If you are looking for a bar with a mechanical bull, a club with 80’s cheese metal or the best fish taco restaurant in town, you may want to use the mobile service buzzd. Buzzd is a location based mobile entertainment service that provides real-time information for bars, clubs and restaurants. Buzzd will even let you network with friends and strangers who have a similar interest in your style of nightlife.

Buzzd was first runner up in the Best Business Plan category at Nokia’s Mobile Rules! 08 competition. Out of a 1,000 entries from around the world, buzzd came in second. Not bad for a company named after the feeling one gets while intoxicated. The last business plan I wrote while “buzzd” created such a bad paper jam I had to throw my printer out.

“Being recognized as an emerging company within the mobile space is always an honor,” said buzzd CEO and co-founder Nihal Mehta. “Having our company recognized amongst the best and brightest companies across the world exemplifies the demand for location-sensitive services like buzzd.”

“Nokia is very pleased to announce the winners of the Mobile Rules! ‘08 competition, who with their ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit typify an emerging wave tapping into today’s exciting convergence of mobility and the Internet,” said Tom Libretto, Vice President, Forum Nokia. “Open platforms and the millions of smartphone devices available today are helping enable this new wave of entrepreneurs from around the globe to become drivers of the future global mobile marketplace through the innovative technologies, applications and business models they create today.”

buzzd

Managing Director of UpCode Ltd., Sture Udd, announced today the appointment of Jerald Cavitt as CEO of UpCode USA. Cavitt was also named the marketing leader for the UpCode brand worldwide.

“I have recognized the marketing genius of Jerald Cavitt and his ability to lead the UpCode brand with his unique marketing strategies. Jerald’s vision has separated us from the other companies by focusing on brands,” said Sture Udd Managing director of UpCode Ltd.

UpCode recently won mobile application of the year at the Nokia Mobile Rules! 2008 awards. The UpCode Parking was ruled to be the best mobile application in the Enterprise category. Parking is a point and click application that enables a mobile phone it act as an optical reader to scan any physical object, on any surface or on-screen by clicking at a mobile barcode.

UpCode USA CEO Jerald Cavitt stated “I am honored and pleased to join the UpCode Brand and to team up with Sture Udd from UpCode Ltd; together we believe that this will be the ultimate game changer in the Mobile Access & Interaction world!” Cavitt added “I have always believed in convergence enabled by physical interaction with the digital world. Accepting this award from Forum Nokia is real world validation for UpCode that we’re on the right track; and we are looking forward to deploying more solutions now.”

The FCC ended bidding for the 700 megahertz spectrum yesterday. Verizon Communications and AT&T won the largest shares of the spectrum after 260 rounds of bidding. The FCC raised $19.12 billion from bidders. Verizon and AT&T won more than $16 billion worth of licenses, airwaves they plan to use to for voice, data services and new wireless technologies.

Frontier Wireless, a partner of DISH Network, spent $711 million to buy a part of the airwaves that leaves open the possibility of a nationwide video network.

Verizon outbid Google and won the biggest nationwide block of spectrum with a bid of $4.74 billion. This loss by Google puts to rest speculation that Google will jump into the wireless business any time soon. But the company sees the auction as a victory for Google. The bidding was high enough to trigger the “open-platform” rules it requested for the nationwide airwaves won by Verizon.

Google called it a victory for American consumers. “Consumers soon should begin enjoying new, Internet-like freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices,” said a statement from Google lawyers Richard Whitt and Joseph Faber.

AT&T won 227 regional licenses. These should fit in well with the piece of spectrum it acquired by buying Aloha Partners for $2.5 billion.

“AT&T’s strong spectrum holdings position the company to further enhance the quality and reliability of existing wireless broadband and voice services, and to set the foundation for new-generation wireless broadband technologies and services,” Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T’s wireless unit, said in a statement.

Verizon spent $9.63 billion at the auction. AT&T was second with a total of $6.64 billion spent.

The FCC set aside the D block of the spectrum because no one met the minimum bid required. The D block must be shared with public agencies like police and fire departments that have overriding usage in an emergency. It is speculated that the FCC will re-auction the D block with rules that make it more attractive to buyers.

MoConDi announced today that it will make over 800 free games available to community members of the MoConDi-run MeYou Community. The games will come from Greystripe, a company that distributes ad-supported mobile games. MeYou users can download games, recommend games to other community members, or learn about a hot new game from others.

“Mobile social networks are an ideal place for users to discover and share ad-supported mobile games and we are thrilled to provide MoConDi’s users with our catalog.” said Alvaro Bravo, VP of Business Development at Greystripe. “By implementing our AdWRAP Catalog Platform, they are joining a worldwide movement of shifting from for-pay mobile content to one that is entirely ad-supported.”

This partnership will allow MoConDi to offer mobile games from publishers such as Vivendi Games Mobile, Hands-On Mobile, Skyzone, Punch Entertainment, and digital Chocolate. Greystripe will be able to tell advertisers that it has a large outlet for ad-supported games in the North American and European markets.

“We are thrilled to enter into a partnership with Greystripe. They are pioneering ad-supported mobile games and provide the best quality and quantity of entertainment for our audience,” said JT Klepp, CEO of MoConDi. “The initial response from our community is overwhelmingly positive.”

MoConDi

How often has this happened to you? You’re trapped in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental and the emergency trunk release has been snapped off. You have a document on your home PC detailing how to escape from such a situation but all you have is your WinMo or Blackberry phone with you. You do a frantic Google search to no avail, and your captors take you to a cornfield and beat you with a baseball bat. Bummer, huh?

Well, now SugarSync can get you out of those occasionally sticky situations we all find ourselves in occasionally on occasion. The service syncs your desktop to a website and allows you to view and download files on portable devices.

Read more…

A U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that banned Qualcomm from selling chips that infringed on three patents owned by Broadcom Corp. A California jury in 2007 found that Qualcomm didn’t have a right to the patents and the lower court placed an injunction on Qualcomm that stopped it from selling the chips.

“We are gratified that the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Qualcomm’s motion for a stay, leaving in force the injunction against Qualcomm’s infringement issued by the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana,” Broadcom General Counsel David Dull said in a statement.

The chips in question are third-generation (3G) WCDMA chips. This technology provides much higher data speeds to mobile and portable wireless devices than most North American networks allow.

U.S. district Judge James Selna ordered Qualcomm to pay mandatory royalties to Broadcom for the chips it sells during the “sunset period” ending January 31, 2009. After the sunset period ends, Qualcomm will be barred from using the three Broadcom patents.

Qualcomm is currently working on 3G chips that will replace those patented by Broadcom. The new chips are slated to be ready by the end of the current quarter.

High Tech Computer (HTC) is developing a mobile phone that will use the open-source Android software created by Google for its operating system. The phone will be called Dream and have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad. The handset is over 5 inches long and 3 inches wide and has a keypad that swivels out from underneath the screen.

HTC is not the only company that is developing a mobile phone around the Android operating system. Samsung has joined the hunt to create a device that utilizes Android.

HTC was the first company to announce it was building a phone around Android. Other members of the Open Handset Alliance, a group dedicated to promoting Android, are also believed to be developing handsets designed around the operating system. Over 30 companies have joined the Open handset Alliance. Samsung and Motorola are two manufactures who belong to the alliance and may be developing Android phones of their own.

The U.S. government auction of wireless airwaves ended yesterday raising a record $19.59 billion, but winners of the valuable spectrum were not immediately identified. The winners of the hundreds of licenses are expected to be announced within days.

Analysts believe Verizon Wireless is the most likely winner of a nationwide piece of the airwaves called the “C” block that attracted a $4.74 billion high bid.

“This is spectrum that’s obviously … very valuable — will be critical to trying to provide additional wireless broadband services,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters after the auction ended.

The C block spectrum includes a requirement sought by Internet leader Google that would make it accessible to any device or software application.

Television broadcasts are moving from analog to digital signals in early 2009. The 700-megahertz spectrum that television has been using is valuable to phone companies and others because the signals can go long distances and penetrate thick walls.

One sticking point of the auction has been the sale of the D block. No company has met the minimum bid for this part of the spectrum. Under FCC rules, the winner of the D block would have to give police, firefighters and other public safety groups priority use during an emergence.

The FCC may decide to re-auction the D block airwaves and modify the rules and minimum price to make it more attractive to bidders. The FCC has declined to comment specifically on what it will do.

In recent months, Google has seen an acceleration of activity among mobile phone users. The company said this is evidence that the era of mobile Internet is at hand. Google has seen sharp increases in mobile Internet usage spurred by services Google has offered on BlackBerry, Nokia and iPhone devices.

“We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage,” Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. “We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.

Waddell believes the availability of flat-rate data plans from carriers encourages consumers to connect with the Internet over their phones. The per-minute charges of the past discouraged mobile Web browsing. Waddell also remarked that improved Web browsers and better designed services from companies like Google are fueling growth.

Recent Google software has allowed mobile users to increase Web search speeds by up to 40%. The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches of Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access and getting to Google.com. The company said the increased convenience has increased the number of searches.

“We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people,” Waddell said.

“Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow,” Waddell said. “Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage.”

Users of phones based on software from Research in Motion, Nokia’s Symbian-based phones and now Microsoft Windows Mobile can download the software at http://mobile.google.com/.

AdMob released a report today that tracks traffic percentages for Smartphones, trend data for the top five country markets and manufacturer market share trends. For every advertising request AdMob received in the month of February, AdMob analyzed information available in the user’s mobile browser.

AdMob’s report includes percentages of Smartphone traffic worldwide. The statistics culminated in data pulled from the following company’s Smartphones: RIM, Nokia, Palm, Apple, HTC, HP, MITAC, Samsung, T-Mobile, Motorola and others. According to AdMob’s data, RIM’s BlackBerry 8100 Smartphone has the greatest percentage of worldwide traffic with 34% of Smartphone traffic share. Nokia’s Smartphones followed in second with 29% share of the traffic and Motorola’s Smartphones came in last with 1% traffic share. In the United States, iPhone traffic flattened slightly during the month of February, consistent with the theory that people use new devices a great deal in January, only to have traffic slow down in the following months.

Manufacturer share trends were included in February’s report as well. Nokia held the top spot worldwide with 29.4% of ad requests, in India with 66.7%, South Africa with 35.5% and Indonesia with 49.3%. In the United States, Motorola was the top device manufacturer with 35% of all ad requests and, in the UK, SonyEriccson claimed the top spot with 37% of all ad requests.

“AdMob is constantly working to better classify our network traffic to help our advertisers target,” said Jason Spero, VP Marketing at AdMob. “The February report has seen the addition of a few new data features that we hope will further empower advertisers and developers to leverage the mobile web.”

AdMob’s February report also included new data from AdMob’s top five country markets – the US, India, the UK, South Africa and Indonesia. Individual country statistics do not follow consistently with overall worldwide data. The BlackBerry remains the Smartphone with the highest traffic in the United States with 39% of US Smartphone traffic share. In India, the UK, South Africa and Indonesia, however, Nokia’s Smartphones become the clear leaders with 89%, 67%, 89% and 86% Smartphone traffic share respectively. The top devices in AdMob’s top five markets remained the same: the Motorola KRZR in the US, Nokia 6030 in India, Motorola v360 in South Africa, SonyEriccson K800i in the UK and the Nokia 660 in Indonesia.