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Burbn , a stealthy startup that brings mobile location check-in gameplay (à la Foursquare and Gowalla) to the mobile browser, has raised $500,000 from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Burbn founder Kevin Systrom confirmed the round to us after it was written up in TechCrunch this afternoon. Burbn is a nifty little HTML 5 mobile web app that offers yet another place to tell your friends where you’re grabbing a coffee or seeing a concert. But what’s cool is how it runs through a mobile browser without losing much of the experience afforded to native iPhone and Android apps. Burbn loads quickly and pulls in GPS information through the browser just like an app. The only material difference is …

Once upon a time, buying cellphones was easy. You’d go for the cheaper deal and leave it at that. But what about when you’re faced with the choice of paying more now or more over time? Which do you chose? The NY Times has an interesting example of this dilemma: Let’s say that you buy a MyTouch 3G, one of T-Mobile’s most popular smartphones, for $400, and sign up for its unlimited voice, text and data plan for $60 a month. The total cost of the phone over two years would be $1,840. If, instead, you buy the phone subsidized by T-Mobile for $150, that same unlimited plan will cost $80 monthly - which is still the best deal among the major carriers, by the way - …

Peter Sisson, the founder and chief executive officer of Toktumi , a San Francisco-based VoIP startup, is elated. He was jumping with joy when I spoke with him earlier today. Why? Because Apple just approved the latest version (2.0) of his company’s mobile VoIP app, Line2. The app, which costs 99 cents, allows you to call and receive phone calls over both 3G and Wi-Fi networks. What Toktumi has done is build a back end similar to that of Google Voice — but unlike Google, it’s gotten Apple’s blessing. It’s one of the more complete mobile VoIP apps currently available for download; I especially …

I confess that I like the trend in cell phones to make them more robust and resistant to damage.  They’re called MOBILE for a reason–they need to be able to go places, and if they go places, they might get dropped.  They need to be able to survive that, and the Samsung Convoy is a little more likely than most. The Samsung Convoy is a flip phone with VZ Navigator and VCAST, a two megapixel camera, GPS, a phone book with capacity for a thousand name and number entries (and even room for email addresses, a street address and notes about the person in question), a calculator, a calendar, speakerphone, alarm clock, stopwatch, world …

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. We live in a world of diverse mobile devices. Laptops, smartphones and everything in between define the mobile experience of the 21st century. But what is the killer application for mobile computing? We all know the theory of killer apps — they’re the reason and the purpose people invest in new devices. The killer app in the early days of PCs was the VisiCalc…

TI’s new dual-core OMAP4 mobile chipset, the sequel to the OMAP3 series that powers the Droid and Palm Pre (among others), claims crazy performance: Three independent displays running 1080p video, for example, and an estimated 145-hour battery life for audio. Basically, TI made up a kind of demo unit (pictured) to show what the OMAP4 can do, which is not inconsiderable. The demo unit is a portable device running Android, equipped with two screens and HDMI-out as well as a 12MP camera, pico projector, plus all the wireless protocols and sensors you can imagine. It’s a fantasy device, most certainly not intended…

The Apple App Store set the standard for a centralized, trusted marketplace of device-specific software applications. Now, three billion downloads later, technology titans like Intel and Ford are attempting to strike pay dirt with their own app stores. While Apple’s 100,000 strong App Store is the unquestioned champion of the software colosseum, it became clear in interviews that the directors of new stores were taking a distinctly different approach to development. While Apple has been widely criticized for what was perceived as a lengthy and secretive review process , three stores in particular — Twitter’s OneForty, Intel’s AppUp, and Ford’s Sync Open API — each embody a more laissez-faire approach to the app marketplace. Faith in…

Like bad beer, cracker jacks, and drunken fans getting hammered in the parking lot, smack-talking and sports-betting are staples of American sports. And that’s why Bema Studios created Smackdaddy, a free iPhone app [ iTunes link ] that allows you to both bet on games (currently just NFL, NHL and NBA) and tell your friends they smell. I got a chance to play with Smackdaddy this Sunday and loved it – it is easy to use, intuitive, and addictive Read the rest at MobileCrunch > >

In case you weren’t aware, Mobile-review’s Eldar Murtazin is somewhat of a living legend around these parts. The Russian-borne phone guru manages to get his hands on an ample number of then-unreleased devices and juicy scoops — but he’s also been known to get things dead wrong from time, so keep that in mind. This time he might’ve just outdone himself with some apparent hands-on time with Windows Mobile 7 . Here’s what he’s saying via Twitter: the OS has been built on scratch, and none of the old WinMo 6.x apps worked. There’s “a lot of horizontal movements, a lot of additional info by clicks… for WM users it will be…

When it comes to touchscreens, you just can’t beat the feeling of a nice, high-quality capacitive screen. If you’ve been using an iPhone, Motorola Droid, or any one of many capacitive smartphones made in the past few years, try to hunt down one with a resistive screen; the difference is almost shocking. Touches to a capacitive touchscreen are registered with the lightest tap, while moving things around on a resistive screen requires you to press down so hard that people probably think you’re angry at it. Of course, resistive screens have their benefits; namely, they play friendly with styluses. As predictive text gets better, this isn’t too big of a deal for…