MobileNest

According to media reports, Cingular Wireless L.L.C. agreed to pay $35K under the terms of the online advertisement settlement.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Cingular, along with Priceline.com Inc. and Travelocity.com L.P., reached settlements with the state for promoting products and services on the Internet through programs installed on users’ computers called adware.

According to Cuomo, this settlement marks the first time advertisers have been held responsible for ads displayed through adware.

Adware programs can deliver advertisements as well as monitor Web site usage and collect other data on users. The programs sometimes are difficult to remove.

The agreements require the advertisers to follow certain guidelines for future online advertising, including providing full disclosure of adware programs used.

Cingular settles adware advertising dispute for $35,000 [RCR Wireless News]

Motorola’s Ron Garriques, president of mobile devices, gave a preview of what it is coming out of Motorola’s product pipeline.

The information was part of the presentation found online [PDF].

Users should expect announcements of products covered in the presentation in the very near future. The release date has not been specified yet, but it is coming.

The main flavors of the new release are the 3G handset:

• KRZR K3 - Existing KRZR with 3G and second camera for video calling
• RIZR Z8 - modified design of the RIZR with UMTS or HSDPA
• Q EDGE - GSM version of the original Q
• Q2 - Updated Q in both HSDPA and EV-DO versions, expected at 3GSM

CellSwapper is a New Jersey based service which allows cell phone customers to swap their cell phone plans with other users to avoid the $250 early termination fee.

The CellSwapper operates as a marketplace for transactions of cell phone contracts. A new user purchasing the contract from its previous owner avoids the activation fees and in some cases he/she also walks away with a free phone and/or a cash deal.

If you are ready for an upgrade and you are locked into a contract, you may want to visit CellSwapper.com.

Daniel Hornal, co-founder of the OwnYourPhone.com, identified a need for a new service when he attempted to create his own ringtone out of his own CD. The task turned out to be more complicated then originally assumed. At the end of the day, four dollars later, Mr. Hornal had a ringtone on his cellphone from his favore CD, but it was not the part of the song that he wanted.

The rington industry gaining its popularity swiftly grew to become a $5 billion worldwide industry, but users are locked into pre-canned offerings limiting the ability to express users’ true personalities.

“The system just seemed stupid,” Hornal said. “Why can’t I choose any song I want? And why should I have to pay for a song twice?”

The OwnYourPhone.com, the new company, has a vision to allow users to turn any part of a song from any CD into their unique ringtone.

“The great thing about OwnYourPhone.com is that you can select exactly what you want to have on your phone, without installing any software on your computer, then download it to your phone without having to mess with cables and software,” said Adam Eivy, Co-Founder of OwnYourPhone.com.

“The site is really easy to use, and I’m super proud of it,” said Hornal. “OwnYourPhone.com puts people back in the driver’s seat. We paid for the music, we paid for our phones, and it should be our decision what to do with them.”

Alltel Wireless has launched a platform, called Celltop, for deploying mobile content, commerce, and data services.

Celltop was created to improve the convenience of access for mobile data and services. The new technology brings the stuff the user cares the most about to the top of the phone.

Alltel is calling their widgets “cells” and Celltop comes with 10 built-in cells:

• News
• Stocks
• Weather
• Messaging Inbox
• Cell Log
• Ringtones
• Pro Foootball
• Pro Basketball
• Pro Baseball
• Pro Rodeo

The company is looking to the development community to provide more cells. Celltop was designed in a way that makes it easy to create and add cells. The only potential limitation could be the imagination. Cells created by the development community will be tested, certified, and available to users in the online Alltel Cell Shop.

Celltop is now available on select Alltel handsets (Samsung u520, MOTORAZR V3m, MOTOKRZR, and LG AX245) and will be shipping on all new phones by late 2007.

If you want, you can vote today on which cell you want next (digg.com feed, NASCAR, Gmail, or horoscope).

New York City is the first city to upgrade its 911 and 311 call centers to handle picture messaging. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to bring the new technology to city’s call centers to enrich the information provided during the emergency and non-emergency calls. Everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words.

“If you see a crime in progress or a dangerous building condition you’ll be able to transmit images to 911, or online to NYC.GOV,” Bloomberg said. “And we’ll start extending the same technology to 311 to allow New Yorkers to step forward and document non-emergency quality of life concerns, holding city agencies accountable for correcting them quickly and efficiently.”

Almost all camera phones have built in multimedia messaging (MSS) allowing sending images to a phone number or an email address.