Daily Marauder

WIRELESS

Samsung’s answer to the iPhone — the Instinct — will gain another distributor when RadioShack begins selling the smartphone over the Labor Day weekend with a four-day price promotion in its 4,400 stores, the retailer announced. Those who sign up for a Sprint Simply Everything Plan can buy the Samsung handset for $130. TMC Internet Telephony (8/28)

Direct Line (iTunes link) is a service that helps you automatically navigate phone trees to get right to an operator (exactly what companies don’t want you to do).   Install the application, browse of search the included companies, and select the one you want. Direct Line then calls the number and preselects the appropriate choices to get you to an actual person. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/direct-line-saves-iphone-users-from-automated-call-hell 8/28)

There’s a huge security problem in the latest iPhone 2.0.2: if you have your JesusPhone password protected, using a very simple trick gives anyone full access to your cellphone private information in Mail, SMS, Contacts, and even Safari. The two-step trick is even simpler to the one used in the past to gain access to the phone to install unlocking cards or jailbreak. Fortunately, there’s a way to avoid this obvious security breach until Apple fixes it. (http://gizmodo.com/5042332/huge-iphone-security-flaw-puts-all-private-information-at-risk 8/27)

Last May, Google announced the first set of winners in its two-part contest called Android Challenge. The challenge is meant to kick-start the creation of 3rd-party applications for its nascent mobile platform by enticing developers with a total of $10 million in awards.  Today, Google is releasing the names of its second set of winners, 10 of which receive $275,000 and 10 of which receive $100,000. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/final-winners-of-android-challenge-announced 8/28)

Sprint unveiled some of the content and location-based services that will be available as part of its planned Xohm WiMax wireless broadband network. The technology will enable high speed connections to be established while driving, which should lead to all kinds of navigation and location-based recommendation services. So far partners in the Xohm venture include:

• uLocate – chosen for its Where platform powering friend finding and other location based mobile services
• Yelp Inc. – providing user ratings and reviews of local restaurants, shops, doctors, etc.
• Topix – offering local news based on location
• AccuWeather – providing location based forecasts, radar/satellite images, etc
• Google – powering search functionality, Google Maps, etc