According to NYT,AT&T announced Friday evening that it would buy Centennial Communications, a regional wireless phone company, for $944 million in cash, a price that is more than double Centennial’s stock market value.

AT&T is locked in a fierce battle with Verizon Wireless to dominate the nation’s cellphone service business. Verizon surged past AT&T as the dominant presence in the field by acquiring Alltel, the nation’s largest rural cellphone service provider, in June.

The company said the acquisition would give it an additional 1.1 million wireless customers. The deal would expand AT&T’s wireless coverage in largely rural areas of the Midwest and the Southeast, as well as in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Under the terms of the deal, announced after the stock market closed, AT&T will pay Centennial stockholders $8.50 a share, a premium of 121 percent over Centennial’s closing price of $3.84. In after-hours trading, Centennial’s shares jumped to $7.90.AT&T will also assume Centennial’s debt, and it said the deal’s total enterprise value is approximately $2.8 billion.

AT&T said the private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, Centennial’s largest stockholder, had agreed to support this deal.

In the first year after the transaction closes, AT&T said it expected minimal dilution to its earnings per share and cash flow as a result of upfront integration costs. It expects the deal to close by the end of the second quarter next year. (more…)

Zhiing is a free location based service for sending real-time messages with map and driving directions to and from cellphones and to the GPS system.Zhiing is now available at the Apple App Store for iPhone users.Blackberry 8800 Series, Pearl and Curve users can download the zhiing utility by visiting the companies’ web sitse.

Zhiing is geo-mapping for the rest of us. With Zhiing, you easily send locations from a PC Web browser or a cellphone, and receive them on your cellphone. Your incoming Zhiings give you turn-by-turn directions in text or map format to a precise spot – from your current (dynamic) location.  Now you can navigate to this location from anywhere you may find yourself in the future. Or, Zhiing the location to your friends and they can find it from wherever they are. Best of all, it’s free! It’s the new way to navigate life.

The Zhiing application and services are free. Standard data and messaging charges from the receiver’s mobile carrier will apply. Mobile devices that aren’t currently supported will receive multiple SMS messages with turn-by-turn directions if they reply to the incoming zhiing with their current location.

Documents To Go Premium edition for BlackBerry is available immediately in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish versions, and supports the viewing, creating and editing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, including the newer Office 2007 file formats.

An Acrobat reader called PDF To Go is also included as a free bonus application.

More about Documents To Go Premium:

Documents To Go Premium Edition offers advanced functionality over the Standard Edition, which is included on devices running BlackBerry Device Software 4.5 or higher, including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Pearl Flip, and BlackBerry Storm. (more…)

Mogreet, founded in 2006, has developed a distribution platform for mobile video messages dubbed ‘mogreets’ (short for mobile greetings), which can be delivered by MMS or as an attachment in a text message.

Mogreet has raised a $5 million Series B funding from existing investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson Frontier and other venture capital firms such as Ascend Ventures, Black Diamond Ventures, and Spyglass Ventures.

By striking deals with major Hollywood studios like Paramount and other content partners, Mogreet has built up a 3500-strong catalog of greetings ranging from short original clips shot with celebrities to (more…)

according to a profile in the New York Times: Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

Apple has been criticized for its decision to restrict certain applications from the App Store, and this suggests users shouldn’t expect any other web browser alternatives (such as Firefox and Chrome) to appear in the App Store at any point in the near future.

Via NYT

Flixwagon has announced that they’re now compatible with Nokia’s Share on Ovi media hosting service.

Once a user downloads the latest Flixwagon for Symbian application and plugs in their Share on Ovi details, they’re able to share live and stored videos directly to their Ovi account. While sharing a video to Ovi doesn’t provide any functional benefits over sharing it to just Flixwagon, it allows those who use both Share on Ovi and Flixwagon to keep all their content in one place without nearly as much hassle.

Via mobilecrunch

NetFront Browser Widgets is a solution that is based on the NetFront Browser engine and enables widgets for mobile handsets and consumer electronics to be created on the basis of open Web technology. It provides widget players, development tools, and widget content in one package for carriers and device manufacturers, helping businesses to quickly implement a diverse range of widget services.

For Windows Mobile
(Pocket PC/ Pocket PC Phone/ Classic/ Professional)

For Windows Mobile (SmartPhone/ Standard)

For S60