The Download Blog

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Windows Marketplace for Mobile debuted in October as Microsoft's answer to smartphone app stores. As with Google's Android Market, Windows Mobile 6.5 users could initially only find and purchase apps from the device. Now Microsoft has published an online catalog to mirror its mobile storefront.

As with iPhone's app store in iTunes and BlackBerry's online App World, Windows Marketplace for Mobile site lets you find apps by browsing, searching, or discovering programs from lists of what's most popular or new. App screenshots, ratings, and version details are accessible from product pages. Like BlackBerry's App World, you can pick apps from the online catalog to install via Marketplace for Mobile on your smartphone.

In addition to discovering new applications to download, the online mobile Marketplace has a management window for you to track your download history and tweak your account settings.

Developers will see a separate portal that contains community resources, blog posts, and lists of upcoming events. Although Microsoft has been the tardiest of the major mobile platform developers to implement an app store solution, it's to Microsoft's credit that the company is quickly rounding out its storefront with an online catalog. Now Microsoft just needs to open up the Marketplace to phone owners using older versions of Windows Mobile operating systems.

Article updated at 5:00 pm to correct mIQ media sharing details.

Best Buy Mobile's mIQ dashboard is easier on the eye.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Microsoft introduced its My Phone service last week, an online dashboard for managing and sharing the contents of your mobile phone. We liked some aspects, and critiqued some others. Ultimately, we wished that Microsoft had teamed up with its Seattle neighbor, connected services startup Dashwire, whose legacy dashboard did much of the same thing as My Phone does now, but did it better. Dashwire has since turned its standalone product into a platform. Best Buy Mobile snapped up a license and is now offering its own sync-and-share service, called mIQ (short for mobile IQ).

I know what you're thinking: The T-Mobile Sidekick backup service just failed, and the blame is Microsoft's. Why trust its My Phone service at all? But backup isn't the point of these services. They're about management. Moreover, comfortably managing the contents of your smartphone from a screen and keypad that's larger than anything you can get on your smartphone. And if you delete a number or photo from the Web or phone, it's gone. Neither of these services intends to save it, but they do intend to make it available online.

So now that that's clear, it's time for a throwdown.

My Phone and mIQ both download small clients to the mobile phone. From there, they bidirectionally sync the phone's contents to an online dashboard. My Phone is limited to Windows phones, but mIQ is free for anyone with a BlackBerry, Symbian, or Windows phone.

Features

We'll say right off the bat that Microsoft's My Phone is richer in feature types overall compared with Best Buy Mobile's mIQ. ... Read more

Slacker Radio 3.0 (to be) on the BlackBerry Storm.

(Credit: Slacker Radio)

Earlier today at CTIA Wireless 2009 (see all stories), Slacker Radio demoed its new apps for Windows Mobile, Android, and Blackberry phones. In typical slacker Radio fashion, the applications looked sleek, suave, and dark--we're not sure about dangerous. All three apps are gravitating toward a similar, standard look that tweaks the interface to add the same small improvements across the board: a new screen that tiles lyrics (visible in full with the Radio Plus subscription), biographies, and a review, and an area that reminds you which song is playing while you browse other categories.

You'll see this Slacker Radio widget on Android someday soon.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The trio of Slacker Radio apps will also start seeing some integration with social networks. The first network integration, Twitter, launched on Wednesday night in a partial offering with loose ends that the native apps will hopefully tie up.

In terms of application development, that's not much to boast about. However, the Android app is slated to receive a Now Playing home screen widget with a few basic playback controls, but no capability to change stations. The BlackBerry app (version 3.0) will soon be able to sync cached stations with your computer via Wi-Fi and the data connection, not just through a USB cable, as it does now. This is the change we've been waiting for, and out of the bundle, it's the most important one Slacker is offering.

The second catch? No firm release dates yet. Slacker hints that all three apps will pop into being by the end of 2009, but the streaming music site that competes with Pandora and Last.FM hasn't been able--or willing--to commit to a time frame.

Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET Reviews.

My Phone's Web dashboard resembles an in-box.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

In step with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, Microsoft also graduated its My Phone syncing service for Windows phones (6.0-6.5) from beta to a full release. As we reported earlier this morning, most of the new features are premium additions to help you find your phone if it gets lost or stolen. We'll get to these later on. For the most part, the My Phone service acts as we expect it to--as a small app you download onto your phone, with the bulk of the management taking place on your dashboard online.

Sure enough, after downloading My Phone and signing in with your Windows Live ID (or signing up for a new one), you'll pick from a list of data types you want to sync. These include contacts, calendar items, notes, tasks, memos, photos, and videos, songs and text messages, and documents.

Syncing took over a half hour the first time around, but we were on a terribly weak EDGE connection. Let that be a lesson to all. In the style of our times, the online dashboard resembles an e-mail in-box. From it, you can view the contents of your phone, and to some extent manage certain aspects. for instance, you can add a new calendar item and comfortably edit contact info from the desktop keyboard, but we haven't found a way to add a contact or create a new text message. You can upload songs from any desktop to remotely load onto your phone, but My Phone missed the smattering of songs we already had on the phone. The photo sharing feature is more fleshed out, with options to publish images to Windows Live, Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace.

We're bummed that Microsoft hasn't broadened the syncing and sharing capabilities since My Phone's beta days. With so many other start-ups creating fuller featured in-boxes and management dashboards than My Phone, it seems to us that Microsoft has unnecessarily reinvented the wheel.

(Credit: Shazam)

Shazam, which has long been helping users identify songs, artists, and albums on other mobile platforms like the iPhone, BlackBerry phones, Nokia phones, and Android devices, now makes its Windows Mobile app store debut as a freemium application. That is, anyone can use the basics for free, but a few more-advanced features will cost you.

Here's what you can do for free: When you activate Shazam and hold the phone near the source of the recorded music, the app checks the sample against Shazam's online database and returns suggestions to you. The app also leads you to opportunities to buy the song if you'd like. You'll get five chances a month to identify songs.

A one-time fee of $4.69 gets you unlimited searches, called "tagging" in Shazam's lexicon. The premium version, called Shazam Encore, also features popularity charts for all songs tagged by all users, artist and band bios, a discography, and music and albums reviews. It will also include an Amazon-like recommendation feature that suggests songs based on your other preferences.

Shazam's freemium model is the first the company has attempted , though CEO Andrew Fisher notes that Shazam is sold as a premium app in 70 percent of its worldwide markets. Factoring in exchange rates, Shazam sells for the equivalent of $5 on most platforms. So does a major mobile competitor, Midomi, which already offers a rival product (that also lets you hum or sing a tune) on the same mobile platforms. In fact, Midomi costs $4.99 in the Windows phone marketplace.

Music lovers will get to try Shazam Encore for free on Windows phones. After seven days, they can pay to upgrade or can continue using the basic features five times a month. Fisher told us that Shazam users tag an average of 10 songs per month.

Shazam will roll out to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile in English in 30 countries, with multilanguage support expected to follow some weeks later. It wasn't in our Marketplace at the time of writing, but we'll keep you posted.

Related: See how Shazam works on iPhone.

For a long time, Microsoft's browser for Windows Mobile phones has been a weak link in the Windows Mobile operating system. Internet Explorer Mobile has been infamous for being ungainly, slow, and so thin on browsing features that many high-end smartphones come preloaded with Opera Mobile 9.5.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6, now found on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, addresses some of these failings head-on. The overhauled interface pulls navigation commands out of a text menu and places five round icons on the bottom that are just large enough to tap with a fingertip or a stylus. The browser shows off a cool, light theme instead of teal (the exact color scheme may vary by carrier).

Following a trend in mobile browser design, the navigation in Internet Explorer Mobile 6 disappears after a few seconds of disuse, leaving a full screen for browsing and a small button to call back the buttons, which include a back button, favorites menu, keyboard call-up, zoom key, and "More" menu. The "More" button presents a list of further options, including copy and paste.

(Credit: F)

On Friday, Mozilla released Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile, the latest in Mozilla's effort to put its Firefox browser on a mobile phone. As with Fennec 1.0 beta 3 for the Maemo platform found on some Nokia Internet Tablets, Fennec for Windows Mobile makes changes to the mobile browser's theme, and its scrolling and panning performance.

In particular, it's using what's called a tile cache rendering system to hold onto the part of the screen that has already been rendered. As you scroll and pan around, it should take less time to refresh the screen, since Fennec won't be downloading the same content afresh. This is the same type of technology used in Google Maps.

In addition, Mozilla says it has increased Fennec's start-up time, though you'll need to reboot the Windows Mobile phone for the difference to take effect. Swiping along the edge of the directional pad on the HTC Touch Pro now controls zooming. In the meantime, Fennec now supports more screen resolutions for any other Windows Mobile phone, so it could potentially look better on your device.

While Mozilla has no hard date set for completing Fennec 1.0 for Windows Mobile (which in all probability, could be called Firefox for Windows Mobile when it's done) it has set a target time for releasing Fennec on the Maemo platform in Q4, which brings us to before the end of December. This fits the timeline of Mozilla's open design competition for the company's Firefox for Mobile campaign, which will cut off voting on October 7, 2009.

Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile is ready to try for your Windows Mobile phone and can be downloaded from this CAB file. Remember that as an unstable alpha release, you may encounter bugs and other issues. For more details about what's new, you can find Mozilla's release notes here.

Related story: Firefox Mobile' updates for Windows Mobile

A chief rival to Opera Mobile in the cell phone browser space, Skyfire has released a new version for Windows Mobile (touchscreen | non-touchscreen) and Nokia's Symbian-run E or N series phones. Version 1.1 makes some minor, but still welcome, improvements to navigation and performance.

My favorite is that you'll now be able to punch the "2" and "8" key on keypad- or keyboard-equipped phones to navigate up and down. Pressing the asterisk (*) will jump you to the joint address/search bar. Of course, this may not work identically on phones with nonstandard keypad arrangements.

Web surfers will also notice that Skyfire may now show a Web site's mobile version more often than before. Behind the change are new WAP features that detect mobile sites better. In addition, Skyfire's browser will zoom in on the page automatically, saving you a step. The new treatment won't work for sites, like Yahoo's mobile.yahoo.com, that use "mobile" as part of a URL intended to be viewed from the desktop.

Behind the scenes, Skyfire's mobile browser also received updates for Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight, all which give the browser the edge in streaming videos. Other tweaks and fixes are designed to speed up the time it takes for a page to load, and quicken scrolling on Nokia phones. Skyfire's blog has a full list of changes.

Skyfire mobile browser is free to all users. You can also download it over the air by pointing a different mobile browser to http://get.skyfire.com. If you're an existing user who can weather a short wait, Skyfire will push the update to your phone. This should save you having to reconfigure all of RSS and social networking feeds.

Article updated at 12:15 am PT with a clarification on how mobile site detection works.

(Credit: Handmark)

The countdown is well under way for Microsoft's Windows Mobile app store, called Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which is slated to arrive in early fall alongside the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. Yet on Tuesday, mobile media company Handmark outmaneuvered Microsoft, releasing a rival application for Windows Mobile phones: HandMarket Apps for Windows Mobile.

Handmark's HandMarket app store is compatible with phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and up. At launch there are 600 applications and games each, plus about 50,000 ringtones and wallpaper items. Prices range from $0 to about $60.

HandMarket fits what can now be recognized as the app store paradigm. It has a quick search function, browsable categories, and users' star ratings and reviews. Like the BlackBerry App World, HandMarket Apps for Windows Mobile includes a screen summarizing past downloads at a glance. If you uninstall an app for space considerations, you'll be able to reinstall through this "locker."

Tracking app store downloads goes hand-in-hand with billing. HandMarket can bill you through your cell phone carrier (your monthly bill reflects your download purchases,) or you can tack purchases onto a credit card that you associate with your account.

In addition, the app store will alert you when an app update is available. HandMarket also lets you share app details with others.

Handmark's HandMarket may well turn out to be a good interim app store for those who want to jump on board the store's centralized distribution and billing model without waiting for Microsoft. The fact that it's also available now for earlier Windows Mobile platforms means it will remain an app store option for those who don't immediately jump aboard Windows Mobile 6.5. It's likely, though, that today's HandMarket users could abandon the app tomorrow when and if they do trade up to a Windows Mobile phone featuring Microsoft's built-in app store and billing system.

To reward early adopters, Handmark is opening its app store with an 80-percent-off sale on some Windows Mobile games, which can be found in the "Specials" screen.

Handmark's free HandMarket Apps for Windows Mobile is currently only available in North America for a variety of Windows Mobile phones, but the company says that it does plan to expand support internationally.