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This should come as a surprise to no one, given that it was painfully obvious in the Marketplace screenshots Malatesta broke over the weekend, but Microsoft apparently is in talks with carriers to have their own customizations in the Windows Marketplace.

As you can see above, it looks like AT&T will have its own little corner, and talks are under way overseas, too, according to Tweakers.net: (Apologies for the translation)

Microsoft wants to close deals with the major providers to the 'branded' versions. "Then about O2, Telefonica and Vodafone, large telco's," says Maarten Sonneveld, business group lead for Microsoft Mobile Netherlands. The providers may 'branded' versions use own ROMs of Windows Mobile devices.

Questions still remain as to what will actually be in the Marketplace upon launch. (For that matter, we still have no idea when the Marketplace and Windows Mobile 6.5 will launch.) We know of a bunch of developers who plan to be there from the outset, but the list of prohibited apps we found over the weekend has a lot of people scratching their heads. We'll just have to wait and see.

Via Unwired View

A long time ago (1985) in a faraway land (Germany) lived a man named Friedhelm Hillebrand. And he had a question: Just how many characters does the average person need to communicate?

Care to guess what the answer was?

Fast foward nearly a quarter-century and you can still see the fruits of Hillebrand's labor. Text messaging is as popular as ever (and often used more on phones than voice calls).

Anyhoo, the L.A. Times has a neat piece on Hillebrand and the birth of text messaging, as well as what the old guy's got up his sleeve next. Check it out.

Why Text Messages are Limited to 160 Characters

This one's had us scratching our heads all day upon reading about it. You can buy the Palm Treo Pro at Best Buy for $249 if you sign up for a "new 2-year activication" for AT&T service. Next stop: The nearest AT&T store. Nary a Treo Pro to be seen. What's up with that? Here's what AT&T had to say:

Treo Pro is a certified non-stock device. Our national retail partners are free to sell any of our certified devices, and set their own pricing. You would have to ask Best Buy if they are subsidizing or if Palm is discounting.

Odd, indeed. But we're not going to worry too much about it. The important thing is if you're looking for a Treo Pro on the cheap and don't mind digging in for two years, this might be the best way to do it.

Oh, bother. What do you do when one of your favorite artists stirs up an attack on your beloved mobile operating system? Why, you call his arse out on the carpet.

And so we shall, after the break.

Not that we really need more indication that the HTC Snap and Touch Pro 2 are headed to T-Mobile, but here you go. TmoNews snagged a couple of inventory screens that show the "Dash 3G" (aka the Snap), and the Touch Pro 2 (which may or may not still show up as the Wing II - we're hoping not).

And that's cool, and everything. More confirmation is good. But if anyone wants to shoot us some launch dates (July has been rumored) and prices, that'd be even better.

Via TmoNews (parts 1 and 2)

Back in April we whined complained about how syncing your Windows phone with Windows (the desktop operating system) took a few steps too many. You had to manually go out and find the software (ActiveSync for you XP users, Mobile Device Center for Vista and Windows 7).

Our cries have been heard.

With the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 (that's Build 7100, for those keeping track at home), everything's taken care of for you. We'd heard as much from PocketNow but just had to try it ourselves. Here's my experience:

1. Phil plugged in his trusty ol' Moto Q9h.
2. Windows 7 downloaded and installed some drivers.
3. Mobile Device Center was automatically downloaded and installed.
4. Phil thrust his arms in the air in celebration, sounded a barbaric yawp and immediately began a post praising Microsoft's foresight.

OK, it's not perfect. There really are no dialog boxes telling you what's going on, and the process isn't as quick as I'd like. It took a couple of minutes to install the drivers and software, which in and of itself was fine. But there basically were no dialog boxes (other than the one saying drivers were being installed) to let the user know what was going on. But we're not going to let that rain on our parade.

And for those of you wanting to try out the Release Candidate, it'll be available to the public on Tuesday.

We're still expecting an official Facebook application come the launch of Windows Marketplace for Mobile, but we've been using the version, er, purloined from a Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM for a while now. It's good stuff.

Noir over at PPCGeeks points out that there's a new version available (0.16 - up from the 0.14 I was using) that for whatever reason is definitely a little more snappy. There's also a version at XDA Developers [via], but I had trouble with that one.

That said, this is highly unofficial and unsupported stuff (hell, the name of the app has changed from Microsoft Facebook to ppcgeeks Facebook - and that's more than a little shady), so be sure to back up your phone first, or just lurk in the thread and see how everyone else is doing.

Along with the announcement of Windows Mobile 6.5, one of the other big news stories at Mobile World Congress earlier this year was the announcement of LG's partnership with Microsoft – and that it planned 26 new Windows Phones in 2012.

Might this be one of them? Mobile-Review (the same site that brought us the excellent Touch Pro 2 review) brings news the LG GT810H. And here are the deets to go with it: (translated here)

• 3-inch, 240-by-400-pixel touchscreen
• 256 megs of storage, and up to 8 gigs external
• HSDPA
• 106.95x55x13.9 millimeters
• 3-megapixel camera
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• FM radio
• Weighs 105 grams

Mobile-Review says the GT810H would be destined for the U.S., though no date is mentioned. And is it just us, or does the big black dot on the top bezel look like a possible 3.5mm headphone jack?

Allow us to get up on our soapbox for a minute. We're well aware that in 2009, it's entirely possible to go the entire lifespan of a phone without connecting it to a computer.

But, Microsoft, occasionally we do need to plug in our phones, and it'd be a big help if your Mobile Device Center (the successor to ActiveSync) were actually built in to an operating system. It's not even a part of the Windows 7 beta (at least as of build 7068, which we're very much enjoying). Sure, my phone plays quite nicely with the cloud and will work over Bluetooth. But if I want to plug in the darn thing and transfer a bunch of files (which is quicker than doing so over Bluetooth, and easier than remembering where I left my microSD card adapter), then I have to hunt down and download Mobile Device Center.

If Microsoft's serious about connecting its three major platforms – desktop, mobile and gaming/entertainment – it needs to get serious about making things easier on the user, and it can start by including Mobile Device Center with Windows 7. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised and find it in the upcoming Release Candidate version or final build. But we're not holding our breath

/rant

(And so that we're not just whining, here are the 32-bit and 64-bit download locations for Mobile Device Center.)