ctia

Thumb open an ordinary flip or slide phone and nothing happens, except maybe the triggering of a robotic greeting (Hello to you, too, Moto.) Do it again with a phone enriched with Emdigo's 3D offering and football players might rush by.

The carrier-partnered content distributor isn't one I'd normally cover, but the offering is an example of compelling 3D software coming our way. Similar third-party, carrier-agnostic downloads are sure to follow.

NFL Team Tailgate and Hello Kitty are two such examples of these enhanced animated skins that users can purchase through Verizon and Alltel. Flipping or sliding … Read more

The only things you need to send a Facebook photo to any cell phone is 3Guppies' (review) Facebook app and a working US or Canadian phone number. The app does a curious thing, pulling up all the photos in your friends' albums as well as your own. Grabbing the photo previews it in a mobile screen frame, though you needn't worry too much about it fitting--3Guppies Mobile automatically scales photos on the destination phone.

You can crop, title, and tag the image and choose to store a copy in the 3Guppies locker for later reference if you have or sign up for an account. Once the photo has landed on the phone, it can be downloaded or sent on its way to sunnier pastures. 3Guppies has hustled behind the scenes, striking compatibility deals with 28 carriers for 1,200 phones in North America.… Read more

The only things you need to send a Facebook photo to any cell phone are 3Guppies' (review) Facebook app and a working U.S. or Canadian phone number. The app does a curious thing, pulling up all the photos in your friends' albums as well as your own. Grabbing the photo previews it in a mobile screen frame, though you needn't worry too much about it fitting--3Guppies Mobile automatically scales photos on the destination phone.

You can crop, title, and tag the image and choose to store a copy in the 3Guppies locker for later reference if you … Read more

Cellfire is smart. The free mobile coupons company knows three things it needs to entice users to use its digital chits instead of stuffing paper cutouts into wallets, purses, and pockets.

1. Provide multiple ways to get the product. Cellfire is a downloadable PC-to-mobile app for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, but it also offloads into the phone via WAP (point browsers to www.cellfire.com/) and through some carrier agreements.

2. Offer compelling brands. In addition to dozens of national chains, like TGIF and 1.800.Flowers, Cellfire's service gets local, offering discounts for hundreds of neighborhood merchants … Read more

Conference-goers flocked around the Guitar Hero station at Motorola's mammoth tent on the CTIA Wireless conference floor, but it was Hands-On Mobile's modest booth where Guitar Hero Mobile is best experienced. There the game's product manager, JJ Leichleiter, walked me through the mobile version of the popular console game.

Let me dispel all doubt by assuring you that this is the real thing, deputized by Activision, Guitar Hero's console publisher. Loosely based on Guitar Hero 3, the 3D mobile version offers two characters (Axel Steel and Judy Nails), four guitars, and 15 songs. Subscription holders will … Read more

Second Life may have nudged its Grid onto the mobile screen, but it's Gemini's EXplo platform for enabling mini virtual worlds that earned a spot on Deloitte's Wireless Fast 50 list at the CTIA Wireless conference (coverage).

In S'town, a game built on the EXplo platform, users can chat on screen, buy products, stare at advertising billboards, and meet up with online friends, even whooshing to a meeting point on the other end of the expansive world. That's in Japan, where impressive phones on the Softbank network are already attracting a demographic of "young, … Read more

Am I too old to own a Sidekick? As someone in his early 30s (okay, mid-30s) I've always thought that the T-Mobile Sidekick belonged more in the hands of a twentysomething, My Space addict than it did in my very uncool hands. But after Bonnie Cha lent me the Sidekick LX, I discovered I liked it using it. The spacious QWERTY keyboard is one of the best I've seen on a phone and the display resoultion is top-notch. Yes, it's missing a lot of high-end data and multimedia features but as a messaging device it's hard … Read more

It's the year of social networks wrought with the mobile experience in mind. I spoke to five companies peddling their handheld experience as The Next Big Thing; here's how they stack up.

Bluepulse is the most advanced of the bunch, with a messaging service core and a profile, activity feed, and friend-of-a-friend discovery as other central activities. Messaging is easy. The single in-box shows status updates, all message types, and friend requests, and filters within this section highlight new messages and allow search.

You can post photos and 3G videos, but click-to-call is still under development. I dig the automatic spell check and basic grammar correction, but wish the messaging had a drop-down menu or predictive text to quickly choose from among friends. Unlike others, Bluepulse is purely mobile, operating on a slim and simple WAP site that never looks right from the desktop.

Based out of the U.K., Trutap has much more momentum abroad--in the U.S. the closed beta only works on AT&T and limits all-in-one IM to MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and ICQ services. Trutap is more a mobile facilitator than pure mobile social network in that photos and posts push to partner sites--Blogger, LiveJournal, Flickr, and so on. Trutap friends can also chat in-network.… Read more

There are very few essential differences between Whrrl and Rummble, two new social networks built on geotagging, ratings and recommendations within a trusted network, and an amphibian experience of comfortable operation on the Internet and cell phone.

Both Rummble and Whrrl pin users' whereabouts and ratings on a local map so their friends can see. Both also contain stealth settings to dissuade stalkers or shunned friends, and a manual mechanism for updating location if the phone isn't GPS-enabled.

The major differences between the reviews service and Yelp is mostly philosophical. Yelp, too, contains filters for whittling opinions to your … Read more