When considering the future of the open web on mobile devices, it’s easy to see that the desktop’s days as top dog are numbered.

Nielsen Mobile, one of the many companies that pays close attention to such things, recently reported unique mobile internet usage has grown 73% since 2006 (PDF). And according to the blog ReadWriteWeb, mobile ad tracking service AdMob claims mobile web use has doubled in the last year.

Looking back, people may be able to pinpoint Internet Explorer on Windows CE as the introduction to the wireless internet on mobile phones. Opera argues its mobile browser played a large part as well. True as that may be, the release of the Safari browser on the iPhone was the tipping point towards truly closing the gap between the web experience on mobiles and on the desktop. Tech research firm ABI Research’s latest report predicts continuing, accelerating growth of real, full-featured browsers on mobiles. The lines are being blurred more quickly than ever.

When the iPhone was first released in 2007, the perception of mobile phones was that they existed as just another calculator-type tool, something you used to make phone calls, send text messages and maybe check a few movie times or sports scores. The iPhone introduced the idea of the phone being not just a tool and more like the desktop computer — maybe even something that can compete with it.

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Digital media and online steaming might be how most people my age get new music, but as a music fan, there is nothing I like more than to listen to a new CD while holding the jacket cover and checking to see what the name of each song is on the back of the album's case. Currently, I have the new Sugarland CD in the player, I've already gone though the jacket cover for the first of what will be many times and the back of the case is in plain view.

I can't confirm it, but I'm pretty sure I'm the first in Mountain Home to own the CD. I spent the first twenty minutes of this day waiting for them to dig it out of the back at Wal-Mart. The name of Sugarland's new CD is "Love on the Inside, deluxe fan edition." And let me tell you, there really is love on the inside. When you open it up, there are seventeen tracks of Jennifer Nettles' voice on the inside, the very definition of love. I love that voice. I can listen to it over and over and never get tired of hearing her.

She's so amazing that a few days ago I heard her doing an interview on the radio with band mate Kristian Bush while driving around town and had to make a conscious decision as to weather I was going to listen to the blond in the passenger seat or the blonde on the radio.

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Life's lessons. You can learn them the hard way; by making your own mistakes or you can learn them through the mistakes of others. I personally recommend the easier option of picking up on wisdom through movies. For the sake of this article, we’ll categorise movies which expound on life’s lessons as Life Movies.

Life Movies are movies about life. Arguably, all movies are, but unlike other movie genres, movies like these explore the measure of a life’s worth. They employ plots that revolve around life’s lessons and sometimes also the lessons we learn from the acceptance of death.Life Movies offer us the opposite experience of other genres like sci-fi, action and epic movies. Instead of escapism, we watch Life Movies to examine our own lives and get to discuss lessons applicable to the things we face on a day to day basis.

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Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. will be the vendor rolling out more than 200 speed cameras on state freeways after it was awarded a contract Thursday from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Scottsdale-based Redflex will be paid $20 million for the program, part of legislation passed this year to place the cameras along freeways after DPS took over a speed-monitored stretch of the Loop 101 set up by Scottsdale and run by Redflex.

"We're pleased to partner with the state on this first-of-a-kind project," said Cristina Weekes, Redflex's executive vice president for sales and marketing. The company will have 50 mobile and stationary speed cameras out by the end of September, with another 50 to be delivered by January 2009.

Few determinations have been made where the cameras will be going, but Redflex and DPS officials already have started those discussions, Weekes said. "Yesterday there were a lot of conversations on where they should go, but some of them will be in Phoenix and in the suburban areas," she said.

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In the PC market, Sony’s Vaio series maintains a mix of style and substance that few other manufacturers can come close to. The new Z series has all the brushed aluminium and solid state hard drive options that you’d expect at this price, but the really impressive feature could be the thorough integration of mobile broadband.

It means you need never be offline, although with an optional Blu-ray drive, you might want to turn the former feature off and relax with a decent movie.

The waiting game is over for technology lovers craving the uber-hyped iPhone, but not everyone who got their hands on the coveted gadget walked away happy.As of 8 a.m. ET, Rogers Plus stores in Toronto, Halifax and Ottawa had opened their doors to lineups of customers, some of whom had waited overnight to get their hands on the Apple iPhone.

A Rogers Plus store in Ottawa opened two hours early in anticipation of the demand for the Apple's sleek G3 iPhone. "The spirits are really high. There is lots of excitement but everyone is well behaved and enjoying themselves," said Henrietta Gibson, a spokeswoman for the Rogers chain in Ottawa. "The crowd is cheering as people come out of the store with their phones."

By 9 a.m., the store had sold 18 iPhones. Gibson said that seven sales associates were working Friday to meet the needs of the growing crowds. Usually, the store is only staffed by two or three employees. Not all anxious tech junkies, however, got what they were looking for Friday.

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Latest technological advances beckon today's gadget-freak teenagers and religiously devoted technocrats to the “world of digital delight”- offering top-of-the line and temptingly cheap digital cameras.

Earlier models of camera are becoming things of the past and are increasingly yielding shelf spaces to digital cameras in the shopping malls. In the past, cameras had bulky shapes, were inconvenient to handle and difficult to use. Times have changed with the advent of cheap digital cameras in today's market and people are now making a beeline to buy them at a feverish pitch.

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The piracy-riddled Chinese gaming market is still a tough nut to crack for makers of console videogames, but Nintendo is still making headway.

Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported this week that Nintendo has teamed up with a Taiwan cell phone company to sell the Nintendo DS Lite in its stores nationwide.

Thomson Financial, reporting the Nikkei story, goes on to note that Nintendo will "introduce (the DS Lite) it to the Chinese market by year-end." Of course, last we checked, it was already available in China as the iQue DS Lite -- so perhaps there's some kind of re-launch going on? Or someone has their facts wrong.

The nation's largest phone companies sell packages of wireless phone service, Internet access and pay TV to consumers. Now they're taking integration one step further, airing video programming and selling ads across all three platforms.

Content and advertising deals used to be struck separately for each platform. But Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., for instance, have cut deals with media companies that allow them to distribute programming from "Saturday Night Live" clips to user-generated video to cellphone, broadband and TV customers. Recently, the phone companies have begun to sell ads across all three screens. They're ...

Is Apple trying to take over the world? It seems as if Apple wants a finger in every pie they can get their hands into, what with their Macbooks ,iPhone, iPod, and accessories, and now they want to take over control of your living room. So just how do they intend to do this, well by replacing one of a home’s most treasured possessions, the remote control!

Yes Apple is looking to have their iPhone replace the humble remote control with a new app for the Apple iPhone which is due to launch when their much talked about Apple Apps Store goes live on July 11th.

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