Smartphone unit sales are soaring, with sales almost tripling between 2004 and 2005, and increasing a further 50% in the first half of 2006 compared to the previous year.
Figures revealed by the high-tech market research firm In-Stat reveal that the Windows Mobile operating system has now managed to grab an equal slice of the US market share with smartphone big boys, BlackBerry and Palm.
Bill Hughes, an analyst at the research firm says that much of 2005’s soaring smartphone shipment growth was down to a run on Linux-based handset shipments in Asia at the end of the year.
However, he’s a bit sniffy about calling these phones – mainly from Motorola, NEC, and Panasonic – proper smartphones because they don’t possess the same high end functionality seen in Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Palm OS devices.
Although the Linux-based handsets are capable of running Java-powered applications added by users, Hughes reckons they should really be called ‘feature phones’ rather than smartphones.
Despite the spectacular sales, Hughes advised caution, pointing out that many smartphone users continue to lug around the very devices that smartphones are supposed to replace.
“Also, users have been slow to add new applications to their devices. Most users have only downloaded a few applications,” he added.
Other research by In-Stat found that business users given work phones were three times more likely to carry a second phone for their personal calls than other users.
Nintendo’s eagerly awaited 
The first punter to get his hands on the shiny new console was the time-rich Isaiah Triforce Johnson, who had sat outside a New York store for more than a week.
Sony had shipped 400,000 PlayStation 3s in North American stores at the end of last week, but Nintendo boasted that it would have “five to ten” times as many Wiis available at launch, with an end-of-year shipping figure of 4 million units expected.
LG’s flip-open VX9900 business phone has been scheduled for a November 27th US launch date on Verizon’s network.
With the 262k color TFT LCD running at just QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution, we reckon users would have preferred the more capacious 640×200 offered by the Communicator.
LG have gone to town on Bluetooth 1.2 wireless connectivity options, with the VX9900 supporting HSP (headset), HFP (hands-free), DUN (dial-up networking), A2DP (advanced audio distribution), SPP (serial port), AVRCP (audio/video remote control), BPP (printing) and HID (human interface device) profiles.
As new media continues to challenge the traditional means of delivering music, video and other digital content, copyright lawyers can expect to get rich in the legal fall out.
“We have been keeping UMG closely apprised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights, and it’s unfortunate they decided to file this unnecessary and meritless litigation,” the statement said.
Just over nine out of every 10 e-mails sent worldwide are junk, with a “spam tsunami” flooding inboxes with relentless junk advertising.
Because each hijacked PC only sends out a relatively small amount of spam, they’re not detected by anti-spam networks and thus avoid being blacklisted on industry spamlists.
Spamhaus blames much of the problem on ISP’s who either fail to stop the spammers or do nothing to stop them through mismanagement or good old fashioned corporate greed.
Although many media players offer the facility to burn MP3 music tracks, the job is often made unnecessarily complex by fiddly menus or hard to find options.
The configuration tab lets you can customise output file name formats, add files to playlists (PLS or MPU), change output file directories, choose your CD-ROM source drive, change the rip offsets and turn jitter correction on/off.
It’s a shame that the program makes no attempt to tell people what the chuffin’ heck ‘CDDB’ means (it stands for ‘CD Data Base’ ), and it took us a while to figure out how to set CDex up to automatically download the information (Options > Settings > Remote CDDB, select “Auto connect to remote CDDB” and include an email address).
If you fancy yourself as a bit of a Cool Hand Luke kind of character when it comes to gambling, then Texas Hold’Em No Limit poker is a great way to practice your skills when you’re on the move.
Interface
For the asking price of $20, this a great little game for passing away spare hours on the train (or perhaps wasting time at the office) and for poker fans it could prove a nifty way to hone your bluffing skills.
A new YouGov survey has found that “free” broadband deals have resulted in lower customer satisfaction levels.
The service was the subject of a 
“It’s disappointing to see that the majority of providers are failing to accompany the growth in customer numbers by sufficient growth in customer service operations and the required investment in their technology to ensure that they are looking after customer needs in an acceptable manner,” said Steve Weller, communications chief services at uSwitch.
Handmark have released the latest version of their consumer survey-based dining, travel and leisure information program, Zagat To Go v5.0.
The program now carries survey rankings for over 25,000 restaurants and nightspots in 70+ cities, with automatic free content updates.
Zagat To Go v5.0 is available for the Palm OS, BlackBerry, motorola Q and other Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Smartphone platforms and comes as free upgrade for existing customers forking out the $29.95 yearly subscription fee.
Now, we understand that when you agree to install a beta product, you can expect a few glitches.
Immediately, we were plagued with time outs, and that ruddy annoying animated exclamation mark icon that appears when Blogger’s uploading became a near permanent fixture on our screen.
Google’s perpetual betas