mobile

MTV's 'Choose or Lose' announces citizen journalism campaign

As part of its quadrennial "Choose or Lose" youth voting initiative, MTV has announced a "Street Team" of 51 young amateur journalists, one from each state and the District of Columbia, who have been selected to cover the 2008 election and emphasize issues important to the younger generation.

"We couldn't ignore the explosion in self-publishing and self-organization and all the tools that young people have now to express themselves on issues of importance as well as consume information," said Ian Rowe, vice president of public affairs and strategic partnerships and MTV, "and … Read more

Pownce beefs out its mobile presence (slightly)

While there's still not a short code service to send in Pownce updates from your mobile phone, yesterday the service quietly rolled out a new mobile interface (m.Pownce.com) to let members both post and browse Pownce updates, including files. While I couldn't manage to get any sort of attachment to load, the interface itself is a big step up from having to load the entire page--especially on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices; however, iPhone users are getting the best end of the deal as the site seems designed specifically for fingers and the large, portrait screen.… Read more

Put a keyboard in your pocket, $29.99 shipped

Smartphone keyboards are fine for composing short e-mails and maybe tweaking the occasional Word document. But if you want to get any serious work done on your device, fuhgeddaboudit. Your thumbs don't deserve that kind of punishment. Instead, reach for the iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard, which serves up a full-size set of QWERTY keys and then folds up slim enough to slip into your pocket.

The Stowaway normally lists for $149.99 (ouch!), but Amazon has it on sale for just $29.99--which qualifies it for the store's free Super Saver Shipping. Just make sure you … Read more

Episode 625: Whither StarTrek.com?

Intel to squeeze tiny solid-state drives into gadgets

Intel is making a "small" change to its lineup of solid-state drives.

The chipmaker announced late Friday that it is making a solid-state drive for handheld devices that is smaller than a penny and weighs less than a drop of water. The Z-P140 drives will be available in 2GB and 4GB sizes, and are intended for low-power, rugged devices, presumably gadgets like Internet tablets, smartphones, portable video players, and handheld computers. Intel says it is 400 times smaller than a 1.8-inch hard drive.

The drives use flash memory to store data, and have a PATA (parallel ATA) … Read more

Avot mV does fast and simple video search on the go

There comes a time at least once or twice a week where I've got to show a friend or colleague a video clip while away from a computer. To that end, a speedy mobile video search tool can help me get to the clip I need without having to jump through a whole lot of hoops.

This past weekend I spent some time with Avot mV--a relatively new mobile video search service that's reminiscent of Veveo's vtap (coverage 1,2). Both are setup to pull in video from a variety of sources, and both have a … Read more

Twitter doubly dead for some T-Mobile users

According to AlternaGeek, and to a CNET reader, T-Mobile is blocking people from sending Twitter updates via SMS. CNET cell phone editor Nicole Lee was just able to update her account from her phone, so whatever block there is does not seem to be universal (or perhaps it has been lifted). We are looking into this.

A workaround for impacted users would be to access Twitter via the mobile Web site, m.twitter.com.

All users will be kicked offline on Saturday when Twitter performs maintenance on its servers.

Via CenterNetworks.

Helio brightens its YouTube offering

To use the worst of bad plays on words, YouTube has thrown itself into the Ocean: Youth-oriented mobile carrier Helio announced Wednesday that it has souped up the YouTube video offerings for its Ocean handset.

Owners of the double-keyboard smartphone are now able to upload videos to the Google-owned service more easily, fill in various criteria for them (privacy settings, tags, descriptions, categories) and "geotag" them thanks to the handset's GPS capability. Additionally, the Ocean YouTube application facilitates access to some of the social-networking features previously unavailable to most mobile versions of YouTube--rating, commenting, and access to … Read more

Nokia to Google: Android is potty

It stinks to be a mobile phone company right about now. Take, for instance, Nokia. The company has long thought of itself as the king of mobile innovation, yet along comes Apple with its iPhone and changes the rules of the game.

Just when it was at least still in charge of the software that runs on its devices, Google shows up with its open-source Android platform. Nokia, not surprisingly, thinks Android is neither new nor threatening:

Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dismissed Android saying his company had already ventured down that path. "Conceptually, we [Nokia] could have made … Read more

Stalk your kids, Facebook friends with Whereboutz

Whereboutz is a new service powered by TeleNav that lets you announce your location for others to see, while mapping it to a geographical location. The service has two ways in the door, both as a Java app for phones that can run J2ME, as well as a Facebook application that accomplishes a similar feat without any sort of installation. Once linked up to your Facebook account, the mobile app will show you any of your friends' status updates on a map, as long as they're posting through Whereboutz (regular old status messages need not apply). You can also … Read more