Daily News : Smartphones & PDAs

Motorola introduced its first Android smartphone at the Mobilize 09 conference in San Francisco on Thursday. The device is jam-packed with features, as would be expected with an Android device, and it differentiates itself through its MotoBlur interface. MotoBlur will stream content directly from social network feeds so you can access all of your social news easily without having to open up multiple applications.

The phone will run Android 1.5 Cupcake and offer access to Google's various services, including Google Maps with Street View, Google Voice Search, Picasa, and GTalk. The smartphone supports a number e-mail clients, such as Yahoo, Windows Live, and other POP3 and IMAP services, and syncs with Microsoft Exchange, including calendar.

Google is going to update its Android Market so it is easier to navigate... your way to paid apps. Currently the Android Market is estimated to bring in $5 million a month, roughly 1/40th of what Apple's App Store brings in monthly. While Apple's much larger install base accounts for a lot of the difference in revenue, Google is already prepping for version 1.6 of its store, most likely due out next year.

Google is looking to address these concerns with the revamped Android Market, and it will allow developers to include screenshots, promotional icons, and descriptions to show off their apps. The store will also have tabs to facilitate finding the top paid apps, top free apps, and the most-recent programs in the store. Google is also launching four new sub-categories: sports, health, themes, and comics.

I don't have an iPhone myself, but I do have iTunes and I know how many App Store applications are downright worthless. This application may come in handy for those of you who have an iPhone and hate being bombarded with pointless applications. Macworld has created "App Gems" that will highlight cool applications for your device. You can get the App Gem of the day, view the highest rated apps, and more. Finally, there's an easy way to sift through the garbage and find the applications that are actually worth their price (and yes, that includes the crappy free apps that should pay you to use them).

That’s why today Macworld is introducing App Gems, a $2 iPhone app that will help you find good apps. Developed by Macworld with the programming expertise of the good people of DS Media Labs, App Gems presents you with an exclusive App Gem of the day, a good app handpicked every weekday by Macworld’s team of editors and reviewers.

Breaking News: AT&T is finally able to bring seven year old tech to the state of the art iPhone. Yes, MMS is finally coming an iPhone near you, in three weeks, on September 25th. Sorry original iPhone owners, you will have to upgrade to a 3G device if you want to experience this amazing technology.

In its brief statement, AT&T offered few reasons why it's taken so long to get such a basic cell phone feature. It only said MMS "required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One."