If you've ever wanted to build a mobile app for your small business but have been intimidated by the cost of hiring developers, Appsbar has a proposition for you.

It seems that your boss doesn't want you to launch digital birds at evil green pigs during office hours.

BOSTON - It may not have received the attention of "American Idol," but this week's Mobile Monday Boston featured a similar type of competition among local mobile app developers.

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority this fall will become the first American railway system in the United States to allow riders to preorder and display their train tickets entirely through their smartphones.

AT&T Labs says its Watson speech recognition technologies have been around for more than 20 years, and come this June, it will put APIs and SDKs in the hands of developers who want to give users a way to interact with smartphones, TVs and other devices using their voices.

If you've ever gone to Apple's mobile app store and purchased games like High Noon, Gamebox1 or Doodletruck, then you've downloaded an app from the burgeoning Chinese software development community.

'Tis the season of mobile predictions. As this year comes to an end and a new decade begins, Mobclix, which operates a mobile ad exchange network, has gazed into its crystal ball and foreseen 10 mobile trends-many of which are, in fact, pretty outrageous.

Microsoft today announced that its upcoming mobile software store, dubbed Windows Marketplace for Mobile, will being accepting submissions for mobile applications on July 27, with a target launch of fall 2009 for Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. Sample View of Windows Marketplace Business Center (Subject to Change)

Services, such as maps and music downloads, will dictate how consumers select their mobile phones, and hardware will adapt to meet this trend, said Tero Ojanperä, Nokia's executive vice president of services.