ShoZu, a company that lets users post pictures and video taken with a camera phone to a selection of Web sites, has added eight new partner destinations. ShoZu users can now easily post their photos to Cellfish, Dailymotion, Friendster, Ipernity, Photobucket, Seesmic, Twitter and Twitpic.

According to ZDNet's Mobile Gadgeteer, the new additions bring ShoZu's destination partners up to 36 sites including Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Picasa and WordPress. You can also reportedly add your own custom destinations if there's a particular site you favor for photo sharing.

RealNetworks said it's going to spin its casual gaming business out into a separate company. Most of the shares of the independent venture will be split among existing shareholders. Real is keeping open the option of taking the games company public, and may offer up to 20% of the shares in an IPO, Fierce Mobile Content reports.

The decision, and hopefully a name, will happen by year-end.

Real has been making its name in the casual games business since 2001; it has already released 38 PC and mobile games so far this year.

Would you watch a few commercials on your mobile phone in exchange for free calling minutes? How about listening to a brief advertisement in order to save money on a favorite product or service? Most Web browsers already do it online, so why not on the phone?

VoodooVox, the company behind the concept of In-Call Media, recently held a summit in New York to talk up the virtues of this new advertising channel. The company's technology inserts targeted ad-supported audio directly into the call stream of any type of phone traffic.

If the panelists at the first In-Call Media Summit are to be believed, it's more than just a replacement for boring, static-filled hold music. And since the company claims to be powering more than 250 million calls a month, consumers must be willing to listen. After all, if those VoIP and free information services are going to stay free, the companies behind them need to make money somehow.

A reader with an iPod touch was kind enough to set us straight on those episodes of "The Office" and "30 Rock" that NBC is making available for the iPhone and iPod touch via a special mobile site.

Apparently, there are ads, and you don't download complete episodes. Rather, the episodes are broken into chunks that you watch as streams on your iDevice. And each segment has an ad attached to it, either at the beginning or at the end.

Orb Networks is pushing the boundaries of placeshifting with its latest application that lets folks stream live TV to the iPhone or iPod touch.

While Orb's placeshifting software works with most mobile browsers, the iPhone is known for limiting the types of video content it supports. To get around these limitations, Orb has developed something called OrbLive, which it says enables the streaming of any video format to an iPhone.

"Although the iPhone provides users with a great way to experience the Web, it offers a ridiculously sub-par streaming video experience," said Orb CEO Joe Costello. "When all the carriers' free phones can stream lots of things that my iPhone can't, something's seriously wrong."

Sounds cool, but you gotta wonder what the folks at Apple will think of the new software. To see how it works, check out the video below.

Online magazine Slate has added a few downloadable ringtones to its site. But since this is Slate, don't expect your everyday, average ringtones. Nope. They're audio clips from the presidential candidates. Political junkies and fans of quirky ringtones can choose from:

* Hillary Clinton's laugh or a clip of her saying "Shame on you, Barack Obama."

* Barack Obama saying "Yes we can."

* The John McCain "my friends" compilation or a clip of him calling a questioner a "Little Jerk."

Previews of the ringtones and download instructions are at www.slate.com/ringtones. They're available for AT&T, Cellular One, T-Mobile and Sprint phones; Verizon Wireless is not currently supported.

Mobile music may be claiming a larger share of the overall digital music sector than ever before, but the trend seems to have bypassed Warner Music Group. Amid the results for its second fiscal quarter, which ended March 31, WMG reported that its revenue from mobile music products - ringtones, ringback tones and full-track downloads - fell 17.6% sequentially. According to a MocoNews post on the results, WMG's mobile music revenue dropped from $56.4 million in Q1 to $46.5 million in Q2.

That might all change in the future, though, if Warner keeps doing exclusive deals with the carriers. During the earnings call, WMG chief Edgar Bronfman crowed about the company's recent promotions with Verizon Wireless and Vodafone surrounding the new Madonna album "Hard Candy." As a result of offering the single "Four Minutes" a day before it was available anywhere, the song became Vodafone's best-selling track yet.

Good news for all those new location-based mobile social services that have been cropping up lately - more than 550 million GPS-enabled mobile phones will ship by 2012, according to ABI Research.

Friend finders, sharing points-of-interest information with friends and geo-tagging pictures are just some of the services expected to result in increased adoption of GPS-enabled phones, says a Cellular-news article on the report.

"While most CDMA handsets are already GPS-enabled and GPS is set to become a standard feature in GSM smartphones, GSM feature phones are next on the agenda to be equipped with GPS technology," ABI principal analyst Dominique Bonte said.

An FTC commissioner warned cellphone content providers they need to do a better job of disclosing the costs consumers incur when clicking or downloading services for their mobile devices, according to a new AdAge report.

The report said that Jonathan Leibowitz, the commissioner, said that messaging, games and video services marketed to children and teens are a particular concern because of young people's eagerness to adopt new technologies. "Kids are usually more facile and fearless with technology than their parents—quick to click first and ask questions later," he said. "A mobile phone that gives them easy access to content and purchasing power makes them easy prey for aggressive marketers," he said.

Leibowitz cited SMS text-messaging offers from marketers that do not clearly disclose the costs for using the service as an example, but he also indicated much broader concerns than that. "We believe in self-regulation, but we are going to police the wireless space," he said.

MediaPost reports that Verizon Wireless is being sued by the parents of a Connecticut teen who was assaulted by a man she met after accessing the Web through a cell phone:

"The parents, who purchased four cell phones from Verizon in 2005, allege that their 14-year-old daughter downloaded a program to one of the phones that enabled her to post an online profile and participate in various chat rooms. The following year, she was allegedly assaulted on two occasions by a 30-year-old man she met via mobile social networking."

According to the report, the parents accused Verizon Wireless of manufacturing an unreasonably dangerous product and failing to warn them that users could connect to the Web from the phones. "Unbeknownst to the plaintiffs," they alleged in the suit, "the defendant's cellular service plan allowed any cell phone user to 'self subscribe' to the internet through the cellular telephone." Verizon has declined to comment, saying that they can't discuss pending litigation.

Fortune is reporting that despite Microsoft's decision to withdraw its $47.5 billion buyout bid for Yahoo - and the subsequent 20% drop in the Internet company's stock price on Monday - many Yahoo employees say not much has changed for them; they also say they plan on staying put, at least for now.

Several anonymous employees told the magazine that they have no plans to leave. Meanwhile, Boris Epstein, CEO of headhunter firm Binc, said in the article he's made a big push to recruit Yahoo engineers this week, but that most of the people he's talked to aren't budging.

"Many of them are telling me, 'no way, I'm not going anywhere right now,' " Epstein said. "Some people are going to want to stay put until something shakes out—if Microsoft makes another move there could be severance or retention packages to look forward to." Some employees said that they feel more loyal to the company, post-Microhoo.

T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the country, said Thursday it added 981,000 customers in the first quarter. Along with an acquisition, that brings its total to 30.8 million, according to The Associated Press:

"T-Mobile USA completed its acquisition of SunCom Wireless in February, which added 1.1 million subscribers in the southeastern United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands."

The report said that T-Mobile's growth means it is doing better than the next-largest carrier, Sprint Nextel, which has been losing subscribers and had 53.8 million customers at the end of last year. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless added 1.5 million subscribers in the first quarter, and AT&T added 1.3 million and is still the largest of the four major U.S.-based carriers.

T-Mobile also finally turned on its high-speed, 3G network this week in New York City, with other cities to soon follow.

Virgin Mobile USA is reportedly looking into a possible merger with Helio, the MVNO created by EarthLink and SK Telecom, MocoNews reports.

EarthLink stopped funding the struggling company a while back, and has been looking for a way out. Virgin Mobile USA has itself been seen as a potential takeover target as of late.

According to the report, one scenario has SK Telecom buying Virgin Mobile USA and lining its coffers so the newly cash-rich MVNO could then buy Helio.

For some of us, Fudgie the Whale, the famous spokeswhale for Carvel Ice Cream, will always be an icon we remember from bad commercials during Saturday morning cartoons.

Luckily, Fudgie and his famous ice cream cakes and other frozen confections have moved into the 21st century. Not only does Fudgie have his own MySpace profile, he now has his own SMS short code. Carvel cravers who text "FUDGIE" to 78247 will get a coupon for savings on a blended coffee or Arctic blender. Showing that he knows how to treat his friends well and not just bribe them with ice cream, Fudgie will also enter his text buddies into a sweepstakes where they can win a 42-inch TV.

Carvel partnered with Brand Movers on the opt-in text-messaging campaign.

Glu Mobile is bringing almost a Wii-like experience to mobile gaming.

The company's newest original game, Get Cookin', uses motion-sensitive technology found in the new Sony Ericsson W910i handset as well as a few other new models. Sony Ericsson's JSR 256 API motion sensor challenges players to use both physical gestures and button presses to create sophisticated virtual meals. Users will get to do things like flip a steak in a pan, add ingredients and try to perfect other cooking methods by carefully moving the handset.

Get Cookin' is launching in July across all major carriers worldwide.

"Sony Ericsson's motion sensor technology allows us to incorporate more authentic, true to life challenges in Get Cookin' and introduce an entirely new dimension to mobile games," Glu CTO and senior VP of global product development Alex Galvagni said in a statement. "The use of this technology gives developers a way to deepen the gameplay and gives players a truly fun game that incorporates all new ways to play."