The Motorola CLIQ, a new Android smartphone from Motorola with a bevy of social networking features, is now shipping. The phone is the first to employ Motoblur, a software integrating various social networking and communication functions for ease of use. We reviewed the CLIQ a few weeks ago and thought it had much promise, despite some issues with a sluggish processor. The phone is available through T-Mobile for $199.99 after discount. [T-Mobile]

Also available today is the SkyDock from XM, the first device to let drivers control satellite radio with their iPhone or iPod Touch. Though it didn't knock our socks off when we tried it, the SkyDock does deliver on its promise and is currently the only way to tap into XM radio in the car via the iPhone. Available from the Apple Store, Best Buy, Radio Shack and other retailers for $120, the SkyDock is powered by the car's DC plug and allows listeners to tag songs on XM for later purchase through the iTunes music store. But of course. [XM]

The stalky dock, which leverages iPhone OS 3.0's new hardware support (remember that?), plugs into your car's DC jack, which it depends on for power and support, and will run $120, not including the required subscription to Sirius XM radio. The companion app, which bears no resemblance to Sirius XM's previous radio app, simply sets your iPhone up as a radio controller. Mercifully, it's free. [AllThingsD]

SIRIUS XM RADIO INTRODUCES THE FIRST DEVICE TO RECEIVE LIVE SATELLITE RADIO CONTROLLED BY THE iPOD TOUCH AND iPHONE

XM SkyDock™ allows customers to enjoy live XM and "The Best of SIRIUS" in their vehicles using the iPod touch or iPhone

NEW YORK–August 26, 2009–SIRIUS XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) today introduced XM SkyDock, the first satellite radio controlled by an iPod touch or iPhone. The XM SkyDock is also one of the first products to take advantage of the new hardware control capabilities of iPhone OS 3.0.

Designed for easy use through the existing vehicle audio system, SkyDock has a built-in XM tuner controlled by a free App that users download from the App Store. The App allows control of the XM tuner using the capabilities of the iPod touch or iPhone Multi-Touch user interface. SkyDock will also charge iPod touch and iPhone devices while listening to live satellite radio.

"XM SkyDock will allow millions of users to add live SIRIUS XM Radio capability to their iPod touch or iPhone while in their vehicle," said Bob Law, Group Vice President and General Manager, After Market Division, SIRIUS XM Radio. "XM SkyDock makes their favorite programming from XM and ‘The Best of SIRIUS' available to iPod touch and iPhone users anywhere they drive, coast to coast."

Listeners can use their iPod touch and iPhone to listen to all their favorite sports, talk, news, entertainment and commercial-free music programming, including Oprah Radio, MLB Home Plate, the PGA TOUR Network, Opie & Anthony, Bob Edwards, Jamie Foxx and Blue Collar Comedy. For the first time, subscribers can also listen to the complete "Best of SIRIUS" package, including Howard Stern and his two 24/7 channels, Martha Stewart Living Radio, SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, sports play-by-play and the Playboy Radio channel, all controlled by the iPod touch and iPhone.

Listeners can also tag songs they hear on XM's music channels for later purchase from the iTunes Store–including songs on XM's 24/7 artist branded commercial-free channels such as Jimmy Buffett's Radio Margaritaville, Elvis Radio, Eminem's Shade 45, The Grateful Dead Channel, B.B. King's Bluesville, Willie Nelson's Willie's Place, Siriusly Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen's E Street Radio. Other features include game alerts and sports ticker, artist and song alerts as well as a stock ticker.

The XM SkyDock is a perfect companion to the SIRIUS XM Premium Online App, which allows subscribers to receive SIRIUS XM's Premium Internet service on their iPhone and iPod touch when they are out of the vehicle and on-the-go, at home, or at the office.

XM SkyDock comes with SIRIUS XM's patent-pending PowerConnect™ technology, which simplifies Do-It-Yourself vehicle installation, working through the existing vehicle radio and making it easy to move from vehicle to vehicle. An Aux In Cable is a standard in-box accessory to facilitate Aux In connections in vehicles with Aux In capability. SkyDock's flexible stalk optimizes the iPod touch or iPhone placement in the vehicle. Customers can view the touch-screen interface in portrait or landscape modes. Accessories include Magnetic Mount Antenna and spacers to accommodate the various iPod touch and iPhone product generations.

XM SkyDock is compatible with iPod touch (1st generation), iPod touch (2nd generation), iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. All models require iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

XM SkyDock will be sold in stores and will also be available at www.shop.xmradio.com with an MSRP $119.99 in fall 2009. The XM SkyDock App will be available at the same time.

This device has been granted preliminary approval by the Federal Communications Commission but is still undergoing evaluation by the Commission.

For more information on XM, please visit www.xmradio.com.

The exact details are unclear from the slides, but it appears that a $2.99 monthly streaming fee may apply. Additionally, there's a shopping cart in the app. Exactly what will Sirius XM subscribers be buying?

We're guessing more details will surface shortly, but what do subscribers in the audience think? Is this an progressive move from the company, or a somewhat sad, last ditch effort to stay alive? (My guess is that it's a bit of both, but if they think that subscribers will buy music a la carte for use in a single app, they are nuts.) [Sirius Investor via Silicon Alley Insider]

TiVo
For a long while, TiVo was the undisputed king of TV recording. Other DVRs have come a long way in the last ten years, but they're all late to the party, and still playing catchup: The TiVo name is now permanently tattooed into the public's consciousness, synonymous with recording shows and backed up by still-impressive hardware.

But the fact that TiVo has attained a near-Kleenex level of brand recognition in the US doesn't mean a thing overseas. As of writing, the service is only available in a few other places—Canada, the UK, Mexico, Taiwan and Australia—where it has been met with limited enthusiasm. While the US, with its huge, old, fragmented cable industry, offers a fantastic opportunity for a meta-service like TiVo, smaller countries with one or two dominant pay-TV providers—which have their own increasingly formidable DVR alternatives—are tougher nuts to crack.

The Kindle
This choice might seem odd—or at least inconsequential—on account of the steady stream of new e-reader hardware available all over the world, but Kindle exclusivity is actually a technological feather in America's cap. Why? Because the source of the Kindle's importance isn't its hardware, but its connectivity and the service it's tied to.

Anyone can slap a case around a panel of E-Ink and add an off-the-shelf Linux OS—and plenty of companies have. But being linked wirelessly to a massive library of legal downloads, bestselling books, magazines and newspapers, is what will make a reader great. For now, the only mainstream reader that can claim such a feature is the Kindle, and the only country that can claim the Kindle is the US. Not that it can't go global—similar services for music and TV, like the iTunes store, have found ways to deal with tricky licensing and gone global—it's just that it probably won't for a while.

Push-to-Talk
Without a doubt, this is the technology that feels the most American on this list. Intended primarily for the workplace, push-to-talk technology has tragically seeped into the mainstream, subjecting millions of innocent mall shoppers to that incessant, inane chirping, and the shouting at the handset that accompanies it. Who hasn't been inadvertently pulled into the middle of a heated, long-distance argument about novelty Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches flavors while waiting in line at Walmart? Well, pretty much anyone who doesn't live in America—and not just because they don't have Jimmy Dean, or Walmart.

As it turns out, PTT's Amerophilia can be explained by little more than poor marketing. According to ABI Research:

In other world regions MNOs have failed to market PTT successfully to business users or have opted to market to consumers, and it just hasn't taken off.

Nextel, which was inherently crippled by a proprietary network technology that wasn't built out in any other country but the US, found success with PTT by pitching handsets to businesses as turbocharged Walkie-Talkies, not by marketing them directly to consumers, most of whom would have trouble imagining a more efficient way to make themselves look like brash assholes.

Video On Demand
iTunes has gone worldwide and services like BBC's iPlayer have brought the Hulu model overseas, but America still has the best VOD situation in the world, bar none. The problem is simple: Even countries with a healthy entertainment industry import a tremendous amount of American TV, often well after it was originally broadcast. This regional disparity seems kinda stupid in the age of the internet and VOD, but it's just as severe as it ever was.

European or Asian viewers have to wait for painful weeks or months for a domestic channel to license, schedule and dub international American hits like Lost or Mad Men, and hope, assuming their stations have a VOD service, that the show eventually finds its way online. As an ad-supported service and a product owned by the networks who profit from the above arrangement, Hulu's reluctance to stream content to countries is understandable, but the despair is deeper than that: You can't even pay for TV if you want to. People without American billing addresses are barred from VOD services like Amazon's Unbox, and will find their iTunes video selections sorely lacking.

Satellite Radio
Since is smells distinctly like a waning technology, satellite radio might not do much to stir your techno-patriotism, but goddernit, it's ours. The US has far more satellite radio subscribers than the rest of the world combined, all through the remains of Sirius and XM, now merged under the lazy moniker of "Sirius XM". Why? We have lots (and lots) of cars.

Satellite radio actually has roots as a proudly international service—after all, it is broadcast from frickin' space—having been developed in part by a humanitarian-initiative company called 1Worldspace, which was established to broadcast news and safety information to parts of the globe without reliable terrestrial radio infrastructure. They still exist today, but they broadcast to fewer than 200,000 subscribers, mostly in India and parts of Africa. Satrad's American success can be solely credited to our auto manufacturers, who eagerly installed satellite units in new cars for years, healthily boosting subscription numbers (but not necessarily car sales). With no comparably pervasive car culture to take advantage of anywhere else in the world, satellite radio is a tough sell.

The reason for the cancellation is that the app still did not have official approval, possibly due to the fact that a first party app from Sirius itself is also in the App Store pipeline, but that is unconfirmed at this time. And so, since the app was in approval limbo, having not been approved or denied by Apple, the developers chose to fold.

Truly, a sad day for people who want streaming music on their iPhone, but for some reason haven't figured out how great Pandora can be. Still, it sounds like there's hope for an "official" app from Sirius XM. [StarPlayr via TUAW]

Even though service would have likely continued uninterrupted had the freshly-merged company actually filed for bankruptcy, Sirius XM's days of luring in top radio jock talent on big contracts would have likely been over. Now, thankfully, we can carry on without skimping on the Howard Stern. [NY Times]

CEO Mel Karmazin, aka the dude who paid Howard Stern a retarded amount of money, said today that the merger didn't magically fuse together satellite capabilities. Says Automotive News:

Merging XM and Sirius technology and installing it in new vehicles could take as long as 15 years because of the new chips required and automakers' lead time.

Fifteen years—when your car will look like this. Karmazin said other stuff about the subscription business(es), most of it was equally depressing. (No chance of it spreading to Europe and Asia, for instance.) How long do you give satellite radio? I say dead in two years. [Automotive News (subscription required)]

If that's not enough acknowledgment of frailty, it has an microSD slot for you to add your own memory—and your own tunes. And although Best Buy says it's a Pioneer-branded player, these things are all developed by XM, and then licensed to CE companies when they need a branding boost. So it's not like the brand is any guarantee of actual Pioneer DNA.

If that's not bringing you down enough, it costs $280 before the 8GB memory card and XM monthly fees. Sorry, XM, but the revenues isn't charging a lot of money, but getting people to pay it. Good luck with that. [PopSci; Best Buy]

The Best of Sirius on XM
•Howard Stern (Howard 100, and Howard 101)
•Martha Stewart Living Radio
•Sirius NFL Radio*
•Sirius NASCAR Radio*
•Playboy Radio

The Best of XM on Sirius
•Oprah & Friends
•NHL Home Ice*
•The Virus
•Public Radio featuring Bob Edwards
•The PGA Tour Network
•College Sports and NBA

Anything you see missing? [orbitcast]