Verizon Wireless (VZ) is holding a media event today to share more details on its Google Android-powered Droid handsets. Below is a live-blog of the event.

9:20 a.m. EST: Attendees are filing in to a small conference room at the W Hotel in New York. Not much on display, other than a poster reading “Droid Era Begins in 00:00 Seconds” that shows the device. Motorola (MOT) and Verizon branding are prominent, with four icons at the bottom of the screen. Someone in the room is talking about the “iDon’t Care” spoof of the “Droid Does” ad campaign.

9:32: Jim Gerace, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, kicks off the event, introducing Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha and Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton.

9:33: “This is a pretty exciting day for us,” Stratton says. Motorola has been “a critical part of this story,” calling Motorola, Google (GOOG) and Verizon Wireless three great brands that have come together on Droid.

9:34: “We get to a pretty intriguing device” because of this partnership, Jha says. Running multiple applications at the same time, broadband capability, a robust Web browser that renders pages the way they look on desktop PCs, will all become increasingly important, he says. Also messaging: Voice, Exchange email, Gmail, other POP and IMAP interfaces, he adds

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Until this summer, U.S. consumers interested in owning an Android-powered cellphone were limited to T-Mobile’s G1. But the Google (GOOG) operating system is appearing in a slew of new handsets by HTC, Samsung, LG and Motorola (MOT).

The specs for Samsung’s newest Android phone, the I5700 Galaxy Lite, leaked in an online video that made its way around the Web Tuesday. The lower-cost, touch-screen device will have 1 GB of memory and a 3.2-megapixel camera. Its predecessor, the Galaxy I5700, also running Android, has 8 GB of memory and a five-megapixel camera. It launched in Europe over the summer.

Also Tuesday, HTC introduced its fourth Android mobile phone, the Tattoo, which will be available in Europe in October.

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For the growing number of tech companies developing safety measures for texting while driving, the reasons are often personal.

Matt Howard, a co-founder of Reston, Va.-based Zoomsafer, began work on the service after nearly hitting a neighbor’s son while texting in his car. Looking for an application for his BlackBerry that could prevent that from happening, he was surprised to see nothing available. Zoomsafer’s BlackBerry app is now scheduled to become available in a few weeks, followed by versions for Windows Mobile and Google (GOOG) Android.

Timothy Smith, chairman of Aegis Mobility, heard about the company from someone who lost his son to a driver talking on his cellphone.

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Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt “resigned” from Apple’s (AAPL) board because Chrome and Android were encroaching on Apple’s core business, or so Steve Jobs says. But what if the opposite were true? What if Apple is encroaching on Google’s core business? Later this month, Apple is expected to break ground on a massive new data center in Maiden, North Carolina.

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All ears will be on what Motorola (MOT) has to say about phones using Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system when the company reports Q2 earnings this Thursday, writes Broadpoint/Amtech analyst Mark McKechnie in a note to clients today. McKechnie has a “Neutral” rating on the stock and believes the business excluding handsets–meaning embedded and networking products–is worth about $5 per share, with the rest of the value being an “option” on success with Google down the road.

McKechnie’s estimate for the June quarter is a bit above the Street, at a net loss of 3 cents per share on sales of $5.7 billion versus the Street at -$.04 and $5.6 billion. He also believes the company can deliver more than expected in the September quarter as Android-based handsets begin to show up in its results.

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After Google (GOOG) announced it was working on an operating system based on its Chrome Web browser this week, many wondered: Didn’t Google already build an operating system? And isn’t it called Android?

Not so fast. At a joint T-Mobile and Google media event Friday morning, Google’s director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin, said Chrome OS isn’t a substitute for mobile operating systems like Android, which have to solve many problems unique to mobile phones, such as managing battery life and ensuring calls don’t drop as a user is moving between cell towers.

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Google (GOOG) today announced AdSense for Mobile Applications, a service that allows developers to display text and image ads in applications for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Google Android operating systems.

Google says it has been testing the system with a small number of partners for the base few months, and is not ready to open up the beta to a larger number of developers.

“In order to continue growing the mobile application market, developers need to make money to fund their projects,” Google said in a statement.

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Last night’s “Charlie Rose” featured an interview with Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon (VZ), who talked about communications in Iran, the company’s prospects for carrying Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and the recent news that Verizon Wireless will carry a Google (GOOG) Android-powered cellphone.

Mr. Seidenberg called Iranian citizens’ use of technology and wireless communications “a great thing,” saying “for us as a network operator, it’s the network effect. The more people on a network, the more valuable the entire network becomes. There’s no question in my mind that that model will get repeated over and over and over again.”

He also said that efforts to block Internet use in China, Iran and other countries will only work for a short time. “It can’t work long term. The power of the people will override that without any question. And it’ll happen sooner than they think because the technology is just too pervasive.”

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Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar this morning upped his rating on Apple (AAPL) to Buy from Hold, setting a $170 price target.

Kumar contends that Apple will gain share in the smart phone segment from both Research In Motion (RIMM) and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Mobile. He also writes that Google (GOOG) Android is “positioned to be a winner” in the sector.

So back to Apple. Kumar says that a low bill of materials should enable Apple to hit a $99 price point on an 8GB iPhone, stimulating demand. He says a launch with China Mobile (CHL) “is an additional near-term catalyst.” Further out, he thinks the launch of what he calls the “iPhone nano” in the first half of 2010 should help Apple further expand its share of the smart phone segment.

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If you believe one Washington State software company, PC giant Dell (DELL) is coming out with a netbook that uses Google’s (GOOG) operating system instead of Microsoft (MSFT) software.

Google Android OS was developed for smart phones, but it’s proven attractive to makers of other devices, like netbooks, for its potential to break their dependency on Microsoft software and Intel (INTC) chips.

Unlike Microsoft’s Windows software–which most netbooks currently use–Android is free. And it runs on chips that use ARM architecture, which are made by companies other than Intel. As the WSJ reported in April, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has been looking at Android for possible future netbooks.

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How secure is your smartphone? We may find out next month.

Hackers and computer security experts gathering on March 18 in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the third annual Pwn2Own contest will be targeting five smartphones: an Apple (AAPL) iPhone, a Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry and phones running on Google’s (GOOG) Android, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile and Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian operating systems.

The contest, sponsored by 3Com’s (COMS) TippingPoint computer security division, will award $10,000 prizes to anyone who can break into one of the phones and “pwn” it–hacker and Internet-gamer slang meaning to conquer or gain ownership. The smartphones themselves will be awarded as prizes to whomever cracks them first.

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The cellphone is the world’s most ubiquitous computer. The four billion cellphones in use around the globe carry personal information, provide access to the Web and are being used more and more to navigate the real world. And as cellphones change how we live, computer scientists say, they are also changing how we think about information.

It has been 25 years since the desktop, with its files and folders, was introduced as a way to think about what went on inside a personal computer. The World Wide Web brought other ways of imagining the flow of data. With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map.

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Groans are issuing from the Googleplex over this year’s holiday bonus. In the past, the search engine paid cash–as much as $20,000 or $30,000 per Googler, we hear. This year? A cellphone.

Oh, but not just any cellphone: A version of the G1 currently sold for $179.99 by T-Mobile, which runs Google’s Android operating system. Android is the fruit of Google founders’ Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s strange obsession with the wireless market, launched in a fit of jealousy over the growing number of phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. (Imagine that: Google, jealous of Microsoft for a change.)

In an email, Google management blames the economic crisis and suggests that this is a great opportunity to “dogfood” the phones–an unappetizing tech-industry euphemism for testing products in-house. This is what has become of the company that was once deemed the best place in the world to work: Canceled bonuses and unpaid labor.

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There’s nothing new about mobile computing. In the early ’90s, the industry promised a range of devices, from tablets to mini-laptops to smaller handheld PDAs. Apple’s (AAPL) pioneering offering, the 1993 Newton Message Pad, sought to deliver a sophisticated new operating system and development environment running a unique new platform based upon low-power, ARM RISC processors the company co-developed with Acorn.

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Having followed activity in the BlackBerry ecosystem over the past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that BlackBerry Storm should be called BlackBerry Stealth. Why? With little media coverage, its forthcoming launch is the sleeper play in the smartphone market; it is poised to make major market penetration on its launch later this fall. Let’s look at the reasons. …

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