While stories about Sprint's recent troubles have been plentiful of late, the company may be on the road to better times, and the source for that is unimpeachable: a competitor!

According to the Wall Street Journal, the president of Verizon, Denny Strigl, told investors that Sprint's performance over the last month has improved. Of course, he also said that the improvements haven't impacted Verizon.

Sprint's stock responded to the assessment, rising by 13 percent last week. According to Sprint, the news is all good about the new Samsung Instinct, which has seen strong sales since its introduction June 20. With a new Treo imminent, too, the news might improve even more. Or not.

The struggle is far from over, however, as Sprint still has serious competition from AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Moreover, rumors persist that Deutsche Telekom might buy them out.

CellSpin has announced availability of their mobile blogging application for Palm OS devices. They state that the software will work with the Centro, Treo 680, 700p and 755p devices. A large list of supported phones is available here. It's a free application, and a free download once you are a registered user.

The mobile application allows you to post content from your device to multiple sites simultaneously. From the Palm OS device, you can select to post text, photos, and videos as well as audio content.

The software works by adding supported sites to your CellSpin account either from the website, or from your Palm device. You can add sites such as Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Picassa, eBay and various blog services. Once you have created your photo, video, audio or text content on the Palm, you choose which of the configured services to post to using the Palm application.

Looks like a pretty neat way to post your content to a number of popular services all from the "Palm" of your hand (oh come on ... I hear all of the groans, but I couldn't resist the pun).

Jay reported yesterday that the Google Maps for mobile for Palm OS update would be available today. And sure enough, the updated app is now available.

My Location is compatible with Palm Centro smartphones running on the AT&T and Verizon Wireless networks. According to the Official Google Mobile Blog, if you have a Sprint Centro, you must first upgrade its operating system to Maintenance Release 1 for My Location to work. Palm Centro for Sprint will have the My Location feature available through a software update expected this summer.

Note that older Palm models such as the Treos don't have the APIs needed to get the cell tower data, so My Location is not available on these models. All Palm OS phones will be able to enjoy the other features of this release.

You can get the latest release of Google Maps for mobile here.

With unlocked GSM Centro smartphones now available, Google Maps for mobile with My Location will be available free for Centros, starting tomorrow. Free is a great price!

The app, which can be downloaded beginning tomorrow from Google's website, provides faster access to local maps, along with street-bound driving directions. My Location is specially built for the lost. You'll be available to press the "0" key to find out where you are, even if your Centro doesn't have a GPS system connected.

With position accuracy of approximately 1000 meters (a little over half a mile), the application comes close enough for many purposes - like finding a restaurant while you're traveling. GPS gets you much closer, but costs considerably more than free. There's a neat explanatory video on this page, which also includes instructions on how to get the applications.

Palm's website is now offering unlocked GSM Centro smartphones for $299. The picture shows a white Centro with gray number keys, rather than the green that AT&T's version sports.

The Palm Centro smartphone gives you voice, chat-style messaging, email and web, along with a color touchscreen and even a full keyboard. (So you can say L8R to those tricky keys on your cell phone.) All of this in a phone that's a whole lot smaller than you think. And now Centro is available unlocked for the flexibility you want. It's also GSM ready for happy traveling.

An unlocked phone lets you pick your carrier, so you're not locked into a contract - though the carrier might insist on contracts, just because they can. You do not need to pick a carrier on the buy page if you choose the unlocked version. Palm's also offering free shipping, a big $5.97 benefit.

An unlocked phone won't work without a carrier, but it will behave just fine as a personal digital assistant. Hook it up when you're ready.

Weather Beta, by DeluxeWare is no longer in Beta and is now a subscription service.

I've received quite a few emails from the TreoCentral community asking me if I had any word on the recent error message when trying to update the current weather conditions.

Anatoly Terebilov contacted me, thanking me for Beta testing the program and letting me know about the change to the subscription service. I hope those of you who, like me, have enjoyed Weather will support DeluxeWare and purchase a subscription!

There are 3 subscription levels:

• Purchase 3-months subscription for $4.95
• Purchase 1-year subscription for $14.95
• Purchase infinity subscription for $19.95

Read on for the full article

I love my Centro. There are minor annoyances (name a phone that doesn't have them), but overall, it's been a great phone. But I'm also on Sprint, where the Centro is definitely enhanced with its 3G speeds. The GSM Centro is obviously a bit of a different story with its slower EDGE speeds and no WIFI to speak of. Is the Centro a worthy adversary of the iPhone? Some would say no. Others would fight tooth and nail to defend their Centros. When it comes down to the cost to acquire each, the new iPhone will leave you $100 lighter - but is that enough difference for most consumers?

After all of this talk about the plans on which the iPhone must be activated, I took a quick peek at AT&T's website. The data plan for the iPhone seems to be pretty inline with what others are paying on their smartphones, minus any text messages. Of course, text messages can get pretty expensive. But maybe you won't be texting as much without an exposed keyboard (what - me biased towards a Centro? Nahhh...) Calm down Apple fanboys and gals, I know you like that big shiny screen.

Aftermarket apps aren't really much of an argument anymore, though the status of the OS may be. Palm's OS is a much more open operating system (albeit archaic), where as Steve Jobs has a much different idea of what can or should go on your phone. Though more and more apps seem to be surfacing for the iPhone everyday, you have to give the nod to the Centro when it comes to 3rd party applications.

What do you think? Jennifer loves her Centro, and at least in my case, the iPhone and all of its shininess has not been enough to pull me away from Sprint and my Centro. Though this is by no means an exhausting comparison (more like late night ramblings), can Palm really position itself across the same table as Apple? Or are these phones too different to even come close to comparing them? Speak your mind in the forums.

The airlines make you turn off your cell phone on the planes, but your phone might get you through the airport and seated a little quicker. Delta Air Lines is now permitting travelers at New York's LaGuardia International Airport to use their cell phones as a boarding pass.

Domestic passengers can download their boarding passes to their mobile phones from the company's web site. When they get to the airport, they skip the check-in lines and go directly to the airport screening area. There, the Transportation Security Administration scans the electronic pass and checks customers' identification. Delta agents also check the phone at the gate before travelers get on the airplane.

Steve Gorman, Delta's executive vice-president of operations:

"Passengers can now quickly check in for their flight while en route to the airport or in a taxi or walking from the parking lot to the terminal. The check-in process now can take place from anywhere, any time within 24 hours of departure."

The idea isn't new, and it's catching on slowly. Last year, Continental Airlines began using mobile-phone barcodes at four U.S. airports, and Northwest Airlines launched a similar system earlier this year at Indianapolis International Airport. Here's a mobile-friendly link to Delta's mobile check-in. Fasten your seat belt!

The Official Palm Blog states that Windows has released a beta version of SideShow for Treo devices running Windows Mobile 5 or 6. SideShow allows your smartphone to act as another display device to your computer and to control its applications such as Windows Media player, PowerPoint and others. SideShow uses bluetooth between your smartphone and the computer.

The Windows SideShow blog mentions a couple of neat uses of the software - the ability to use your smartphone to control a PowerPoint presentation while viewing the speaker notes, or using it as a remote control for Windows Media Player.

Microsoft has enabled managed APIs via their SDK, so the hope is that developers will jump on board and write some cool new software using this feature.

Our friends over at WMExperts previewed this software earlier this month, including a link to a nice set of screenshots.

The UK cellular carrier Orange is providing free cell phone charging for attendees of the famous Glastonbury Music Festival, using free electricity. Powered by a windmill and solar cells, and standing more than 23 feet tall, the company's REcharge Pod is a self sufficient unit that looks like a tent and can charge up to 100 mobile phones at one time. The company expects the pod to accommodate thousands of mobile phones during the three-day "Glasto" festival, which begins June 27.

Hattie Magee, Head of Partnerships at Orange UK:

"It is more important than ever that we continue to innovate and demonstrate how mobile technology can help bring people together and make festival life a little bit easier, whilst in-keeping with the traditions of the Glastonbury Festival. Mobiles phones are essential tool for festival survival and with an expected capacity of over 175,000 people spread across a sprawling 900 acres of farmland, keeping in touch with mates around the site, especially when you are covered head to toe in mud, is made that much easier if your phone has battery power."

According to CellularNews, a UK cellular industry publication, the REcharge Pod will be in the Pennard Hill campgrounds, and free for all. The huge list of performers is here. Don't forget to bring your cell phone!

With gas prices and everything else seemingly shooting through the roof, it's times like these that make even the best of budgeters cringe. If you're like me, my budgeting skills are next to none, so every penny counts - which is why mobile spamming is so irritating. To those with an unlimited messaging plan, this may be a mere annoyance, but to those with limited - or no - messaging plans, unsolicited text messages can be more than a nuisance - they can be quite expensive. And since it doesn't matter if you wanted it or not - that spam message could have cost you upwards of $0.20. Not a big deal for one message, but they add up quickly - imagine if we were charged for each spam message in our email inbox. Is this what we have to look forward to?

Luckily, it seems that many of the wireless providers are well aware of this and have taken steps to help consumers avoid large, unsolicited messaging bills. David Pogue with the New York Times outlines how several networks attempt to stem cell phone spam:

Read on for the full article

Computrace Mobile from Absolute Software is being made available for Windows Mobile versions 5 and 6 devices such as the Palm Treo 750. Computrace Mobile is part of Absolute Software's suite of security products that allows an organization to manage and track handheld devices. The software allows remote deletion of data in case of theft. (Note: Click on pic to the right to open full size.)

Once the software is installed on a device, the device's configuration can be retrieved remotely. This allows a remote administrator to query the missing device, and if needed, force deletion of its data if theft is suspected.

From the website's description, it would seem that the Computrace suite of security utilities device goes beyond some of the currently available Palm utilities such as Butler, TealLock, Warden and others, which allow remote locking and deletion via text messages. Computrace allows a remote administrator to query the device as well.

Absolute Software's Computrace suite includes "LoJack for Laptops" - software that can report its location whenever connected to a network, allowing law enforcement a chance at recovery. Whether or not a similar capability will be made available for handhelds is not stated - but seems like a logical future possibility.

No price is given for Computrace Mobile.

The Palm Centro is quickly making its way around the globe. Palm Inc. and Rogers Wireless today announced the Canadian launch of the popular Palm Centro smartphone, available at Rogers Wireless, the country's most reliable wireless network. The Centro is Palm's smallest and lightest smartphone and has sold more than one million units worldwide. And Palm says that they expect to sell 2 million Centros by the end of 2008.

From Palm's press release:

"Traditional cell phone users are stepping up the Palm Centro in droves because of its cool design, full keyboard and ease of use," said Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing for Palm, Inc. "More and more people need voice, text, email, web, contact and calendar capabilities all wrapped in one compact device so they can stay connected with everyone who is important to them. Centro delivers all that and more."

The Centro on Rogers is the Cobalt Blue that Verizon just launched on Friday. It's nice to see more people getting the opportunity to buy a Centro. I have one and I've been really impressed with it so far.

Ok, so all of the new 3G iPhone hype has died down (at least a little bit). And everyone is now limited to watching the various iPhone demos floating around until July 11th at least. Plus you own a Palm OS device, so what's the point? Enter TouchLauncher by ahsirg's software. TouchLauncher provides a bit of the look and feel of the iPhone on your Palm OS Treo or Centro. There have been other iPhone look-a-likes floating around, but this one goes beyond just an icon set.

TouchLauncher allows you to start applications much like you would on an iPhone. It allows you to scroll between launcher pages by sliding your finger as well. You can use drag and drop to rearrange the applications, to display information, categorize icons, rename, delete and beam the items.

With TouchLauncher, you can add icons representing contacts and web pages too. Adding contact links requires the use of TouchBook (additional software).

Read on for the full article

According to an article in the New York Times, Palm said on Thursday that it was on the way to shipping 2 million Centros. Palm hit the million Centro sales mark back in March.

The Centro launched on Sprint in September of 2007, followed by AT&T's GSM Centro launch back in February of this year. As of today, Verizon will also be carrying the Palm Centro. Shares of Palm jumped 9 percent in early trading after the company announced that the Centro would be sold through Verizon.

According to the NYTimes.com article, Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing, was asked when Palm expects shipments of the Centro to reach 2 million. Keast replied that Palm was confident that they'll get there in 2008. It's very possible that could happen by the end of 2008 since that would allow Palm to sell the Centro for another 6 months. I feel pretty confident that Palm will succeed in selling 2 million Centros. They sold their first million within 6 months.

The Centro sells really well due to its low price. I would think that Apple's new iPhone 3G could be a threat to the Centro since it too will sell at a low price. However, the Centro, selling at $99 after rebates, is half the cost of the iPhone 3G (8GB version), which will sell for $199.

VITO Technology has released a new version of SMS-Chat. SMS-Chat has the popular threaded messaging, and the new version has cool animated smiles.

A feature in the previous version of SMS-Chat that was very popular was the ability to click hyperlinks to open in the browser, clicking a phone number to place a call, and clicking e-mail to send a letter. However, you needed to click SMS to get to the menu buttons to then choose the desired action. In the new version of SMS-Chat, you only need to click the highlighted text and SMS-Chat will automatically detect the desired action of placing a call, sending an e-mail or opening the link in the browser.

The updated version includes two skins, a bright skin and a dark skin. Plus minor bugs from the previous version have been fixed.

Read on for the full article

On June 10th 2008, Spb Software House, the leading Windows Mobile applications vendor, released Spb Backup 2.0. Spb Backup is a tool for making reserve copies of personal data and system settings for Windows Mobile phones. Spb Backup safeguards from data loss, eliminates the pain of reinstalling applications after a hard reset, a ROM or device upgrade, and delivers a flawless restore experience.

Spb is the choice of ASUS and Gigabyte and thus became the best-sold backup utility for Pocket PC in 2007. The new and improved Spb Backup 2.0 is smarter, twice as fast, and makes moving data between Windows Mobile phones as easy as unpacking an archive.

New in version 2.0

• Device and ROM upgrade modes
• Spb Backup Sync
• Spb Backup Unpack tool
• Smartphone version
• File Black-list or "Ignored Files"

Read on for the full article

No texting when you should be sleeping. ScienceDaily is reporting results of a sleep study that found teenagers who excessively used their cell phone were more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue. An abstract of a paper detailing the findings is to be presented today at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

Authored by Dr. Gaby Badre of Sahlgren's Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden, the study focused on 21 healthy 14-20-year-old subjects with regular working/studying hours and without sleep problems. Of those, a control group made fewer than five calls and five text messages a day. The other half of the subjects made more than 15 calls or 15 text messages a day.

According to the study:

...When compared to subjects with restricted use of cell phones, young people with excessive use of cell phones (both talking and text messaging) have increased restlessness with more careless lifestyles, more consumption of stimulating beverages, difficulty in falling asleep and disrupted sleep, and more susceptibility to stress and fatigue. They behave more like larks than owls, suggesting a delayed biological clock."

A new study released by the European Interactive Advertising Association has identified the most likely customer for mobile video: sports fans. Guess those soccer games are just too tempting.

The EIAA said the study found that among people who watched mobile video, sports enthusiasts outnumbered average mobile users two-fold (12 percent vs. six percent). The study also found that 93 per cent of people who access sports sites own a mobile/PDA/Blackberry and are twice as likely as the average European mobile/PDA/Blackberry user to watch video/film clips on their mobile.

The study's interviews, more than 1,000, were conducted in September 2007, and reported this week in the London phone industry publication Cellular-News.

According to the report, 36 percent of European internet users visit sports websites, spending over 13 hours online each week, a 27-percent increase since 2004. Moreover, mobile TV watching among sports fans has grown by 144 percent since 2006.

Just wait till the Olympic Games get cranked up. Then we'll really see some mobile TV watching!

TreoTown has renamed their TreoSpot app to Centroid. I mentioned TreoSpot, which was then in version 2.4, in a Treo Software Roundup last month. Centroid is now up to version 2.8.

To refresh your memory, Centroid is a Location Based Reminder and Phone Profile Settings utility for Palm Centro GSM smartphones. Once you set-up the Centroid database, you can enable alerts and phone profiles when you are in a specific area. This is useful in case you need to remember something (e.g., buy groceries, etc.) when you are in a particular place.

Centroid will work only on Palm Centro GSM Smartphones.

Features of Centroid:

• Automatic collection of GIDs.
• Change phone settings when you arrive at a particular location. (e.g., forward calls to your home land-line when you arrive there).
• You can set the Theme, TimeZone (experimental), Mute Phone and System Sounds and Call-Forwarding.
• Alert at a particular location (e.g., set-up an alert to purchase groceries on the way back from work, when you are near your favourite store).
• Timed phone settings profile cancellation.
• True one-handed operation.
• Tiny PRC (~ 55 KB).

Centroid is still Free so go check it out!

MSNBC is reporting this story - "Cell phone users outside U.S. secretly tracked". The story reports that 100,000 people (again, to avoid panic here, living outside the USA) had their whereabouts secretly tracked via their cell phone usage. The big news from this study (aside from the privacy and ethical questions it raises) is that most people rarely stray far from home. Nearly 75% of the people tracked stayed mostly within a 20 mile wide circle for the half year covered by the study.

The report does not disclose where the study was performed other than to say it was in an "industrialized nation". Good thing, as I suppose you'd get wildly different results if you were monitoring say a remote tribe's cell phone usage patterns. Hey, that brings up the question - maybe we could have been monitoring Osama bin Laden's cell phone usage to track his whereabouts - oh never mind.

Researchers said that they gathered the data by tracking calls and text messages via cell phone towers for a six month period. They also tracked an additional 206 cell phones via tracking devices in them, and monitored those locations every two hours. An undisclosed private company provided the cell phone records.

Read on for the full article

Google showed off Android, its mobile operating system, during its annual developer conference in San Francisco. The event was reported by FierceMarkets, an online news aggregator. Running on an iPhone-like touchscreen, the system showed off mobile web services, mobile gaming prowess, and map features.

According to the firm's vice president of engineering, Vic Gundotra, Android tries to extend the browser to handheld devices. "We believe over time, the browser on mobile devices will be the entry point for many, many applications.�

Google showed Android versions of its Google Maps Street View service, which is assisted by an internal compass and accelerometer, as well as a snippet of a classic arcade game, plus a mobile web content magnifying tool.

According to the company, Android-based devices remain on track to hit retail markets in the second half of 2008. There's a YouTube video of the presentation here.

Give Sprint your email address, and you could win a Palm Centro. Sprint's promising "all the latest information about new Sprint products, services, and exclusive offers" delivered to your email box. Signing up enters you in a drawing for the prizes.

The sweepstakes will have four winners, to be selected in a random drawing on June 30. After jumping through some hoops, the winners get a Palm Centro. Activation fee and phone plans are extra.

Go to this link to enter, but do it soon. June 23 is the last day to enter. The official rules contain information on entering the old-fashioned way - 3x5 card, handwritten info, you know the drill.

While upload speeds (HSUPA) are typically not as important to smartphone users, AT&T has stated that they expect to have all of their 3G coverage areas upgraded to the faster HSUPA standard by the end of June. Perhaps just in time for the 3G iPhone release? This upgrade would bump user's upload speeds to as much as 2 megabits - at least in theory. AT&T says they predict typical end user speeds to be in the vicinity of 800 Kbits.

Not all devices that support HSDPA (the download spec) also support the HSUPA spec, so check your potential device's specs to be sure. Palm does have support for HSDPA on it's WM6 devices (like the Treo 750), so the upcoming 800 series should be poised in that area as well. We haven't seen formal mention of Palm supporting HSUPA, but hopefully it will be included in the upcoming devices.

Read on for the full article

People are paying $9 more for a mobile phone, on average, than reported in 2007, according to volume 1 of the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 U.S. Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study, which was released May 29.

The increase is the first in two years, bringing the average purchase price cited by customers to $101, the highest average price paid for a wireless device since the study�s inception in 2003. JD Power, a consulting firm, attributed the change to the recent surge in popularity of smartphones, "such as the RIM Blackberry, Palm Treo and recently introduced Apple iPhone, as well as music-enabled handsets." The average reported price paid for a smartphone is $208, compared to $58 for phones with fewer features.

Read on for the full article

The Palm Centro showed up in full-page newspaper ads in southern South America last week, marking the smartphone's arrival, acccording to The Inquirer.

The Inquirer reported:

A month ago, the Centro was launched in Colombia with operators Movistar and Comcel. In Mexico, the Centro is being offered by Telcel and Movistar. Negotiations in Argentina are still in the works so Palm's local branch hasn't yet announced any operator deals and discounted prices�

The Centro is sold as what we call a 'smartphone in disguise,' because the ads target Generation-X users who don't necessarily buy one to keep to-do lists or use the PIM apps, and plenty of whom might not have ever used a PDA before. As such, the ads highlight the phone's 'social' features like messaging friends, doing the occasional web browsing and looking up directions with Google Maps, in addition to more individual features like playing music and videos.

South American Centros are all GSM, in black, red, blue, or white � different colors for various countries and carriers. The phones aren't cheap, either - two or three times the same models' prices in the U.S.

IDC has posted a survey indicating that despite all the hype the iPhone receives, it's market share for the first quarter of 2008 has actually declined. According to the survey, the iPhone's market share shrunk from 26.7% at the end of last year, to 19.2% in the first quarter of this year.

The reason for this drop? Strong increase from RIM's Blackberry line is one reason. The survey showed Blackberry's market share increasing from 35.1 % to 44.5% in the same period. Many believe that RIM's market share increase is due to new, more consumer friendly models, and as a result, appealing to a larger audience than it's traditional business only segment.

Read on for the full article

Hmmm, Engadget Mobile got hold of an interesting powerpoint presentation which details Verizon's roadmap for the upcoming months. The glossy Verizon presentation revealed the Treo 800w and the Samsung i770.

Of special interest to Treo folks, the Treo 800w will arrive in Q3. Dieter guesses over at WMExperts that the Treo 800w will arrive in late Q3 so Sprint can have a little exclusivity after their July 22nd release.

The Treo 800w doesn't look too shabby in this photo. Not bad at all. Sure got my drool glands going. ;-) I love the charcoal color. Note the smiley keyboard and the black number keys.

Check out the gallery of slides here.

Thanks to forum member seanandcara for sending in the tip!

In their blog, the makers of the Kinoma Player music and internet radio (and YouTube and other stuff) player for Palm smartphones, says Sprint's new limit on "unlimited" data plans won't be a problem. Sprint is planning to roll out a five gigabyte per month limit on "unlimited" data plans.

That's five gigs for all incoming and outgoing traffic, and an even lower limit of 300 megabytes while "roaming" off their network. The upcharge begins in July, according to an internal memo leaked on sprintusers.com.

According to Kinoma Notes:

Since Kinoma Player is a data-intensive app, your first question might be, 'Do I need to worry about this?'

Read on for the full article