The Wirelessinfo Blog

Activision and Hands On Mobile today announced that the hit game "Guitar Hero" will soon be available on a mobile phone near you.  The game "Guitar Hero" allows anyone to be a "rock star" in their own home, with their own gaming platform. A big hit for the Playstation 2 and Xbox, this innovative new game is sure to be a hit in the mobile arena.   From the press release:

   "The lifestyle of music is strongly immersed into our everyday culture, and having Guitar Hero on mobile platforms will now allow our dedicated fans the opportunity to passionately feel the music, anytime and anywhere,” said Dusty Welch, head of publishing at RedOctane. “Hands-On Mobile has extensive experience and success in bringing established franchises to mobile devices, and we greatly look forward to extending the Guitar Hero brand to mobile users."    

This game is truly awesome, we can hardly wait for it to go mobile!  No dates as to availability are currently public, stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Late Wednesday, Microsoft released a preview of their newest mobile browser, as the war to own mobile browsing intensifies.  Coded named "Deepfish", this browser is downloadable in beta form on a first come, first served basis and downloads will be shut down when an unspecified number is reached. 

Deepfish is a significant step towards creating a mobile web experience similar to what users experience on a PC.  It allows zooming, panning, and has a cue map. This version does not yet support ActiveX controls, AJAX, cookies, Javascript, and HTTP POST.

Love to enter sweepstakes?  With Smith Micro Software's new mobile "paperless" sweepstakes application, entering will be as easy as a few keystrokes on your mobile phone. 

From this week's press release:

How Mobile Sweepstakes Works: The consumer purchases an item and receives an SMS code to send from their cell phone. The Mobile Sweepstake Generator then generates a random "digital scratch card" displaying a series of pictures and sends it via the company's Multi-Media Server gateway back to the consumer's cell phone. The user's goal is to match the pictures by clicking on the image. A "digital scratch" similar to scratching a lottery ticket is animated and the user continues to click until the prize is revealed or the game is over. The consumer then gets an SMS to their mobile phone or email instructing them to call a phone number to arrange delivery/redemption of the prize.

This new mobile app will not only increase SMS traffic for carriers, but will also help consumers adjust to the idea of using their phone for higher level transactions.  It is currently being test marketed in chosen Asian cities.

The Yahoo! Go service has just been launched for Windows Mobile, and now has been expanded to over 75 Windows Mobile devices and 175 different cellular phone models.

This service is optimized for the small mobile screen, called the “third screen”,and doesn’t try to cram large PC-based content into an eye-test for its users.  It features rich  content such as current and breaking news tickers, customizable widgets accessible via a carousel-like interface, photo sharing via a Flickr widget, and full synchronization with Yahoo Mail as well as Yahoo content such as stock tickers. This is a great feature for those who upgrade or change phones often, or if phones are lost or stolen.  A nice map widget is also handy for road warriors.

One of the best features of this service is oneSearch; a search engine optimized just for mobile users that provides relevant search results instead of a list of URLs that may or may not be what the user needs. oneSearch doesn’t just base its search results on what you enter, it also bases your results based on where you are in the world.  This means that searching for a movie title will show you where it is playing near you.

Yahoo! Go also uses advanced caching technology and a “push” service to eliminate long download times.