With LiMo’s recent announcement that Verizon had hopped onto their Board of Directors, things are starting to heat up between the LiMo platform and Google’s competing product, Android. Both are open-source Linux-based platforms, and both are aiming to rock the handset market sometime in the next year or so.

LiMo is Linux-based. Android is-Linux based. But they’re far from the same. Below, I’ll try to explain some of the key differences without going too heavy on the tech jargon. (Fiiine. It gets a bit heavy for a paragraph or two. But I’ll avoid it where possible.)

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TechCrunch recently took a look at Twitterfone, Pat Phelan’s new voice to text transcription service for Twitter, mentioning that it should be available in more countries soon.

We just got word that local support has been added for 13 more countries, bringing the list up to 17. Any Twitterfone user can dial into any of the numbers, making it perfect for firing off tweets while traveling.

The service now offers local numbers for the following countries:

• Israel
• Japan
• Spain
• Italy
• Switzerland
• Belgium
• Finland
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Sweden
• Australia
• Canada

They’ve also fixed a problem they were having with delivering sign-up verification codes. If you’ve signed up in the past but were unable to verify your account, you’ll be able to kickstart the process by dialing a local number.

We’ll be taking a closer look at Twitterfone (and giving away some beta keys) real soon. Stay tuned!

Filling the last available seat on the Board of Directors, Verizon has become the first American carrier to join with the LiMo foundation. LiMo is the main competitor of Google’s Android in the area of Linux-based software development platforms. However, Verizon will not be dropping their intentions to support Android; by supporting both, Verizon is more or less guaranteeing themselves a win.

Also joining as members of the foundation are Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg AS, Mozilla Corporation, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR, and SK Telecom, bringing the list of members up to a count of 40.

The Philips X800 that Peter told us about last week has been confirmed according to GSM Arena. It’s a tri-band GSM/GPRS device running Windows Mobile with a 2.9-inch display that covers most of the face. It’ll also have a 2-megapixel autofocus camera, Bluetooth, and memory will be expandable via microSD. Battery life looks okay, too, at 850 hours of standby time and 8 hours of talk time, according to Philips.

Pricing and availability are unknown, other than the device should be here sometime soon. The Xenium X-Connect was also confirmed (photo below), although details are even more murky. It’ll apparently run WinMo 6, have a 3-inch display (resolution unknown), GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA connections, GPS, Bluetooth, and microSD expansion.

via SlashGear

The UK’s Juniper Research published a report this morning which predicts massive growth in Mobile Web 2.0 revenues. According to the report, they expect social networking, user generated content, mobile search and instant messaging to more than triple the Mobile Web’s current estimated worth of $5.5 billion up to $22.4 billion by 2013.

I will have to check the accuracy of this from my hover car come 2013. I just hope my shiny space pants don’t cost more than $22.4 billion dollars.

Nothing points out the flaws in a mobile browser like attempting to quickly open it up and run a search for something. If you’re using the carrier’s default WAP homepage, the built in search often doesn’t search past things that will make the carrier money. If you’re trying to use a standard search engine, the results take forever to load and any elements of the page that render correctly are little miniature blessings.

Yahoo’s oneSearch is one of the few search engines that manages to take away the massive suck factor from the process. Rather than just dumping a list of results on you, it uses your queries (and, if suitable, your location) to figure out what you’re looking for and provide answers directly. For example: Entering a recently released movie title will precede the results with local showtimes, while “NBA” will lead with scores for any active NBA games.

Canada’s largest carrier, Rogers Wireless, is the first in North America to recognize this. In addition to Yahoo’s mobile site and the Yahoo! Go application, all Rogers/Fido customers can now use oneSearch straight off the default Rogers WAP portal.

For those of us in the US, our rep at Yahoo says the company expects AT&T to integrate oneSearch into their portal sometime in the near future.

ACCESS announced today that their NetFront mobile browser has been ported over for embedded use on Analog Device’s Blackfin processor, allowing for on-the-go internet meandering without as much strain on the battery.

The NetFin browser has already made its way onto over 500 million devices, including Samsung’s recently launched Glyde. The browser can be pretty featured pack (depending on the hardware it’s running on), managing a couple things its competitors haven’t managed yet: AJAX for all of those Web 2.0 sites that break in most mobile browsers, and Flash support capable of handling things like Youtube.

Toru Arakawa, CEO of ACCESS, stated “NetFront Browser embedded on ADI’s Blackfin is the ideal solution for OEMs who want to make it possible for their customers to access and interact with content-rich multimedia Internet sites.”

A survey conducted by research firm IDC and sponsored by Nortel Networks asked 2,367 people what item would they choose to take with them if they had to be absent from their homes for 24 hours. More than 38% chose their mobile phone over things like keys, a laptop or music player. Less than 30% thought their wallet was the most important item. It looks as though many of us have bought into the mobile lifestyle and fear withdrawal symptoms if separated from our cell phones.

Nortel paid for the survey to determine how many people around the world can be defined as “hyperconnected.” Someone hyperconnected uses at least seven devices for work and personal access, in addition to at least nine applications like instant messaging, text messaging or web conferencing. Cell phones and laptops are examples of devices, while things like e-mail or Facebook count as applications.

I fell short in both categories to be considered hyperconnected, but 16% of those surveyed made the cut. China led the world with the highest percentage of those hyperconnected, followed by the United States. Canada and the United Arab Emirates had the fewest number among the 17 countries surveyed.

The survey had a subset of people it called “increasingly connected.” These are people who use a minimum of four devices and six applications. The survey found that 36% of those questioned fell into this category.

Within five years the survey predicts that those categorized as hyperconnected will rise to 40%. If the trend continues as predicted, it is good news for companies like Nortel. There will be an increased need for network technologies and other mobile gear to get the hyperconnected out the door and into the world, without them worrying about where they put their wallets.

If you are curious about this phenomenon, see Nortel’s Hyperconnectivity site.

It took me a few passes to realize that the “Mobile” part of LonerMobile should be read like it would in “mobile phone”, not “Batmobile”. I thought they had announced the Lonermobile, the ultimate car for people with no friends. Having a down day? Lonermobile thinks you look amazing. Stuck alone in traffic, and the carpool lane is wide-open? Activate the inflatable friends in the seats.

Alas, it’s not a car. LonerMobile is a new Blackberry application by GPS developers BlackLine, announced today at WES. While it might not provide transportation for those in need of social assistance, it could very well save some lives. LonerMobile is intended to keep lone workers safe when they’re out in the field by transmitting status messages and GPS coordinates back to their employers. If the worker doesn’t respond to a check-in request or suddenly loses device communication, their employer is alerted and can pull up their last known locations for the rescue party.

BlackLine hasn’t updated their site yet, but information should be up soon.

Schmap, publisher of over 200 free online travel guides, has opened access to their guides for iPhone and iPod Touch users by way of a remarkably nifty web application. The guides cover cities throughout the US, Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and provide information on everything from the city’s historical background to the best places to get your drink on.

As portrayed in the image above, the web app utilizes the iPhone’s gyro sensors and a Safari specific Javascript function to determine how the device is currently oriented, and swaps between two display modes accordingly. If the device is oriented vertically, points of interest are displayed as a simple list; if horizontal, the points are overlaid on a map of the area. This allows the user to jump back and forth between modes without having to dig through menus, and is an ingenious way to make the most of the available screen real estate.

In addition to the city guides available for many major cities, Schmap is working on implementing a local search feature to provide similar functionality for cities they haven’t charted out yet. While local search results obviously won’t be as in-depth as the custom written city guide entries, it provides enough to get by: the business name, street address, and phone number. It did a good job of finding coffee shops in my area, even pointing out a few I’d somehow managed to ignore. I was unable to get the local search to recognize any zip codes, so you may need to type out the city’s name for the time being.

My only dislike with the service thus far is the tiny size of some of the buttons. I definitely don’t have sausage fingers, yet I constantly found myself tapping just outside of the detection areas. This was especially true of the arrows at the top and bottom of the interface.

Overall, Schmap for iPhone/iPod Touch is an incredibly handy application, especially while traveling or getting to know a new area. I’d expect to pay a few bucks a month for the service; that it’s free is just the mega delicious icing on the cake.

To check it out, just head over to http://www.schmap.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch.