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Under the terms of the deal, Sony BMG artists can send text and voice message updates to fans, who in turn can send their own messages back as well as check out those left by others.

Mozes charges companies a monthly fee, but the service is free to consumers. The 22-employee company based in Palo Alto, Calif., raised $11.5 million recently in a second round of funding, according to TechCrunch.

Sony BMG, one of the top four recording companies, has signed a deal with Mozes, a start-up that connects communities through mobile phones.

Bands are making their fans aware of the service during concert performances by shouting out their text codes. Concert-goers join the service by texting the performer and opting in.

Mozes will hand Sony BMG music artists a way to communicate with fans through text and voice messages. Right off, this isn’t spam, says the company’s CEO Dorrian Porter.

He says Mozes only sends messages to people who have opted into the program. If you’re a hard-core fan of musician Teddy Geiger, Porter says, you’ll want him texting you with his next concert date or leaving a voice message about an upcoming release (Geiger uses the service, Porter said).

For Sony BMG, this marketing method can offer a much more directed link to its target communities. Porter said Mozes has deals with a major retailer and NBA team.

“People want a way to manage their messages,” Porter said. “This is a way for people to be in control of who communicates with them on their cell phones.”

To help keep track of AT&T’s various offerings, the carrier also launched an AT&T Travel Guide where you can input your international itinerary and get specific roaming rates.

AT&T added to its existing international roaming packages Monday with a new plan for smartphone users. The package will feature 50 megabytes of data in 67 countries for $60 per month. That’s in addition to your normal voice and data plan and any roaming plan for international voice calls.

Besides the new smartphone plan, AT&T offers other packages for data use while traveling abroad. The Unlimited BlackBerry International plan lets you receive unlimited e-mail for $69.99 per month. iPhone users have two plans available. For $24.99 per month, you can get 20MB of data in 36 countries, or for $59.99, you can get 50MB of data in 36 countries.

For Windows Mobile and Palm device owners, $24.99 will give you 20MB of data in the same 36 countries. See CNET’s quick guide to world phones for a full rundown on roaming packages from all of the major carriers.

Electronista spotted a Web page advertising the BlackBerry Developer Conference, scheduled for the week of October 20 in Santa Clara, Calif. The two-and-a-half day conference will feature the usual keynote speeches and technical sessions, but RIM doesn’t seem to have settled on an agenda just yet.

Smartphone application development appears to be the next frontier for software developers. Such applications have already been in development for years for operating systems like Symbian and Windows Mobile, but the swell of interest in Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating systems is generating new demand for third-party software that knows how to play well within the constraints of a phone.

The BlackBerry is the leading smartphone in North America, and is No. 2 on a worldwide basis. RIM just launched the newest version, the BlackBerry Bold, this week.

Research in Motion will hold its own conference for smartphone developers later this year, as interest in mobile development continues to grow.

Developers will learn more about creating apps for the BlackBerry Bold later this year.

(Credit:
RIM)

Via: Note 19

The latest version of Share offers PDF creation, updated Flash previews (supports full screen mode) and improved performance. The various rendition generations are based on Adobe LiveCycle,
Creative Suite and other core technologies. Share also offers Web Services that developers could use to create desktop or online applications.

The newly revamped Adobe Share (beta) 1.3.5 is out today and is based on Alfresco, everyone’s favorite open source ECM (enterprise content management) platform.

Why is this interesting?
- The fact that a bigCo like Adobe is publicly stating that they are using open source at the core of their products is fantastic (and we need alot more companies to step up publicly)

- Alfresco is proving that they (like other open source products) can go beyond an enterprise sale by doing embedded deals

Sun has already hired other open-source luminaries such as Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock, in an effort to capitalize on open source and diversify beyond its roots in Java and Solaris.

Sun Microsystems has hired high-profile Python programmers Ted Leung and Frank Wierzbicki, stepping up its bet on open source and scripting languages.

Correction 10:45 a.m. PST: This blog initially misspelled the name of one of the Python programmers hired by Sun. His name is Frank Wierzbicki.

“Sun is (finally?) very serious about this. As part of Sun’s new direction, Sun wants to give developers the ability to use whatever tool sets they want. Ruby, Python, PHP, Java. On or off OpenSolaris. On or off the JVM (Java virtual machine),” he wrote.

Leung, well known for his work with XML and Python, will join Sun as “principal engineer, dynamic languages and tools,” he said in his blog Monday, which means that he’ll be working with other dynamic languages.

Python is one of several dynamic, or scripting, languages that have grown in popularity over the past several years. Developers are using scripting languages, such as PHP or Python, in some cases over Java, which is considered more complicated and harder to learn.

Wierzbicki is the lead implementer on the Jython project for making Python run on the Java virtual machine.

“Jython is going to remain completely open source….This move by Sun means that Jython is going to get some of the attention that it needs to move forward,” he wrote in his blog.

But, Sacconaghi doesn’t think the shortage really cost Apple all that much business. “We believe the impact to Apple’s overall iPhone sales has been minimal so far, and is likely to be modest unless the shortage persists or worsens,” he wrote in a report.

Today, on “This Week in iPhone,” we’ll address two significant developments. Apple stores around the country are starting to recover from an iPhone shortage, while T-Mobile has cut the price of the iPhone in Germany by 300 euros.

Despite sitting out the
CTIA 2008 conference, Apple’s
iPhone business had an eventful week.

First up, the supply concerns. Apple acknowledged the shortage and told The New York Times that it was working to get iPhones into its retail stores as fast as possible. The cause of the shortage still hasn’t emerged, but speculation that a 3G iPhone would be arriving sooner than expected has cooled.

After a brief shortage, it's getting easier to find iPhones at Apple's stores.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile is running a special on iPhones until the end of June. You can now get an 8GB iPhone in Germany for 99 euros ($154.78), if you choose a hefty service plan. Several analysts think this means the 3G iPhone launch is therefore timed for the end of June, which would make some sense given the identical target date for the iPhone 2.0 software.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

One reason, advanced by Sanford Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi, is that all the newly arriving iPhones are the regular models, not 3G versions. If Apple really was gearing up to launch a 3G model in the near future, it probably wouldn’t build inventories of the older models. Sacconaghi thinks that Apple ran into a production issue, and made the decision to allocate the iPhones it had on hand to AT&T’s stores, because it can count iPhones shipped to channel partners as sales. Remember, the first quarter just ended last week.

A silly example of a Chickenfoot script is one that changes the image on the Google home page. First you copy the script from the Chickenfoot site, and then you paste it into the Chickenfoot script editor, swap out the image-source URL for the one of your choosing, and click the Run icon. Gone is the universally recognizable “Google” icon, and in its place is whatever image you chose. Not especially practical perhaps, but a neat little trick nonetheless.

Keep in mind that malicious scripts can wreak havoc on your system, so be judicious in your use of scripts from unfamiliar sources. Likewise, Chickenfoot may be susceptible to cross-site scripting (XSS), so the developers recommend that you create a separate Firefox profile for Chickenfoot, and use the scripts only on sites you trust.

Tomorrow: top online scanners and speed testers.

After you download the scripting engine, click View > Sidebar > Chickenfoot (or press F8) to open the Chickenfoot Script Editor. Enter the script in the top pane of the sidebar, and click the Run icon to activate the script for the current page. You can also run scripts by copying and pasting them into the editor, or by clicking the sidebar’s Open icon and navigating to the .js file. By placing the scripts in the Triggers window, they will run as soon as the target page opens in Firefox.

Another Chickenfoot script places an icon at the end of URLs that lead to a PDF download or anywhere other than a Web page. But the real power of Chickenfoot scripts is in customizing those in the various Chickenfoot libraries.

Any task you perform on the Web can be automated by writing a script. But you don’t have to know how to use Javascript or some other scripting language to create your own custom scripts. The Chickenfoot add-on for
Firefox makes it easy for nonprogrammers to devise scripts that do their bidding.

Run a Chickenfoot script that changes the "Google" image on the site's home page with the image of your choice.

Chickenfoot was developed by MIT’s User Interface Design Group. It’s similar to the Greasemonkey scripting extension for Firefox, but its scripts tend to be simpler and easier for nonprogrammers to customize.

(Credit:
Chickenfoot)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Much as I prefer to avoid paper, sometimes you just need hard copy. And at those times, you don’t want to wait. Samsung’s ML-2510 laser printer cranks out 24 pages per minute, so there’s very little waiting required. Buy.com has the ML-2510 on sale for just $44.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate. These are new units, not refurbs, and shipping is gratis.

A laser printer for $45 is a pretty sweet deal. A fast laser printer for $45 is just plain awesome. If you’re looking to outfit a home office or small business for volume printing and don’t mind waiting on a rebate, click no further.

(Credit:
Buy.com)

Although CNET refers to this as a “workgroup” printer, to me that implies an Ethernet or Wi-Fi interface. The ML-2510 offers neither: It connects via USB or, if you’re working with older machines, a parallel port (remember those?). On the plus side, it’s a very compact model that offers a 250-sheet input tray and compatibility with Windows,
Mac, and Linux PCs.

Swatches may have lost their cool in the ’80s, but these color samples are timeless for Web designers. This tool lets you figure out what's hot and cool by just mousing over the colors.

(Found on Delicious)

Even if you’re not a cutting edge Web designer it’s pretty fun. Plus, once you’ve found your colors you can match them up with Flickr photos using Kuler’s latest release.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Adobe’s Kuler (coverage) is neat for finding color schemes that are aesthetically pleasing, but what about when you want to figure out what colored text will look like on a colored background? You can either spend time trying each combination in something like Dreamweaver, or by using this handy tool, which lets you select a background then the secondary color (for something like text) by just hovering over each color hash with your mouse.

The Canadian government has put the kibosh on the $1.3 billion sale of a Canadian satellite company to a U.S. firm for fear that such a deal would give the U.S. government too much control over sensitive satellite images.

The government said Thursday that it was blocking Alliant Techsystems’ bid for MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates to protect Canada’s sovereignty. The New York Times noted this was the first time in 23 years that the Canadian government has blocked such a sale to a foreign company.

The satellite, called Radarsat2, is owned by MacDonald Dettwiler, but the Canadian government financed a good portion of the construction and launch. It is uniquely positioned over the Arctic with views of the Arctic sea passage ways that could one day be used for shipping. In exchange for its investment, the Canadian government has access to images from the satellite.

Opponents of the deal fear that if the company were sold, U.S. officials would be able to ask Alliant Techsystems to let them see images of ships traveling through the Arctic. Canada has long claimed sovereignty over the Arctic sea passages, but the U.S. maintains that those waters are international.

Alliant Techsystems has 30 days to appeal the government’s decision.