Third Screen Media Inc. finally found a well-heeled suitor, agreeing to be acquired by Time Warner's AOL Internet division for an undisclosed sum. The question now is, who's next?Third Screen was snapped up for a rumored $80 million and will operate as a subsidiary...
The U.S. wireless data market generated more than $5 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2007, according to Chetan Sharma Consulting, and data may make up as much as 20% of carriers' service revenues by the end of the year. Sharma, founder...
Hello! And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCR Wireless News to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the...
Ask.com announced it will offer a GPS-enabled mobile search application, a move that puts the company in direct competition with the likes of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.-and also further crowds the market for location-based services. IAC, parent company of Ask.com, is calling Ask...
Long billed as the killer app of tomorrow, location-based services finally appear to be gaining mass-market appeal. And network operators are well positioned to cash in. A study released late last year from In-Stat found that 53 percent of the 1,000 wireless users polled...
Helio L.L.C. announced it is now offering an unlimited voice calling plan for $145 per month. The offering includes long distance and roaming calls, as well as unlimited data services like text messages, picture messages, 3G network access and Helio services.Helio is also offering...
Like a kid futilely looking for a sugar fix, mobile advertising companies are struggling to cope with an empty cookie jar.Online advertisers and publishers have long used cookies to make surfing the Web easier. Simple text files that are planted on consumers' hard drives,...
Google.com topped the list of the most popular mobile Web sites in the both United States and the United Kingdom for the second month in a row, according to M:Metrics. Search, news and social networking sites dominated the list during March. In the...
Internet giant Yahoo Inc. today launched a new advertising campaign that highlights the company's offerings in mobile and social search. The consumer advertising push, using the tagline "Life is a little bit better with Yahoo," highlights Yahoo Answers and One Search, the company's new...
Shares of InfoSpace Inc. sank after the company reported a first-quarter loss of $500,000, marking a notable downturn from a net income of $3 million the company posted during the year-ago period.The Seattle-area developer reported $86.6 million in revenue during the quarter, down $3.6...
Text-based mobile search company 4INFO said it will begin to monetize its basic service by placing advertisements in its search results.The San Francisco-based startup said it will sell space for relevant ad campaigns that can be independently managed by marketing companies, allowing them to...
Time Warner Cable has partnered with Spanish-based hotspot company FON to offer its subscribers access to any of FON's 60,000 Wi-Fi hotspots scattered throughout the country.Interestingly, those FON hotspots are actually managed by FON community members who share their unused bandwidth via a FON...
Editor's Note: Welcome to our Monday feature, Analyst Angle. We've collected a group of the industry's leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Compete's Miro Kazakoff, Current Analysis' Avi...
The voice-activated mobile search space continued to heat up as Microsoft Corp. launched a series of services delivering local business information.The free offerings, unveiled by Microsoft subsidiary Tellme Networks Inc., allow users to dial a toll-free number, 1-800-555-TELL, from any phone and say their...
Even in the confusing, clinical world of mobile software terms, the term "speech-recognition technology" draws yawns. Lately, though, it's also drawing a flood of investment money.Speech-recognition developers for years were the Eli Mannings of the wireless world, failing to live up to loads of...
It's 9 p.m. last Wednesday, and Evan Williams has just received an e-mail from a reporter. So, naturally, the co-founder of Obvious Corp. lets his friends know."Answering yet another journalist's urgent queries about Twitter," Williams posted on the site for the trendy new service....
Alltel Corp. announced it is offering a phone with a dedicated search key, an offering powered by mobile search company JumpTap. The dedicated key, which features a magnifying glass search icon, launches an Alltel-branded BREW client that enables subscribers to search for content, services...
Google Inc. is showcasing its speech-recognition technology with a voice search service that delivers local business listings to fixed-line and mobile users.The offering, which is available on the company's Google Labs site, invites users to dial a toll-free number from any phone to search...
If checking out the Internet on a PC can be called surfing, browsing the wireless Web is more akin to hunting snipe in a briar patch: it's arduous, painful, and sure to leave you disappointed.The fixed-line Internet has evolved to offer a remarkably standardized...
Microsoft Corp. showcased a new Web browser that customizes Web pages for smartphone screens.The browser, dubbed Deepfish, delivers small images of Web sites, retrieving detailed information as needed when a user zooms in on part of a page. The technology is designed to replicate...
AT&T Inc. subsidiary YellowPages.com unveiled a text-message search service that delivers local business listings and wireless Web links.Users can send a text message to YP411 with a business name or category, along with a city and state or ZIP code. The service returns up...
If checking out the Internet on a PC can be called surfing, browsing the wireless Web is more akin to hunting snipe in a briar patch: it's arduous, painful, and sure to leave you disappointed.The fixed-line Internet has evolved to offer a remarkably standardized...
LG Electronics Co. Ltd. announced it will install Google Inc.'s software for cellphones on "millions" of LG phones through a new partnership between the two companies. The agreement is the latest such handset deal for Google, which has inked similar announcements with Motorola Inc.,...
Location-based services, like so many emerging technologies in the wireless space, for years have been on the cusp of widespread use among mobile-phone users. With more global positioning system-enabled handsets coming to market and more tech companies launching LBS applications that exploit previously untapped...