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Yahoo has stolen a march on Google in many areas of mobile web services, notably carrier deals and use of widgets. But recently its rival has taken back the initiative with its Android plans and some key search deals, and Yahoo used the US CTIA Wireless show to bite back. It enhanced its Blueprint mobile development platform and, as Google released high profile integrated applications for BlackBerry, Yahoo went the iPhone route, unveiling a preview version of a new Apple app called OneConnect.

OneConnect is a free app that is billed as a "socially connected address book". One feature, called Pulse, "allows you to tap into everything going on with your friends,", according to the software house, pulling in information from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Last.fm and other social networks into one aggregated view.

Other features of the Yahoo iPhone software include 'Favorites', which allows users to track or quickly their inner circle of friends; and a unified hub for instant messaging, SMS and email. OneConnect will also appear in time on other handsets including BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Nokia Series 60.

The extended version of Blueprint, meanwhile, goes beyond a runtime platform for developing widgets purely for Yahoo's Go Mobile phone software. Now it can also be used to develop standalone applications that anyone can develop and distribute, but which harness Yahoo's back end service to identify which phone a user has and to supply the appropriate Blueprint runtime. In this respect, Yahoo will be taking on Nokia's widgets service and platform, Widsets, which also provides this back end intelligence, and is targeted to move to non-Nokia devices soon.

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