Motricity, a leading provider of mobile content infrastructure services, today outlined the company’s strategic operating plan following the acquisition of InfoSpace Mobile.

“Historically, Motricity has been involved in several areas of mobile content,” said Ryan Wuerch, chairman and CEO. “The InfoSpace acquisition gave us the opportunity to refine the focus of our organization on areas where we have the strongest market position and are seeing the fastest growth today. Moving forward, our strategy will be aligned with our core business of providing mobile content infrastructure services – enabling consumers to discover content inside and outside the walled garden. These services include powering portals, storefronts, managed web and search for mobile operators along with messaging gateway services for all customers needing a mobile solution.”

As part of this, Motricity will discontinue non-profitable and non-core businesses including the planned divestiture of its direct to consumer property, Pocketgear.com. In December, Motricity announced the sale of another direct to consumer property, eReader.com, to Fictionwise. The company will also be divesting certain business relationships in the media and entertainment arena. More at Yahoo. Thanks to Justine.

My latest experience with Palm OS has been very similar to my previous dalliances, except that this time the hardware works. The Centro is very cheap but arguably much better than the Treo 680 in many crucial areas, and this has made the Palm OS experience much more positive this time around.

I have always been a fan of Palm OS but have also been very critical of Palm’s hardware and lack of innovation over the past two years. It is frustrating that Wi-Fi, 3G and many other top end features have not made their way to a Palm OS smartphone, but a couple of weeks with the Centro has made me realise that a phone is still a phone after all and that maybe I do not need super fast mobile broadband and the ability to multi-task many applications at once.

I have a firm belief that multi-tasking on a smartphone is more troublesome than useful. Some smartphones struggle to cope with multiple applications open at one time, and most are not set up to easily deal with moving information between different applications. Being able to push the home key on Palm OS and to know that is it fully closed with the open information saved is a big time saver in itself, and one that quickly becomes second nature.

Maybe it is just the way I use a smartphone, but I am struggling to think of times when I have needed to multi-task. It is useful when GPS is active, but besides that I never need it and probably never will. A smartphone is a phone and not a computer. It is a smarter option to make a phone do things in the simplest way possible and to not overcomplicate the architecture behind the user experience.

This is not a Symbian or Windows Mobile bashing article, because that would be silly considering both operating systems are arguably more reliable than Palm OS, but rather a comment on the fact that some people feel that the way Palm OS works is a failing. Many would argue that the way it works is the reason they stay with it, and that no other mobile operating system has matched it to date.

It must have something going for it because any other company producing such a slow rate of new devices would have been chapter 11’d long ago…

St. Petersburg, Russia - March 04th, 2008 - Spb Software House, the world's leading Windows Mobile software vendor, upgrades its outstanding Spb Mobile Shell software to version 2.0. Spb Mobile Shell is an application that completely overhauls the innate Windows Mobile user interface, making it more direct, logical, and slick.

The software first hit the market in 2007 and quickly gained recognition among end-users and mobile device manufacturers. By the end of 2007, Spb Mobile Shell became the best-selling Pocket PC application in the world, was named the best interface/menu improver by Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine, the Best Evolution Application by Handango, and the Best Program for PDA's by the Shareware Industry Awards. Spb Mobile Shell turns the Windows Mobile device into a better phone: gives access to crucial information at a glance, enables one-hand navigation, minimizes the number of taps to launching programs, changing settings, making calls. The new Spb Mobile Shell offers a great choice of haptic animation, it is more futuristic and practical in design, yet it is lower in memory consumption.

"The application is deeply integrated and fits well with the operating system," - comments Yaroslav Goncharov, the Product Manager of Spb Mobile Shell. "The software has become the accepted Windows Mobile interface for many: people buy devices with Spb Mobile Shell preinstalled and use it, believing the software to be an inherent part of the Microsoft platform."

*** Top Spb Mobile Shell 2.0 Features ***

* NEW All functionality in one tabbed window
* NEW Full screen dialogs for Weather and Time
* NEW Animated transitions
* NEW Navigation with gestures
* NEW Quick panel selection with taskbar gestures
* Now Screen: the most important information in one screen
* Spb Menu: phone style menu
* Weather forecasts
* Photo speed dial
* World time
* Launcher
* Color based themes
* Spb Contacts: smart contact search

*** Pricing and Availability ***

Spb Mobile Shell is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC or higher. A free, 15-day trial can be downloaded, or Mobile Shell can be purchased for 29.95 USD from www.spbsoftwarehouse.com. Users of any 1.x versions of Spb Mobile Shell are welcome to upgrade to Spb Mobile Shell 2.0 for just 14.95 USD. According to Spb Software House upgrades policy, all Spb Mobile Shell users who have purchased the product within the last 90 days, are invited to exchange the previous version of software for the newly released one, for free.

T-Mobile Germany has unveiled the MDA Compact IV- Grrrr! Thanks to Gavin. "When it comes to manufacturers CeBIT may be an international or even global event, but for mobile operators it is purely German event, so no wonder that only German operators are present at CeBIT, that is after all located in city of Hannover, that, when we checked last time, was in Germany...

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, has personally admitted that it is thanks to T-Mobile and Orange, that HTC achieved breakthrough in past, so indeed T-Mobile is very important for Windows Mobile!

Obviously CeBIT 2008 will be the first CeBIT event, when iPhone will be presented and since T-Mobile Germany has exclusivity for iPhone for Germany, it will be presented on their stand... but there is also some interesting Windows Mobile related story from T-Mobile Germany at CeBIT 2008:

MDA compact IV – multimedia pro with 3D touchscreen

HSDPA technology, an exclusive T-Mobile design, 3 mega-pixel camera and 4 GB internal memory – these are just four of the features of the MDA compact IV. This cell phone has a smooth comfort factor thanks to the new 3D-animated interface on the large touchscreen (640 x 480 pixels). Of course, the newest member of the MDA family can also be used with MyFaves." More at msmobiles.

ASUS delivered in style with the Eee PC and now the M930 could take just as many positive reviews. Looks like an alternative to the E90, but a bit cheaper.

The ASUS M930 is your office on-the-go that’s high on class and style, and full of connectivity options and features. Boasting a full QWERTY keyboard and an ultra-wide screen, the M930 offers ease and efficiency of use.

The M930 has a stylish design, elegant screens with mirror reflective surface and sleek metal keys. A key design feature is the ergonomic free-stop flipping hinge that effortlessly fixes to any position and angle you prefer.  When closed, the M930 offers great carrying ease with its compact body and slim side profile.

The ASUS M930 benefits from a full QWERTY keyboard in a neat, narrow design, offering intuitive input that’s fast, easy and natural. Every character is in its rightful place, and speeds up everything from documents and presentations to emails and messaging. In addition, the M930 offers another input option with its numeric keypad for one-handed convenience.

The M930’s 2.6” WQVGA landscape display makes the day-to-day content browsing, reading and writing of documents and messages that much easier on the eyes. With the ultra-wide screen and embedded webcam, you can enjoy enhanced Video Telephony with a wider, clearer and more detailed view.              

Wireless connectivity is a strong feature of the ASUS M930 with GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi, you can enjoy faster downloads of documents, videos and MP3s with 3.5G high speed data transfers.

With the M930, you are assured of instant Internet access even in areas without Wi-Fi coverage. With the Quick Modem Setting, your M930 becomes a 3.5G modem in one quick step!

The word round the campfire today is that Sony Ericsson’s recently announced flagship handset, the Xperia X1, might be facing a delay of up to a year. The source of this unconfirmed rumour is the SEMC Blog, which claims to have a table of legitimate release dates for all of Sony Ericsson’s announced new handsets for this year.

The table lists the Xperia X1 as launching on February 10th 2009 which if true could be disastrous for the device. It wouldn’t look good for Sony Ericsson to let its new flagship handset slip that far and considering how quickly the technological landscape evolves in the mobile space, the Xperia might not seem like quite the showstopper is does at the moment in a year’s time. More at Unwired. Thanks to Luca.

Terni Lapilli is tic-tac-toe but a little more difficult- "Ancient Rome board game (five in a row) is ancestor of modern tic-tac-toe games."

Mozilla's Firefox Mobile will hit smartphones like Windows Mobile and Linux devices later this year and as Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla Vide President Engineering, unveiled this week, beside users also mobile carriers and operators are interested to learn more about Mozilla's latest mobile device project. Schroepfer is quoted, that Mozilla's mission is to break open a closed market but he knows that it won't happen overnight.

And while Windows Mobile devices includes a web browser already, namely Internet Explorer Mobile, it looks like operators and ODMs aren't satisfied with Internet Explorer anymore which must be the reason for adding Opera Mobile on their smartphones in addition.

Since Opera Mobile isn't available for free, unlike the desktop version, operators and carriers "want to know how much it will cost," Schroepfer said and added "That's an easy answer: mobile Firefox will be free". More at the unwired. Thanks to Luca.

EverNote is a stunning desktop application, and it is extremely effective on Windows Mobile as well. It looks as though a web version will soon be widely available and the demonstration videos suggest this is another killer version.

We're almost ready to let the whole world see the new Evernote. Until then, we're looking for a limited number of people to help us put the finishing touches. If you received an invitation to the closed beta, please follow the instructions in your welcome letter. Otherwise, leave your email address and we'll shoot you a note as soon as a spot opens up.

This story is unusual in that the customer 'may' actually have recourse on this one. I have little sympathy for the other recent cases where people should have know better.

A British businessman has been hit with a £11,000 (US$22,000) mobile data roaming fee after his wife used an "unlimited" data account to download several TV shows via a mobile phone. A report in the Sunday Times says that the wife of a business executive used his phone to start the file downloads while they were in the UK. However, he took his phone on a trip to Germany, and once back in coverage - the handset resumed the data download, at overseas roaming rates.

Had the download occurred completely within the UK, it would have been free of charge as part of their tariff.

The first the businessman knew of the problem was upon his return to the UK, when Vodafone called to advise him of the issue.

Today's free eBook is Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key (excerpt) by Kage Baker- "On the 16th day of April, 1671, a man walked down Tower Street in old Port Royal and came to the Bluebell Inn. He stood in the street a while, looking up at the hanging sign. The daubed blue flowers were unmistakable, and in any case he could read the name perfectly well, having had some education. Still, he hesitated to step inside.

His name was John. To some people he was known as John James. He had been a London bricklayer’s apprentice who killed a man and was sent to the West Indies as a consequence. He had been several things since then: redleg bond slave, runaway, pirate, and most lately patriotic gentleman of fortune, for he had just returned from doing his bit sacking Panama with Captain Henry Morgan.

This very morning he had gone ashore, bidding farewell to his late commander. Morgan had returned his salute with a gloomy wave, and headed straight for the nearest tavern for a stiff drink before reporting to Governor Modyford. John would have joined him, but for his new and earnest resolve to give up the life of a buccaneer."