If you’ve ever suffered a flakey mobile phone that keeps on freezing, dropping calls or generally screwing up you may have felt a near-uncontrollable urge to lob the thing as far as you can throw it.
Although we’ve always managed to resist the temptation to send our phones skywards (only just in the case of the Sony Ericsson T610), some sporty wags have managed to turn the act of throwing mobile phones into an annual competition.
Held last weekend in Savonlinna, Finland, the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship has been running since 2004 and offers four categories; Juniors, Original and Team Original and Freestyle.
The rules
In the first three categories, only a “traditional over the shoulder throw” is allowed, with one simple rule: the person or team who throws the phone the furthest wins.
However, the freestyle competition awards points for “style and aesthetics” with the overall appearance being “crucial,” with a competitor adding that three things were needed to be a long distance phone lobber; power, technical skills and a sense of humour.
Contestants were allowed to pick an old phone of their choice for the competition, with Finland’s Lassi Etelätalo managing to clinch the title with an impressive 89m throw,
Eija Laakso took first place in the woman’s category with a new world record throw of 50.83m
AOL has got out its digital scrubbing brush and polish and revamped its Web-based music download service, serving up a redesigned product that adds music videos, streaming radio and user community features. 
Another new feature sees more than 200 AOL radio stations and XM Satellite Radio being offered to subscribers, with the ability to browse the playlists of other subscribers. 
“It’s available to anyone to come to the service and search for songs,” said Amit Shafrir, president of AOL Music Now. 
BT Media and Broadcast the business to business outfit within BT’s Global services division has announced an alliance with Entriq. 
Headquartered in San Diego, California, Entriq have offices dotted around the world and have a host of existing big name broadcast customers that includes MTV Networks, NBC Universal and the UK’s Channel 4 television.
Apple have announced that they’re recalling 1.8 million laptop batteries including 1.1m in the US. This follows a 
Belkin showed off their new 802.11n draft 1.0 equipment today. They’ve announced an access point and wireless card to go with it, both should be available in the shops by September. Following that, an ADSL router will follow along with a USB adapter and PCI card. 
If it’s just for connecting to the Internet, the Internet connection is going to limit the speed so upgrading isn’t worth it, but for distributing video and music around the house, the speed increase will make a difference. 
We’ve all known for years that PVR’s have been eating TV advertising. Murdoch has been on top of this for ages too, which makes it all the more interesting to hear that his Fox network is using 2-second Blinks, adverts. 
Overall, Clear Channel Radio has experienced mixed results following Less Is More, though recent quarters have shown positive revenue increases. Clear Channel executives have credited those jumps to the shortened advertising slots, which address a major source of radio listener irritation. 
It’s been a cult movie staple for over 15 years but, from Friday, you’ll be able to interact with Mr Pink, Mr White, Nice Guy Eddie and the rest of Quentin Tarantino’s be-suited robbers as Eidos launches Reservoir Dogs, the game. 
We said the graphics were realistic but so is the dialogue and each level is accompanied by excerpts, with each character having over 200 lines. 
This approach includes the music. Eidos licensed all the original music from the film but more was required to fit the length of the game. Some was written in-house and additional tracks were licensed including some stupendously funky 70’s driving music to accompany the car chase. 
Desktop computing will be dead by the end of the decade and laptops will be following shortly after. That was the view of Graham Brown-Martin of Handheld Learning in an entertaining presentation at day two of the EIEF. 
As an illustration of this, and of his extremely cool mobile phone, Brown-Martin demonstrated a home made remix of the Snakes on a Plane teaser, edited with a mobile and a Macbook. The result was uploaded directly to YouTube from the phone then downloaded again (wirelessly) using a Nokia Internet tablet. 
If you haven’t already seen the fabulous Make: technology magazine, we suggest you toddle over to their Website to get a flavour of what’s on offer. 
The projects require varying levels of technical know-how and competence, but the down to earth writing style and clear illustrations should get you reaching for your tool kit in double quick time – or provide an engrossing read at the very least. 
We like Make: a lot. It’s fun, informative, wittily written and although it’s primarily aimed at adults, it’s a great way to get teenagers interested in science – even if some of the projects are more about having fun than pushing the envelope of science!