British mobile operator Vodafone Group, said on Tuesday it has signed a deal with Google to offer search capabilities on its Vodafone live! 3G service to provide customers with the most relevant information, wherever they are and whatever time of day it is. Users will be able to use Google's search engine to find content within Vodafone live and on the wider Web. Search results will be delivered through Vodafone's data networks. Examples of the kind of information that will be available include news, weather and details of restaurants, the company said. Vodafone hopes that the deal with Google will help it increase Internet usage by customers and help it raise data revenues. For Google, the alliance will help it expand its reach into the world of mobile devices.

   Google already has a deal with T-Mobile and already offers a limited Web service, Google Mobile, which lets mobile users access a modified search engine or find information by sending a text message. In January, Google announced a deal with Motorola to put a button with a Google icon on some handset models that will enable users to connect wirelessly to Google's search engine.

   Masttones.com, the first global channel of Indian mobile entertainment created by eMbience Inc., a leading developer and publisher of wireless software, launched an Indian-themed ringtones and images service. It features the latest music from South Asian artists and films as well as from emerging bands worldwide, including Karmacy and Junoon. Masttones ringtones are available on Verizon Wireless, Cingular, Cricket, U.S. Cellular, Alltel, Cellular South, and Metro PCS. Masttones will soon announce global distribution deals in other parts of the world.

   The user can browse and preview hundreds of Indian songs online, and after deciding which song he wants, order it through his handset at prices ranging from $1.99 per song. For instructions how to download ringtones, visit masttones.com. Masttones.com currently sells Indian-themed ringtones in the United States, the Middle East, India, Australia, Thailand, and Latin America. The new Masttones includes MastPix, which offers the latest images of South Asian and Middle Eastern culture: Bollywood stars, popular bands, cricket and soccer players, and national sports heroes.

   Opera Mini is a fast and easy alternative to Opera's mobile browser, allowing users to access the Web on mobile phones that would normally be incapable of running a Web browser. This includes the vast majority of today's WAP-enabled phones. Instead of requiring the phone to process Web pages, it uses a remote server to pre-process the page before sending it to the phone. This makes Opera Mini perfect for phones with very low resources, or low bandwidth connections. Its special feature is the ability to reduce transferred data volume up to 80% by reformatting visited Web pages and adapting them to the telephone screen.

   Its secret lies in the fact that while the page is being loaded on the device, the browser contacts the Opera servers which download the page in question and purge it of all that is excessive (animations, excessive images, etc.) then the compressed page is sent to the telephone which will now have a smaller download to support and should therefore process the data more quickly. This makes it possible to access websites which are normally accessible on a computer, read emails, refer to up-to-date information or do some research on Google.

   Skype has over 74 million users and is owned by eBay. In an effort to put music to our ears, Warner Bros. Music has agreed to make selected music tracks available as master recording ringtones to users of the Skype Internet telephony service. Warner Music will supply songs or short song snippets and images of popular artists to Skype. Skype will market the ringtones and artist images to its more than 70 million registered users.
 
   Ringtone selections will feature Warner Music Group artists including Madonna, Green Day, Mike Jones, Paul Wall, and D4L, with Madonna set to be the first exclusive "Featured Artist". The Featured Artist section will spotlight content from a particular artist and provide a direct link to an artist-branded page where the ringtones can be purchased.The cost per ringtone from an artist in the featured section will be at €1 (roughly $1.21 US). Pricing for the artists' images was not immediately available.

   Skype will seek to add ringtones and artist images from other music companies as the company builds up its personalised service. Never mind that Skype allows you to choose music (in WAV format) from your hard drive for ring tones.

   British music downloads store Wippit has launched a new service that lets you edit your own ringtone from the original master recording, create a realtone (premium ringtone) and send it directly to your mobile phone. Ringtones created in this fashion costs 99 British pence. Wippit Ringtones can be purchased by choosing the ‘create wippit ringtone’ option on the Wippit website and creating an edit of the full length track to a clip of up to 30 seconds in length using a graphical interface. The edited file is then converted to a format compatible with the user's mobile phone and a download link is then sent to the mobile.
   
   Wippit is now the UK's third largest downloads service behind iTunes and Napster, offering unrestricted MP3s. Wippit began offering monophonic ringtones in 2001 alongside MP3 files. 'Now we're first to offer an online music editor giving our customers the chance to make their own ringtone online, securely and legally and let everyone in the bus queue know what their favourite is,' said Paul Myers, founder and CEO.

   Cool Free Ringtones offers large collection of 100% free polyphonic and monophonic ringtones (app. 10.000), animated screensavers and wallpapers. The site was established 2 years ago, in 2004.
   Polyphonic ringtones are divided into eleven categories which represent the various music genres and other groups of ringtones. An example of a music genre can be "rock ringtones"; the other groups have names like "effects", and so on. The supported ringtone formats are: .mid (all except effects) and .wav (effects). Ringtones are also categorized by artist, just click on the letter of the artist to list the ringtones. Now choose your ringtone! Preview is available for all tones. After you have selected your ringtone, choose the type of download you want. Method 1: download via WAP site. This means that you need WAP activated to connect to the WAP browser to download your ringtones. NOTE: in this case your ringtone is really free, but you have to pay for your WAP connection. Method 2: click to download, and save the ringtone to your PC and transfer it to your mobile phone using bluetooth, infrared or data cable. NOTE: in this case your ringtone is absolutely free.
    Monophonic ringtones are divided into four categories (nokia, siemens, alcatel, sonyericsson) and are also categorized by artist. Ringtones are available in standard and Nokia keypress formats.
   Summary: Easy to use website, higher quality ringtones, large selection arranged by genre, excellent design, updated everyday, useful FAQ page.
   Quality: 7/7