ReMix 08 Microsoft aims to nail deals with major handset on Silverlight in the next few months, taking the media player software beyond the beachhead it has established with Nokia.

On Saturday the BBC-sponsored Over The Air: the 48-hour race to create innovative mobile applications wound up with 21 teams presenting applications they had hacked together.

Keyless entry systems are ubiquitous, from locking your car to accessing the restricted corridors of government and corporate power. It's therefore troubling to learn Wikipedia reading egg heads have cracked the encryption of a device widely used in a variety of keyless entry systems. There goes the girlfriend's VW, you thought you'd locked.

CTIA Wireless Google's Android platform is designed to drive fragmentation of mobile operating systems, creating an industry in which Google's cross-platform applications will thrive.

CTIA Wireless For reasons unknown, Apple's new Jesus Phone SDK won't allow apps that run in the background. As many have noted, this rules out instant messaging - or, at least, instant messaging as we know it. But it also rules out all sorts of other useful applications, including the fledgling smartphone rescue tool from remote control maven LogMeIn.

Andrew's mailbag With over 100,000 downloads of the iPhone SDK, and a $100m pot of money available for developers, there's no doubt Apple's MultiTouch UI has a lot of potential.

But, er... what for? Here are a few of your suggestions:

Comment Are mobile gadgets tools, or just toys? There's one way to find out of course, the hard way. Throw something at the market in a recession, and see if it finds a use. Apple has created a wonderful new user interface for its iPhone, iPod Touch and Mac notebooks that should be the basis for a generation of consumer products.

In the battle for gaming supremacy, Microsoft has finally deployed the big guns against the Playstation and Wii: Web 2.0 and the Zune.

Caravan World Congress Google Android phones aren't even on vapourware yet, but already Symbian is already welcoming the challenge.

Not content with mounting a serious challenge to Asus' elfin Eee PC, US manufacturer Everex this week said it will follow up its 7in CloudBook sub-notebook with larger models later in the year.

Mobile phone handsets based on Google's Android platform are due to appear some time in the second half of this year but hackers have already got a cut-down version of the software running on devices.

CES AmigaOS 5 made a covert appearance at an event outside the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), turning up in the guise of a version of Space Invaders running on a Windows Mobile 6-based smartphone.

If you're a developer working with mobile devices few decisions will be more critical than the platform you choose to focus on. With the correct choice, your skills and creativity may pay off both financially and personally when thousands of users enjoy something that you brought into the world.

This being the month of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada and Macworld in San Francisco, California, I’ve looked at three devices/development platforms that have tweaked developers’ interest: OpenMoko's Neo1973, Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone. I will look at the strengths and weaknesses of each, to help developers decide which platform to adopt.

Having been rapped on the knuckles for hacking Apple's iPhone, SAP is playing by the rules to make its next customer relationship management (CRM) software work with Apple's handset.

While the mobile Linux community has reacted positively to Google's Android, the new platform has also given it some cause for concern. The arrival of a giant player area with very clear ideas of role it wants mobile Linux to fill was bound to ruffle a few feathers and, despite public proclamations of "welcome" and "support", the Linux establishment is showing a few cracks.

Google's marketing department no doubt popped the champagne corks following the massive media coverage and largely positive reaction to Android. OK, so it wasn't actually a phone, but who cares?

Slowly, though, criticism is being heard over Google's decision to make Android available under an Apache Software Foundation (ASF) license rather than the preferred GPL.

If an El Reg hack can write an iPhone application then anyone can, so we thought we'd have a go and pass on our experience in the hope that others can build something more useful.

Understanding that developers need to be bribed to create applications for a new mobile platform, Google has put up $10m in prizes for the best Android apps.

Opinion Yesterday, Google's announcement of Android headlined the blogosphere, as much for what it was as for what it wasn't. For us, Google's announcement took us a few steps down memory lane, back to an era when software appliances were better known as turnkey systems.

What a pity Andy Rubin's charming Welsh Terrier can't talk. But that makes "Alex" Rubin the perfect spokesperson for Google's phone software.

In two videos on the new Open Handset Alliance site, the dog had as much information to impart as anyone else - which is to say, not very much at all.

So Google is working with some big industry players on an open-source operating system for mobile phones. The assumption is that developers are waiting for a completely open OS to change the mobile world.

Google has unveiled its phone platform, Android. It's yet another Linux OS, freely licensed, and will appear in devices in the second half of next year. Google has signed up over 30 partners including Qualcomm, Motorola, HTC and operators including Deutsche Telekom for the "Open Handset Alliance".

Mobile Business Expo The mobile applications market is poised to take off with the emergence of devices like the iPhone, faster wireless networks and web services - but independent software vendors (ISVs) are asleep at the wheel.

That was the consensus of a panel of Motorola, BlackBerry and AT&T executives at the Mobile Business Expo in New York last week. There are few off-the-shelf, plug-and play mobile applications to be had, they said.

CTIA Facebook has launched a fresh attack on the mobile market, unveiling a brand new version of its social networking service for BlackBerry smartphones as well as two new mobile hooks for its much-balleyhooed app development platform.

With his morning keynote at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment, the mobile trade show now into its second day in downtown San Francisco, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz called the mobile market "his personal passion". Then he trumpeted two new mobile extensions for Facebook Platform, the fledgling API that encourages third-party developers build their own apps for the service.

CTIA Steve Ballmer believes that Microsoft is the only company with "the wherewithal" to dominate the world of mobile computing.

Appearing at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment, a massive mobile tradeshow underway in downtown San Francisco, the Microsoft supremo told show goers that the company has the upper-hand on the likes of Apple and Blackberry-maker Research in Motion because its Windows Mobile platform is so darn versatile. Windows Mobile plays nicely with both enterprise and entertainment applications, he explained, and it's open to third party developers.

This evening Mr Ballmer is to announce Microsoft's "System Center Mobile Device Management 2008", which will compete with Nokia's better-named Intellisync to remotely manage mobile devices in the enterprise.

The to-be-announced software will integrate with Microsoft's System Center, and require a client application to be installed on all the Windows Mobile devices already deployed (presumably the client will be pre-installed in future). SCMDM will offer capabilities such as locking or disabling handsets which have been reported stolen, wiping data, and controlling functions such as the camera, or the ability for users to install their own applications.

Anyone already using a corporate-locked-down PC will be familiar with how annoying the limitations can be, but BOFHs appreciate the security advantages, and with mobile devices becoming part of the corporate IT infrastructure they need to be brought under the same control.

Ballmer is known to get somewhat excited during press conferences, and we'll try to convey some of that enthusiasm as best we can when we bring you the details. ®

James Gosling, godfather of the Java programming language, has expounded on the future of JavaFX Mobile, and it's a future which doesn't feature J2ME at all, as the micro edition is phased out over the next decade or so.

Google has slipped its Web 2.0 Docs application onto its mobile portal, allowing users to view documents, spreadsheets and presentations on their mobile phone browser.

Office 2.0 Conference Apple is facing fresh calls to open the iPhone as new evidence emerged of the technical and legal challenges developers face putting their software on the device.

Delegates attending the Office 2.0 Conference have voiced concern over the iPhone's closed architecture, lack of developer tools, and the fact its version of Apple's Safari browser lacks common web plug ins they said needlessly complicate the process of porting software and online services to the device.

Intel has confirmed yesterday's processor price cuts, which saw up to 40 per cent knocked off what the chip giant charges for some of its CPUs. A batch of new ones were released too, including the first single-core Core 2 processors.