Motricity, a leading provider of mobile content infrastructure services, today outlined the company’s strategic operating plan following the acquisition of InfoSpace Mobile.

“Historically, Motricity has been involved in several areas of mobile content,” said Ryan Wuerch, chairman and CEO. “The InfoSpace acquisition gave us the opportunity to refine the focus of our organization on areas where we have the strongest market position and are seeing the fastest growth today. Moving forward, our strategy will be aligned with our core business of providing mobile content infrastructure services – enabling consumers to discover content inside and outside the walled garden. These services include powering portals, storefronts, managed web and search for mobile operators along with messaging gateway services for all customers needing a mobile solution.”

As part of this, Motricity will discontinue non-profitable and non-core businesses including the planned divestiture of its direct to consumer property, Pocketgear.com. In December, Motricity announced the sale of another direct to consumer property, eReader.com, to Fictionwise. The company will also be divesting certain business relationships in the media and entertainment arena. More at Yahoo. Thanks to Justine.

My latest experience with Palm OS has been very similar to my previous dalliances, except that this time the hardware works. The Centro is very cheap but arguably much better than the Treo 680 in many crucial areas, and this has made the Palm OS experience much more positive this time around.

I have always been a fan of Palm OS but have also been very critical of Palm’s hardware and lack of innovation over the past two years. It is frustrating that Wi-Fi, 3G and many other top end features have not made their way to a Palm OS smartphone, but a couple of weeks with the Centro has made me realise that a phone is still a phone after all and that maybe I do not need super fast mobile broadband and the ability to multi-task many applications at once.

I have a firm belief that multi-tasking on a smartphone is more troublesome than useful. Some smartphones struggle to cope with multiple applications open at one time, and most are not set up to easily deal with moving information between different applications. Being able to push the home key on Palm OS and to know that is it fully closed with the open information saved is a big time saver in itself, and one that quickly becomes second nature.

Maybe it is just the way I use a smartphone, but I am struggling to think of times when I have needed to multi-task. It is useful when GPS is active, but besides that I never need it and probably never will. A smartphone is a phone and not a computer. It is a smarter option to make a phone do things in the simplest way possible and to not overcomplicate the architecture behind the user experience.

This is not a Symbian or Windows Mobile bashing article, because that would be silly considering both operating systems are arguably more reliable than Palm OS, but rather a comment on the fact that some people feel that the way Palm OS works is a failing. Many would argue that the way it works is the reason they stay with it, and that no other mobile operating system has matched it to date.

It must have something going for it because any other company producing such a slow rate of new devices would have been chapter 11’d long ago…

The Palm Centro is a great little smartphone that has many plus points, but the battery could be more effective. It is difficult to keep the various power hungry functions on the phone set up the way you need without constant tweaking, but there is now an easy way to make sure the Centro (or Treo) is using the exact functions you require at any one time.

Power Hero is a tool designed to let you quickly and easily enable or disable the Phone, Network, Bluetooth, Infrared and Keyboard backlight functions on a Palm smartphone by simply tapping each icon. You can use function-P to open Power Hero and just a couple of taps is all you need to change your current settings. Within the main screen there is a backlight adjuster bar which shows the exact percentage setting plus the battery icon also shows the amount of power remaining. There is also a real time graph showing the exact and historic battery performance at any time. It is impressively laid out and every part is logical to new users, but this is far from the whole story.

The Usage Info option shows the time to full charge, and plugged in and out history- simple statistics of which the first one is particularly useful.

Power Saver is one of the most proactively useful parts of this application- you can choose to close the wireless network after a preset time and the same options are available for Bluetooth, Infrared and the Keyboard lights. Add to this the ability to not trigger key lights when using the side keys or 5-way and you can quickly see that every angle has been covered when it comes to preserving precious battery life. Within the Power Saver section are many other options including dealing with deactivating or enabling Bluetooth when calls received, dialled or plugged in. You can have the phone turn itself off if signal is lost for 10 minutes and there are other options included in a miscellaneous panel.

It does not end there though because the Scheduling feature is possibly the highlight of the entire set up. You get to choose exactly when you want the Phone feature, Network, Bluetooth, Infrared and Keyboard lights turned on and off. It is set up in such a logical way that you simply choose when to activate each function and when to turn it off. For example, I have the Phone and Network activated on Monday to Friday from 8am to 8pm with a 30% backlight, and subsequently the phone is switched off at 8pm with the backlight dropped to 10%. For Saturday and Sunday I have different settings again, but I won’t bore you with the details here. The Screen setting allows you to set this part separately from the other functions and this is good because the screen is obviously the major factor when trying to conserve power.

It is very hard to fault Power Hero- it works efficiently when used manually and even more efficiently when the scheduling is used to it’s full potential. At only $14.95 it is a true bargain and well worth every cent.

Available here.

Alex Pruss is in the habit of making very impressive Palm OS software and here is Fastlaunch for Treo/ Centro which looks up to standard for him.

Quickly launch applications and desk accessories, including popping up one application over another.

Daymation is rarely mentioned but looks like a novel idea from PocketSensei- "PocketSensei® Daymation™ looks a lot like the popular desk calendars that fly off store shelves at the end of every year—with two key differences: 1) it's fully animated, and 2) it never expires. Daymation can transform your Treo into the best looking clock/calendar you've ever laid eyes on, or revivify your retired Palm® OS device as a stunning desktop conversation piece.

Start every day off smiling with Daymation's professional cartoon animations. While traditional calendars can only hang limply on the wall or sit like a lump of coal on your desktop, Daymation runs, jumps, flies, chases, eats, breaks, bumps, hops, kisses, salsas and spins twenty four hours a day. Better yet, the clock/calendar for the new millennium will last the entire millennium (and beyond), because Daymation never expires."

EverNote is a stunning desktop application, and it is extremely effective on Windows Mobile as well. It looks as though a web version will soon be widely available and the demonstration videos suggest this is another killer version.

We're almost ready to let the whole world see the new Evernote. Until then, we're looking for a limited number of people to help us put the finishing touches. If you received an invitation to the closed beta, please follow the instructions in your welcome letter. Otherwise, leave your email address and we'll shoot you a note as soon as a spot opens up.

This story is unusual in that the customer 'may' actually have recourse on this one. I have little sympathy for the other recent cases where people should have know better.

A British businessman has been hit with a £11,000 (US$22,000) mobile data roaming fee after his wife used an "unlimited" data account to download several TV shows via a mobile phone. A report in the Sunday Times says that the wife of a business executive used his phone to start the file downloads while they were in the UK. However, he took his phone on a trip to Germany, and once back in coverage - the handset resumed the data download, at overseas roaming rates.

Had the download occurred completely within the UK, it would have been free of charge as part of their tariff.

The first the businessman knew of the problem was upon his return to the UK, when Vodafone called to advise him of the issue.

Today's free eBook is Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key (excerpt) by Kage Baker- "On the 16th day of April, 1671, a man walked down Tower Street in old Port Royal and came to the Bluebell Inn. He stood in the street a while, looking up at the hanging sign. The daubed blue flowers were unmistakable, and in any case he could read the name perfectly well, having had some education. Still, he hesitated to step inside.

His name was John. To some people he was known as John James. He had been a London bricklayer’s apprentice who killed a man and was sent to the West Indies as a consequence. He had been several things since then: redleg bond slave, runaway, pirate, and most lately patriotic gentleman of fortune, for he had just returned from doing his bit sacking Panama with Captain Henry Morgan.

This very morning he had gone ashore, bidding farewell to his late commander. Morgan had returned his salute with a gloomy wave, and headed straight for the nearest tavern for a stiff drink before reporting to Governor Modyford. John would have joined him, but for his new and earnest resolve to give up the life of a buccaneer."