We know, you’re already rolling your eyes, but this time it’s really for real. At least that’s what Covad Communications wants us to believe. Reportedly, said outfit is jump-starting a gigantic municipal WiFi project to blanket Silicon Valley that fell apart after upstart Azulstar failed to garner funding to kick things off in 2007. Covad is hoping to cover one square mile of downtown San Carlos, California for three months, and during the test period it will gauge just how lucrative such an initiative is. If successful, it may expand into surrounding locales, but at the moment, such an endeavor is “too much to dive into.” Best of luck, Covad — history says you’ll need it.

Okay, so we’ve got our Time Capsule up and running here — we’ll be back with a full review once our full 516GB backup is completed, but here are some quick first impressions:

• You can definitely hear the disks spin up and access. It also sounds like there’s a fan in there, but there are no obvious vents for one and we can’t feel any air coming out, so the drives might just be that loud.
• The top is getting quite warm during the backup — we’ll see if it cools down once we stop hitting the drive this hard, but if there really isn’t a fan we’re a little concerned. Hope those server-grade hard drives like being cooked.
• You can’t transfer an existing Time Machine backup to Time Capsule. Sure, it’s easy enough to switch back and get at your old data, but it’s still a pain — and now we have a 1TB drive sitting here with months of backups on it that we can’t erase and reuse.
• Time Machine doesn’t prioritize network activity on your machine, so it’s slamming our network connection right now as it backs up. That’s not a huge problem since we’re backing up over Ethernet, but we’ll see what happens when we try this over WiFi later.
• We tried to back up a second machine while the first was in progress, and not much happened — it created the disk image and got to “Preparing…” and then did nothing. We’re assuming these can only happen one at a time.
• The wireless side of things is basically the same as the Airport Extreme, nothing shocking there, although the setup assistant has been substantially revised to make things easier.
• The setup assistant now asks if you already have a 2.4GHz network and offers to create a 5GHz secondary network, which is interesting.

That’s about it for now — there’s not much we can try out while this backup is in progress. Anything else you guys want to know?

Assuming Sprint can make it — and that’s starting to seem like kind of a big if these days — CEO Dan Hesse made some comments about the coming 4G revolution, including one auspicious hint about dual-mode CDMA / WiMAX devices this later year for XOHM. It’s almost an exciting enough concept for us to forget that even if these devices were forthcoming in 2008, they’d still only be for one of the soft launch markets, and would probably start as a data cards — not phones. But hey, we’re happy to be proven wrong, Sprint.

Six months after Facebook came out with a version of its social network for the iPhone, LinkedIn is finally coming around to releasing a mobile version of its own.

It is live now. Just go to http://m.linkedin.com/ on any mobile browser. Of course, if you have an iPhone, you will see a version optimized just for that device.

This isn’t exactly what we had in mind when we noted there is still an opportunity to create a kick-ass mobile social network.

But the basic functionality is all there. You can look up people’’s profiles, invite people into your network, and see updates from your contacts. More fully-featured, downloadable mobile apps geared to specific phones may be coming in the future.

Even limited mobile browser accessibility should help LinkedIn keep its members happy. The regular Website has been on a tear lately, nearly tripling in unique visitors over the past year in the U.S., to 3.6 million in January 2008, according to comScore.

No signs of social networking fatigue there.

Today, in conjunction with the 1.0 release of Adobe Air, the digital labs of the New York Times Co. is releasing an application in public beta called ShifD. An early version of the app won a Yahoo Hack Day last June. It is designed to let users easily shift notes, links, and addresses between their computers and their mobile phones.

Instead of e-mailing yourself notes to remind yourself to do something or links to stories you want to read, you put them into ShifD and create a feed that is automatically available on your mobile phone. You can use a standalone Adobe Air app on your desktop or a regular Web browser. On your mobile phone, ShifD supports most mobile Web browsers, and is also offering customized versions for the iPhone and the Blackberry. You can enter notes back into your SHifD account from you mobile phone by texting to “SHIFD”.

It seems like a lot of extra effort just to sync a limited number of things between your computer and your phone. There are more comprehensive syncing options out there, and it is not too hard to access a regular bookmarking service, such as del.icio.us, from your mobile phone (see mobilicio.us). As for addresses, Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, both have mobile options as well. So there is nothing new that ShifD allows you to do. But it does tie those three use case (notes, links, and places) together in an elegant way. It makes a lot more sense for people with less capable phones. Otherwise, I’d argue that e-mailing yourself such reminders and links to your Blackberry or iPhone?or tapping into the mobile versions of existing services you already use?is probably more efficient. Those of you who decide to try it out, tell us what you think in comments.

Companies are starting to figure out that the contact information on your mobile phone may be the most important social network you have - perhaps even better than the email inbox that Yahoo is targeting.

Danish startup ZYB started offering a service that simply backed up your mobile phone contacts to the web in mid-2006. A year later they turned all that data into a mobile social network. They’re one of the small startups with a real shot at mobile social network with critical mass. As of August 2007 they had 200,000 active users.

It’s no surprise, then, that ZYB is being emulated. Israeli startup NewACT, with $6.5 million in funding over two rounds from Cedar Fund, are launching a new service called SYNCY into beta today. The service lets users migrate contacts, calendars and media from a mobile phone to the web. It’s part ZYB, part Sharpcast.

While Syncy supports over 700 handset models, the iPhone isn’t one, so I took it out for a spin by installing it on a SonyEricsson phone. The feature that won her over was the ability to get immediate Web access to the photos and videos she takes of our kids using her phone. Incidentally, the last time she had digital copies of such files was when she switched handsets. That’s when she had no choice but borrow a cable and install Nokia’s phone management application?by far, not a user-friendly proposition to access “everyday media”.

Syncy’s handset client is simple to operate and once syncing is configured to run automatically, it’s smooth sailing from there onwards. There also an Outlook plug-in which synchronizes contacts and events (Exchange is not required). Google calendar integration will be available shortly.

NewACT claims that Syncy is the only service to offer cross-phone synchronization. Meaning, you can sync a Nokia phone then stick the SIM in a Motorola phone and Syncy’s server will reformat and readapt the data to fit the exact data structures of your new phone.

500 TechCrunch readers will receive access to Syncy’s limited Beta by requesting an account and entering “TechCrunch.”

iPhone owners, like users of most Apple products, are a fairly passionate, elitist group of people.

I think an iPhone-only social network, if it had the right features, would be a huge hit with these users. Actually, I think any mobile social network would be a big hit, if it had presence awareness and was able to tell you both where your friends are and what they are up to. And also let you meet new people around you who were open to it.

I wrote about some of the early experiments with mobile social networks last September (see our more recent coverage of LimeJuice as well). The big social networks, of course, aren’t ignoring mobile, either. But even Facebook’s iPhone app is just the desktop version optimized for that phone. It doesn’t leverage the device itself to tell you when friends are close.

The goal here isn’t just to let users see where their friends are and what they are up to. The killer app is to facilitate meeting new people - either for dating (see a picture of everyone around you who’s single and looking, along with their basic bio), or business (see the professional bio and picture of everyone at the cocktail party). Subject to privacy controls, of course.

Once a network has critical mass users will, depending on privacy settings, be able to walk into any gathering and see information on the people in the room. Whoever gets there first will have a far more valuable asset than the existing networks at MySpace and Facebook today. Social networks are about being social. And social implies being around other people. The device they have with them when they’re doing that, and which can enhance those social gatherings, is their mobile phone. The key to doing that is through GPS or cell phone triangulation (which the iPhone now has).

None of the mobile social networks we’ve covered have even come close to establishing a critical mass. The key to winning is getting users on devices that have GPS or triangulation for presence and location, and having software on the phone instead of just accessing it from a website. Getting java apps on phones in Europe is much easier in the U.S., which is why most of the mobile social network startups are located there.

The iPhone, though, has both. Or rather, soon will have both (the SDK to allow third party apps on the phone may have been delayed). As soon as that SDK is released, look for a flurry of third party applications to try and create a social network on the iPhone.

The front runners will be Facebook and MySpace, who, I assume, will get their users to install software on the phone as quickly as possible and try to add location information for users who choose to share it.

But new startups will try as well. And one way to differentiate themselves may be to offer a social networks that is open only to iPhone users, and no one else. The exclusivity factor may be exactly what will draw enough iPhone users to kick start the service.

Fon11 - Giving It A Shot

Berkeley-based Fon11 is one startup that we’re tracking that plans to do this. The service works already through the web browser on the iPhone. In fact, you have to use it from an iPhone - it’s the only way you can register for an account, add friends or do anything else. The website, when accessed from any where but an iPhone, just shows information about the service (note - that isn’t entirely true - you can go to testiphone.com and enter fon11.com/home and see it just like it would appear on the iPhone - but only from the Safari browser).

The service is fairly limited right now to setting presence/status information. They can’t use the iPhone triangulation feature, so they set up a separate service called OpenLandmark to let people set their location information (it works well for places you visit frequently). The service caught the eye of the iPhone team, who made it a Staff Pick earlier this month.

Blackberry has a true GPS and allows third party apps on their phone. And Google’s Android will also do all of this as well. But something tells me that iPhone users might be the first group of people to jump on mobile social networks, and wouldn’t mind letting other iPhone users in the room know they’re part of the cult.

StyleTap, the folks behind the CrossPlatform Palm emulator for Windows Mobile have built a proof of concept version of the software for the iPhone / iPod touch. They’re not committing to releasing any such product, and aren’t releasing the software as a beta or anything like that at the moment, but the video demo of the software in action is certainly promising. All the apps are rather responsive, the device benchmarks a good bit faster than the Tungsten | T, and Apple’s keyboard is even integrated into the proceedings quite nicely. Video is after the break.

[Via TUAW]

And you thought puttering around the intarwebz on your EDGE-capable iPhone was bad — just think of trying to find anything on the ‘net while accidentally moseying through a dodgy part of town. Nevertheless, BMW is gearing up to offer “unrestricted access” to the web as an option in any new 2008 vehicle, but alas, it’s only for European clients at the moment. Of course, BMW’s no stranger to letting bits and pieces of the web into its motorcars, but this creation will let you catch up on the latest gadget news and pre-order the latest Elmo doll from the comfort of your heated seat. Sadly, the service is only available to front seat passengers when the car is in park (it’s for the best, we know), but your kiddos can surf into all sorts of bizarre chatrooms while seated in the rear. Nothing like a predator tailing you on the autobahn!

DataPortability cofounder Chris Saad, in the face of a nasty cease and desist letter over their logo, took our (and others’) advice - don’t waste time fighting it. Treat this as a press opportunity and hold a new logo contest instead.

That’s exactly what they’re doing. Third parties are lining up to donate prizes, and an iPhone is already on the list. We’ll throw in a sponsorship spot on TechCrunch for a week for free, too, and point to the winner’s website. Whoever wins will have the thanks of a grateful community, and likely a lot of new business coming their way.