Today is October 5. That means that November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, is one month away.

While we don't celebrate this day in the US (it's not even a public holiday in the United Kingdom - it's only a yearly celebration), many of us know of this day thanks to the DC Comics / Vertigo graphic novel (comic book) series V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and its movie adaptation (with inimitable performances by Natalie Portman as Evey and Hugo Weaving as V).

Still, any "holiday" that gives people an excuse to light fireworks and go door-to-door begging for spare change sounds like something worth celebrating. So we at QJ.NET invite you to get into the spirit of things to remember, remember the 5th of November.

On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness - what moves us and affects us and touches us, and all the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten. Pretty much like the QuickJump QuickList articles in our Opinions & Analysis section at the front page and the other articles in the Opinions & Analysis sections of our many video game, science, and gadget blogs.

We invite you to plan ahead and consider what you want to remember on that day - because our articles obviously can't be the final word - that's what comments and the QJ.NET Forums are for. (Besides, now that we've turned off anonymous comments - and now that comments are smarter, funnier, and more meaningful - you have a good venue to share your reactions.)

We look forward to your thoughts. See you on the 5th of November.

Rob Mead at Tech.co.uk shared some of the "secrets" that were revealed at the Apple shareholder's meeting at Cupertino, California.

Third-party apps for iPhone. First, it seems that the iPhone will be open to third-party applications. Apple CEO Steve Jobs had said that the Apple iPhone wouldn't be open to third-party applications, that it would be a closed system based on Mac OS X (the goal was to make sure that the iPhone wouldn't be buggy). But it now seems that Mac developers are free to make apps for the iPhone.

Leopard delay. Steve Jobs also said that the delay of the launch of the Mac OS X Leopard operating system, the next version of Mac OS X, was partly due to the iPhone. According to Jobs, the issue isn't money; the issue is talent. It seems that Apple has dedicated a lot of time and talent to the iPhone, and there just wasn't enough left over for the Leopard. "I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check," said Jobs. "If so, then Microsoft would have great products."

The smaller and innovative iPhone. It looks like there's a smaller iPhone on the way. Apple has made an application to the US Patent & Trademark Office for a sleek little device with a display on each side (patent number 0070103454). This "Back-Side Interface for Handheld Devices" has a rather interesting concept:

An electronic device uses separate surfaces for input and output. One of the surfaces (e.g. the bottom) includes a force-sensitive touch-surface through which a user provides input (e.g. cursor manipulation and control element selection). On a second surface (e.g. the top), a display element is used to present information appropriate to the device's function (e.g. video information), one or more control elements and a cursor. The cursor is controlled through manipulation of the back-side touch-surface. The cursor identifies where on the back-side touch-surface the user's finger has made contact.

In other words, the new iPhone is a dual-screen set-up with a touch screen. Hm. That reminds us of the Nintendo DS (over 40 million units sold worldwide).

Apple and the mobile phone market. Jobs also said that Apple really has to look deeper into the mobile phone market. In 2006, there were 135 million MP3 players and 200 million PCs sold. But in that same year, there were 1 billion mobile phones sold. That's a big market to explore.

If Apple thinks that the mobile phone market is worth exploring, then we at QJ.NET wish Apple the best. Several of us love our iPods, and if Apple's iPhone can do for mobile phones what the iPod did for "mobile audio and video," then we don't mind the Leopard delay at all.

Sony Corporation has just  announced CLEFIA (based on the French word "clef" or key). CLEFIA is "a new highly secure and efficient block cipher algorithm that delivers advanced copyright protection and authentication" for digital data like music and images. Sony said that CLEFIA "maintains high security levels while providing both world-leading hardware and software implementation capabilities, the combination of which had proved difficult until now."

Sony will reveal more about CLEFIA at the Fast Software Encryption 2007 international conference in Luxembourg (the conference starts on March 26 and will run for three days). Here are other details:

• When implemented in hardware it achieves maximum throughput of 1.42 Gbps using a 0.09 micrometer CMOS standard cell library and gate size of just 6.1K.
• Able to provide advanced capabilities, even in restrictive environments such as smart cards and mobile devices.
• When implemented in software it can realize high speed performance on a wide variety of processors.
• CLEFIA is said to be more secure and faster than most other security measures - it takes fewer operations to encode and decode (that means the gadget's hardware won't be burdened; that means it is possible for CLEFIA to be used by many AV devices).
• CLEFIA is a strong cipher: block length is 128 bits, while key length can be selected from 128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits.

Apparently, Sony's aim is to establish an environment in which CLEFIA can be used across various applications and products such as AV devices "while continuing to develop technologies that our customers can use with confidence."

For those of us who still remember the Sony BMG rootkit scheme from 2005 (which became a costly "scandal" in 2006), we're wondering how soon Sony will implement CLEFIA in commercial applications like its wide range of video, music, and video game products. CLEFIA may just be the fast, non-intrusive, tough-to-crack, and convenient anti-piracy tool that today's digital market has been watching out for.

Shiny Media (based in the United Kingdom), Xataka (Spain), Daily Gadget (Germany), Journal du Geek (France), and GamesBlog (Italy) asked their readers to vote for Europe's "gadget of the year".

Here's the list of winners. We're throwing in some of the Wii's other awards just to further drive the point home:

Nintendo Wii: Except for Italy, over one half of the voters from each country voted for the Wii.

• The Wii won the Game Critics Award for Best of Show and Game Critics Award for Best Hardware at E3 2006.
• Popular Science made it the Grand Award Winner in Home Entertainment on December 2006.
• Electronic Design magazine gave it the Consumer Design of the Year award in their Best Electronic Design issue.
  
• It got the Spike TV Video Games Award for breakthrough technology.
• It is one of PC World magazine's 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year.
• Gamespot gave it the Best Hardware award at their Best and Worst 2006 awards show.

Apple iPod nano: Italy voted for the iPod nano.

• All we can say is Apple's popular digital audio player has won too many other awards to mention. (It doesn't need to - the iPod is the current undisputed market leader when it comes to portable audio and video.)
  

Nokia N Series phones: These got lots of votes from Spain.

• The "N Series" or "Nseries" is popular for its variety of multimedia features. Most notable are the high-resolution screens, FM radio, 3D graphic support for games (something we very much admire), variety of music codecs, and high-resolution camera. Just look at the Nokia N73.

As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Corporation of America, Howard Stringer has had to dodge flak on behalf of Sony. But Stringer has high hopes for Sony's future and plans to make Sony Corp. meet its goal of a 5% profit margin for next year. Here are some things that will help him, according to ABC News:

• In October, Sony reported a big profit loss (more than 90%) because of the laptop battery recall and expenses related to the PS3 rollout. But Stringer said the PS3 should break even by the end of the year.
• The Bravia TVs and audio products are doing well with gross margin profits of 4%. This is according to Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics of America.
• The Sony Reader (an electronic book or e-book reader) are also selling well in the US. Sales of downloadable e-books are better than music sales from Sony's Connect Store. They'll also release a new wireless Sony Reader (to compete with Amazon.com which is expected to enter the e-book market).

The PS3 has to pull its own weight when it comes to making money. The old Sony practice of letting one division make the money so that another division can spend it is over, says Stringer. But with all the good news, that shouldn't be too hard to do. You'll see.

By the way, to keep the good news rolling, analysts are now affirming that the PS3 is expected to sell better than the Xbox 360 or Wii worldwide, so you can expect articles about that soon.

"We don't know the meaning of life, but we're pretty sure that we were put here in this world to enjoy ourselves."

Are we right? So thank goodness for gaming, and have a great new year, everybody!

Thanks for spending 2006 with us. We wouldn't be here without you. We're thankful that you make us your "quick jump" into what's happening in the gaming world. In 2007, we'll do our best to be an even better one-stop-shop for your news needs.

That's our Number One New Year's Resolution.

Also remember that sometimes happiness is something you have to make yourself (that sounds biologically painful and improper, but it's true). So we're going to do our best to generate happiness for our readers this year. We've got some big plans for you, the QJ.NET community. For example, you know that you can now filter news on the "BoB" (the "Blog of Blogs" or QJ.NET main page) if you're a member, and becoming a member of the community is fast and easy. Some changes are taking place at the QJ.NET Forums. We'll continue introducing more improvements this year.

By the way, our other two New Year's Resolutions are easier to keep. We'll be more carefull with spelingg. We'll also edit out bad puns (that'll be tough because new year resolutions go in one year and out the other). Have a great 2007, dear readers!

Versu Richelieu is a builder of worlds. She's like the Architect from the Matrix. For 72 hours, she lived in the store window of Datavision at 5th Ave. and E 39th St. (New York, NY 10018). And for 72 hours, she built a virtual world around her.

Oh tell me why... Do we build castles in the sky... Oh tell me why... All the castles way up high.

She built a Second Life virtual version of her little store window. Then she built the building and the streets around. And acre by acre, she built the city around her.

Oh tell me why... Do we build castles in the sky... Oh tell me why... All the castles way up high.

Watch the end of the third day (that would be the end of the second video). We were impressed.

It was part of a marketing activity for the Intel Centrino Duo laptop with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor (that explains why her room is wallpaper with Intel signs and why the laptop she used was a Intel Centrino Duo laptop with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor). Did we just repeat ourselves there? Deja vu. Must be glitch in the Matrix.

We're hoping the next project will be 7 days long. We'd like to see her create the world in 7 days (she can rest on the last day).

At the MECCA for Games subconference at CTIA earlier this week, a panel of experts talked about the future of mobile gaming. The "Pessimists vs. Optimists" discussion was something worth listening to because the following people have a right to insist that they're right:

• Mike Yuen, Senior Director, Gaming Group, QUALCOMM
• Robert Tercek, Multimedia Networks, GDC's Mobile Symposium
• Matthew Bellows, GM and VP of Marketing, Floodgate Entertainment
• Jason Ford, VP of Strategy and Planning, Namco Networks and formerly from Sprint
• Justin Hall, New Media Research Specialist, Creative Artists Agency
• Douglas Soltys, Editor-in-Chief, QuicklyBored.com

A lot was said, and the article we found on it was really long. Since this is QJ and not Oprah, we'll keep it short and cut through the drama:

• Pessimism: The American mobile game industry has been around for 5 years. About 15 million subscribers have played a mobile game, 4.8 million have downloaded a game, and 3.9 million have bought a game. Those sound like big numbers, but when you consider how many American phone subscribers there are, the fact that 3.9 have bought a game looks real puny. Is the market really that limited?
  
• Optimism: Those gamers paid 2 billion dollars, baby. That's not too bad. And there's plenty of room for growth.

And that's basically what the debate was all about. Untapped potential. So we leave you with one more thing from the debate: "Concepts like presence, constant connection, and constant global positioning are currently not available to game developers because of limitations of technology and issues of privacy and security." Is the technology really limited? Or is it simply that no company is willing to invest in this yet?

Apple, Acer, Motorola, and Lenovo are among the worst polluters, according to Greenpeace, while Nokia and Dell just barely passed. Greenpeace ranked major electronics companies according to what they were doing to remove the harmful chemicals in their gadgets, phones, and computers. Also, Greenpeace ranked the companies according to their policies about taking responsibility for their products when these are thrown away by their customers (for example, companies should recycle old components as much as possible and they should process and dispose of the chemical waste properly). Like all other piles of garbage, the amount of toxic waste caused by electronics ("e-waste") is growing, and it often gets dumped in poor developing countries.

Greenpeace's rankings (points are out of 10; 10 is the highest possible score):

7: Nokia - Needs to improve recycling program.
7: Dell - Some models still have the worst chemicals, but has a good program of taking back their toxic trash.
5.7: Hewlett Packard
5.3: Sony Ericsson
5: Samsung
4.7: Sony
4.3: LGE
3.3: Panasonic
3: Toshiba
3: Fujitsu-Siemens
2.7: Apple
2.3: Acer
1.7: Motorola
1.3: Lenovo

Greenpeace will update the rankings four times a year. And as for Apple scoring so low, the Greenpeace article had this to say: "It is disappointing to see Apple ranking so low in the overall guide. They are meant to be world leaders in design and marketing, they should also be world leaders in environmental innovation."

"Microsoft releases patch to repair the fault in the previous patch meant to fix the original fault."

Yes, it's one of those days.

Not a lot of you run x64-based versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on your laptops, but a number of our readers run Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and both systems are affected by a fault in the MS06-040 update.

Programs come to screeching halt if they request one gigabyte or more of information. For example, if you've installed the update on a business computer, you might have experienced problems with Microsoft Business Solutions Navision 3.7. The MS06-040 update was a "critical" security patch to prevent certain worms, but apparently it opened up a whole other can of worms. Luckily, fixes are already available.

The other Microsoft update patch with problems is MS06-042. It was also a security patch. It now crashes Internet Explorer depending on which Internet sites are visited. A fix will be available on August 22.