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By Times Staff Writer
Published October 18, 2007

Sprint Nextel gets a feel for cell phone craze

It's official: Touch screens are the big new thing in cell phones this holiday season. Sprint Nextel Corp. announced Wednesday it is jumping on the bandwagon with the Touch by HTC. Like Apple Inc.'s iPhone, this smart phone has only a few buttons and is designed to be controlled by touching the screen. The Touch will go on sale Nov. 4 for $250 with a two-year contract. Beyond the touch-screen interface, the Touch's similarities with the iPhone are not overwhelming. It doesn't have a large amount of built-in flash memory for music and movies, relying instead on expansion cards. It's smaller and lighter, with a screen measuring 2.8 inches diagonally compared with the iPhone's 3.5 inches. The Touch uses Sprint's relatively fast data network, rather than the iPhone's combination of a relatively slow AT&T network supplemented by wi-fi.

Apple to enable iPhone tinkering

Apple Inc. will allow third-party applications on the iPhone, chief executive Steve Jobs said on the company's Web site Wednesday. In a decision that marks a clear turnaround from Apple's previous desire to control the applications consumers have on their iPhones, Jobs said the company intends to release a software development kit in February that will let people outside the company create iPhone and iPod touch applications. "We are excited about creating a vibrant third-party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users," Jobs said in the posting. Jobs said it will take until February to release the kit because the company wants to give developers an open platform and also protect iPhone users from viruses, malware and privacy attacks.

MySpace connects with Skype calling

News Corp.'s MySpace will offer members of its popular social network free Internet phone calls with a new feature based on eBay Inc.'s Skype service, the companies announced. Users with a Skype account will be able to click a single button in their MySpace profile to call the computer or telephone of another member, so they could reach people in their network even when they're not online. The service will be available in 20 countries starting in November. Standard PC-to-PC phone calls will be free, but users must pay for "premium" options such as their own personal phone number, voice mail, call forwarding and the ability to make calls from a computer to land lines or cell phones.

Best Buy moves past analog TV age

Best Buy Co., the largest U.S. consumer-electronics retailer, stopped selling analog televisions this month before the transition to digital broadcasts in 2009. The company is the first national retailer to pull analog TVs from its shelves. It will stock digital TV converter boxes starting in 2008, Best Buy said Wednesday. Best Buy is trying to fend off Wal-Mart Stores Inc. by branding itself as the knowledgeable retailer as consumers navigate new rules and technology for digital television.

[Last modified October 18, 2007, 00:19:58]