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The Google Mobile Blog has alerted us to a new umbrella page for its mobile services.

Hit up www.google.com/mobile/winmo from your desktop for one-stop shopping for all of Google's mobile device products available on Windows Mobile, including Google Maps, Gmail, Picasa and their bread and butter, Internet search.

Nothing earth-shattering here, but it's all available under one roof, with some how-to videos thrown in as well. No mention of Google Gears, though.

Microsoft on Thursday announced it was purchasing a company that allows you to back up your PIM data - that'd be your e-mail, contacts, calendar items, etc. - online, as well as post directly to social networking sites, such as Facebook.

No, it's not buying Dashwire, which has been a hot topic of late.

What Redmond is buying is MobiComp, who is tight with Europe's Vodafone (Verizon's parent company), and other mobile carriers with a good number of customers in Portugal and Saudi Arabia.

A direct shot across Dashwire's bow? Or Apple's Mobile Me, for that matter? Probably not just yet.

According to a Reuters report, Microsoft intends to turn MobiComp into a research and development group and keep it in Portugal, making it unclear exactly what Microsoft will do with MobiComp's technology. Microsoft already has a number of cloud services in development and is rapidly expanding its mobile portfolio.

Hang in there, Dashwire. Chin up, Mobile Me. You've probably got a good one, maybe two years if we stick to Microsoft's "development" schedule.

Ahh...right on time for our weekly leak of Treo 800w info and/or blurry spy pics. Not much to say here, just look on with envy or scorn for you square haters. Oh and we now know that it comes with unicorns and puppies. Now are you intrigued?

Note: these are clearly early tester versions, not final release/design. How to tell?
(1) blurred our serial number top right corner (2) not the final paint scheme

Thanks Matthew_Love84!

The big smartphone news today is that Nokia finally got their act together and set forth a unified game plan for the Symbian platform. They're buying up the rest of it and then re-jiggering the Symbian Foundation as a non-profit that will offer its members Symbian for free to use on their smartphones. Or at least, that's the thumbnail version.

Most folks (right) see this as a big shot across the bow at Google's Android platform. If you have a choice between Android and Symbian you're choosing between two free smartphone platforms - one is brand new with a handful of developers, few shipped phones (none yet) and is tied very closely to Google, the other is well-estabilished with a legion of developers, hundreds-of-millions of shipped phones, and helps out Nokia but can also be tied to whatever carrier-based services you like. Google: that's gotta hurt.

What about the rest of the market? What about Windows Mobile? After the break, y'all.

Ok, so we're not entirely sure. WM is no slouch worldwide (as the above, slightly outdated graph shows, WM is maintaining a foothold despite Symbian's dominance and the iPhone's comeuppance), but will it be able to continue to attract developers and users? The short answer is yes, WM will do just fine.

Let's start with North America. While the new Symbian will eventually mean that they'll be able to make a real push into North America in a couple of years, it's still not going to make a significant dent in what is increasingly a fractured US market. By the time Nokia massages Symbian's S60 (or whatever the successor will be) so it's more palatable to US consumers, they'll be trying to make an entry into a market where BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm's Linux / Palm's Garnet, and of course the iPhone all will have marketshare that is not to be sniffed at. Sure, that gives Symbian a chance to grab a chunk, but it will be such small potatoes that I wonder if Nokia will really be able to put their heart into trying. They haven't in the past, I tend to doubt they will in the future.

Internationally, Windows Mobile is still competitive (very competitive) in the enterprise market. If anything, the new Symbian system might hurt BlackBerry more than it hurts Windows Mobile. The hot WM devices are coming a lot faster than what RIM is able to put out and should help WM keep a spot as a 2nd or 3rd fiddle to Symbian worldwide. Witness the Touch, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Samsung's offerings, and more. All of these are selling and selling well. RIM has a bunch of stuff coming -- but after the Bold hits the rest is still pretty mysterious. Everywhere except North America, Smartphone == Symbian for most people, and for those that opt-out the question is what the backup choice is. I think Windows Mobile has the best shot at being that choice -- both for consumers and developers. That goes double for enterprise.

Since we're discounting BlackBerrys as too slow to come out to stay competitive in Europe, discounting Android as too Google-nichey (and not out either!), and believe that WM is going to be able to hold its own, the only X factor left is the LiMo Foundation and/or Palm's upcoming OS (read: Linux). We're pretty sure that Symbian puts Linux in a box too, but it's too early to say.

What do you think? Will Nokia's gambit pay off?

Faster than a speeding bullet 1xRTT, more power than a locomotive mere EVDO, Alltel is rolling out EVDO Rev. A, just in time for its little coming out party with Verizon.

What should you expect, if you're one of the lucky ones?

• Download speeds in the neighborhood of 600 kbps to 1.4 Mbps, with bursts up to 3.1 Mbps. That's increased from an average of 400-700 Kbps.
• Much higher upload speeds, at 1.8Mbps on a really good day, compared to the 50-70 Kbps you're getting now.

Of course, this won't cover everybody at first, with Charlotte, N.C., New Orleans, Phoenix and Tampa first in line for the upgrade. Alltel says the expansion should cover about 82 percent of potential customers by the end of 2008.

And you'll still need a Rev. A-capable device. Alltel is pimping a couple of laptop cards, the Huawei EC228 USB and the UTStarcom UM 150. Or, you could finally do that ROM update for the HTC Touch or the 6800.

The upgraded service (and regular EVDO) will cost you $59.999 a month, with or without voice plan.

For awhile now we've been covering the whole "HTC/Qualcomm Video driver drama" (read our insider Q&A for some perspective and more here).

So far we know that the unbranded HTC TyTN II (aka "Tilt") is getting WM 6.1 with a video performance boost, but no gurantees that the AT&T branded version will be getting the same. We also know that the HTC Touch Diamond, which is a powerful VGA device, does have the DirectDraw video drivers on board, though up until recently they too have underperformed.

The big question was whether the lot of other HTC devices that are based on the MSM-7xxx series chipset would be getting any help from HTC? So far, the answer appears to be "no".

Enter some crafty hackers and dedicated software pros to start piecing together bits and pieces from the TyTN II, Touch Diamond and the K620 and have a somewhat working version of the OpenGL ES driver, which according to the HTCClassAction.org site:

...provides the DirectDraw (2D) capability; so getting the OpenGL ES driver to work correctly is a big step in getting the D3D and DD working.

As you can see from their demo video, the tester app flickers during the test, but that is a result of a problem with the tester program, not the OpenGL drivers. But this proof-of-concept demonstration definitely hints that exporting and enabling these advanced video driver capabilities is possible.

Click the link to watch the the OpenGL ES Driver in action!

We'll continue to follow this story as usual!

Via Tilt Site