RCR Wireless closed its doors yesterday, after 25 years in the wireless business. With over five times the tenure, I have to admit, we enjoyed the competition.

The publication tried to stay hip to the times, but when the Web 2.0 economy met the Global Recession economy, they had to shut down. This isn’t a post to mock them… it’s pretty clear that they did what they could to keep an old-world publishing platform as modern as it could be.

But, what really scratched my head about RCR, was how it couldn’t find a niche. It tried to be the insider journal in all-things-wireless. With huge over-the-top overheads, I was amazed each year that the bought up massive floor space at CTIA. It’s pretty clear that was running on ad budgests that shrank to zero when the economy declined. And, while they did try to compete with PhoneNews.com in the device and carrier news… it wasn’t an earnest enough effort. They couldn’t gain a new niche, and lost the old one at the same time.

This is really a lesson in rolling with the punches. We’ve certainly learned that here at PhoneNews.com in this economy. But, we intend to stay in the game. We’re honored to maintain viewership that we have, and we intend to keep delivering the same quality of news… no matter how bad it gets out there.

Shortly after we posted all the old iPhone firmware download links on our Apple Phone Encyclopedia section, Apple has taken them offline.

It’s pretty clear why they did this… old iPhone firmwares are only useful to those who hack the iPhone. And, by taking them offline, Apple ensures that it’s one step harder to obtain the tools needed to unlock the iPhone.

Our real question is… why did Apple let those firmwares stay up for this long? iPhone has been out for nearly two years, before Apple pulled the plug on hosting old firmware versions.

And, we think we know the answer. Apple recently asked the U.S. Copyright Office to not remove iPhone hacks from the list of DMCA-protected acts, and took the legal opinion (two years too late) that hacking your iPhone is illegal. This came as the EFF is asking the USCO to make iPhone hacking unquestionably legal, by removing any DMCA vaguries via an exemption.

Thus, Apple couldn’t keep tacitly permitting jailbreaking. Apple of course wants to support jailbreaking, so long as it doesn’t become mainstream (since jailbreaking keeps the Apple base happy, but without being popular enough to undermine their business model). So, as Apple asks the USCO to change the rules of the game, they have to remove the old firmwares… keeping their policy consistent on all fronts.

One final thing… Apple left up the original iPhone old firmwares, while only pulling the iPhone 3G old firmwares. It’s pretty clear that Apple doesn’t care if original iPhones get hacked, which is supported by their lack of attempts to protect the SIM lock on it. Unlocking original iPhones help maintain the resale value of Apple products in general… boosting Apple’s bottom line, by reducing the cost difference between old-and-new models.

They’re being mailed! We’ve gotten quite a few emails from people that didn’t read the details… and didn’t notice that we had to hold the gift cards for 30 days.

To review, we had to begin holding the Best Buy gift cards for 30 days, because some took it upon themselves to return the free phone. Why they wanted to return a free phone… I have no idea. But, we can’t pay people for sending back a phone (that actually winds up costing more when you factor in the return shipping).

So, those are being mailed out as we speak. We’ve mailed a good third of them already, and we expect everyone’s to be sent out in the mail… by week’s end.

And yes, for the new challenge (announced this morning), there will also be a 30 day hold. Don’t blame us, blame the geniuses that decided to return a free phone.

Some may be thinking that just because MechaWorks is growing, means that PhoneNews.com is going to be set in its ways.

We’ve certainly not given off that impression, with the launch of PhoneNews.com Cashback kicking the year off. But, I can certainly understand why some people might be thinking that we’ve aimed at locking down the feature set here.

Well, we’ve been talking about that a lot internally. And, the answer really is, that’s the worst thing we could be doing. Now, I can’t announce what we’re working on, but I can detail a few things.

First, there will be a news expansion this year. I can’t go into too many details, but safe to say that if you like getting phone news from PhoneNews.com, we aren’t going to disappoint there. Part of the problem is balancing our mainstream viewership, with our tech-savvy viewership. We think we’ve got a good way to address that, along with a few other tricks up our sleeve.

Launching a bunch of new sites is inherently a bumpy process. But, it’s also given us a chance to experiment in ways that we wouldn’t be able to easily otherwise. So, while we’re expanding our other sites, we’ve tested a few improvements that have already been a success. You’ll see those ported over to PhoneNews.com in the very near future.

We’ve already announced an expansion and renovation will be coming to the PhoneNews.com Forums. That’s still on-track for this year.

The Phone Encyclopedia has certainly proven to be a powerful tool. You’ve made it the most popular part of the site… second to the news itself, of course. We’re working on new ways to make it even better, and you’ll see those later this year.

PhoneNews.com Cashback has already proven itself a success, and as promised, we’re going to continue expanding it.

Finally, we realize searching around PhoneNews.com is, well, a pain. Unified search is on its way… so that every search box, on every part of the site… will search every part of the site, consistently and up-to-date.

So, as you can see, we’re certainly not resting at MechaWorks on PhoneNews.com. A huge part of this expansion will be dependent on bringing new, talented people into the company… and we’re going to get on that right away. Our move, to Silicon Valley next month, is only going to help with that.

HTC screwed up and forgot to send us the embargoed press release. They’re in the process of groveling at our feet for forgiveness right now.

And, we have to apologize to you, in turn. Because HTC didn’t send us the details, it will take us awhile to give you a full report. Developing…

Some of you are wondering what the status is on T-Mobile Cashback. We delayed both Verizon Cashback and T-Mobile Cashback to make sure they would both work great from day one.

But, to make really sure everything works properly, we’re rolling out Verizon Cashback today, and T-Mobile Cashback will launch tomorrow.

Stay tuned, and be sure to check back all the new Cashback additions today, over on PhoneNews.com Cashback.

Update (9/15): Sorry for the delay folks, we ran into a show-stopping bug in an unannounced project… and I just finished hours of bug regression. We’ll try to get T-Mobile Cashback out the door today.

Update (9/17): Sorry folks, as I noted on my own blog, AT&T did not properly install my new fiber line. And, all the data for enabling T-Mobile Cashback was on the systems over there. AT&T says they’ll fix that line later today, and then we’ll get T-Mobile Cashback online.

PhoneNews.com Cashback went offline early this morning, we hope to have it patched and back online later tonight. We’ll keep you updated.

Don’t worry if you placed an order, but didn’t fill out the cashback form. You can just fill it out when finish tweaking things.

Update: We’ve pinpointed a couple of issues. We could fix them by wiping everything out and copying it back over, but the server guys like to get to the bottom of this stuff… so that it doesn’t bite us in the rear end later. We’re hoping to have everything back online today.

When we started offering full RSS feeds, we did so because we had great partners at FeedBurner. Over the past several months, FeedBurner has been acquired and integrated into Google. We’ve migrated all our services over… but, there is a problem.

With the decline in the economy, Google has really done a number on RSS feed advertising rates… far worse than on any level that we expected. Plus, our readership tends to avoid RSS advertising to begin with (i.e. you don’t click on ads in general). So, we’re having to draw a line somewhere.

Until Google can improve the RSS ad market, or until someone else comes along… we’re going to have to end running full articles in RSS. We hope that this is only temporary. Really, we do. For well over a year we ran RSS feeds with a significant operating loss, versus running RSS summaries. In this economy, we can’t do that, especially with no bright outlook on the RSS ad market.

I know this is going to make some people upset, and for that, I apologize. We’re going to make sure our article summaries in RSS are more than enough to give you the news that you need to know, and click through for the full in-depth analysis that you’ve come to expect.

Because the staff is all moving around, mostly due to CES, cashback payments from PhoneNews.com Cashback may be delayed today. We just wanted to give folks a heads up, we’ll have cashback payments at the normal speed later today, hopefully before the evening.

We’re still integrating CentralGadget.com into the MechaWorks network of sites. Why does that matter to you? Well, we’re still shaking up the coverage… so hang in there while we’re sorting things out.

Ideally, we’re going to have all mobile news on PhoneNews.com, with key mobile news on CentralGadget.com. But, especially with the brutal back-to-back Macworld and CES… we may not get that perfect until after the shows.

But, while we’re tweaking things… why not sign up for both? Park both in your feed reader and get the best tech and mobile coverage.