Almost exactly one month ago, Verizon added Push-to-talk support to the BlackBerry Tour! Hurray! Unfortunately, it cost $5 extra a month. Un-hurray.

It looks like Verizon might be having a bit of trouble getting people to sign up — or, at least, they want to kickstart the number of people using it. They just dropped the price down to an always-welcome amount: free. But you’ve gotta act (somewhat) fast.

In an e-mail sent to Tour owners today, Verizon says that they’re making Push-to-talk “Free for life” (in other words, as long as you keep up your contract) for all BlackBerry Tour owners that add the option by June 30th. So what happens after that? Will Verizon have a big enough Tour push-to-talk users in place to be able to sell the feature to newcomers, or will they just keep it free? It’s anyone’s guess at this point — but if I was a Tour owner, I wouldn’t risk waiting to find out.

[Via CrackBerry]

By Greg Kumparak

Originally posted 2010-05-01 04:11:24.

GSMA, the organizers of the annual, massive Mobile World Congress, have announced a couple of new developments this morning. For one, the organization is to expand the developer-focused programme at the event to include new elements such as Macworld Mobile and the Brand App Challenge.

In addition, the organization has announced new speakers, including Sir Martin Sorrell, chief exec of WPP and HTC head honcho Peter Chou.

At Mobile World Congress 2011, the GSMA is partnering with IDG World Expo, organisers of Macworld, to produce Macworld Mobile, a mobile apps developer-focused event that will center around the iOS platform. GSMA says the Macworld Mobile iOS Developer Conference will provide full-day, in-depth training on the platform, with technical sessions, targeting tools and applications specifically designed for mobile apps application developers and engineers.

The GSMA expects more than 10,000 developers to visit App Planet, the “event within an event” at Mobile World Congress that centers around the mobile apps applications market, during the four days of Mobile World Congress. At the next event, App Planet will also feature new elements, including the Brand App Challenge, which is essentially a competition / networking opportunity focused on mobile apps application developers creating “brand apps” for a select number of global consumer brands.

Finally, GSMA has expanded its line up of keynote speakers at Mobile World Congress, announcing today that the following speakers were added to the programme: Daniel Hajj, CEO, America Movil and Telcel; Peter Chou, CEO, HTC; Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive, Vodafone and Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP.

They will join previously announced speakers like Randall Stephenson, Chairman, CEO and President, AT&T; Li Yue, President and CEO, China Mobile; Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google and Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter.

The event will be held on 14th-17th February, 2011 in Barcelona.

We’re looking forward to it.

By Robin Wauters

In case you missed it, iOS 4.1 was made official and released to developers on the first. Seems that Apple might have made a slight misstep when they released it however; the version that went it works with any iPhone/iPod Touch, not just the developer units. The upshot is that if you don’t want to wait for the general release, you don’t have to – you can go to the Uneasy Silence forum and download it. There’s also quite the support discussion built up on that forum, so if you have any questions about iOS 4.1, odds are the answer is there.

By Dave Freeman

See that shot above? That was taken with an iPhone 4. Don’t believe it? See how in the video after the jump.

Armed with nothing but a $7 mini-microscope and the cheapest (around $3) back-protecting iPhone case they could find, the guys over at Crabfu managed to convert their iPhone 4 into an on-the-go microscope camera capable of taking shots at a 12x zoom level.

Ten bucks for at least a few hours of wandering around my house looking at everything way closer than I probably should? Deal.

[Via Giz]

By Greg Kumparak

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Android Police noticed today that the minimum requirements for Flash Player 10.1 actually exclude the original Motorola Droid, even though it was one of the devices Adobe showed off in their early Flash Player 10.1 demo videos.

What isn’t clear, however, is whether or not the minimum requirements will apply to the Droid from now on (meaning, Droid users no longer being able to download it), or if they’ve just made an exception to these requirements in the case of the Droid.

My gut tells me it’ll be the latter, but Android Police have reached out to Adobe for clarification, just be sure. We’ll let you know how it turns out.

The hefty minimum system requirements serve as a reminder that Flash probably doesn’t have a home on mobile apps phones, as much as we’d all love it to.

By Simon Chester