Virgin Mobile USA has designed an application, that  allows Virgin Mobile USA’s customers to get their friends on Facebook to  pay for their wireless minutes !

The “Fund My Phone” application can be installed just like any other Facebook application and placed on the user’s profile.

Now there’s way to separate your real friends from acquaintances …

I’m personally a big fan of widget applications (Widgets are light weight applications). Be them Vista, Mac or Web widgets, sometimes a widget does it best.

Plusmo is a new service that brings widgets to mobile phones. With over 20,000 cross platform widgets, now you can get a cool calculator, the latest teams scores, news, stock quotes and tons of more stuff, all in a nicely formated widget .

Singapore Airlines has announced it’s plans to offer iPod and iPhone connectivity on select business class flights.

Just like them hi-tech treadmills, the system will allow passengers to enjoy content from their iPod or iPhone through the aircraft’s in-flight entertainment system, which is displayed on the private 15.4-inch widescreen monitor available on every seat, while simultaneously charging your iP(hone/od).
To make your experience whole some , active noise-cancellation headphones are provided as an extra cherry.

If you’re one of those people that enjoy the captian coming on every once in a while and informing you of what’s to your left and right (clouds and some more sea), then fear not , announcements and instructions made by the crew will be mixed into your playing media, in true iPhone fade-in/out fashion…

First we had The Bold and Beautiful blackberry 9000 and now Blackberry is sweetening up it’s line up with the new Blackberry 9500 code named : Thunder

The BlackBerry Thunder is, of course, a touch based cell phone that is supposedly 4G ready with LTE and GSM HSPA. It will be exclusive for Verizon ….

Blackberry really seems to be getting it claws out when it comes to defending it’s territory against Apple , eh ?

(Discovered as an easter egg in GTA IV )

In true Maury’s show fashion,the iPhone might have a larger sibling , pending DNA tests that is .

ZDNet.de reports that Intel Germany CEO, Hannes Schwaderer , confirmed that an iPhone that will be using Intel’s new Atom processor is in the works. Moreover, the new iPhone device is said to be “slightly larger” than the current iPhone…..

There’s been a long standing rumor that Apple is developing a new tablet style macbook , Could we have it all wrong ? Could it be more like a Macbook type of iPhone ?

iPhones  are currently out of stock in the US and UK, and Steve Jobs scheduled to give the keynote at WWDC 08. Could new iPhones and it’s sibling mini-tablet be right around the corner ?

I can’t remember the last time i heard or saw the word “Philips” while i was not in the kitchen or playing a quick game of curling with my old CD player.

Philips is trying to make it back into our world and guess with what ?
No not perfume silly , that’s for celebrities… Cell phones, a touch cell phone mind you.

The two new models from Philips are dubbed the X800 and Xenium X-Connect

The Philips X800 (pictured right) specs point it out to be a tri-band GSM handset with a 2.9-inch 262K color TFT display and of course with ..drum roll.. a touch sensitive screen.
There’s also a 2 megapixel auto focus camera in there.

In true iPhone ripoff fashion, the interface is fully touch based with a twist: It supports hand writing recognition .

The Philips Xenium X-Connect on the other hand  will run Windows Mobile 6 a slightly larger 3-inch display. GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA, integrated GPS-receiver are also on the roster.

AT&T announced plans to boost the speed of its 3G wireless network (High speed internet for mobile phones) to speeds of 20 megabits per second in 2009, say it ain’t so !

It so is ! and it gets better:

AT&T’s mobility chief, De la Vega, also said that his firm has “a clear and logical path” to 700MHz 4G access by 2010 , which could theoretically allow 100 megabits per second !

100 megabits per second , eh ? So using the following formula:

Laptop (Macbook preferably) + Bluetooth + 4G capable headset = End of Wifi ??

I’m keeping my ear to the grind stone…

My World’s favorite mobile browser just got better !

Opera just announced their release of the latest version of Opera mini .

Those unaware of Opera, it started off as a lightweight feature packed browser for desktop computers , this made it a perfect port over to mobile phone’s, spawning Opera-mini .

I must say, Opera mini provides the best mobile web experience by boundless leaps (yes Apple’s safari included…) . I really suggest you give it a go, it might actually convince you that the mobile web is more than just team scores and ASCI weather reports

You can have a download link telezapped to your phone (SMS ) via Opera Mini’s website

HTC’s has a new Diamond in it’s series of Touch-Flo phones.

Allow me for a moment to skip over the bells and whistles HTC managed, every so skillfully, to pack into this diamond (GPS, Wifi, Kababajillion-bytes of memory, HSDPA to name a few) and instead focus on the crux of the post iPhone phone timeline: Touching

If you’ve ever used any of the previous Touch-and_not_so-Flo series of phones from HTC (Touch Dual, Touch Cruise, MDA Touch, etc...) you quickly realize that while the interface it’s self is not to shabby (I’m actually a fan of the cube) the responsiveness and feel of interacting with the phone through touching could be described in a lot of ways, non having flo .

I’ve always been an advocate of the importance of instant feedback when it comes touch based interfaces, it’s the instinctive thing we expect, after all we don’t touch something in real life in hopes that the reaction is maybe experienced this century, if at all .

What has been so great about the iPhone is it’s responsiveness. Till this day , it leaves me at awe. In the true apple sense , it just works.

Back to our diamond, while HTC has been making great stride to improve CPU speeds on it’s phones, more importantly (i think) HTC have been working ever harder on  it’s graphic acceleration capabilities , which is a key factor in responsiveness of touch based interfaces.

While we will be getting our stock unlocked HTC diamond phones pretty soon for a full-hands on review. Youtubing i found the following video:

Ok ok… it’s no iPhone yet, in-fact you can argue responsiveness is still slightly sluggish relative to Apple’s wizkid, however you have to admit there’s a vast improvement in the user experience offered by HTC’s Diamond over it’s predecessors.

Now entertain the following :

HTC Goodies  + iPhone grade responsiveness + All the great WM software already out there = Dare i say, iPhone Killer

While i’m no where close to calling HTC diamond an iPhone killer, i really do think if HTC keeps moving in the direction it is, Apple might soon run out of the exclusive sweet mojo that’s been powering it’s iPhone and might actually need to start opening up it’s platform and innovating in ways other than it’s interface to be able to truly compete in this super competitive industry , especially against the big boys that have been around for quite some time and are not bounded to a single carrier as their distribution platform.