The Short Names

Motorola’s biggest success to date was when it released the thinnest and sexiest device the world had seen. Since then, the handset-maker has struggled to produce anything like it.

Yesterday, everyone was prepared to see Motorola’s latest form factor that would bring it back from the brink. Instead, what we got was an announcement about an innovative new user interface, or skin, that runs on top of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system. In fact, the big unveiling had little to do with the hardware, and in many ways, the upcoming CLIQ phone looks like any smartphone with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard. The interesting stuff is the Blur technology running under the hood.

This marks a huge cultural shift for the company, which in the past has always been driven by hardware design. While we didn’t get the entire story, the picture we gleaned during yesterday’s announcement and during a hands-on demo showed that much of transformation had to do with new Motorola (NYSE: MOT) management—and leveraging assets the company already had.

When Sanjay Jha was appointed CEO of mobile devices, he fast tracked a project being worked on by former employees from Good Technology, an enterprise email service that Motorola acquired, and then sold off in February. So, while other divisions back in Illinois were slashing staff, the Sunnyvale office was quietly picking up employees from Apple and Google in what has become a long two and a half year process to get to market. Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s VP of Product Development for Android Products, couldn’t help but talk about the project, which had been kept under tight wraps for the past year so well. He said it originated with Jha, who was interested in what the former Good employees were working on. “He liked what he saw and he gave it resources.”

Jha explained the importance of BLUR to GigaOm’s Om Malik at Mobilize and how it compares to Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry. He said the platform melds Apple’s idea of having access to tons of applications with BlackBerry’s niche of integrating the apps—like email—deeply into the phone. Together, they have the apps and the integration: “The iPhone has one, BlackBerry has the other, but we have combined them in a meaningful way for social networking.”

Essentially, the BLUR technology enables users to get all of their messages, status updates and other social networking components pushed to them. Motorola’s director of product marketing Dan Rudolph told me during a demo at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art that in order to accomplish this, there’s a lot of server-side technologies playing a role. All of the messages are compressed and then sent to the device. The process should help save on bandwidth and battery life, while the consumer will have all the information without having to go out and retrieve it.

Osterloh said the original idea stretches back as far as 2007 when Facebook and MySpace were just taking off. “We had all these people from Good…we thought we could really solve something.” He said the two keys were that messaging services on devices had gotten complicated. (Users had multiple email addresses and also SMS and MMS.) The other thing they looked at was making a consumer-friendly service that would be used by people who didn’t have support from an IT staff at work. “We redid everything. It was focused on business and this is 100 percent focused on the consumer.”

Some of the key services include an online portal, where users could log in and manage their device. If it’s lost, they can ping it and see where it’s located on a map. If it’s been stolen, they can wipe off all of their information and data. Likewise, if you get a new phone, all you would have to do is re-enter a BLUR user name and password and all of the consumer’s settings and preferences would be restored from the wallpaper to which widgets it has on the home screen—a significant time saver. Osterloh: “There was a big hole between what was happening with applications and what was happening with services on the BlackBerry. We see that there’s a need for both…The strategic part is the BLUR part.”

Motorola’s strong software platform may have increased its chances of making a comeback. But form factor is important, too. And, so far, it’s something that’s been neglected on the Google Android platform. To date, most of the devices are bulky, and while some have gotten sleeker, nothing still compares to the iPhone. Motorola’s new CLIQ also falls into this category. While solid and full of the latest hardware, it too is large and strays from Moto’s design background. INQ Mobile’s CEO Frank Meehan announced yesterday that his company was going to start building phones on Google Android’s OS, but pointed to one of the challenges with the platform: “Currently, Android phones on networks that are selling against the iPhone have not performed well. You need to get the experience better.”

So far, Motorola has announced that its first handsets will be sold via T-Mobile in the U.S. and also Orange, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) and America Movil. How will it do? We’ll have to wait and see.

AT&T (NYSE: T) has added a new pricing scheme that provides unlimited calling to five people that a subscriber designates as their VIPs. The offer is similar to T-Mobile’s myFaves and a service from Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), which adopted Alltel’s My Circle when it acquired the carrier. Release.

The announcement is the second major pricing roll-out today by a U.S. carrier. Earlier this morning, Sprint launched “Any Mobile, anytime,” which provides users with unlimited calling to all cellphones for $70 a month, no matter what carrier people are using. The plan, which costs $70, also includes unlimited data.

AT&T’s new plan allows individuals to add five phone numbers with plans of at least $60, and families with plans worth at least $90 can add up to 10 lines. The service called “A-List” will launch Sept. 20.

20th Century Fox is partnering with Tapulous, the iPhone-app maker known for its popular Tap Tap Revenge game, to publicize the launch of its upcoming movie “Jennifer’s Body,” a high school thriller, featuring Meagan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.

The campaign highlights a way advertisers have started to market on the phone. By drawing in users with the offer of free entertainment, the experience can feel less obtrusive—even if it is an ad. To take it a step further, Tapulous is integrating user-generated content, by letting users create their own look and feel for the application and compete in a contest. The lucky winner may just land a job at the Palo Alto-based company.

Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge games are played by tapping the screen to the the beat of the music, similar to the console game Guitar Hero. In this special edition, the look and feel will be modified to promote “Jennifer’s Body.” Plus, it will cross promote the soundtrack, by using one of the songs from the Album, Panic! at the Disco’s “New Perspective.”

Tapulous’s COO Andrew Lacy said this form of marketing is actually fun for users and avoids the distracting affect a takeover ad can inflict, much like The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) ads that launched recently and were criticized on our site. “But it still keeps the user staring at the brand’s messaging for three to four minutes,” he added.

Tapulous conducted a similar campaign recently promoting Paramount’s G.I. Joe movie. In that instance, the game was played by users five million times in the 10 days leading up to the movie’s premiere.

The difference with this launch is the user-generated component. Users can either create a background based on pre-designed templates from Tapulous, or a more professional version can be made using an Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) PhotoShop file. The theme most representative of the movie will be the one chosen for the actual game, but user’s will be able to use the theme they create if they wish. Believe it or not, but the ultimate prize is a design job at Tapulous. Lacy said he figured it was the best chance for a candidate to show off their ability (of course he makes not promises as to whether the position will be filled this way). The contest kicked off Tuesday, and voting will take place Monday through Wednesday with a winner being announced Thursday, the day before the movie launches on the Sept. 18.

Besides, the movie deal with 20th Century Fox, Lacy said the company is nearly ready with its third general release of its general iPhone app, Tap Tap Revenge 3. The new release will have two versions—free and paid. Lacy said the paid app will have more features, and more importantly, will enable in-app purchases, so that people can upgrade and buy new songs to play or other content—without having to leave the application. The functionality was just released by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in the iPhone 3.0 operating system release.

In addition, Lacy said they are close to releasing their sixth premium application that will be branded by their largest musical artist yet. Other artists that have released versions include: Lady Gaga, ColdPlay, Weezer and Dave Matthews. Lacy wouldn’t say who the artist is, but in June, Tapulous announced a partnership with Universal Music to make at least six games based on their artists, which range from Eminem to Black Eyed Peas. The premium games cost $4.99 each. Overall, the company’s plethora of games have been downloaded 14 million times and played by users about 60 million times.