• San Diego-based GreatCall, creators of the Jitterbug cell phone, unveiled plans to expand operations, officially breaking ground on the construction of a new customer care and sales call center in Carlsbad, Calif., today. The new 23,400-square-foot customer care and sales call center is scheduled to begin business operations in May and will accommodate more than 200 employees.
• Sprint announced that for the fourth consecutive year, NFL fans can watch NFL Network’s broadcast of the NFL Draft live on April 25-26 on their Sprint TV-enabled phones and receive other exclusive wireless NFL Draft content from Sprint via NFL Mobile Live.
• Samsung Mobile announced the availability of the Samsung Propel Pro, a chrome slider smartphone powered by AT&T’s 3G network and the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. The Pro, which has a qwerty keyboard, offers access to multiple e-mail accounts with Microsoft Direct push for corporate users and AT&T Xpress Mail, which includes access to most major personal e-mail accounts.
• Utah.Gov, the official Web site of the state of Utah, announced the release of the free “Utah.Gov” and “Utah Professional License Lookup” iPhone applications, available immediately through the Apple iTunes Store. Utah says it is the first state government to develop and release an iPhone application.
• Palo Alto Networks says Cricket Communications has upgraded its data center infrastructure with PA-4000 Series next-generation firewalls for high-performance threat prevention. Deployed as a replacement for its current data center firewall, the platform is also allowing Cricket to consolidate a number of other devices for security and traffic management.
• Nuance Communications revealed findings that show consumers are more demanding than ever and require access to customer care directly from their mobile devices. The results of a Yankee Group study revealed that 62 percent of users said they want to bypass automated systems and be given an opportunity to use their mobile phone screen to complete simple inquiries that should not require agent intervention.
• Online travel itinerary and trip planning service TripIt is offering TripIt for iPhone. The free application for the Apple iPhone displays a traveler’s detailed itinerary on their mobile phone.
• Continuous Computing announced support for OCTEON II Processors from Cavium Networks. The company also announced that it is now a Cavium PACE (Partnership to Accelerate Customer End-solutions) member, which provides Continuous Computing with the opportunity to optimize its Trillium Long Term Evolution (LTE) protocol software to support the OCTEON II architecture, offering network equipment providers solutions for LTE network infrastructure.
• RF Monolithics reported sales for the second quarter of $6.6 million, compared with sales of $13.7 million for the second quarter of the prior year. The company reported a net loss of $1.5 million.
• Molex announced that it has purchased the equipment assets of the Motorola Antenna/EMC Measurement Lab in Aalborg, Denmark. Molex will use the lab for RF research projects to further advance its antenna technologies for wireless applications.