[Carolyn]

How do you make sure your website works on mobile phones? One solution is the dotMobi's consortium's free test suite. Today the group released an upgrade to the ready.mobi tool that, among other things, provides additional mobile phone emulators and better reporting.

German IP phone manufacturer snom hopes to incent developers to build applications for snom 3xx phones with its “eXtreMeLy snomlified!” contest. First place winners get a snom 370 phone and an invitation to either Fall VON Boston 2007 or SIMO Madrid 2007.

Tech consultant Diamond says that the current model for municipal
broadband access may not cut it because, ultimately, private vendors have no mission to provide universal access and bandwidth requirements are leap-frogging planned WiFi and WiMax networks. You can get the whole report here.

IMHO, the job of providing for the public good with universal Internet access properly belongs to…the public, i.e. local government. Just like collecting the garbage and maintaining the roads. I have the good fortune to live in a town with a municipal power company. Our rates are a third lower and we almost never have outages.

Jott Networks unveiled new features for its free cell phone voice-to-text email and texting service. New links let users "jott" to their blogs and social networking pages, a file "jotted" notes into categories.

IPTV pundit Shelly Palmer gave the iPhone a chance and found it wanting in the aspect that counts most: as a phone. Now Palmer carries two mobile phones — a $50 LG VX8300 for making calls and an iPhone for surfing the Web and showing photos. Here's his evaluation.

Markus Goebel and Andy Abramson have wondered how German holding company Betamax makes money from its VoIP products when it appears to be giving away its service. One of the company's money-making models is a pricing scheme that would be a full-time job to stay on ahead of. (NYworldphone.com describes it here).

Others allege out-and-out credit card fraud. The company has had a history of credit card fraud problems, noted by MyVoIPprovider.com in April, and the company reportedly is taking action. Interesting detail: secure payment services is listed in Betamax's technology portfolio.