Opera Software, the company known for 'redefining Web browsing for PCs, mobile phones and other networked devices,' has launched a new way of mobilizing content across a wide range of devices and web browsers: Opera Link. 'We refuse to believe people should compromise their experience when they access the Web from different devices,' said Opera's CEO Jon von Tetzchner.

Buongiorno, il mio nome Amanda Chapel. I have 15 plus years experience in marketing communications. I am a former vice president in the Consumer Marketing Group at Weber Shandwick, one of the world's largest PR firms. Prior to Shandwick, I spent about 10 years bouncing around various top agencies. This includes senior posts at Cone Communications in Boston and Porter Novelli in Chicago. I cut my teeth at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in London.

Voice Perspective 2.0 will help contact centers and businesses improve the voice quality delivered to customers whether or not the call is originating either from a traditional PSTN landline-based phone or an IP-enabled phone. This is an important distinction as most VoIP calls today travel over hybrid networks. Keynote stands alone in its ability to measure customer experience of voice service quality for such a hybrid network from the end user perspective.

'We are leveraging Qualcomm's expertise in multi-mode wireless chipsets to bring unparalleled connectivity to notebook users, who can now be confident they can instantly access the Internet without searching for a hotspot - today,' said Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, COO of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, as Qualcomm today introduced Gobi global mobile Internet, an embedded solution for notebook computers.

So Steve Jobs has finally announced the availability of the iPhone SDK. It will be available sometime in February of 2008.There are a lot of compelling reasons to build web applications for the iPhone. If you're already thinking of an application then you might have an idea of whether it should be web-based or SDK-based. Web applications have a lot going for them.

The BBC carried a report yesterday that raises the alarming possibility of extending cellphone use on board airplanes from just either end of a journey to throughout the duration of the flight. The key to the whole thing, the technical trick that circumvents the problem found in 2003 by the CAA that mobile phone signals skew navigation bearing displays by up to five degrees, is that cellphones in the plane are not allowed to connect to any base stations on the ground.

Of the nearly 1.4 million iPhones sold since it was introduced in June, an estimated 250,000 of them were purchased by people trying to unlock them so that they can use the iPhone on a cell phone carrier other than Apple's dedicated partner, AT&T. This admission came yesterday from Apple executives who were announcing record results for the three months that ended Sept. 29.

Social.FM yesterday unveiled a new version of its innovative social music service with a newly optimized user interface, marking a significant re-design of the industry's first and only social music service for Windows Mobile 6 devices and improving usability for Social.FM mobile users. Microsoft will provide a free lifetime subscription to Social.FM for all Microsoft employees worldwide.

Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. announced today that its initial public offering of 27,500,000 shares of Class A common stock has been priced at $15.00 per share. The shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today, October 11, under the symbol 'VM'. Of the total 27,500,000 shares sold in the offering, 25,467,160 shares were sold by the company, while the remaining shares were sold by certain stockholders.

I completely understand that Apple have to protect their exclusive deal with AT&T and disable _unlocking_ exploits (and that?s fair enough, although their decision to go with a single carrier in the first place is anything but commendable) but their stance towards 3rd party applications, nearly all of which are free or open source efforts of the development community, is baffling to me. Think different, indeed! Not even Microsoft would pull such a stunt (you can install whatever applications you want to on your Windows Mobile phones and the same goes for other phones like the ones that run Nokia?s Symbian operating system). It is probably fair to say that Apple has created the most closed mobile phone in recent history with the iPhone and is making a colossal mistake by battling its own development community.

'Your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally,' wrote Jaiku's Finnish co-founder Jyri Engeström as he revealed yesterday that Jaiku had been acquired by Google. Jaiku's technology can hopefully help Google develop new ways to use mobile presence and 'activity streams.'

In a cautionary tale about the tulip-like valuations assigned too many of these Internet acquisitions these days - as well as the returns one gets off of a free business model - eBay as much as admitted Monday that it paid way, way too much for Skype and said it will write off $900 million of the $2.6 billion it paid two years ago. It's also paying off its earn-out arrangements with certain Skype shareholders early, costing it another $530 million in charges, a clear sign nobody thinks the free or cheap VoIP service will hit the 2008/2009 targets that would have made the earn-out worth $1.7 billion.

Sybase, Inc., has announced that it has won seven Gold and three Silver Mobile Star Awards from MobileVillage, a provider of market development and news services about mobile technology. The annual Mobile Star Awards aim to honor and promote the best companies, products, deployments, and leaders in mobile and wireless technology.

Apple's iPhone is the latest consumer electronics and technology sensation, sparking not only what should be significant worldwide demand, but also representing a potential new world to conquer for developers. How can developers leverage the Dojo Toolkit for this latest innovation from Cupertino?

All reviews are positive on balance. The negatives mainly coalesce around AT&T and EDGE as well as getting used to the keyboard. The keyboard gets better, EDGE does not. The most surprising thing to me was how they all said the iPhone seems virtually scratch-proof. They've all tossed in their pockets, knocked it with change and keys, and keep it unprotected during the duration of their tests. And virtually no marks. That's impressive. Some funky new materials or treatments perhaps?

The iPhone's high resolution touch screen, dynamic orientation sensors, and multi-touch features present significant challenges to mobile web sites. SoonR has adapted its full mobile AJAX interface to include the ability to scale fonts and pictures for easy access via finger tips. As users change from portrait to landscape modes, SoonR will make the proper adjustments to maintain usability. When viewing a custom rendering of a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation or any of the over forty (40) document types supported by SoonR, users can zoom and pan using the native 'pinch' action on the iPhone. SoonR?s industry leading interface requires no software installed on the phone but still offers much of the dynamic UI components of native applications.

Funambol, the mobile open source software company, will begin inviting consumers to join the new myFUNAMBOL portal to access free mobile e-mail, contacts, and calendars on everyday cell phones. myFUNAMBOL also provides the first over-the-air mobile contacts application for the new iPhone, which demonstrates the pace of innovation available with open source.

So the rumors were right. Apple has delayed the launch of Leopard, its next-generation Mac OS X, a competitor of Microsoft Windows, until October, four months past its June 11 due date. In a statement issued late Thursday after the market closed Apple blamed it on the iPhone.

Synchronoss Technologies, Inc., a provider of on-demand transaction management software to Tier One communications service providers (CSPs), has announced a multi-year contract with AT&T to support the launch and ongoing operational support of the Apple iPhone.

Just thought I would send up a quick post to let people know that I've just tried out Meebo on my iPhone. It takes a few seconds to get signed in, but once you're in, it's actually quite nice. Single-click a buddy to open a chat window with them. Double-tap the blue screen region to zoom out, then you can double-tap the newly opened buddy window to zoom into that region. Once you're zoomed in there you can use the on-screen keyboard (I switch to landscape mode for this because the keys are slightly wider in landscape mode). click the 'Go' button to send your text.

Forrester analyst Vidya Lakshmipathy claims that the iPhone's approach to the web eliminates the need for 'stripped down sites crammed onto the small screens of devices meant for phoning, not browsing.' I would love to agree, but I came to the opposite conclusion. 7/25/07: 'I think what Apple has attempted is noble, but it's not going to work. The screens have limited resolution, and even if they didn't, even if they could cram a billion pixels into every square inch, there's the limit of how much detail our eyes can see and how big our hands are.' I'm glad to have the opportunity to elaborate.

Apple's new application, Numbers, is a really nice refreshing blend of Excel and a general diagramming tool. It is surprisingly feature-rich, making actually somewhat more complex to use than a typical Apple app. It's interesting that the new iWork suite has the Leopard theme or skin. Because of the Leopard delays, Apple seems to be in this weird hybrid states where many of their new applications have the new Apple style, but the operating system itself does not. It's a very different model than Microsoft where apps take on the theme and UI guidelines of the version of the Windows.

Apple has got itself a couple of pretty, sexily anorexic, redesigned aluminum and glass 20- and 24-inch all-in-one iMac desktops available with a wireless keyboard. They're easier to recycle and priced competitively at $1,199 and $1,799 to start, $200-$300 cheaper than their predecessors, and can be pushed in the important back-to-school season. There's no more 17-inch model. The top-of-the-line can be had with 2.8GHz Intel Dore 2 Duo chips, 4GB of memory and up to a terabyte of storage.

Wireless carriers O2 in the UK, Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany are going to handle the iPhone in Europe under unusual 10% revenue-sharing arrangements with Apple, according to a story in the German edition of the Financial Times. Paris Match then waded quoting Orange owner France Telecom as saying the negotiations are still ongoing and that it will take well into the fall for anybody to come to terms.

Asked at the end of his keynote address on Day Three of AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 West at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California yesterday what he thought of the fact that Java doesn't run on the Apple iPhone, Robert Brewin - Sun's CTO and VP of Software - replied that he thought it was 'a mistake' on Apple's part and that it would make more sense if Java were able to run on iPhones right from the get-go.

No IM. Ok, this is a big sore spot. This one sucks. You can't use Google Talk because the widget requires Flash (I tried...trust me, it doesn't work). There's no native AIM, Yahoo!, or MSN support. There are a couple of web pages that you can go to that simulate the AIM experience, but none are very good. My inner conspiracy theorist tells me that this lack of IM support is a ploy by AT&T to continue to make revenue from SMS texting. The reason that doesn't fly is that every single damn Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 device on the freaking planet (well, virtually) can download and run an AIM client with very little effort. MSN Messenger works on just about every version of WM out there. Bottom line: the first patch/update/service pack for the iPhone had damn well better come with iChat. I want iChat on my iPhone and I want it NOW. You hear me? NOW!

Zoho went live with iZoho, which provides iPhone-optimized access to Zoho's online office applications. iPhone users who visit www.izoho.com can view Zoho Writer documents, Zoho Sheet spreadsheets, and Zoho Show presentations - and edit Zoho Writer documents - from the Safari browser.

The iPhone story that interested me the most though, was Bubba Murarka's tale of his service experience with Apple. Here's someone who clearly likes the product, but the whole experience is let down by the support model. I had a similar experience when I returned my malfunctioning Macbook 17 days after I purchased it. If the problem had arisen within 14 days, the Apple ?Genius? happily told me, they would replace the device with no questions asked. But because it was now 17 days old, they would have to repair it. I won?t bore you with details of the story, other than to say that ultimately I was left with no laptop for more than 2 weeks.

The major challenges that mobile devices such as the iPhone cause enterprises are in the areas of security, management, control, cost, and heterogeneity. The adoption of such devices by employees tends to be in many instances user-driven, as features such as ease-of-use, better screen, e-mail, calendars, and contacts provide greater convenience, and can motivate the workforce to use the new device for corporate use.

This is the first article in a series that I plan on writing about iPhone application development. The first thing you should know is that these articles will not cover anything related to taking existing content sites and making them more 'iPhone-friendly'. While I think that is a valuable topic, it has little interest to me as a programmer. If I was a website manager, then it might have more interest to me. There are plenty of online resources for making your web content more iPhone-friendly and the fact that the iPhone runs a full version of Safari makes this a somewhat minor task.

The introduction of the iPhone was marked by huge publicity and the scrambling of all sorts of web services to roll out support for the unique features of the iPhone. The breakthrough browser in the iPhone provides the best mobile browsing experience to date. Not only does it support the multi-touch interface, but the full AJAX support in the Safari based browser provides the ability to create a mobile experience way beyond WAP. The challenge is that the iPhone provided no API, toolkits, or developer tools. So how do you make your normal web or WAP based application suitable for the iPhone.

'Phones should be open to anything,' claims a flyer being distributed by Apple in the wake of Sun's recent claim about Apple: 'Fundamentally, they don't like open systems.' Is the Nokia vs Apple war heating up?

Elias Corporation has launched Applists.com version 2.0. Version 1.0 was released on July 18, 2007. 'Our goal is to get great apps into the hands of iPhone and iPod Touch owners the instant they need them, and to do so in the easiest, most intuitive, and respectful way possible,' says Elias Corporation CEO Bill Denk.

All of which brings to mind the so-called gPhone that Google is supposed to be close to fielding. Rumors claim Google's developed a Linux-based operating system for phones, which, if true, would be its first operating systems product, and intends to open the APIs to developers, a potentially dicey proposition leading to speculation that it might pressure Apple to open up more of the iPhone to third parties.

Apple has released quite a few tidbits about developing web applications for the iPhone, however, this information is not complete. The iPhoneWebDev community has discovered many missing answers to help you better create rich AJAX-based web applications for iPhone. This session will discuss what we know, what we don't know, and a little about creating native iPhone applications that can also access the internet.

The other day I was chatting with a friend and he was taking notes about some things using his iPhone. I commented on how unbelievably fast it seemed he was able to type using the keyboard. Up until recently, I've been 'OK' at using the keyboard but I never really considered the iPhone as a device on which I could take notes - I have been so abused by smartphone keyboards (virtual and physical) that I just assume that the typing experience is going to suck.

Telefonica and Yahoo have announced a global agreement providing a framework for making oneSearch, Yahoo!'s mobile search product, the main search service on Telefonica's mobile portals in 15 countries in Europe and Latin America, potentially reaching more than 100 million consumers worldwide.

Nokia will pay $8.1 billion, or $78 per share, for NAVTEQ, which provides digital map data for in-car navigation systems and other devices.

August is always an interesting month for me at Sybase, as it's the month when Sybase holds their User Training & Solutions Conference and employees like myself get to meet a lot of customers and partners face to face. This year was no exception - I was thrilled to meet the folks who I have believed for a long while are the leaders and responsible for the coolest weapons in the road warrior's mobile arsenal. Who am I talking of? Why HTC, of course, one of our great sponsors this year.

The program chairs for the Workshop on Mobile Ajax are Daniel Appelquist of Vodafone and Jon Ferraiolo of IBM and OpenAjax Alliance. The program committee includes representatives from ACCESS, ETRI, Google, Livescribe, MobileAware, Nokia, OpenGardens, Opera, Sun Microsystems, Volantis, and Wake3, Inc. Results will be linked from the Workshop home page in October.