The Synergy functionality on the Palm Pre really kick-started this craze back in January, when Palm debuted the system of integrating all your web services into their native UI. This week, at the CTIA phone show in Vegas, it seems like everyone wants a piece of this action. Lets look at some of the contenders.

Yahoo Mobile Apps
Yahoo released a torrent of apps on the public this week, which aim to reinvent how you access their services on a mobile basis. Yahoo's Mobile Apps and Portals allow you to:
• Look up your Yahoo contacts
• Check statuses of those contacts and look up your own
• Access yahoo mail and messenger
• Sign into your Oneconnect account for social media updates
• Import RSS feeds and Yahoo content modules for news, sports scores, weather and all that crap

All of this comes together in one place so you don't have to launch 10 different mobile apps to manage this stuff. Good if you're a heavy user of Yahoo services. This service is available via mobile browser, plus there's a standalone app for the iPhone and a Yahoo Go app for the other major platforms (WinMo, Blackberry, Symbian, etc...) which gather all the services into a navigable UI.

3deep
3deep was one of the most impressive mobile apps at CTIA. The idea behind it is that you can manage your calendar, contacts, social media and mail all from a single app, with location-aware integration. It's coming out for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian and Android in the coming weeks, if all goes according to plan. Some of the features include:
• The ability to track location, availablilty and presence—meaning it knows where you're going, what your doing there, how long you'll be there and who you want to meet with most
• "Tell Me When" functionality gives you alerts when selected contacts arrive at a specific location, when they're available to talk/meet, or conversely, will send a shout out when you do the same
• Informatilon on whether it's best to call, SMS, email or IM a selected contact
• Updates from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc....
• Calendar and mail management. Plus auto-integration from your computer and phone cals
• Open API so any developer can make their service compatible with 3deep

While a live demo wasn't available, 3deep reiterated this app would be available as a free download sometime in the next couple weeks. This is some serious Stalker 2.0 right here. Facebook has nothing on 3deep.

HTC TouchFlo 3D
HTC's updated (and upcoming) TouchFlo 3D continues to streamline its design so that it's easier to get pertinent contact info from a single screen. Now using their new tabbed contact screen, you can quickly get up to speed with your friends, including the ability to:
• Check call, email and SMS history.
• Check updates and activity to social media services (Facebook, Skype, etc...)
• Easily send emails, text messages and place calls from the same screen.
• Check upcoming calendar events for a selected contact (if you have their shared cal)

TouchFlo 3D will be available on the Touch Pro 2 and Touch Diamond 2 when they launch in the second half of 2009.

The emerging trend is making sure you can communicate and collaborate with your contacts through a variety of mediums and services, all through one control panel. For the most part, it's done with a degree of visual polish. This is good, because if Web 2.0 can't move to the mobile space gracefully, we're all in for some headaches.

The thing is, Onxy was created more out of a sense of self-preservation amongst developers than it was keeping it real for people who game on the iPhone. As the App Store becomes cluttered with hundreds upon hundreds of throwaway games, Demeter told Wired the indie developer is in danger of being muscled out by big boys like Sega, who have the marketing budget to get their titles (for better or worse) to the top of the heap.

So by making games talk to one another, or by encouraging some competition among the players, a pack mentality begins to take shape with the smaller games. A rising tide raises all boats, or the saying goes.

"Right now games don't introduce the social aspect at all on the iPhone," Demeter told Wired. "If there is a social aspect it's an island. If these users are playing Trism, they're playing Trism; it's an island. How does that tie into other puzzle games? If players are still connected to a larger whole then they're more likely to keep playing other games."

Demter then claimed Onyx will "save" the App Store. For now, we'll agree that it could save something—Demeter's busines—but we'll be watching this one nevertheless. [Wired]

Besides using a wiki-based community to contribute content, TuneWiki also displays real-time music popularity lists, the locations of other TuneWiki users based on your favorite songs and artists, and the ability to check out music from other countries with translated lyrics. It's an interesting new app for the (MID-using) international crowd, but will it take off States-side?

TuneWiki brings its Next Generation Social Media Player
to Intel-based Mobile Internet Devices

TuneWiki for Moblin revealed today, at a keynote speech for the Intel Developer Conference in Taipei. TuneWiki successfully ported its award winning software to the MID, based on the new Intel® Atom™ processor.

TuneWiki's social media player is the first to integrate music and video with synchronized lyrics and a social network. The lyrics data and synchronization are contributed by the community, using wiki technology. TuneWiki MusicMap displays the location of users based on songs or artists. LiveCharts allows consumers to access a real-time music popularity list by country or state, and listen to music from other countries with lyrics translated to their preferred language.

“Mobile Internet Devices are projected to have hundreds of millions of users,” said Rani Cohen, founder and CEO of TuneWiki. “We offer the experience of social playback anywhere, and our integrated music solution allows consumers to enjoy music in a completely new way. TuneWiki is committed to becoming the leading media player for Linux powered devices, with current offerings for Android, iPhone, Moblin, Windows and OSX, and with the MID we use a great open source platform developed by SongBird.”

“Mobile Internet Devices represent an innovative platform that enables users to take their entertainment media, social network and Internet with them,” said Pankaj Kedia, director of global ecosystems programs in the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel. “With TuneWiki’s media player optimized for MIDs based on the Intel® Atom™ processor and Moblin-based Linux OS, mobile users will be able to create and share lyrics with their friends and family while on-the-go.”

With TuneWiki and the ‘connect anywhere’ capabilities of the MID, enjoying audio or video will no longer be a solitary activity, but a shared social experience among friends, and the worldwide music community. TuneWiki’s built-in translation capabilities enhance this experience and are an engine of discovery and expansion of outstanding music in all languages.

About TuneWiki
TuneWiki Inc, is the first social media player for mobile and PCs, with the community enhancing the experiance. Additional information about TuneWiki is available at www.TuneWiki.com

It's too late to see the site doing its thing live (the first debate was last Friday), but there are three more debates planned, so you'll still get to see C-SPAN pull and archive video on the fly.

In an interview with ars technica, social media magnate Clay Shirky was enthused by C-SPAN's effort.

"This transforms liveblogging from a marginal thing that a few committed high-speed typists do to something anyone can do," said Shirky. "The platform allows me to do what I do when I blog asynchronously, basing a post directly on a link to a permanent reference point." This, he says, overcomes the "perennial liveblogger dilemma."

"Do I comment or watch and try to form a considered reaction?" he asked.

Truly, it could mean more power to the people, and an end to the talking heads of cable network news. I think that's an idea, red or blue, that we can all get behind. [C-SPAN via ars technica]