Verizon Wireless is offering a free ringtone of your choice.

Important Note: Apparently, the offer is only valid 12:00 am to 11:59 pm December 31, 2006 (EST I believe) … so only those few reading blogs today (or registered through feedblitz) will most likely get in on it from this posting. Come 2007, this posting and the Verizon offer will be defunct.

Steps to get your free tone:

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Hitachi Displays, Ltd just started producing 800×480 2.9″ LCD displays for use in mobile devices. Check out the photo below (I think you can guess where it’s going to show up first).

If you thought 240×320 QVGA was nice … the display looks positively gorgeous. Now all they need is a device to install it in (apparently they claim battery drain isn’t all that significant due to enhanced IPS technology).

You can read more about display technology and inner workings here.

(Note: Not actual display size)

Pretty sweet if the display makes it into a Flash Lite enabled device (ummm, cough, NTT DoCoMo).

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I’m not sure if Grey Thumb is a global group or not (yet), but if you are into AI (Artificial Intelligence), artificial life, biology, complex systems, or Computer Science in general … this may interest those of you in the Boston area: Grey Thumb.

What is Grey Thumb?
“Grey Thumb Boston is a group of scientists, engineers, hackers, artists, and hobbyists in the Boston metro area with a strong interest in artificial life, artificial intelligence, biology, complex systems, and other related topics. It is inspired by the Homebrew Computer Club and by Make magazine, but is geared mostly toward artificial life, agent based simulation, and evolutionary computation. Our goal is to bring together people from diverse backgrounds to help create a nucleus of interest in these subjects in the Boston area.”

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“Verizon to Allow Ads on It’s Mobile Phones”, this is a good read.

“Beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones, company executives said.”

No specific mention of the underlying delivery method of mobile ads, but it’ll probably go something like this: text and static graphics (1st generation), video and other interactive content (2nd generation? if, ever!?) …

What about Flash Lite? Well, at some point Flash Lite content ads *might* be possible in the future (2nd gen ads, perhaps) … but, please let’s not go there yet though … Why you ask?

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Just an FYI, but TieBoston is sponsoring a panel discussing WiMAX. It is scheduled for Monday, January 8, 007 6:30-9:30 PM. This is not a free event, so check out the registration fees (ranges from $10-$25).

Here is the event info as I write this:

Topic: WiMax: Is it finally here?
It’s been years since WiMax was originally proposed and hyped by high profile backers. Finally, there is real evidence that the technology is nearing mass deployment. For example, Sprint and Clearwire are spending $100M’s on WiMax rollouts today.

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Ever had a device that was *almost* perfect, except for that one stupid flaw or defect (like a misplaced pause button, lack luster UI design, or sad battery life)?

Ever wish you could help design the latest and greatest gadget? Enter crowdspirit.org.

Although not a new concept (companies like elephant design/cuusoo in Japan have been doing it for quite some time), there’s a new player in town for consumer electronic crowdsourcing … crowdspirit.org. They now have a blog and FAQ, as well as some other information currently on their site.

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My second article on working with Series 40 content is now live on DevNet. This 2nd part deals with basic Flash Lite wallpaper for Nokia Series 40 devices shipping with the Flash Lite 1.1 Player.

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I’ve written an Adobe DevNet article on working with Flash Lite 1.1 under the Nokia Series 40 platform. The first part is a capabilities overview of some of the devices shipping with the Flash Lite 1.1 Player installed. Part 2 and 3 (pending) deal with wallpaper and screen savers.

If you are interested in these content types I suggest checking out the articles.

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Last Monday’s momoboston (12/11/2006) session was on Mobile Interfaces and Usability. Two companies presented, digitwireless talked about Fastap (their mobile user input technology), and geophoenix gave some insight into mobile UI’s.

Here is the event recording if you are interested.

Here are some photos:

Mark Connon of digitwireless

Meeting - we had about perhaps 20 attendees total

Device with the Fastap technology - 12-key input is yesterday’s news? - I tried it and I love the idea. Apparently some device manufacturers are catching on and have adopted it … it’d be a shame if it (or a variant) doesn’t become a standard.

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iRiver’s newest PMP’s is the S7, a close cousin to the iRiver S10.

For all intensive purposes, this is a Korean version of the Shuffle, but check out the cool features, such as SRS WOW support and skin personalization. Plus, it’s also only 15g!

Here are some of the iRiver S7 device specs:

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