See no evil, hear no evil, text no evil. Think your text messages are just between you and the one who's meant to read it? Think again. In the US, text messaging is quickly becoming a matter of public record that can be brought as evidence in court. Read the full story by following the "read more" link below.

Will the lawsuits never end? Apple manages to entangle itself once again in another lawsuit, this time filed by Klausner Technologies over the iPhone's Visual Voicemail feature. Details in the full article.

Seven big names in the online and mobile industry have banded together in an effort to release a new standard of mobile application software that will be easily available for mobile users everywhere.

ARM, a British company responsible for designing chips for cellphones, announced its plans during the fourth annual ARM Developers' Conference held this week in Sta Clara, California. ARM, along with Samsung, Texas Instruments, Mozilla, Marvell, MontaVista, and Movial have decided to design a Linux-based open source platform to base the next generation of mobile applications on.

The purpose of this new collaboration is the hope that they will be able to create products and technology at a quicker pace with the help of the online community by developing enhanced applications through this open source platform.

ARM plans to release the full platform by 2008 and expects that the first devices bearing this new platform will be available by 2009. However, some critics were saying that the iPhone already has the exact same capabilities as the ones planned by ARM and the other companies.

However, the potential of this new platform is still very high considering the amount of applications open source programmers can contribute to the effort. Mike Inglis, an execute VP at ARM had this to say about the collaboration:

Today's consumers are very knowledgeable about technology, want to be connected to the Internet and access multimedia content and applications anywhere, at anytime, yet they do not want to be restricted by short battery life and inadequate features that will limit their experiences.

By stepping up the collaboration among key stakeholders in the mobile market, we will be able to jointly deliver the devices and applications with the cutting-edge innovation consumers have come to expect.

With a whole slew of memory card formats out there it's good news to hear that three big mobile phone companies - Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson - are cooperating to push for a standard unified format. Their plan is to have one single format for mobile phones, digital cameras and other gadgetry that requires a memory card.

Memory card companies are also said to be on board, like Micron Technology Inc., Spansion LLC, STMicroelectronics NV, and Texas Instruments Inc. We might not see the "one card" take over the gadget kingdom in the near future, but with technology running on its current pace it won't be surprising to see it take effect sooner than we expect.

Dell announced today the winners of their eBay charity auction of two limited-edition World of Warcraft XPSTM M1710 notebooks. The winners are Trip Hoover of Texas and Daniel Marinow of Germany, whose combined bids for the unique notebook PCs reached nearly US$ 12,000.

All proceeds from the auction will go to America's Second Harvest, the Nation's Food Bank Network. "We are very pleased to accept this generous donation from Dell," said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of America’s Second Harvest. "This fun and innovative charity auction will help us provide thousands of meals to Americans who are at risk of hunger."

Dell is also sponsoring an online sweepstakes in which WoW fans can win one of five XPS 710 H2C Gaming PCs outfitted with new 27-inch wide screen monitors. Fans can head on over to dell.com/imagination and put their WoW knowledge to the test by answering five questions about the game. They are then entered into a random drawing for a chance to win one of the five high-end gaming systems. The drawing will be on or about February 20.

Montclair State University in Cincinnati implemented a mandatory cell phone rule in which school authorities can locate their students on and off campus. This may easily be seen as an invasion of privacy in that the university is granted the authority to track down their students, thus hampering the students' freedom to go wherever and whenever one wants.

Ron Chicken, a student in the said university, used to hate the idea of him being tracked down by the university administration. But according to him, as time passed, more and more students became used to the idea and even favored its implementation because it also provides them with security. According to the university, nine out of ten of their students carry cellphones and rarely, or no longer, use landline phones. This means that school authorities would have to adapt to this technological development and use it to maintain lines of communication with their students.

However, the Montclair State University made it clear that the tracking program for their students is voluntary, and that even if the students do decide to avail of the service, they can deactivate it any time of the day. Students can activate what they call the "Guardian" service if ever they feel threatened on campus. The said university came up with a voluntary program that offers freshmen a free mobile phone, but the students would have to pay for the services they would avail of. Montclair partnered with Rave Wireless Inc. to develop the software applications for their students' cell phones. Sprint Nextel Corp. provided the handsets as well as the wireless services.

More and more universities are pondering on whether they should drop the traditional use of landline phones to contact their students especially in emergency cases, and move on to tapping into the cellphone as a medium for maintaining communication lines with their students. While email and landline phones still prove to be useful in contacting the students, it is ultimately the cellphone that every student carries with him constantly. The Morrisville State College in New York has also implemented mandatory school-issued cellphone handsets as a replacement for landlines in its dorms.

However, some schools and universities remain ambivalent about the issue because of lawsuits that may ensue if the traditionally reliable landline services are removed from the dormitories. Austin College in Texas is keeping the dorm landlines for safety reasons but will ultimately rely on email to keep in touch with its students.

The cellphone tracking program can prove to be a very useful tool for universities and schools to communicate with their students and guarantee their safety especially within the campus. The important thing perhaps is that the students are given a choice on the issue and are consulted before universities implement such programs.

From the looks of it, the saga of the Dell exploding laptop is very far from over. It seems that more headaches are coming in the way of the Texas-based company way as another one of their laptops went ballistic and decided to be a flamethrower instead. After sprouting fire in a Japan conference and in a U.S. office, it seems that another Dell laptop went boom, this time it "exploded" in Singapore.

The man's laptop is a Latitude D410 model. He didn't elaborate as to what he was doing when it exploded, when it happened, or if the laptop was in use, but it is quite obvious that the damage was again brought about by its battery. We will let the pictures do the talking so you could judge the scenario for yourself. So far, Dell manages to stay mum about the issue and has not released an official statement about the matter. Maybe the reason why they won't talk is because their official investigation about the first exploding laptop is yet to be concluded.