The iPhone has leapfrogged Windows Mobile to jump into the number two position for smartphone platforms in the United States. That news could be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back for the floundering Windows Mobile operating system.

The latest ComScore report shows that Windows Mobile market share is stagnant for the year. After climbing to 7 million users in May, Windows Mobile market share dropped precipitously to 6.6 million in July, then scratched its way back to 7.1 million in October--most likely due to the release of Windows Mobile 6.5

The dust hasn't yet completely settled from the frenzy of Google Nexus One phone rumors--in fact there is still ongoing debate about whether the Nexus One will be direct from Google, but that hasn't stopped us from moving on to a new rumor that Google is also developing a Google-branded netbook.

Assuming the rumors are true, it begs the question of what Google's larger strategy is, and what its vision for the future looks like. Developing and marketing hardware are not what we expect from Google.

Research in Motion (RIM)--maker of the popular BlackBerry line of smartphones, confirmed an email outage earlier today. The issue has since been resolved, and RIM reports that service is back to normal, but it's never good for marketing or public relations to have the word "outage" come up.

In an e-mailed statement, RIM noted "Some customers may still experience delays as email queues are processed." The statement summed up with "RIM is continuing to investigate the cause of the issue and apologizes for any inconvenience."

McDonald's announced that it is going to provide free Wi-Fi access starting in January 2010 at 11,000 McDonald's locations across the nation. It's about time.

Two summers ago I did a cross-country road trip with my family. It was a "working vacation" so I sat in the passenger seat pecking away on my laptop as we traversed this great nation. Every once in a while, I would need to find a Wi-Fi hotspot to check in with the real world.

The antitrust lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is nothing new to Intel. Intel has a history of unfair competition and antitrust lawsuits and litigation spanning almost two decades. Here is a brief chronology of Intel's legal woes.

•1991. AMD files an antitrust lawsuit against Intel.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, alleging that the tech giant used its dominant market position to stifle competition and expand its monopoly. The FTC is pretty late to the party, though, and at this point, even if the accusations are proven true, its really too little, too late.

The FTC complaint claims that Intel engaged in a wide range of anti-competitive and predatory business practices and alleges that Intel "threatened to and did increase prices, terminate product and technology collaborations, shut off supply, and reduce marketing support to OEMs that purchased too many products from Intel's competitors."

The European Union is dropping its antitrust case against Microsoft in the wake of an agreement between Microsoft and European antitrust litigators to provide European users with more choice. Beginning in 2010, and extending over the next five years, Microsoft will allow European users to select the Web browser they use with Microsoft Windows using a ballot screen.

Beginning in March of 2010, Microsoft will push out an update to existing users of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 in Europe with a choice screen that will allow them to choose from twelve different Web browser options. New installations of the Windows operating systems will also receive the "Choice Screen Update" through 2015.

Reports that a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader is being exploited in the wild have been confirmed by Adobe in a blog post. Adobe is exploring the issue to determine how to patch it, but you're on your own in the meantime.

The popular PDF document format has made the Adobe Reader software virtually ubiquitous. Few software products are installed so pervasively that they exist on nearly every system regardless of operating system. For malware developers, targeting flaws in Adobe Reader offers an exceptionally large potential for victims.

The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear a case related to the expectation of privacy in the workplace. The case in question involves public employees, but the decision could have consequences that reverberate to private organizations as well, and impact efforts to maintain regulatory compliance.

Police officers in California sued the Ontario police department after learning that the police chief had read text messages sent from their department-issued devices, some of which were sexually-explicit messages sent to personal contacts.

The options for shortening long URL's to a more manageable length are quickly proliferating with both Google and Facebook getting into the link shortening game. The shortened URL's are easier to send via e-mail, and they are a requirement for Twitter's 140-character limitation, but they also introduce security risks.

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