Entries tagged with “windowsmobile” from WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS

Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile phones is now available for immediate download on a smartphone near you. This version for Windows Mobile users elevates mobile browsing to a desktop-like experience, helping people to search, socialize and stay connected while on-the-go.

The Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile looks and feels similar to the Opera 10 desktop browser and Opera Mini 5 beta. Opera is creating more cohesion between its products by introducing a unified look across many of its platforms. Opera maintains its powerful arsenal of features in this beta, including Speed Dial, tabbed browsing, a password manager and its super, server-side compressor, Opera Turbo.

"We are unifying our products, so that users get the same experience, no matter the device or which particular Opera browser they are using," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "With Opera Mobile 10, we are raising the expectations of how a a mobile browser should perform. Today, users require a browser as powerful as the Web, one that can handle their daily tasks as well as their computers. That's Opera."

The third annual LG U.S. National Texting Championship, concluded  with 15-year-old Kate Moore from Des Moines, Iowa as the winner. Moore, won the title of the LG U.S. National Texting Champion, along with $50,000 in prize money by texting on an LG enV3.

The winning phrase was "Zippity Dooo Dahh Zippity Ayy ... My oh MY, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine Comin' my way ... ZippittyDooDahZippityAay! WondeRful feeling, Wonderful day!" which Moore completed flawlessly in less than 60 seconds. The contestants used the new LG enV3 phone, the newest edition in the enV family, which features a full QWERTY keypad.

"When I heard the final phrase, I got so nervous and thought how can I finish that!" said winner Moore. "But apparently, my thumbs are faster than everyone else's! I'm so excited to be this year's champion."

Kate told AP:

"Let your kid text during dinner! Let your kid text during school! It pays off .Your kid could win money and publicity and a phone."

More frequently sent 4,000 texts-per-month, eight months after she got her first cell phone.

Moore won the title of texting championship after beating step sisters Erin Fink, 15, and Morgan Dynda, 14, both from Pooler, GA. The two sisters and best friends drew gasps from the crowd as they went head to head in a semi-final texting showdown in which Dynda came out on top, placing her in the final round where she competed against Moore.

LG Mobile Phones is partnering with crowdSPRING for a new competition to define the future of personal mobile communication.

This year's competition is even bigger and better than last year's:  first place will be awarded $20,000, second place awarded $10,000 and third place awarded $5,000.

To reward as many people as possible in the
name of creativity, LG will be giving out 40 honorable mentions of $1,000 plus an LG U.S. phone!

They need U.S. residents (citizen or green card holder) age 18 (or age of majority in state of residence) and older.

They give participants a chance to design the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than $80,000 in awards. They want designers to exercise creative imagination

They are looking for a cool new concept or "big idea" supported by usage scenario illustrations.

Submissions may be illustrated or rendered in any format - hand sketches, digital drawings, or renderings - rendering tool used will not affect judging process.

LG and crowdSPRING have partnered with Autodesk®, a world leader in 2D and 3D design software. Autodesk will be providing a FREE 15-day trial of SketchBook Pro to all participants of this competition.

For more information go to crowdSpring.

Deadline is  June 7, 2009 @ 11:59 p.m. PST.

Microsoft ran a mobile app contenst during Mobile Incubation week, lats week.

The six finalists were:

• Networks in Motion - Plans to build a mobile app that offers turn-by-turn directions and hyper-local search. The developer claims that it has the same experience as a GPS device.
• DJ Nitrogen - building an application to facilitate the legal sharing of user-generated content, such as ringtones and music mash-ups
• VoiceMuffler - App will enable real-time, two-way speech-to-speech translation designed for foreign military personnel and civilian travelers
•  Motolingo - Telematics solution that will monitor car diagnostics and report mobile phone behavior in the car   
• VisTracks - Plans to build an enterprise app for real-time product location and tracking company shipments
• BrightKite - Extending their current  location-based social networking tool to Windows Mobile

And the winner was:  Networks in Motion. A video interview follows.

March  is really madness month and for some lucky betters, I mean speculator, it could mean a million bucks. Yahoo! Sports is giving college basketball fans a triple-double of madness with mobile access to brackets, millions in prize money, up-to-the minute college basketball news, and easy search tools.

Yahoo! Sports is offering $1 million for the perfect bracket and other prizes for top performers. This year, Yahoo! is allowing fans unprecedented mobile access during the Big Dance to keep them at the top of their game. The site will also offer up-to-the-minute news from the games. Yahoo!'s college basketball offerings give fans millions reasons to 'go a little mad.'

You have to  complete your brackets before registration closes at tip off of the first game of Round 1 on Thursday, March 19.
 

This season, Yahoo! is launching a dedicated mobile tournament Web site (http://m.yahoo.com/ncaa) allowing fans to follow all of the action and their favorite teams from the convenience of their Internet-enabled mobile phone. For the first time, Yahoo! allows users to track their brackets via mobile devices as well as the progress of others in their group. Fans also have access to up-to-the minute scores, news, schedules, pictures and expert commentary while on-the-go.

Here's a new twist on contests to get more people to use TurboTax software. TurboTax has launched a campaign through social networking and widgets, only. They launced a  social networking website Freeloader Nation on myspace and are offering games with prizes for social networking status updaters only.

TurboTax SuperStatus is a contest where TurboTax gives users a challenge to solve it by updating their status on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

This weeks' prize is to a trip to New York to see a taping of Saturday Night Live by posting a status about TurboTax. Other prizes include, cash, iPods & DVDs, and tickets to sporting events and top NBC shows. The grand prize is a tripled TurboTax Refund up to $25,000. The game can be played through Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, or all three.

The game requires that the user grab the widget or visit SuperStatusContest.com to find out when each TurboTax SuperStatus game is happening, read the challenge, and check out the prize that's up for grabs.

Then social networkers get to play on one or all of the social networks by updating status with answers to the challenge.There is a deadline and counter clock to see when the contest ends.

How to Play on Twitter:

1. Become a follower of TurboTax on Twitter
   
2. Tweet your response to the challenge
   
3. Increase your chances: play as many times as you want during each challenge countdown. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

The HTC Touch Cruise has had a makeover and now has a new look and extreme geo-tagging with HTC Footprints. The HTC Touch Cruise has been called a GPS-centric smartphone because HTC Footprints goes beyond geotagging photos. Users can add notes and an audio clip and make digital "postcards."

HTC Footprints automatically name each postcard with its general location or area. The HTC website notes "The best part about HTC Footprints is that you can use them to find your way back to the hidden little café you visited last year."  

Another GPS feature of the HTC Touch Cruise is that it can be used as an in-car navigation system. .Once the HTC Touch Cruise is in the car kit holder and it automatically changes to NaviPanel mode. NaviPanel gives a one-touch interface to the travel tools .Tap Go Home and the included software guides the user to a destination. It even helps users locate services or avoid traffic jams on the way

This Windows Mobile 6.1 device also features a 2.8-inch QVGA touch screen with HTC's TouchFlo interface, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and a new thinner design.

HTC is expect to offer an unlocked version of the HTC Cruise in the United States that will with 850/1900 HSDPA bands (for AT&T 3G ).

It should be available this spring, unlocked for $500 to $600.

Opera Mobile 9.5 now offers Opera Widgets to the mobile Internet experience, enabling one-click web content access. This release marks the second Opera Mobile 9.5 beta for Windows Mobile and the first-ever beta for UIQ-based phones. A developer version of S60 Widget manager is also available within the Opera Widgets SDK.

T-Mobile has already embraced Opera Mobile with Widgets for their web’n’walk initiative, as previously announced on September 18, 2008. Like T-Mobile, other operators can now incorporate Opera Widgets into their offerings. Customer-selected web content can be accessed from a list of icons on the home-screen. Widgets can also serve as a means of customer communication, as automatic notifications are now easier to instantly deliver to subscribers.

Opera is launching the updated SDK with a developer competition called the “X Widget Challenge”. Opera is offering $10,000 in cash prizes for the best cross-device widget submissions. Read more about the competition from my.opera.com/widgets.

Verizon is throwing a really big 15th birthday party in San Jose, California.

Athaly Ramos will celebrate her Quinceañera with a $45,000 dream party sponsored by Verizon Wireless with a performance by  Hip-Hop star Sean Kingston.

Athaly Ramos from San Jose, won the Verizon Wireless' "My Fabulous 15" contest. The program garnered more than 6 million online and text message votes.

Her winning entry has quite a few grammar, spelling and "prety" dumb mistakes. Here's the entry with misspelled words in bold.

I never really wanted a Quinceanera because I knew my parents coudnt aford it.I didn't want to think about my dream party when i knew it was never going to happen

Forum Nokia is  Calling All Innovators, a global contest for developers to create mobile applications that will help to better society. 

Apisphere Inc. (www.apisphere.com), a leading provider of location-awareness services for mobile business applications and devices, is looking for application developers and independent software vendors (ISV) who want to integrate location-awareness into their mobile enterprise or consumer applications. Apisphere will be accepting submissions from ISVs starting this week at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment. The company will invest $30,000 to $50,000 of development time into enhancing one best-in-class mobile application with its location-awareness platform

Bluepulse, the award-winning free mobile social messenger, today announced a contest where users have the opportunity to win a $250 Apple gift card. This referral program is timed to celebrate the new Bluepulse iPhone App, which was unveiled three weeks ago. Bluepulse provides mobile users with a messaging platform which allows them to broadcast their lives and be in constant communication with friends and groups through status updates, messages, photos and videos. Bluepulse's iPhone App allows seamless contacts integration with the iPhone address book and easy media uploads.

erizon Wireless customers who download Jonas Brothers' songs, purchase ringtones or ringback tones from their V CAST-capable phones will be entered to win a pair of mobile tickets to see Jonas Brothers in concert.

Verizon Wireless provides fans with access to the Jonas Brothers during the "Burning Up" tour, including exclusive music and video on V CAST, mobile tickets and a chance to meet the Jonas Brothers.

Verizon Wireless customers can download exclusive songs and video from the Jonas Brothers through V CAST Music and Video. With V CAST Music, fans can now download the live versions of the previously unreleased songs from the Jonas Brothers' anxiously awaited album, "A Little Bit Longer," including "Shelf," "Burnin' Up," "A Little Bit Longer" and "Pushing Me Away." The songs can be downloaded over-the-air directly to fans' mobile phones with V CAST Music.

Sprint is inviting video makers to plug the Samsung Instinct in their YouTube Videos and create the best product placement video showcasing the Sprint Instinct phone.

The Samsung Instinct must be included in the homemade videos. Samsung is providing a remix tool tool to add the Instinct to video even if the viideographer doesn't own the phone.

Contestants create a video from 30 to 120 seconds in length and follow the instructions at www.InstinctThePhone.com to upload the video and then can use a video remixer tool provided on the contest website to creatively overlay the Sprint Instinct phone throughout the video; use of video remixer tool is recommended but not required. Contest ends August 1. The first 1,000 contestants get a $20 check in the mail.

The top ten videos will be selected and then voted on on the special YouTube channel. The winner receives a $10,000 grand prize.

As a part of the two-year anniversary of “My Circle,” Alltel Wireless, is giving one lucky “My Circle” customer the opportunity to connect with their ‘circle’ of family and friends during a luxury vacation in one of the country’s top vacation destinations in Alltel’s “My Circle Reunion” text-to-win sweepstakes.

Between May 5, 2008 and May 31, 2008, customers can enter to win the “My Circle Reunion” sweepstakes by texting CIRCLE to 102102 or visiting www.alltel.com/circlereunion.

The grand prize package includes a four day and three night stay in one of three relaxation hot spots: Key West, Las Vegas or Palm Springs, Calif; a variety of activities including golf and spa packages; and a special meal prepared by celebrity chef Ted Allen. In order to help the group stay in touch after their getaway, Alltel Wireless is also giving the winner and ‘circle’ of guests a new [handset] and a $200 Alltel gift card.

Pangea Day is an event that seeks to overcome barriers by helping people see themselves in others through the power of film. Nokia is inviting everyone to enter the 2008 Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards by creating and submitting their short videos to http://www.ovi.com/pangeaday to be considered for inclusion in the first Pangea Day broadcast event on May 10, 2008.

Pangea Day was created by award-winning documentary filmmaker Jehane Noujaim after winning the prestigious 2006 TED Prize. Together, Noujaim, TED and Nokia have created Pangea Day to connect people by harnessing the power of film and encouraging people to view the world through someone else’s eyes.

Contestants can upload entries for the 2008 Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards to Share on Ovi (ovi.com/pangeaday), a free media sharing service that makes it easy to upload, manage and share personal media through mobile, desktop and other connected devices. Consumers who register can vote to select five finalists, who will have their videos screened during the Pangea Day broadcast and win a trip to the live Pangea Day broadcast location in Los Angeles.

Wireless and Mobile News has been Nominated for the 2007 Weblog Awards in Technology and Business. Nominations end October 15 and winners will be announced at blogworld November 8-9 in Las Vegas.

Wireless and Mobile News has been Nominated for the 2007 Weblog Awards in Technology and Business. Nominations end October 15 and winners will be announced at blogworld November 8-9 in Las Vegas.