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As leaders in the wireless industry meet Monday in Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress, they will be buzzing about the latest open software platform for mobile handsets. More companies are signing up to support it. A few phone makers will be flashing hot off the bench prototypes. Software developers will be snapping up just-released development kits.

The surprise is, the platform isn’t the much-vaunted Open Handset Alliance set up by Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ). Instead, a year-old alliance of companies spearheaded by a group called the LiMo Foundation is horning into the spotlight.

Both are working to create a truly open mobile software platform that standardizes how developers build their applications. Currently applications developers spend large amounts of time rewriting or tuning their applications for a myriad of software environments, including Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows Mobile and Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) Series 60, and beginning last year, some Linux-powered phones. For consumers, an open system could translate into faster access to richer mobile applications like mobile TV and location-based services, and more affordable cell phones.

Google made headlines last year when it unveiled its Open Handset Alliance, a group of 34 technology and mobile companies that also is seeking to develop such an open and free mobile platform. That alliance will have news in Barcelona, too: Several companies, including British chipmaker ARM, are expected to exhibit prototype chips and phones running on the alliance’s platform, dubbed Android. Alliance member HTC Corp. has already said it plans to offer an Android phone this year.

But Android has been plagued by reports of glitches since Google released an early version in November. Google recently announced it was tweaking its software developers kit and postponing the deadline for a contest for developers by two weeks, to mid-April. The Android Developer Challenge will provide $10 million in awards for “innovative and useful” Android-based mobile applications.

Meanwhile, LiMo has been steadily chugging away. “[LiMo] is a very practical initiative, but also a deeply philosophical one, based upon the belief that openness in handsets delivers value to consumers,” says Morgan Gillis, LiMo’s executive director. Inspired by this vision and the desire to exert more control over the operating systems that power their handsets, Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ), NEC (nasdaq: NIPNY - news - people ), NTT DoCoMo (nyse: DCM - news - people ), Matsushita, Samsung and Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ) joined forces in January 2007 and set up a LiMo program office in the U.K. to facilitate collaboration.

Universal standards mean they can easily port applications from one device to another. That’s roughly the same vision Google has for its Open Handset Alliance. Currently, half of mobile software developments costs go toward ensuring the application will work correctly on different operating systems.

In Barcelona, LiMo will announce nine new members, bringing corporate participation up to 32 companies, including such heavyweights as Motorola, Panasonic and Vodafone. Eighteen handsets from LG, Motorola, NEC, Panasonic and Samsung will use its platform. The lineup includes Motorola’s Motorokr and Razr2, as well as the high-end 905 series of phones supported by Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo. LG is not an official LiMo member, but will be showing a prototype “LiMo Phone” at the event. LiMo partner Azingo Mobile announced in late January that it had built a full mobile Linux suite based on LiMo’s specifications.

New partners are also showing strong support for LiMo. Orange, the mobile arm of France Telecom (nyse: FTE - news - people ), plans to dedicate part of its 150-person Beijing-based R&D center to working with LiMo, says Yves Maitre, senior vice president of devices. The company, which began working with open platforms in 2002, wants to have 50% of its mobile phones run on open source by 2012, he says.

Similarly another recent member, ACCESS, a global mobile software provider that runs another popular mobile operating system called Garnet, has pledged to oversee future LiMo revisions and work closely with developers. To tap a wide range of developers, LiMo’s SDK suite includes native, Java and Web-based SDKs.

LiMo’s official position toward Google is cordial. The two groups share three members: Motorola, NTT DoCoMo and Samsung. In November, LiMo responded to Google’s announcement of its Open Handset Alliance with a press release that said the two shared “core beliefs” and technology that would allow them to “work together synergistically.”

Nevertheless, these new moves bring the two closer into competition. “There could certainly be overlap,” says Gillis. He hopes LiMo will attract developers by avoiding the types of delays that have beset the Open Handset Alliance. “For developers, what really matters is having a platform and having handsets available immediately, as that’s what will bring their applications to consumers,” he notes. LiMo is “completely on schedule” and “extremely well positioned to quickly deliver … new handsets, applications and services,” he adds.

How soon American consumers will benefit from LiMo is unclear as no American carriers have yet signed onto it. Gillis says he expects they will soon, citing AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) and Verizon (nyse: VZ - news - people )’s recent commitment to open their networks to outside phones and services, and the “strong American presence” of LiMo members Motorola, Samsung and LG. Sprint Nextel (nyse: S - news - people ) and T-Mobile, the country’s no. 3 and 4 carriers, are Open Handset Alliance members.

LiMo-based phones could be a particular boon for consumers in emerging economies. Orange is proud to be the official operator of the iPhone in France, says Maitre, but the phone’s high price limits it to the elite. LiMo will help Orange reach a broader population in places like Africa by enabling it to offer affordable, feature-rich handsets from well-known brands, he says.

Android is believed to be similarly targeting the mass market with low-priced handsets, but it may have a more complicated model that includes subscriptions to Internet access and mobile advertising, backed by Google’s technology, says consulting firm Capgemini.

Leading handset maker Nokia may have its own open-source ambitions, judging from its recent acquisition of software developer–and LiMo member–Trolltech.

No matter who prevails, the shift will usher in a second cellular revolution, in which openness, innovation and collaboration between industry leaders and developers will transform the way people use their phones, say advocates.

It may also pump money into the telecom sector in general and encourage investors to take more risk with start-ups. Says Maitre, “That will bring value to everyone.”

Google didn’t miss Wall Street’s fourth-quarter earnings estimates by much, but it’s Google and every little shortfall matters. The miss was enough to send its stock falling about 7% in after-hours trading. The search giant said its net profit rose 17%, to 1.21 billion, or $3.79 a share. Subtracting stock awards to employees, profit was $4.43 a share, a penny shy of analysts’ estimates.

Sales rose 51%, to $4.827 billion, just a hair under analysts’ estimates. Revenue after payments to marketing partners, known as traffic acquisition costs, was $3.39 billion, also shy of analysts’ $3.45 billion estimate. Google doesn’t give guidance, so its results are often subject to guesswork by analysts.

After Yahoo missed estimates on its fourth-quarter earnings, investors were looking to Google for clues to whether the economic slowdown would hit online advertising. With the conference call about to start, it’s not yet clear what accounts for the earnings shortfall, or at least the perceived shortfall. But with sales more on target than earnings, it looks like expenses, in particular those traffic acquisition costs, came in high. More to come as the call starts. …

But a quick summary first: Execs are pretty firm that the slowing economy isn’t affecting Google yet. CEO Eric Schmidt declares: “We have not yet seen any negative impact from the rumors of a possible recession.” (Oral italics are his.)

The call starts: CEO Eric Schmidt calls out strong international growth. He also calls the fourth quarter “a solid quarter, without a question.”

CFO George Reyes says AdSense revenues flagged a bit because of quality improvements that reduced the clickable area around content, which reduced clicks but increased return on advertising.

When talking about traffic acquisition costs, Reyes also says: “Social networking inventory is not monetizing as well as expected.” Sorry, MySpace (Google’s key social network partner).

Execs say they’ll continue to keep spending on data centers and other capital improvements.

Schmidt summing up: “We’re quite optimistic about ‘08.”

Now to questions.

Question on why paid click growth was down 15%. Jonathan Rosenberg, senior VP of product management: Search ads grew faster than content ads, and Google weeded out low-quality (low click-through-rate if I heard right) ads.

Question about any impact from the slowing economy: Cofounder Sergey Brin: “We have not been able to detect any such effects from macroeconomic concerns.” Rosenberg adds that direct marketing, which is what search advertising largely is, generally fares better in a downturn.

Question on Google’s role in the wireless auctions: No comment. At all.

Will the European regulators approve the DoubleClick deal? No firm answer, of course, but Schmidt says, “We’re very hopeful that they will clear (the deal) as well.”

More questions on problems making money from social networks: Rosenberg says they haven’t been able to slice up social networking pages into targeting enough groups. Brin adds: “I don’t think we have the killer best way to monetize social networks. But it’s a big opportunity” because it’s such a large amount of inventory.

More thoughts: Some analysts focused on the decline in the growth of paid clicks in the fourth quarter–up 9% from the third quarter, compared with a 22% gain from last year’s third to fourth quarters. The question is whether that decline in paid click growth is due to the economy. If so, look out. But Google execs seemed quite firm in saying they saw no negative impact from the economy yet. Since companies are usually only too happy to blame any shortfalls on the economy, Google should probably be taken at its word. In any case, the details of Google’s miss show no indication any wheels are falling off.

With the stock market slowly moving off of lows set early last week, look for Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) earnings to be just what the doctor ordered to rocket the market forward. As Brian White posted, “Google’s shares have been shaken from a high of over $700 this past Christmas to under $543 today, as the company has joined in with the overall market teeter-totter amid continued housing worries and recession talk and FUD that spreads like wildfire every week.”

I think that the company will report blow out numbers, as it has done in the past. The catch this time is that the market hasn’t set Google up for a fall. I don’t believe expectations are all that high due to the market rout. If Google surprises to the upside, this will be what the bulls among us have been waiting for, and I would expect a nice 7-10% market move to the upside in the next two to three weeks.

A strong Google report would help justify what I have been saying that technology will be leading the market higher. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had a great report last week, let’s hope Google has a similar report tonight.

Google Inc. yesterday reported that its first-quarter profit more than quadrupled and revenue nearly doubled because of surging online ad sales. The news, disclosed after the close of the regular trading day, sparked a rally in the search engine giant’s stock price.

For the three months ended March 31, Google reported profit of $369.2 million ($1.29 a share), up from $64 million (24 cents) in the first quarter last year. Revenue, almost entirely from online advertising on Google and its partner Web sites, increased 93 percent, from $651.6 million to $1.3 billion this year.

Google stock shot up nearly $20 in after-hours trading as share prices pushed above $220. Google shares, which started the week trading at about $185, started rising earlier this week following rival Yahoo Inc.’s positive earnings report, which was released late Tuesday. Google went public in August at a price of $85 a share.

“Our focus remains very clearly and steadfastly on long-term growth. In the meantime, we have a quarterly earnings report about which we are very pleased,” said Google chief executive Eric E. Schmidt.

Millions of computer users use Google to find information rapidly on the World Wide Web. The firm profits when people click on the text-based ads that it serves up alongside its free search results. The company does business in the United States and dozens of foreign countries.

“We were very busy this quarter launching dozens of new products and features,” said Google co-founder Larry Page. But, he added, “We remain most focused on the core technology of search.”

Sergey Brin, the other co-founder, said the company also put new systems in place that made it easier for large advertisers to join the thousands of small and medium-size firms that promote their products and services on Google. He said Google’s online ads enable firms to measure the results of their spending more precisely than with traditional media. “We also see more use of Google advertising by companies for branding to make sure their name and products are known throughout the world,” Schmidt said.

Steve Jobs took the stage to kick off the annual Macworld Expo today. As usual, he brought with him a crushing amount of buzz and a pile of new product announcements. Here’s what we’ll be seeing from Apple, starting today!

MacBook Air

As widely expected, Apple is launching an ultra-thin notebook called the MacBook Air. At 0.76″ thick at its widest point, the three-pound Air has a wedgelike shape that tapers down to 0.16″ thick at the front base. LED backlighting on its 13.3-inch screen, multi-touch trackpad (which offers some nifty features like rotating photos, all in the touchpad), and a backlit keyboard. Specs are decent: 1.6 or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (on a cleverly shrunken socket), 2GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive (or 64GB SSD option). No optical drive (of course), and just one USB port. It’ll set you back $1,799, which is on the inexpensive side for ultralight notebooks with specs like this. Ships in two weeks.

(By the way, as great as the MacBook Air sounds, calling this the “world’s thinnest notebook” is hyperbole: The Sony X505 was 0.75″ thick… and it was released in 2003.)

iPhone Software Upgrades

Apple isn’t resting on its cell phone laurels; after selling 4 million iPhones, it’s adding new features to the existing software package (including webclips, which will bookmark not just a web page but a specific zoom and pan and then let you place them on your home screen; multiple recipient SMS; and lyrics support for iTunes). Nothing major, but some nice, incremental upgrades to the existing software. iPod Touch gets the same upgrades as the iPhone, but it will cost you $20.

NOT announced: iPhone 2!

iTunes Movie Rentals

As widely rumored, Apple is launching a movie rental service to complement its TV and movie sales service as part of iTunes. All major studios are on board. Titles will be available 30 days after their DVD release and can be viewed on a PC or your iPod/iPhone. You have 30 days to start watching and 24 hours after that to finish. The price: $3.99 for new releases, $2.99 for old titles. Launches today. (Hey, that Netflix deal is looking pretty good!)

Also: The flagging Apple TV will get the same rental features, without the need for a computer. You’ll also be able to get photos from Flickr and .Mac, podcasts, and YouTube videos via Apple TV. It will still sync with your computer via iTunes, but that isn’t required if you just want to use it to watch web content. It also does high-definition… but rentals will run you a whopping $4.99 each. The Apple TV features will be a free software update to existing boxes (available in two weeks). New boxes drop in price to $229 from $299.

Time Capsule Wireless Hard Drive

Also announced: A wireless external hard drive designed to be used as a backup solution (with Apple’s Time Machine backup software). $299 (500GB) and $499 (1TB).

A video of the Quicksand cover is available on Youtube and Myspace If ya have any questions or comments either hit us up on our myspace page or through the online contact form on this site Search for your favorite Voodoo Wallpaper background and then combine it with your . We have free video codes, Myspace Tweaks, Pimp Myspace, Pimp, Myspace, . All of the images in this section were created by voodoo and are used with myspace voodoo . t hot link them directly. You will have to click to their myspace page . artists who exist only on Myspace. I write this so that they can easily manage and display . . DJ Nature is blessing the Voodoo Radio listeners with his skills for their ears. . wallofvoodoo Wall of Voodoo at MySpace Certified Official June 2006 . Click the title to see the latest with VooDoo Vixen and Mannequinn Management Model, Kaki West. Yeah, We are on MySpace too . VOODOO was an effin crazy good show, and youre right music like yours is the reason NOLA could never die European Tour Dates have been posted in the tour section. Venues TBA soon Voodoo Quota Show 21 201006. www.voodooquotashow.co.uk www.myspace.com thevoodoojets The Voodoo Jets will begin recording a second CD in the Fall of 2007, with an anticipated release in mid 2008 MySpace, Web, People, Music, Video. Powered . like Tales From Da Hood MySpace music profile for Skeeter with tour dates, songs, videos, pictures, blogs.

Google have released their latest version of Google Maps for Mobile devices. On the right is a screenshot I’ve just taken on an HTC Touch to track my phone’s current location within the Google Maps software.

Not quite the accuracy that is required of phone’s in the US for their E911 system, my phone can only identify which is the current cell tower it’s connected to. If I switched to satellite view and zoomed right in, I’d be able to see all the way down to the big mast sticking up into the air.

This is pretty much exactly what I’ve been trying to achieve with my own attempts at cell location lately. My method doesn’t link directly into maps, but it does keep a history of where I’ve been, by relaying the information to my website and also updates Jaiku with my location as I go.

I’ll certainly be using this in the future, as there are a few times when I’ve found myself wanting to quickly load up a map without worrying about entering details. Google have made this ridiculously easy. On my phone I didn’t even have to press any buttons or do anything. As soon as the software was installed, it took my straight to my current cell tower, as in the screenshot.

I’m very impressed. When do we get an API?

UPDATE: I jumped the gun on the screenshot. A couple of minutes later, my phone decided to connect to a different nearby cell tower. At this point, the software probably looks at the previous tower, the two signal strengths, and looks up both locations to mark me as being half way between the two. If it does real triangulation based on multiple current towers then I’m jealous.

Google today upgraded its mobile Maps program with a feature dubbed My Location, a feature that helps pinpoint the whereabouts of a cellphone without demanding a potentially expensive GPS receiver. Similar to assisted GPS, the utility calculates the rough position of the user based on their distance from cellular towers. The feature is usually accurate to within several meters and can even supplement devices which already have GPS, providing a location fix when buildings block satellite reception or consuming less power when a precise fix is less necessary.

My Location is currently in an open beta and does not work with all devices, though most any BlackBerry, Symbian Series 60, or Windows Mobile smartphone can upgrade to the test version of Google Maps. Some Motorola and Sony-Ericsson phones that support mobile Java apps also work, Google says.

Notably, the feature opens the possibility of location-finding on the iPhone, which has lacked both true GPS and assisted GPS to date. The touchscreen phone’s version of Maps was co-developed by Apple and Google and so shares code from both companies.