Motorola Cliq smart phone will synch and stream various sources onto the screen.

Last month, Motorola introduced its first Google's Android phone, the Motorola Cliq scheduled to go on sale exclusively from T-Mobile beginning Nov 2 with pre-ordering for current T-Mobile customers starting from October 19 to November 1. The Motorola Cliq is priced at $199.99 for the pre orders and will likely remains at that price when it goes on sale to the general public, according to Barron.co.
With Google Android as the brain, the phone comes loaded with various offerings from Google like Google Maps with Street View, Google Voice Search, Picasa, Google photos sharing website, Gtalk etc.
But when it comes to e-mail services, the Motorola Cliq offers several options beside Google's Gmail, including Yahoo mail, Windows Live and others.
According to CNET.com, Motorola Cliq comes equiped with a full HTML Google browser, WI-FI capabilities and is Bluetooh and GPS ready. It also has a built-in music and video player, and a 5-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities.
But beside all its nice features, what Motorola is hoping will set the Cliq apart from the competition, is its featuristic interface called Motoblur which key element is it ability to synch information from different sources such as your work or personal e-mail accounts, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networks sites and automatically display any updates from those sources, on the screen.
In that new feature, Motorola tries to set the tone in what a smart phone should be: an Internet access and platform device. How true that assumption is going to ring, will depends on how widely and quickly the new phone is adopted before the next new thing comes out and takes all the novelty factor out of it.

For more, see CNET.com

Choosing the best phone when traveling to Europe.

For most Americans traveling to Europe, being able to make phone calls using a cell phone can be very challenging and frustrating. There are many reasons behind that fact, starting with the compatibility factor between the cell phones' technologies used in the U.S. and the one used in Europe. With the exception of AT&T and T-Mobile, the technology used by most U.S. major phone carriers is not compatible with the one used in Europe. So, if you are traveling to Europe, your best bet would be to pick a phone from one of those two companies that can operate on all the frequencies in usage in both sides of the Atlantic. Usually, those phones are referred to as "quad band" or "world phones." Once such phone is picked, the next step will be to find a plan with minimum roaming fees which can be very steep.
Another way to deal with the issue, is to look for what is called an "unlocked" phone which can accept different SIM cards. The advantage of such possibility is that you will be able to use a different SIM card for whatever country you are in, and have your phone calls treated as local.

New Blackberry Curve 8520 offered at a discount.

On August 5th, Research inMotion, the maker of the popular Blackberrys released its newest addition to the Curves series with the Curve 8520. In releasing this newest version, something very interesting happened as far as pricing, which can be very attactive at the right place.
Speaking of price, the Curve 8520 is offered at prices never seen for any Blackberry at launch. To get right to it, the Curve 8520 is offered for $129 by T.Mobile which is the service provider for the device, and even better, Wal-Mart is selling it for $49.99. Both those prices, require a two year service plan with T-Mobile which starts at $55 a month for voice and data only.
The new device has all the features someone comes to expect from a Blackberry device including a a full QWERTY keyboard. On top of tools like right and left shortcuts buttons, the Curve 8520 also sports a new feature not seen on any Blackberry model before, a trackpad instead of a trackball or scroll.
The Curve 8520 come equipped with a 2 megapixels camera and a 1-gigabyte microSD memory card.
To connect to the Internet, the Curve 8520 uses WI-FI instead of the fast 3G network, but will automatically connect you to trusted networks within range.

For more, see WSJ.com

Free Internet calling services for cellphones.

Even if the possibilities have been around for a while, making free international calls via cellphones have remained challenging. Two companies, Skype, the market leader and Fring, an Israel based company, offer the most user-friendly cellphone applications for international calls. But, there are still some hussles and for these applications to be worthwhile, someone has to plan to make a lot of international calls.
For these two applications to work best, they better be downloaded on a phone with WI-FI capabilities with the user staying within the hot spot during the phone call.
For both Skype and Fring, users are assigned an ID or name that they use to dial up with the call going through the service's Internet servers.
Calls made to others members of both services are free while those made to non members using a Skype prepaid account, are at a cheaper rate than the one charged by traditional phone companies.
The Skype cellphone application can be dowloaded directly to a phone using Windows Mobile or to a PC and then transfered to the phone later.
According to the New York Times,"for those without a Windows Mobile phone, Skype recently introduced Skype Lite, which runs on dozens of Nokia and Samsung phones with Symbian software, as well as a few Motorola Razr models. On Skype.com, these users can type in their mobile numbers and Skype will send a message to the phone with a link to download the software."
Skype Lite also runs on the G1, from T-Mobile, also known as the Google phone, which operates on the Android software platform. To get the application,one's only need to visit the “Market,” Android’s app store and click on the free Skype application.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Peek simple e-mail mobile devices, now even more affordable.

Back in October, we have posted an article about Peek, a new simple device that does one think and one thing only: send and receive e-mails without a long term contract; today, there is even better news to report. Due to the intense competition between smart phone manufacturers and wireless service providers, the prices of wireless devices are falling at breakneck speed and the Peek devices are not immune to that phenomenon despite their niche character.

Take for instance the Peek Classic which from $99.95 when it launched in September, now can be had for $19.95. Another Peek device, the Pronto, introduced in March and costing $79.95 back then, n0w sells for $59.95. Beside the prices, the two devices have some significant differences.

The Classic only does e-mails and it receives them five minutes after they are sent while the Pronto, like the name suggests, receives e-mails instantly and can send and receive text messages.

Despite these differences, both cost the same to use, $19.95 a month for unlimited e-mails and texts through T-Mobile network, thanks to the use of data compression technology.

Beside its own GetPeek.com site, the devices are sold at Amazon.com, at Target and now at RadioShack stores.

For more, see WSJ.com

Glympse, a new easy way to share your whereabouts

If you ever been in a situation where you wanted to effortlessly and continuously share your whereabouts with someone or several others, this new mobile application called Glympse by Glympse.com , may be worth giving a consideration.

For now, the application only works with T-Mobile's G-1 phones and according to the New York Times, versions for the i-Phone, Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerrys and other portable devices, are on the work. Here are the basics on how the service works : You download the application from the Android Market which is the G1 kind of version of Apple's App Store.

From there, you can start sharing your whereabouts with anyone with Web-enabled phone or PC. Every time you want to do so, you begin the process by opening the application and enter the phone number or e-mail address of the person or persons you want to share that information. The length of time for which you can be tracked, is by default set at 30 minutes with the option to extend it.

Beside your actual location which is tracked by your phone's GPS system, you can include other information like your destination or your own message or one of the scripted ones.

The last step is to hit the "send" option, and there you are beaming your position or destination like an airplane to a to a control tower.

For more, see techcrunch.com

T-Mobile to be the first to offer Google's smartphone.

T-Mobile has been chosen to be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google's Android software. The phone to be manufactured by HTC , one of the world largest makers of mobile phones, is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, or as early as October.The high-end phone is said to match many of the capabilities of Apple's iphone and other smartphones that run software from Palm, Research in Motion , Microsoft and Nokia to access the Internet and perform computerlike functions.

For more see : Canada.com