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Last week, the Federal Communications Commission built upon its growing new media prowess with the launch of its own iPhone and Android applications.

The FCC's new apps allow users to test the speed of mobile broadband services and report deadzones where mobile broadband is not available. The FCC iPhone app is a free download from iTunes or the Android marketplace.

If you're an adventure seeker with a penchant for storytelling you'll be happy to hear that Google is giving you the visuals you need to illustrate your tales of bravery. In a blog post written by Google Earth Product Manager Peter Birch, the company has updated its iPhone application. While we've always been big fans of the Google Earth desktop version, the company released its iPhone app in 2008 with new attention to the mobile accelerometer and touch features of the iPhone. Users pinched, tapped and tilted their way to stunning satellite views of mountain ranges and far away terrain. The application update builds on these features but adds a touch of the personal.

In the mobile world, it's been long established that applications are the key selling point for Apple's iPhone. At the end of June the company reported a record 5.2 million iPhones sold in its third quarter - a 600% increase over the same time frame a year earlier. Steve Jobs was proud to announce that more than 1.5 billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store. Unsurprisingly, according to a new survey released by Compete, 72% of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more applications to their devices. Meanwhile, in comparison only 27% of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or more applications.

Following successful iPhone and Android app releases, WhitePages is releasing a mobile application for BlackBerry users. WhitePages Mobile will be available in the BlackBerry App World this Thursday.

WhitePages Director of Monetization & Mobile, Bret Moore, said, "While we have seen tremendous success and uptake from our iPhone and Android apps as well as the newly relaunched m.WhitePages.com, we wanted to design something new with the power BlackBerry user in mind."

Users are bombarded with new sites and apps that spring up every five seconds. It's becoming increasingly difficult to know what's the next big thing and what's just more noise and clutter.

Enter new media marketing for new media products! A rash of online promo videos for social products show how Internet and mobile entrepreneurs have taken lessons from traditional broadcast advertising as much as they have from YouTube.

Recession? What recession? According to a survey from ABI Research, many U.S. consumers are spending hundreds of dollars per year on mobile applications. Over 15 percent of those surveyed had spent nearly $100 over the past twelve months and a surprising 16.5 percent had spent between $100 and $500 during that same time frame.

Hint: They're Using iPhone Apps

The newspaper industry is in a downward death spiral, having been severely impacted by new technologies, the ubiquity of internet access, and a rise in citizen journalism. Here in the U.S., some papers are filing for bankruptcy, others are close to doing the same, and there's even a proposal to give the newspaper industry a bailout plan of its own. Elsewhere in the world, it's more of the same. In Japan though, the country's high population of elderly citizens is keeping the papers afloat...for now, at least. But like everywhere else, they will soon have to face the future: young people don't do newsprint.

Netflix lovers out there, rejoice! You can now manage your Netflix queue right from your desktop using a new Adobe AIR application called Queued. Created as a demonstration of how AIR and the Dojo Toolkit can be used together to create rich hybrid applications, Queued is open-source, BSD-licensed software. Although the point for Queued's existence may have be to demo different types of technology, the end result is definitely something we all can enjoy.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, MySpace just made some major announcements. They've announced plans to develop mobile applications for the Nokia S60 as well as the much-anticipated Palm Pre. However, for most of us, the bigger news is the relaunch of the MySpace Mobile web site which will occur this week. Yet even with the updated branding and new user interface elements introduced by the revamped site, we wonder: will it be enough to win users back from Facebook?

The Android Market was designed to be the one-stop shop for all G-1 users to download applications for their mobile handsets. As such, it had a great deal in common with the Apple iTunes App Store - save for one specific feature: the ability for developers to charge for their apps. Now, even that feature will be common between the two application stores as the Android Market prepares to release support for priced applications.