo's still pushing hard on mobile technology, despite the potential distraction of a Microsoft takeover bid.

Yahoo this week led a $20 million investment in Vlingo, a speech-recognition technology company. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company also said that Vlingo will power the voice capabilities of the mobile oneSearch service, a search engine optimized for the phone.

To use the voice-search service, which will be available immediately, people must first download the Vlingo client. (It currently works only on select BlackBerries, but Yahoo said it will be available soon on other mobile phones.) With the application, users can voice queries, … Read more

Dashwire, a small Seattle start-up eleven employees strong, continues to impress with its growing service for managing and interacting with the contents of your cell phone online. To recap an earlier review, Dashwire synchronizes your cell phone to an online account, displaying on a flexible dashboard your call history, images, profile, texting history, photos, ring tones, videos, and contacts. You can roll up your sleeves and muck around with your phone from Dashwire, a much happier experience than crouching over your two-inch cell phone screen and tapping or clicking away through on-device management programs, particularly if you're not on … Read more

Call me jaded, but it's been a while since a new smartphone has knocked my socks off. I mean, of course, I get excited when a new product comes out, but (iPhone aside) it's usually pretty much the same innards in a slightly different package. So perhaps that's why I'm stoked on a new company called Velocity Mobile, which debuted at CTIA.

Velocity Mobile is a collaboration between Inventec and a team of industry veterans (including some from the Microsoft Windows Mobile camp). It's not so much the hardware that wows me, but it's … Read more