CTIA show

Updated April 3, 2009 at 11:00 am PT with more questions and answers.

(Credit: Skype)

You've had a lot of questions about the new Skype for iPhone (download)--how it works and even why anyone would want to use it.

I'm going to answer some of the most frequently asked ones here, but if you've got more, you know what to do. Put 'em in the comments.

First of all, some context. Skype for iPhone is a voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, communications application that lets you chat with other Skype members for free, plus call landlines and mobile phones when you buy Skype Out credit. It is available in every country in which the App Store can be found, and it has already made a splash in the United States, Japan, and Europe.

Apple requires Skype and other voice applications to use Wi-Fi to place iPhone calls, not the hardware phone. Now without further ado:

1. If you've already got an iPhone, what's the point of having another calling application?

At least at first, Skype was primarily used to place international calls for free to other Skype users, or to landlines at a reduced rate on par with a calling card, for example. If you've got family and friends living abroad, the application's potential is a no-brainer.

Sure, you might not need to use Skype if everyone you know and love lives within a 500-mile radius of you. Yet users have already chimed in with examples of domestic uses, like if your home has a weak cellular signal but strong Wi-Fi; or if you eat through your free-talk minutes, a low-rate VoIP service like Skype will cost you less than the carrier's charge for each minute you go over your plan.

Also, don't forget that iPod Touch owners can use Skype and other VoIP applications (like Truphone and Fring) to make calls, even though the iPod has no telephone hardware--you just need earphones equipped with a mic.

2. If you're on the road, you still can't use your iPhone to make free calls with Skype, unless you can track down a Wi-Fi connection somewhere.

If you're in the United States, AT&T allows iPhone users free access to AT&T hot spots without incurring extra charges, though if you're attempting a call, you might not want to start it in the middle of Starbucks.

Also, even when you've got a laptop or desktop handy, and could use VoIP on the desktop, a calling client on the mobile phone gives you the freedom to wander. You won't be able to see your pals with the Webcam from the iPhone, though, so there is a trade-off.

Palm Pre at CTIA 2009--photos

While we didn't get the release date or pricing of the Palm Pre at CTIA 2009, we did learn a few new things about the smartphone, which is better than nothing, we suppose.

Fandango on the Palm Pre

(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET)

The first bit of news actually came out of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco where Palm announced that it's ready to release the Mojo SDK to developers so they can create apps for the Pre and Palm WebOS.

Back here in Las Vegas, Sprint and Palm hosted a VIP Lounge where invitees could kick back and check out the Pre in a more intimate setting, away from the masses. I stopped by the lounge, and we were disappointed to learn that there's still a "look, but don't touch" policy (more on this later), but we were happy to see that they were demoing a number of third-party apps on the smartphone, which we really haven't seen before.

The first app I saw was Fandango. The movie ticket site was announced as a partner back when the Pre made its debut at CES 2009, but we finally got to see how it would work on the smartphone, and I've got to say, it's pretty sleek. You can view trailers, check show times, and buy tickets through the Fandango app. If you buy tickets, the Pre will even create a calendar entry to remind you about the show.

Next up was FlightView. This is a real-time flight-tracking app that's designed to make it easier for you to know the status of a friend's or family member's flight. It lets you view in-air maps, receive status notifications, and also offers Calendar integration. FlightView will also use the smartphone's GPS to find the nearest airport to your location

Perhaps the most exciting app for me was Pandora. I love music, and Pandora's introduced me to some great new artists, so it's wonderful to see the integration of the Internet radio service on the Pre. Even better, you can run Pandora in the background while using other applications and without having to go back to the dedicated app, you can use the notification bar along the bottom of the screen to check out what's currently playing and perform some basic functions (e.g., stop/pause, next track).

Last but not least, we got to see a couple of Sprint's services demoed on the Pre, namely Sprint TV and Nascar Sprint Mobile app. The latter lets you get live race audio, keep tabs on your favorite drivers, and receive alerts on their latest results, and so forth. Sprint TV, of course, allows you to access to programming from a variety of channels, including CNN, Comedy Central, Sprint Exclusive Entertainment. The video playback on Sprint TV wasn't all that great. Picture quality was choppy and at one point, there was a couple-second stall in playback. However, to be fair, we've seen this on other Sprint TV-enabled smartphones and cell phones.

In general, I was impressed with what I saw. There were, of course, some hiccups, but everything's still in beta stage and I understand there are issues to be resolved, so I'm not going to pass final judgment. The bigger picture is that the smartphone offers great multi-tasking capabilities, and this is where I think the Palm Pre trumps the iPhone. Being able to run and interact with Pandora while working in another application is just a great example of the Pre's multitasking capabilities. Well played, Palm, well played. Check out photos of the apps and more beauty shots of the Palm Pre above.

Article updated 4/1/09 at 1:30 pm PT to correct the name of LyricFind.

All these lyrics can be yours as part of a subscription fee.

(Credit: Slacker Radio)

If you've ever seen this Internet-infamous video, nobody need ever remind you of the importance of song lyrics.

Soon, subscribers to Slacker Radio's RadioPlus service will be able to avoid embarrassing lyrical flubs with the help of a new lyrics tab on the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Web. Slacker Radio has partnered with LyricFind to provide the text behind the songs, which RadioPlus subscribers began seeing Tuesday, March 31, 2009, on Slacker.com. The lyrics tabs is expected to appear on the BlackBerry on April 1, and on the iPhone sometime next week.

Licensed lyrics are beginning to set a trend in mobile applications. In addition to Slacker Radio's lyrics play, TuneWiki has released its offering for Android and is working on versions of the music video and lyrics application for the other mobile platforms. The bottom line is: are you willing to pay for a tool that keeps you from making a fool of yourself in front of people you're trying to impress?

Careful, Yahoo Mobile for Web can grow longer than your arm.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo let loose at CTIA 2009 with a redesigned Yahoo Mobile experience for the Web and iPhone--available beginning Wednesday--and a sneak peek at a version for Java smartphones.

Yahoo has combined all the organizational elements it has been working on separately during the past year and a half or so to bring OneSearch, OnePlace, and OneConnect together in a single application. It's a throwback to Yahoo's beginnings as an Internet portal, but with a twist--and it works, though not without drawbacks.

Most intriguing is Yahoo's completely divergent similar experiences for the Web and iPhone versus the build for Java smartphones. The former invoke a classic Yahoo design, and the latter splinters off into widget land with a brand-new dashboard. Read below for the full details, or check out photos in our gallery: Yahoo Mobile steps into the light.

Yahoo Mobile's Web makeover
Yahoo's completely redesigned mobile hub on the Web is a tall, scrollable mashup of search, news, e-mail, social networking, finance, weather, sports scores, and any other RSS feed you'd want to add. At the very top is Yahoo OneSearch, which keys in your location using GPS or cell tower triangulation to make your text searches start faster. Below the search bar is a condensed feature section (Today on Yahoo) that emphasizes images.

Below that is an option to expand all Yahoo services, which gives you a portal-style list of everything from the Yahoo calendar to Flickr to movie showtimes. Back in the main screen, Yahoo OneConnect lets you add Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL e-mail in-boxes, Facebook and Twitter feeds, instant-messaging applications, and Yahoo's calendar and address book.

Further south, the area for Yahoo OnePlace will let you monitor RSS feeds for weather, finance, stocks, bookmarks, sports scores, and any other RSS link you'd like to add.

Now here's the bad part: Yahoo Mobile is infinitely customizable, which means that it's infinitely scrollable--the more services you add, the taller the app. While this is less of a problem on the iPhone, whose finger-flicking navigation rapidly scrolls up and down, it will take more time (and patience) on other devices. Although you can easily edit each section, the link to manage accounts from within each silo can easily get lost.

The ability to flip between screens for these various functions makes the iPhone app smoother and less cluttered, though the individual pages can still get long if you add numerous RSS feeds.

Trying to be too many things to too many people has been Yahoo's Achilles' heel for a long time, beginning with the Yahoo Go application that, though excellent and thorough, took too many brain cells for unfettered use.

The theme continued with Yahoo's series of separate apps for different mobile platforms that felt more like experiments than a mobile solution--Yahoo OneSearch with voice, OnePlace, and OneConnect. The retooled Yahoo Mobile unifies them all in a good-looking, intuitive structure whose whole is worth far more than the sum of its parts, even if it has the potential for creating a foot-long application.

Yahoo Mobile for Java phones
Yahoo's new native application for Java phones may be the same genus as the Web portal, but it's a completely different beast. Yahoo Mobile for smartphones has a few more enhancements, including voice search (powered by Vlingo) and an underlying Opera Mini browser. (See an image in our gallery.)

The app will take on a dashboard feel, with the search bar on top and widgets tiled below. The widgets will include services like Facebook and a socially intelligent address book that integrates e-mail history, SMS, IM, and calling.

There will also be a mapping app, and plenty of ways to personalize by adding your own widgets. It certainly looked easy to use when we played with in during our demo, but the one question in our minds is whether people will want a second dashboard on their phones to access their contacts, calendars, social networks, e-mail, and so on.

Answers to these questions will become clearer when Yahoo Mobile for Smartphones becomes available sometime in May.

Yahoo Mobile steps into the light--photos

If Skype for iPhone seems like a big deal to you, you're right. It's topping iPhone App Store charts in nine countries, Skype says.

The Skype for iPhone VoIP application, which became available Tuesday after an announcement at CTIA, is now the top free app in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Russia, and Spain.

"I'm delighted that consumers have voted with their fingertips and chosen to download Skype in such phenomenal numbers," said Skype Chief Operations Office Scott Durchslag.

You can read more about Skype for iPhone in our hands-on review or see screenshots in our slideshow.

We've barely unpacked our bags from GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and we're on the road again to Las Vegas for CTIA Wireless, the U.S. trade show and conference held every spring where the biggest and most influential players in the U.S. mobile market gather.

While there will be some cell phones announced at this year's show, most of the excitement will center on software applications and the virtual storefronts that are popping up to distribute these new applications. Since the success of Apple's App Store, which provides easy access to third-party applications for iPhones, other companies have jumped on the bandwagon announcing their own application stores.

Everyone from Google to Microsoft to Nokia to Research In Motion has announced plans for a new application store. And at this year's CTIA, some of these new app stores will come to life. RIM is expected to announce that its BlackBerry AppWorld is open for business, and Microsoft will start showing off its Marketplace for the first time.

But application markets aren't the only thing that will be talked about. Carriers like Verizon and Clearwire will also be touting faster broadband wireless networks that will help make these applications a reality. And of course handset makers will be showing off new products, some of which have already been announced, such as the Palm Pre.

But this year's spring CTIA Wireless show will likely be smaller than in years past. The economic downturn has taken its toll on the mobile market. Even Nokia, the world's largest and strongest maker of cell phones, has slashed expectations for 2009. And the company has already begun laying off employees and closing facilities to cut costs.

Photos: Inside Skype for iPhone

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype's native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application's principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing. While most of the features aren't too surprising--Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all--there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

At long last, Skype has come to the iPhone.

(Credit: Skype)

In terms of navigation, Skype's VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple's sleek interface archetype, that's a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype's branding may feel disappointed.

Skype's screens are well organized and use the iPhone's ability to add filters, for instance, to sort your contacts alphabetically, or by who's online. There's chatting as well, though Skype's flagship feature is its VoIP calling that's free to other Skype users and an inexpensive per-minute fee to landlines. Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you're in range of a Wi-Fi network, so your call quality will in part be at the mercy and strength of wireless networks nearby--calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.) Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online.

Taking a photo from within Skype to serve as your avatar image, or pulling a picture in from the camera roll are two iPhone-only features that makes use of the phone's hardware attributes. Another imperfect, but still neat, feature is the ability to accept incoming conference calls. While you won't be able to initiate a call, we're told, you will be able to jump on one if a buddy invites you in. We hope the next version includes placing conference calls from the iPhone.

Skype bypassed a few more features in its maiden iPhone voyage. SMS, setting up a conference calling group, purchasing SkypeOut credit directly, and being able to field a second incoming Skype call are a few. File transferring and getting Skype voicemail native on the phone are two more. We expect to see at least two of these added in the next version, but we'll hope for more.

Skype versus the competition
Here's the big question on our minds: will Skype's iPhone app replace competitors like Nimbuzz and Fring, which focus on cross-network IM but also include VoIP calls with Skype pals even though they've been available for the iPhone for months? Kurt Thywissen, the principal engineer for Skype for iPhone, thinks so. He says what the other apps use is a workaround that requires them to channel calls through a server and transcode audio, resulting in poorer-quality calls than Skype can do in its own app. He may be right, but those who IM more than they vocalize probably won't ditch the likes of Fring too soon. They might, however, let Skype handle the calls and let another app take care of the multinetwork chatting.

Inside Skype for iPhone--photos

The CTIA 2009 spring show is just a few days away, and there are sure to be new product announcements. HTC, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG--they'll all be there. However, there's one company in particular that's at the forefront of my mind, and it would be Palm. I'm sure you can guess why.

Palm Pre, where are you?

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Both Palm and Sprint will be in Las Vegas for the show, but the companies don't have any news conferences or major events scheduled--just an invite-only VIP Lounge where they'll have the Palm Pre on display.

I really hope we'll learn some new information at CTIA (ahem, pricing, release date), since we clearly didn't during their last Webcast. However, I fear it'll be more of the same and we'll come home none the wiser. Part of me also thinks that they'll wait till the last possible moment (June) to deliver on their "first half of 2009" promise, but I hope I'm wrong.

Palm and Sprint are running into dangerous territory right now. We said at CES 2009 that it was risky for the companies to announce the smartphone (though smart in many ways) back in January and they had to careful to deliver on their promise and not delay the phone.

On the one hand, I commend Palm for better communication with the public whether it be through its blog or Twitter feed, but there's comes a point where the canned responses get old and things like the Webcast look like a stalling method or shameless self-promotion. I think it's pretty safe to say, we're at that point, and the masses are getting restless.

Also, with the new iPhone OS 3.0 and all its new features, the Pre has lost some of its competitive edge. (The chart below gives you a side-by-side comparison of the basic features of the two smartphones.) Plus, there's a chance we could see a new iPhone at WWDC in early June and that could certainly steal some of the Pre's thunder. ... Read more

(Credit: CNET Networks)

If you didn't already know that football season was under way, you would after glancing at Yahoo's audacious purple booth at CTIA Wireless in San Francisco, where oversize posters and computer monitors advertise Yahoo's fantasy football leagues, and where complementary gelato is scooped into small, plastic football helmets. Across the convention center aisle, mobile widgets company Plusmo has also made a nod to the pigskin with a quiet demo of the beta iPhone app, Pro Football Live.

Released Monday to the iPhone App Store, Pro Football Live beta is a thicket of teams, schedules, seasonal stats, photos, and news. During live games, Plusmo cranks up the social networking features by adding chat, voting elements, play information, and the position of the ball in a virtual stadium. The free app has received mixed user reviews because of known stability issues that hang a screen or crash the app, but Plusmo's team hinted that it wanted to kick out Pro Live Football before the season really took off. Plusmo also expects its college football and pro baseball apps to hit the App Store within the following week, despite the baseball season drawing to a close.

At this stage, Plusmo's battle for sports tracking dominance on the iPhone will be against the free Sportacular, which houses its stats and news in a much neater interface. Sportacular, in Version 1.1, also efficiently shows stats for pro baseball, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, and pro soccer within one app, compared with Plusmo's multiple applications, each specific to its own sport. However, there are enough multimedia extras in Plusmo's football app to keep sports lovers checking back in for improvements. Golf fans can check out the free Plusmo Golf, which debuted in August, and cricket followers should keep an eye out for Cricinfo MobiCast, also forthcoming.