On one front, Yahoo is introducing a new tool that can synchronize address lists between social networks and Apple's iPhone. But maybe more importantly, a new Yahoo SDK may enable this and other apps to find their way to Symbian and WM6.

Extending its battlefront against Google to the mobile playing field, Yahoo this week rolled out plans to build its own applications for Apple's iPhone, as well as to produce new tools for outside developers that will enable their applications to migrate more easily among various smartphone environments.

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After agreeing to allow access to Live Messenger and Hotmail in May, Microsoft's addition of search to its RIM partnership further signifies the company's embrace of Blackberry.

Under the terms of an extended agreement announced this morning, Microsoft's Live Search will be given prominent placement in the Web browser and mapping applications of RIM BlackBerry handsets.

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After a brief delay, AOL and Nullsoft's Internet radio service Shoutcast has launched its overhauled and upgraded site, in addition to receiving a number of goodies.

Shoutcast has received an official team blog, site skinning, and an embeddable widget, as well as an upgrade to its popular Winamp portal.

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Though the Web browser has become a popular BlackBerry feature, users on the go don't have time to fiddle with browsers. For them, Google has released a mobile version of its basic services that skips the formalities and gets down to basics.

If you're a BlackBerry user, chances are that you've already noticed Google's classic, plain vanilla screens and menus often seem more suited for the PC than for the handheld. There's a much greater chance that a mobile user will need to see a map of nearby restaurants or a list of incoming e-mails than, say, the proper spelling of "esophagus."

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Ad revenues at AOL are no longer 'growing like a weed,' a Time Warner exec admitted at a conference this week. The CFO didn't mention, though, that AOL had just intentionally canceled some of its contracts with advertisers.

Advertisers are now starting to pull back from AOL's Platform-A ad platform, acknowledged Time Warner CFO John Martin, speaking this week at Merrill Lynch's investors conference.

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A shareholder lawsuit accusing Apple and its executives of improper accounting as a result of its stock options practices will yield a $14 million payout to the plaintiffs.

As a result of a settlement in a shareholders' derivative action, liability insurers will pay Apple a total of $14 million, effectively restoring to the company -- and, in the "derivative," to its shareholders -- what executives of the company allegedly took for themselves through options backdating practices.

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How much does your cell phone say about who you are and where you are? Last year, the US government wanted the authority to use the information cell phones put out naturally in its own investigations. Yesterday, a judge said no.

Pennsylvania US district court judge Terrence McVerry late yesterday denied the US government's appeal of a federal magistrate's order last February, that effectively prohibited the government from acquiring location information from individuals' cell phone location tracking devices without a warrant.

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A partnership between TiVo and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) was announced today, promising a future synergy between the popular smartphone and DVR products.

Unfortunately, we are not yet seeing the ability to stream TiVo to BlackBerry handsets, like Sling Media promised earlier this year. Instead, TiVo subscribers will first be given access to their program guide and scheduling functionality on their BlackBerry.

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Voice calls by US wireless subscribers are getting shorter this year, but Americans are spending more of their time texting, playing games, and browsing the Web on their cell phones, according to a wireless industry group.

Although average local cell phone bills will drop to $48.54 per month this year, US wireless carriers will rake in nearly $144 billion in yearly service revenues, with about 20 percent of this total going for data services such as text messaging, games, Web browsing, and ringtones. This according to a new survey from the CTIA industry association.

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It didn't even take 24 hours for Apple and NBC to begin arguing again. The latest dust-up? NBCU's claims that it only came back to iTunes after the Cupertino company agreed to variable pricing.

Many news outlets -- including BetaNews -- took Tuesday's announcement as an indication that Apple had agreed to allow NBC Universal to use a variable pricing structure like it had been demanding.

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With the recording industry reportedly prosecuting tens of thousands of cases of intellectual property theft, the federal government is considering whether it should appoint a new agency head to take care of that job instead.

As the US Senate prepares to debate a bill introduced last July that would enable federal law enforcement agencies to seek, arrest, and prosecute suspected traffickers of intellectual property -- including unauthorized file-sharers -- a cavalcade of trade, industry, and advocacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, and Consumers Union, began a joint counter-offensive against the legislation.

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Alcatel-Lucent has extended its tender offer to purchase US software company Motive yet again, stretching the offer into its fifth month.

In early August, Alcatel-Lucent had collected approximately 27 million shares in Motive, but its tender offer was set to expire, and had to be renewed if any deal was to proceed.

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Qualcomm's "global mobile Internet chip" Gobi, announced last October, is an SoC that enables connectivity to EV-DO Rev. A, UMTS, and HSPA networks as well as GPS. Today, Panasonic announced the chips will be used in upcoming Toughbooks.

According to Gartner research, embedded wireless broadband was seen as a problem for notebooks because of the disparity between available technologies, rapid evolution in the field, and the limitations of aligning with just one network. This is why Qualcomm developed the multi-connection software-swappable modem used in Gobi.

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If you haven't watched any TV on a smartphone yet, you're not alone. But in one of two separate announcements today, MobiTV is gearing its new Mobi4BIZ on-demand mobile TV service for business rather than entertainment.

With mobile TV still in its early stages, especially in the US, two companies -- Openwave and MobiTV -- today announced offerings aimed at pushing faster adoption of video viewing on wireless smartphones and other untethered small-screen devices.

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Starting this week, New York City residents will be able to send in pictures and video to the authorities, which could aid not only law enforcement, but city services.

New York City's $11 million Real Time Crime Center, launched in 2005, is now equipped to handle pictures and video sent via computer or cell phone, city officials announced this morning. In addition, New York's city services number 311 will also be receptive to pictures and video.

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