Mippin is one such company that specializes in helping users attain access to mobile content, and helping publishers mobilize their content for easy access for their audience.

Mippin, backed by Refresh Mobile, came to life in 2007. David Mannl, Head of Creative and co-founder of Mippin, states that he and his partner said, "let's ditch the whole client business for the time being' and focus only on mobile apps and that's when Mippin got started and launched as a product."

He also notes that when they started back in 2007 there were hardly any mobile internet sites around, and left a huge need for publishers and users to have mobile versions of all the web content they could.

One such company that is ahead of the curve is Yukoono, a digital content portal that is as adaptable as the user is.

Sales Director of Yukoono, Thomsen Ghebresellassie states that “The idea of Yukoono came up last year in April when the CEO thought about why a user should only have access to certain types of content and certain type of media? If you are browsing on the website, you have to visit several websites in order to get news, videos on YouTube, or a different application in order to get access to content. So we came up with the idea of having one platform which you can think of a big shopping mall.”

INTERVIEW. Web2Mobile is a company that specializes in making your content mobile ready for ease of use for your customers on the go.

In the last 12 months we seen a lot change in the mobile market with a huge transition of users putting their mobile devices ahead of their laptops and desktop computers.

Deb Hall notes that even on a personal level, using mobile devices create a difference in behavior in how we use and read content and how we interact with our devices. In the last ten months she notes that this transition has become more apparent as the iPhone, specifically, has immersed itself into the general populace.

Mobile Tag has announced that it has been selected by JCDecaux as the technological partner to deploy flashcodes (2D barcodes) on bus shelters within the Quartier Numérique (Digital Area) in Paris, France.
The 2D mobile barcode specialist said the new flashcode service - called Mobilités - will offer both Parisians and tourists access to external content via mobile phones with Internet access.

DiBcom has signed a partnership agreement with Solaris Mobile to use its receiver technology to enable mobile devices to receive content such as mobile TV transmitted by satellite.
The link-up centres around Solaris' recently launched Eutelsat W2A satellite, which carries Europe's first S-Band payload.

Text message answer provider AQA has launched a new mobile service that it claims will allow content publishers to make money by sending text messages.
In what could be seen as a reference to Twitter, AQA's CEO, Colly Myers, describes the new venture as "web 2.0 with a business model".

The iPhone sits outside the top 20 when it comes to the most popular phones for browsing and buying content on the mobile web worldwide.
Nokia's 3110c is the top handset, followed by the Samsung M800 and then Nokia's 6300, according to statistics released today by Bango. The iPhone appears as 24th on the list.

INTERVIEW: Sanjiv Parikh, vice president of marketing for FutureDial, talks to smartphone-biz.news about its mobile content management service and its potential to generate revenue for operators and retailers.
The company's Retail Management Solution (RMS) 4.0 allows mobile content to be directly loaded to handsets at store counters - an industry first.

Many factors influence consumers' decisions to buy one mobile phone over the other - but it seems that embedded content is an increasingly important one.
A survey by independent app store GetJar has found that brand remains the key purchase decision factor (28% respondents), followed some way behind by user experience (17%).

Irish start-up Dial2Do are creating quite a stir at this year's Mobile World Congress.
The Dublin-based company lets you do various tasks on your mobile simply by calling a number and speaking.
So you can send email or text messages, record reminders, post updates to Twitter or Jaiku stream or even listen to internet content - all while driving your car.

The UK's mobile content and services market could be in for tough times if research from mobile research and analyst house Direct2 Mobile bears out.
Its survey found that over 7 per cent of consumers have stopped, or intend to stop, their spend on content and services until better economic conditions emerge.

Whatever the outcome of the Obama-McCain contest, the unprecedented level of mobile US election coverage is expected to do much to introduce mainstream consumers to mobile content.
Media companies and mobile operators have teamed up to offer extensive coverage of the US presidential election results direct to mobile phones.

"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th. But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire. "

I don't advocate stealing music from the various services out there - I tend to buy my digital music from Amazon's MP3 service, which has no DRM. However, if I had purchased music that was tied to my PC and I couldn't move it to another PC because the DRM service was shut down, I'd have no problem "stealing" that music again to get what I paid for. Hopefully, if you purchased music like this you can burn it to a CD then re-rip it DRM free. That is what I used to do when I purchased tracks from Naptster and Yahoo before I moved to Amazon. As for Audible books, who buys Audible books with the intent of keeping them and relistening to them?

Head over to the article lined to above to see the heart-warming letter from Wal*Mart to their loyal customers.

Laridian has released a number of new books for their PocketBible program in the last month or so.


New Living Translation Bible Study Notes

Here is a quick rundown:

• New Living Translation Bible Study Notes - This book weighs in at over 32MB and contains maps, over 25,000 notes, illustrations and more. It will work with any installed translation, not just the NLT. Just use the Sync to Verse function to keep your favorite translation sync'd with this reference book. It is $14.99.
• New International Readers Version - This is geared towards younger readers, so if you have any children that you've passed down one of your Windows Mobile devices to, they might enjoy this translation. $14.99, and roughly 3.5MB is required.
• Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Matthew/Mark Vol. 11 - This is part of an 18 volume series on the Bible. $19.99 and needs roughly 1.3MB of space. You can read more about the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary at Tyndale's site.
• Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Romans/Galatians Vol. 14 - Another book in the Cornerstone series. $19.99 and about 1.3MB.

Be sure to check the system requirements for each of these before buying. I believe they will all work with the most recent releases of PocketBible 3 and PocketBible 4, but confirm that on the product page if you have a Smartphone (non-touch screen device) or PocketBible 3 on the Pocket PC. I know they all work with PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile. If you haven't upgraded to PB4 for Windows Mobile yet, you should. You can read a review of PB4, released earlier in 2008, here. If you are just getting started with PocketBible on your mobile device, consider some of the bundles available at the top of this page, which will give you substantial discounts on a lot of content.

Google is to offer an applications “market” for its Android open mobile platform but has sought to distance itself from Apple’s iPhone app store.
A member of the Android team has said it is to be “an open content distribution system that will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices”.