4 billion SMS messages in a day

Twice a year, the organization representing the wireless industry puts out
a bunch of facts and figures on how much we're using our phones in the
U.S., and each time, I can't help but marvel at the results.

The big number this time around, according to the CTIA: In the past six
months alone, Americans sent an estimated 740 billion text messages, which
comes out to about 4.1 billion messages each day.

Put another way: That's 11.7 text messages a day for every man, woman, and
child in the country. (Of course, the average American teen can fire off 11
text messages in the time it takes you to read this paragraph.)

Or, how about this: An SMS has a maximum capacity of 160 characters, so
let's say (for the sake of example) that your average text message is about
80 characters long. And let's assume that your average novel contains about
100,000 words, and each word has about five letters.

Six charged by Federal prosecutors

Federal prosecutors have charged a prominent hedge-fund manager and five
others with securities fraud resulting from insider trading involving some
of the tech industry's best-known companies, including Intel, Google, and
IBM.

Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group was arrested Friday in New York according
to various reports and charged with 13 counts of securities fraud and
conspiracy following a FBI investigation into Galleon Group's trading
patterns. Also charged in the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for
the Southern District of New York, were co-conspirators Rajiv Goel of Intel
and Anil Kumar of McKinsey, which provided consulting services to AMD.

ITC ruling case - Nokia wins

InterDigital, the King of Prussia, Pa., provider of wireless-technology
solutions and products, filed a complaint with the ITC, charging that Nokia
was selling certain third-generation cellular handsets and parts that
infringed four InterDigital patents.

On Friday, the companies said in statements that the ITC had reviewed and
affirmed the decision of an ITC administrative law judge that Nokia's
products did not infringe InterDigital's patents.

Nokia also said in its statement that the ITC "withdrew the portion of the
[administrative law judge's] initial determination that had found the
patents valid."

The Espoo, Finland, company /quotes/comstock/13*!nok/quotes/nls/nok (NOK
13.48, -0.20, -1.46%) said that InterDigital had asserted that its patents
were essential elements of the UMTS third-generation mobile standard. The
ITC decision is consistent with a "previous judgment in the U.K. that found
several InterDigital patents not to be essential to the UMTS mobile
standard," Nokia said.

NokiaSiemens won a network expansion order from UCell

NokiaSiemens Networks informed on Monday that it has won a network
expansion order from UCell, the number two mobile operator in Uzbekistan,
but did not disclose the value of the deal.

Microsoft files lawsuits against 'malvertisers'

Microsoft Corp on Thursday filed five civil lawsuits in Seattle, Washington against alleged "malvertisers."
Malvertising is the term used to describe harmful online advertising and works by camouflaging malicious code as harmless online advertisements, Microsoft's associate general counsel Tim Cranton wrote in a blog. "The lawsuits allege that individuals using the business names "Soft Solutions," "Direct Ad," "qiweroqw.com," "ITmeter Inc" and "ote2008.info" used malvertisements to distribute malicious software or present deceptive websites that peddled scareware to unsuspecting Internet users," he said.

Intel gears up for mobile battle

Intel has slashed the power consumption of its new "Moorestown" chip platforms for mobile devices, a big boost for its efforts to grab a slice of a booming market for chips in cellphones and other consumer electronics.
Anand Chandrasekher, a senior vice president at Intel and general manager for the ultra mobility group, also said the company is open to joining forces with the world's largest cellphone maker, Nokia, on a Linux-based operating system. Analysts have previously said Intel's chip-and-chipset platforms will be too power-hungry for portable consumer electronics and cellphones, when compared with rival platforms based on ARM Holdings Plc architecture.

iPhone 3GS

iPhone 3GS

The first video advert inside a paper magazines

The small screen, built into a cardboard insert, contains an advert for Pepsi Max and trailers for US TV network, CBS.

There are also in-built speakers, so the viewer can hear the advert too.

"This is an extraordinary way to refresh how we interact with consumers," said Pepsi-Cola's chief marketing officer, Frank Cooper.

Chip technology is used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - which is activated when the page is turned.

The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries.

Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video.

BBC News' Los Angeles correspondent, Rajesh Mirchandani, said that the magazine advert was mounted inside a cardboard insert, so it was "instantly distinguishable from a normal flimsy page".
CBS and Pepsi won't say how much this limited commercial trial is costing, but manufacturers Americhip told BBC News that a multi-thousand print run with built-in screens would cost in the region of US $20 (around £13) for each magazine.

This has prompted criticism from some quarters, saying that the internet has already been delivering video-embedded-in-text for some time.

Windows 7 Upgrades Could Take Over 20 Hours To Complete

Upgrading your operating system using the “in-place” approach has always come at the cost of some performance and stability, but never would we have imagined that it could take up to 20 hours to complete!

According to a new study released by Microsoft software engineer Chris Hernadez, upgrade times can range wildly depending upon your hardware configuration, and the amount of data it needs to migrate during the install. The worst time recorded during their testing was a whopping 20 hours and 20 minutes for a “Super User” that had roughly 650Gb of data, and about 40 applications installed prior to the upgrade. This might sound like a pretty niche scenario to some of you, but I imagine at least a few of our readers (myself included) fall into this category.

GPush - Push Gmail to iPhone

One of the battles against the iPhone has long been a lack of push email, a
feature that is crucial for many business customers who live in their
inboxes. It is one of the great benefits that BlackBerry has the iPhone,
especially for business users, and although the iPhone 3.0 software update
added support for push notifications, Apple does not update the phone's
built-in e-mail program to push.

A new 99-cent application from Tiverias Apps called GPush (iTunes link)
aims to change that. Call GPush simple would be an understatement - this
app is literally a one-track mind. All it does is give the press notices of
new mail in Gmail. It does not open emails or send emails, it just lets you
know when the new arrival as soon as they arrive, and whatever you do.

Facebook acquires online feed aggregator FriendFeed for $50 million

Social networking site Facebook has acquired FriendFeed one of the online
feed aggregator that allows users to consolidate and share updates, in real
time, from social networking websites, social bookmarking sites, blogs and
micro-blogging sites,and other RSS feed.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not yet disclosed but The Wall
Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter, reports that
Facebook has paid approximately $50 million for FriendFeed, in a
combination of cash and stock offer where the cash component is pegged at
about $15 million.