Smartphones are awesome. They are futuristic and reminiscent of our imagined future where we all carry our personal computers in our pockets. Robots are also awesome, and for very similar reasons. If only there were some way to combine the two into something so future-tastic that it would make us nostalgic for a time that hasn’t even happened yet. Well, late this August, in Las Vegas there will be. At the annual Appcon event this year, they will be holding a fantastic competition known as the Cellbot Hackathon. Yes, the premise is just as epic as the name makes it sound.

You know how Yahoo has been recently trying to retake many of the web-based industries that they were once leaders in? From search engine to text chat, they are tired of being the go-to second tier choice of the internet.  Well, it looks like the comapny's returning CEO actually knows more about what she’s doing than some thought. Yahoo recently introduced a plan to increase the global popularity of all Yahoo services, particularly Yahoo messenger.  They have created a unified platform for data management specifically targeted at countries where more users may be using data-phones/the internet for the first time in their lives, particularly Indonesia.

You know how all of the cellular companies have been scared about the rise of Skype, and the potential merging/digitization of two of their primary services?  Well, according to new information released by Verizon, these fears are actually a little more grounded than we had originally thought.  The number of people who are using mobile Skype as a major means of communication has been increasing exponentially ever since they made it possible to do so.  Naturally they are patting themselves on the back for a product that is growing in popularity, but may actually be an omen of things to come in the cellular service world.

Qualcomm, the U.S. based CDMA chip maker, has won a broadband wireless access (BWA) contract for four major markets in India (Mumbai, Delhi, Haryana and Kerala). It is considered to be a meritorious win, since it is the first huge telecom equipment vendor to win in an auction in India. Though it is a great win, the technology that will be demonstrated in the four circles will greatly influence Qualcomm’s future plans in India. 

After all the bad blood between Adobe and Apple, you wouldn’t expect much cooperation.  After Apple hilariously hypocritical accusations of unethically proprietary business practices, Adobe retaliated with their brilliantly tongue-in-cheek “We Heart Apple" Campaign, (not to mention the release of flash player’s source code).  This whole debacle isn’t exactly conducive to working together, yet low and behold, flash 10.1 actually went out of their way to make the new version more compatible with Apple computers.  No, you still won’t be able to use flash player on your iPhone (at least not yet), but all of those unpleasant little kinks that you inevitably run into while running Flash in Safari have apparently been ironed out.  What’s even more impressive is the fact that this was actually a joint effort on behalf of both companies.

You know how the cellular/1-4G service providers are basically as evil as they come (especially in the states).  From monopolizing entire hardware lines, to manipulating speed for money, to manufacturing outages so that people will pay for the “premium” service, they do it all, and there’s not really much we can do about it.  Sure, there have been unlocked phones being created, but usually they are reserved for the hardcore chipheads in the know, and besides they are usually somewhere around 10 times the normal price.  Thankfully, Nokia is taking another step forward in the battle against communication coverage homogeny: the Nokia C2, aka, our first dual Sim active handset.

The head of the FCC wasn’t the only important person to throw their two cents about recent unfortunate court cases during this year’s D8 conference.  Also present was CEO of HTC, Peter Chou, who was interviewed about, among other things, the trials his own organization is undergoing.  As we all know, HTC is currently embroiled in a lengthy battle over patent law and smartphones.  Naturally, Chou kept an optimistic attitude about the whole ordeal, but he brushed the issue aside rather quickly, perhaps indicating a frustration/exasperation with the whole situation.

Nokia has introduced a new way of charging support for its mobile phone. Now, customers can use a Nokia Bicycle Charger Kit to recharge the batteries anywhere. This kit supports the traditional 2mm jack that most of the Nokia phone’s use. The kit is embedded with a charger and a dynamo along with a holder to secure the phone when riding. The dynamo is a small electrical generator which uses the movements of the wheels to generate the electrical power required to charge the phone.

We never thought that it would really happen.  Apple is letting a version of Skype run on the iPhone; and this one allows Skype-to-Skype calling.  This is now the second time in a short while that they have broken their “no apps that duplicate our own services” policy in a big way.  This time in the biggest way possible perhaps: in the duplication of the PHONE functionality.  Sure it’s not a very good duplication, and it doesn’t pose any big threat to their buddies over at AT&T right now. As the technology grows , it might some day.  Whether it is competitive market pressures from guys like Android or just a realization that they can’t stay on an island forever, this new behavior pattern for Apple is refreshing.

While day one of the first Disrupt event was centered on pie in the sky, science-fiction-esque dreams for the future of mobile computing, today’s event was the more business oriented day with much more immediate and perhaps realistic dreams.  This is not to say that there is anything wrong with pie in the sky dreams… jetpacks and neural phones that let you think at people are awesome things… they’re just not going to happen any time soon.  When the question of the ideal smartphone was brought up at the opening, there were a few recurring themes, and the issue followed suit for a good portion of the day.

Another important and informative event at Disrupt today was the conversant with eComerce prospector and tech investor John Doerr.  The man has been investing in the tech game for two decades now, as well as personally knowing most of the industry leaders.  If anyone is qualified to be a tech oracle, it’s him; and that’s just what interviewer Charlie Rose asked the man to do.  His predictions essentially consisted of the following. 

It has been said here before that while it is fun, easy, and useful to jailbreak your apple smartphone level products (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), it will never truly make its mark on the market.  The sorts of people who would be prone to jailbreaking just aren’t the same type of people who would typically be prone to buying a product that needs to be jailbroken in the first place.  This, however might not be the case for that much longer.

Remember way back in the dark ages when everybody still used Internet Explorer to browse the web? Then, remember when Mozilla came riding along in their shining armor and fiery canine steed to rescue us from security holes and unnecessarily bulky coding?  Well now there is even more reason to laud Mozilla as the one of the great white knights of all things internet.  Today, they have informally announced their intention to begin working on a application marketplace that is actually cross-platform open source, totally equal to developers.  Granted this project is still in the very base conceptual level right now, but if completed it could really have some amazing ramifications.

Facebook is constantly introducing new features. The company announced yesterday that that it has launched an exclusive mobile version of the site: 0.facebook.com. The brand new mobile site is absolutely free, super fast and has been made accessible for more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries, said Sid Murlidhar, product marketing team, Facebook Mobile. This mobile version is said to include most of the features that users are used to seeing on the site.

Google Voice is very helpful for everyone, especially students. Keeping this in mind, the search legend has announced that Google Voice, the invite-only VOIP technology and voice mail transcription service is available to all students that posses a proper .edu e-mail address. It is to be noted that in August 2009 Google did something similar, opened up Voice for all U.S. military personnel that had a .mil email address.