SmartPhoneCool.com

Zumobi announced the availability of Ziibii, a free iPhone App now available on iTunes . Ziibii users enjoy a new way to stay in-touch and in-the-loop with friends, photos and the world around them. Blending Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and web content into a fresh experience, Ziibii is easy-to-use, fun to explore, and offers great features for wireless consumers as well as brands.

Ziibii enables real-time social interaction between users across a variety of popular social media applications, as well as on-going discovery of news, stories and blogs throughout the day. Displayed on the screen of the handset, Ziibii’s visual expression metaphor is a river with content “rafts” floating with the user’s pre-defined content, including direct-connect to social networking sites and RSS feeds.

Ziibii’s highly engaging environment also offers a unique showcase for brands. With Ziibii’s creative inventory of advertising and sponsorship opportunities, brands are seamlessly immersed into content flow, becoming part of the user’s on-going engagement and product experience. Offering compelling content discovery and real-time interaction between wireless users, Ziibii offers a creative inventory of mobile advertising, sponsorships and media units to maximize brand impact, and features advanced reporting tools and analytics for usage and behavior.

“Smartphones have clearly emerged in the mainstream marketplace, no longer used solely by the business community, and the advent of the iPhone took the concept of the smartphone to the next level,” said John SanGiovanni, Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Design. “As consumers flood to what Zumobi refers to as ‘Superphones,’ Ziibii brings benefits to brands looking for a new way to engage users while providing a unique and fun way for people to stay connected to the content they want.”

Great news today for members of the BlackBerry Nation looking for an excuse to waste more time on their BlackBerry. Bplay just emailed us to let us know that they now support direct billing!

Direct billing for games is now available for AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint subscribers at Bplay. Subscribers of those carriers can bill Bplay games directly to their phone bills by using Premium SMS. It is available at Bplay through an additional “Bill to Phone” option on the game product pages.

Over time, Bplay will be adding more US and Canadian carriers. We’ve included links below to our three favorite Bplay games.

Texas Hold’em King 3
Bookworm
Nintaii

Pew Internet and American Life Project have released a study saying 48% of the respondents to their survey said they needed help setting up their devices.

* 38% contacted user support at some time
* Men (39%) more than women (22%) are more likely to try to fix it themselves
* 29% of cellphone users had their device fail in the last year
* 23% of those cellphone users never had them fixed

I’m always surprised at the number of people who buy smartphones and other devices but don’t take the necessary time to set them up and get the most out of them. For example, at my university, I met several people with BlackBerrys who did not take the time to activate their push email. They didn’t even know they could get their email on the device other than through Google. They simply bought the phone for its QWERTY and therefore faster SMS.

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The Sony XPERIA X1 uses an interesting panel system to display content much like Zumobi for BlackBerry. The latest panel to surface on the net is the Facebook Panel. The panel has all the Facebook functionality that you need on a mobile such as the ability to write on a friend’s wall, send them a message, dial their phone number, and so on. Also of interest, the panel shows you who has recently updated their status once refreshed.

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To be a drug dealer in the new millennium… When I was a kid (tilts back in his rocking chair…) we had to deal with two-dollar bills, debt lists and stealing loonies from my old man’s change jar. Now all Peter Pusher has to do is whip out his iPhone and you’re good to blo—err… go.

Developed by a Seattle startup named Innerfence, the technology is not going to be as straightforward as having a magnetic strip reader built-right-in (though that’s not a shabby idea). What’s needed to to start processing credit card payments from your iPhone is an Internet merchant account (similar to a bank account but with a payment processor for the settlement of e-purchases), a payment gateway (exactly as it sounds—a server for processing said charges), and Innerfence’s app, available from the Apple app store for $49.99.

The monthly fees at $30-some-odd-dollars U.S., transaction fees at south of .50 cents, plus 2%-3% commissioned by the credit card companies hardly make this worthwhile for kids selling nickel bags and permanent markers. But compared to previous technology that pizza delivery guys rock, priced at $4,000 USD, rich university kids could be funding their habits while mum and dad are non-the-wiser. “It’s my tutor… really!”