Magicpins.com has a new strategic alliance with TúYo Mobile. This is just the start of a tactical push for Magicpins to form new industry partnerships. The TúYo deal represents a solid opportunity for Magicpins to expand into the booming Hispanic wireless market and a tangible way for Magicpins to get to the next level of distribution growth. Magicpins' thrust is to explore new business opportunities and markets.

As companies continue the pursuit of reaping the cost savings and productivity enhancements offered by integrating real-time voice traffic over the corporate Wide Area Network (WAN), unified communications (UC) has found an unlikely ally: service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Sybase iAnywhere has announced the availability of its Blue SDK 3.0, the latest version of the company's leading embedded Bluetooth software development kit. The new SDK provides support for the Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR specification enabling the use of the newest radio devices from companies such as Atheros Communications, Broadcom Corporation, CSR, Marvell, Qualcomm, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments. The new Bluetooth wireless specification enables more secure communications and improves the ease of which Bluetooth wireless enabled devices can bond a connection.

LegiTime Technologies debuted its professional message management service - LegiText, which enables smartphone users to mirror the PC experience in a mobile world through prioritized inboxes, group messaging features, and administrative functionality. Designed specifically for the mobile pro-sumer, LegiText addresses the challenges of traditional smartphone solutions: overflowing inboxes, the need to collaborate with groups in a mobile environment, and the convergence of personal and professional communications on a single device.

SMobile Systems announced that it has prepared and tested a mobile anti-virus update and disinfection tool for its Security Shield platform to help protect Nokia smartphones being attacked by a malicious SymbianOS Worm (also referred to as a Beselo worm) currently spreading on mobile phone networks worldwide.

This session will investigate what is happening out there in the world of Mobility that uses Services, some are calling this MOA (Mobile Oriented Architecture). We will also discuss architectures, application design & considerations for mobility

Sybase iAnywhere announced that it has expanded platform support within its Information Anywhere suite. Its Web standards-based mobile enterprise application enablement component, M-Business Anywhere, now supports Symbian, Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Vista desktop and tablet platforms, in addition to Windows Mobile 5, Win32 and Palm.

Tira Wireless unveiled new development and porting services that extend its mobile platform support beyond Java ME, BREW and smartphone platforms to include the Android platform built by the Open Handset Alliance.

Evolving Systems announced that its Tertio Service Activation solution has been selected by a global tier 1 telecommunications group with wireless operations in Asia, Latin America and Africa, for deployment in seven countries.

China TechFaith Wireless Communication Technology Limited announced the formation of TechFaith Tech-Interactive Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary focusing on the development and operation of wireless application and content. The new wireless content unit will initially set up three studios to develop interactive online gaming content.

Astral effects are now being released as screensavers for mobile phones. The company Mobile Visuals has developed ten hypnotic screensavers to help mobile users to relax and stress down. The screensavers are included in their product Astral Effects.

OK OK, so I admit I'm already running version 1.1.3 of the iPhone firmware. While I think it's fantastic that I now get the ability to add web icons to the home screen, and that the home screen has multiple pages, I usually spend my first few minutes on a new version of the firmware looking for changes in Safari that might impact iPhone web application developers. One that I noticed right away is that Safari is no longer fooled by the 1-pixel scroll trick. In case you're not familiar with this trick, the way it worked is that under previous versions of the iPhone software, if you scrolled the web page slightly, then the address bar would hide itself. iPhone web application developers took advantage of this to make their applications look a little more 'native' by using JavaScript to simulate a user scroll of just one pixel.

MicroMonster is ready for the mobile world. The new real-time multiplayer role-playing game comes with fine graphics and action loaded game play ideas. The fresh game uses a fair payment model instead of subscription fees.

Openwave Systems Inc. announced a joint collaboration with Japanese Internet start-up, Zero Start Communications Co. Ltd, to launch a new mobile Mini-Blog service branded 'chopi' in Japan. Openwave's carrier-grade, standards-based converged communications platform, will serve as the messaging engine powering Zero Start's chopi Mini-Blog service.

I plugged in the iPhone and now I've got several episodes worth of 'The Universe' that I can watch in the palm of my hand while I'm on the train. I'm sure everybody reading this has already realized how cool this ability is, but I'm new to the whole video conversion thing. So with the addition of a fairly cheap piece of software (Popcorn) to the hardware I already own, I was able to add a lot more value to my TiVo recordings. From TiVo to iPhone took me about 40 minutes for an episode, but that's because the TiVo is wireless and the Macbook Pro is admittedly not the fastest at video encoding. Either way, if you have a TiVo and an iPhone, you need to go buy a copy of Popcorn.

Tokiva announced the public beta launch of its Mobile Communications Platform that provides open and cost effective voice, messaging, and sharing services on Mobile, Web, and Instant Messaging systems.

Trolltech, Acrodea, ETRI, Huawei and Purple Labs have joined the LiMo Foundation started a year ago by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone to deliver a mobile Linux platform. Said platform would perforce have to compete against the Linux-based Google-organized Android platform.

Intel turned up at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this week loaded down with 16 new 45nm Penryn chips, including its first 45nm Centrino mobile chips, and the idea that it can now cultivate a new category of tiny gadgets that'll put broadband Internet access 'in your pocket.' These devices are supposed to start appearing later this year thanks to the 45nm shrink. Intel said it would ship a first-generation low-power platform chipset known as Poulsbo this half that will help these ultra-mobile Internet devices (MIDs) or ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) materialize.

You have perhaps heard - given the amount of ink spilled on the story - that Intel quit the One Laptop Per Child board last week rather than get thrown off for badmouthing and competing against the altruistic non-profit and its cute little kid-friendly, customer-shy, AMD Geode-based green-and-white widget, the thing that was supposed to cost $100 and currently costs $188. Intel only took the board seat and promised millions of dollars in financial aid last July after the head of OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte, complained about Intel's interference with his brainchild and its potential third-world buyers on television's '60 Minutes.'

MobiForms includes a free copy of HSQLDB for server, standalone or mobile database applications, complementing the MobiForms Developer tool and the Mobiforms runtime interpreter. MobiForms offers all the tools in one box for the creation and deployment of any type of mobile application - from surveys to field service, from signature capture to bar coding.

Since the iPhone was first released, early adopters haven't stopped talking about what they think of the device. While the free promotion can be a great marketing tool for wireless carriers, it can be crippling if users have issues with session and network quality. This is the background to the iPhone Developer Summit session 'Early Adopters: The Key to Free Publicity or the Fall of a Technology,' to be given in March by Mark McIlvane, President & COO of Velocent Systems.

Google's new-year special logo, which went live briefly as 2008 began, celebrated the 25th anniversary of TCP/IP - adopted by Arpanet on January 1st, 1983. While 'invisible' to most users, many of the layers built on top of TCP/IP are well-known even to laymen: HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), FTP (the File Transfer Protocol), SMTP and POP3, and IRC.

Roughly two years ago, when I was writing an article on 'New Features for Device Developers in Visual Studio 2005' that was published in the August 2005 issues of this magazine, our program management team was already busy shaping the next release of the product, which is soon to be released as Visual Studio 2008. We spent a lot of time talking to our major customers and reviewing the feedback we got on blogs and questions on forums on newsgroups to identify what enhancements/features would be most useful to our device developers. One thing that surfaced was that device developers needed more help when it came to testing their applications efficiently. Whether that meant testing on multiple devices or under varying conditions or simply being able to write unit tests, they clearly needed help getting applications to market faster by reducing the testing time.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), legal guardian of the sanctity of the GPL, has sued the mighty Verizon Communications Inc on behalf of the two open source developers who wrote the Busybox utility, charging the phone company with patent infringement because it is allegedly violating the famed GPL 2 license under which Busybox is distributed. This is now the fourth suit the SFLC has filed in the past few months in the name of these same two developers, Erik Anderson and Rob Landley, and all of them have made the same charge - that the defendant isn't providing source code as the GPL requires. This is the first time, however, that the SFLC and its clients have taken on a household name with immense resources in defense of the GPL.

Perforce Software announced that Ixonos Plc, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, has chosen Perforce, the Fast Software Configuration Management (SCM) System, to manage software development projects for its leading smartphone customers. Ixonos' telecommunications business unit specializes in the development, verification, maintenance and project management of software applications and information systems for licensees of the Symbian OS and smartphone manufacturers.

In keeping with the longstanding SYS-CON tradition of being at the very forefront of software development with all its online and offline resources, SYS-CON Media & Events jointly today announced a double whammy, launching both 'Open Web Developer's Journal' (htt p://openweb.sys-con.com) and 'Open Web Developer Summit' (http://openweb.s ys-con.com) - to be held for the first time in New York City April 21-22, 2008.

Ikivo AB and Sun Microsystems announced that Ikivo has joined the NetBeans Strategic Partner Program. This alliance will assure that the NetBeans community of developers, have access to enhanced authoring tool solutions for rapid creation and deployment of Mobile SVG content and rich media services to Java Platform, Mobile Edition (Java ME) devices.

CNBC reported on Monday at 'Closing Bell' that Motorola maybe a logical take over target by Dell, HP, or Rim, at $21-22 per share target price. Motorola CEO Ed Zander's chair wasn't even cold yet when the company's CTO Padmasree Warrior, with the company for 23 years, suddenly decided to 'pursue other opportunities' and was out the door. Twenty-four hours later she turned up at Cisco as CTO, reporting to CEO John Chambers, who called her a 'visionary.' Obviously the move has been in the works for a while. The Wall Street Journal says she's into 'seamless mobility,' where multiple devices share the same video, voice and data. It jibes with Cisco's vision.

According to SMobile Systems, the launch of Google Phone platform will be among the most positive transformational moments in mobile communications history by further merging computers with mobile devices. But while millions of people will now be able to 'compute on the run,' those same consumers will be a high-value target for hackers, spammers and others intent on hacking the new phones.

This year's hottest new security innovation for laptops and PCs makes its first time appearance at the 2008 CES International in Las Vegas. The Yoggie Pico, winner of the CES Best of Innovations 2008 - Computer Accessories, is the world's first hardware-based security solution for laptops and PCs that provides a suite of 12 security applications on a USB key-sized security mini-computer. The Yoggie Pico has garnered numerous awards in the last few months.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander's chair wasn't even cold yet when the company's CTO Padmasree Warrior, with the company for 23 years, suddenly decided to 'pursue other opportunities' and was out the door. Twenty-four hours later she turned up at Cisco as CTO, reporting to CEO John Chambers, who called her a 'visionary.' Obviously the move has been in the works for a while. The Wall Street Journal says she's into 'seamless mobility,' where multiple devices share the same video, voice and data. It jibes with Cisco's vision.

In a partnership with Yahoo! and Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind the BlackBerry, JetBlue is equipping one of its Airbus A320s with a special version of WiFi that's compliant with the FCC ban on in-flight cellular communications. The result is that passengers with WiFi-enabled laptops and BlackBerry users with certain models will have airborne access to 'lightweight' versions of Yahoo! e-mail and IM.

For building applications, BundleWorks includes ant tasks and command line tools to allow developers to build standard bundles for both custom and third-party applications. For testing, BundleWorks allows a developer to create and manage multiple environments to test multiple versions of applications. For deployment, BundleWorks supports local and remote deployment and provides a library of functions to handle common deployment tasks. For maintentance, BundleWorks tracks all bundle actions and configuration changes providing a complete history of activity.

Why are you opening private message directed to someone else? This is a private message not directed or intended for you. As I'm a long time member of the HR community - shame on you! Eileen Sirrell

Since Ed Zander led Sun into the valley of the shadow of death back, what? over five years ago now, it has never recovered. And there's a good chance the same thing may happen to Motorola. With a year left to run on his contract, Zander quit yesterday and clearly not a moment too soon given the events of the last year or so. There are people who would have gladly ridden him out of town on a rail months ago and it's assumed he's resigning now to avoid getting fired. Zander, whose telecom experience consisted of answering the phone, was brought in four years ago to narrow the lead in phones between a first-place Nokia and a second-place Motorola. Motorola is now in third place, losing ground to both Nokia and Samsung, its market share sheered from 20.7% a year ago to 13.1% now.

Mitch Randall, the company's founder and Chief Technology Officer, adds that 'With the recent introduction of our first products, we made a step towards eliminating the need for consumers to regularly lug around multiple bulky chargers, adapters and cords for every battery-powered mobile device they carry, or to struggle with congested outlets and power strips.' Randall advises that 'our products offer true environmental benefits. By eliminating the need for each device to use its own wall plug, our products reduce standby electricity drain when devices are not actually plugged in. Our products further minimize the need to dispose of used AC adapters and chargers when consumers upgrade to newer models of mobile devices, as they regularly do.'

Within minutes of my blog entry, I received the strangest email notification, alerting me to another blog written by Alan Zeichick, 'co-founder and editorial director of BZ Media, which publishes SD Times and Software Test & Performance, and which also produces the Software Security Summit, Software Test & Performance Conference, and EclipseWorld. Also president and principal analyst of Camden Associates.' That's what his bio says.

Reuters reports this morning that according to communications industry analysts there are now some 3.3 billion mobile phone accounts worldwide. 'In recent years the industry has seen surging growth in outskirts of China and India, helped by constantly falling phone and call prices, with cellphone vendors already eyeing inroads into Africa's countryside to keep up the growth,' said Mark Newman, head of research at Informa in a statement.

My money is on targeting iPhones and WM devices until Android actually shows up live and in the wild on more than 500,000 devices. Also, don't be fooled about the Android developer challenge. That's not $10million in prize money, that's a $10 million bribe in order to obtain the critical mass of engaged developers they know will be required for anything useful to come out of the Android project. If they don't have truckloads of developers begging to get their apps onto the phone, their framework will fail and all the mobile partners will go back to business as usual.

iPhone Developer Summit (www.iphonedevsummit.com) announced today Kevin Hoffman as the Tech Chair of the Conference. The letter from the Tech Chair at the conference Website contained the following message: What's the impact of the iPhone going to be on the delivery of rich content to mobile users? How does Google's new Android differ from the iPhone SDK and iPhone Safari development? When should you use the iPhone SDK versus developing web applications?