Cell Phone Accessories

Verizon Wireless and LiMo Foundation (formed January 2007), a global consortium of mobile leaders delivering an open handset platform for the whole mobile industry, announced today that Verizon has joined LiMo and will fill the final seat on LiMo’s board of directors.

By participating in Limo, Verizon hopes to help LiMo unify the mobile industry around openness and Linux as the key enablers to lowering development costs. Verizon Wirless is the first US cell phone service provider to join LiMo.

LiMo Foundation is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, integrators and independent software vendors. Verizon Wireless joins the foundation’s other 39 members in working within LiMo’s transparent governance model to shape the evolution of the LiMo Platform, while remaining entirely free to deliver their own compelling and differentiated services to mobile customers.

Like podcasts?  Now you can get them on your cell phone thanks to Foneshow.  Foneshow is a new service that offers users a fast and easy way to access downloadable radio shows known as podcasts.

Instead of synching your music player to a PC to get audio clips, Foneshow lets you listen to podcasts on demand from your cell phone.

To use Foneshow, a user subscribes to a series. They can do this on the Foneshow website, on the publisher's website, or over the air when someone forwards them a show. Soon Foneshow will let new users subscribe with a phone call or via a short code.

When a series publishes a new show all the subscribers are immediately notified via a text message. The text message includes the series' name, the show subject, and how long the show is. The message also contains the coded access number.

According to a new report from Forrester Research, mobile signatures are a success. Forrester conducted research exclusively covering mobile signatures and has just published their findings, titled Extending Mobile Identity Beyond Authentication, which is now available free of charge through the Valimo Wireless website.

T security and identity expert Bill Nagel, the author of this groundbreaking report, recognizes that “mobile authentication has taken hold in lots more countries – mobile signatures are a logical extension.” Nagel states that, “nearly all of the banks and operators we spoke with report that the technology operates flawlessly and that the experiences of customers who use the system are very good.”

Mobile signatures transform any mobile phone into an identity card and signature pen for online and mobile services. A user-chosen numerical password, or signing PIN, tells the SIM card to generate a digital signature.