The mobile industry continues to boom with its uncanny ability to entice the public to get cell phones and constantly upgrade to the latest models. The pace has been so fast in terms of production and sales that there are now 3.3 billion mobile handsets in the world. That's half of the world's total population.

We've all heard our share of urban myths. Now, it seems that one has finally been debunked, with this particular myth being that exploding cellphone batteries can not only hurt someone, but also kill. Check out the real reason why a South Korean man died with a melted cellphone in his pocket after the jump.

If you know your basic internet culture, you probably already know that the question on every other person's mind online is "what insanely innovative stiff will Google come up with next?" Today, we have the answer for you: Google-owned YouTube is coming to mobile phones soon.

The most popular video sharing site in the world has signed a deal with the fifth-largest mobile handset maker in the world today, LG Electronics of South Korea.

At the core of the agreement is the development of a mobile phone which can access the YouTube server and deliver streaming clips on the go. It's never been done or attempted before, but LG says a working design could be seen as early as this year. "LG Electronics will unveil a mobile handset that fully supports the YouTube service for the first time in Europe in the second half of this year," said the company in a statement.

Right now, YouTube has around 100 million users worldwide, driving up the demand to have it in every appropriate medium. It has some 70,000 user-created content which are readily accessible and are steadily on the rise.

The International Mobile Gaming Awards announced yesterday the 25 games that topped out in their annual awardings - 5 more than they previously predicted.

These 25 are the best among the 400 entries during this years' festivities, with a total of 42 countries participating in the IMGA; 46% from Europe, 30% from  Asia, 15% from North America, and 9% coming from the rest of the world.

The IMGA, sponsored this year by major companies like Nokia, NVIDIA, and Orange, aims to provide recognition for the most innovative and creative games around the world, and is divided up into five separate categories, with the top 25 divided within each:

1. Best Interactive Experience Award
2. Best Use of Connectivity
3. Excellence in 3D Award
4. Most Innovative Game Award
5. Best Use of Flash Award

Some of the more interesting concepts shown by the entries included educationally-themed ideas, like ways of teaching foreign languages to the players, or teaching them how to dance. One notable was the use of localization technology (layman's terms: cell sites), with over 100 participants playing an interactive outdoors game (outdoors, video games...that doesn't add up) titled Triangler, developed by the Holland-based TNO research lab.

The top 25 list awaits after this jump!

Though at first it seemed that China (including Hong Kong) would topple the US from the top of the spam charts, America has defended its title as king of all spam-relaying nations. China's 20% contribution to the global spam total ended up as being second only to the US's 23.2% output. South Korea got third place with 7.5%.

The figures -- covering the months of April to June 2006 -- from IT security firm Sophos reveal that this is the first time in over two years that the US has failed to cut down on all of its spam. The US accounted for half of all spam sent in the world two years ago. China and South Korea, on the other hand, have managed to reduce their spam output since the first quarter of the year.

In the continental category, Asia was the king of the hill with 40.2%, but Europe seems to be trying to usurp the throne in the near future. Europe collectively accounted for 25% of the world's spam in the first quarter of 2006, a figure that has now increased to 27.1%, overtaking North America in the spam spreading league.

There's no sign of Russia in the spam league's top twelve, but Sophos believes that Russian spammers may be lurking just around the corner, controlling "vast networks" of 'zombie' PCs -- computers hijacked by Trojan horses, worms, and viruses controlled by devilish hackers. These zombie PCs are the source of the vast majority of spam tracked by Sophos.

Just how obsessed are South Koreans about their MMOs? Well, ga-ga enough for a company to launch the first wireless MMORPG for mobile phones. South Korea which is, arguably, home to the most rabid and enthusiastic online-gamers in the planet, now has the opportunity to engage in some MMO gaming through their handhelds. Com2uS has announced the start of paid subscription for its MMORPG for mobile phones from July 18.

So just what MMORPG could they play with their cell phones? The game is IMO: The World of Magic launched in Korea on June 8 and has been available for free during its open beta test. The game represents the first commercial release of an MMO game in Korea for mobile and is priced at around $5, which includes all network charges. Now that's a bargain in any country!

IMO: The World of Magic puts its players into the real-time online world of Inotia. The game is for mobile, but it offers gamers much of what they’ve come to expect from MMORPG on the PC. In an MMORPG, users enter a persistent, real-time online world, where they go on quests, team up with other players to fight monsters, collect items, fight against other players, and try to level up their characters. Com2uS added additional quests, dungeons, and party play options to mark the start of the paid subscription service. Future content for IMO will be added in episodes, the current instalment being “Episode 1: The Wingfriel Island”.

Com2uS is planning to add functionality that will take advantage of the mobile platform itself: for example, utilizing SMS in the game. More features, could only mean more fun and more money for Com2uS. Now I wonder if this kind of MMORPG would find a place in U.S. and European shores?

The tech Gods must be listening...cool Korean contraptions are making their way to foreign shores! Well, ok, South Korea is still the place to go for nifty, strange, and useful thingamajigs, but one of 'em is making its way to North America. Sign of more to come? We could only hope so.

Samsung's SCH-A990 phone will be available to Verizon customers for about $350 after rebate plus a two-year service agreement. Well what can you say, coolness comes with a hefty price tag.

Samsung Senior Vice President Peter Skarzynski can't help but talk about the product. According to him, "the launch of the A990 marks the first time a multimedia phone is fully integrated with a high resolution camera in the United States...The a990 is the premier print quality camera phone for photo enthusiasts in the U.S. market."

According to the Korean electronics juggernaut, the A990 produces photos comparable to a stand-alone camera and also has the ability to transmit the images to a Bluetooth-enabled printer. The device is also Mobile Web 2.0-capable and accommodates V-cast technology for video and music downloads. As for the specific date of availability, that would be divulged soon by Verizon.

South Korea recently launched its WiBro - the country's highly-anticipated mobile broadband Internet service - based on Intel Corp.'s WiMax standard. The service will initially be offered at several high-demand areas in and around Seoul but broadband Internet service carrier KT Corp. and mobile telecommunications network provider SK Telecom Co. Ltd. plan to expand coverage throughout Seoul and surrounding cities by the end of 2006 and nationwide by 2008.

According to KT, WiBro users will be able to avail of wireless Internet even while moving at 74 mph. The base service stations have a coverage radius of 1 km, while existing hotspots for public wireless LAN services reach 50 meters. WiBro service can be accessed only by using a PCMCIA card ($312) manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. Basic WiBro service fees is about $16.00 for the broadband and $31.00 for the mobile service per month, respectively.

South Korea is often considered the world's "most-wired" nation because of its high prevalence of broadband access.

A few days have passed since the other Korean electronics conglomerate, Lucky Goldstar, released their HD-DVD notebook- the S1 P555K, but that doesn't stop them from coming up with another contraption, this time its the V1-WCUP4, the new core duo notebook from LG.

This new thingamajig is a 15" notebook that is blessed with a "Fine Bright LCD" which is 35% brighter than regular LCDs. And this one is powered by Core Duo CPUs, an ATI Radeon Express 200M video card and a wide array of SATA HDD's.

The price tag isn't out in the open yet, but that won't matter too much to you if you don't live in korea/1573" id="tag" title="">South Korea. You're asking why? Because this one will most likely join the ranks of those cool gadgets that would only be confined within the shores of South Korea. Sigh...

Lucky Goldstar, more commonly known as LG has recently come up with a killer - its latest laptop innovation, the S1-P555K. It looks so good, it as if its screen has zero-glare.

It also has good specs: an Intel Core Duo processor (speed not yet announced, but from how it looks, maybe it is 2 Ghz), a HD-DVD player, with a 15.1" LCD (1680x1050 resolution), ATI X1600 (256MV of VRAM), and component video out.

It looks impressive, but LG has yet to announce a release date and a price tag. Whether it will be available in the U.S. and other countries aside from South Korea is also something that no one knows yet.

And also, this baby does not have a HDCP output support (or it wasn't mentioned yet), so with that, there's no guarantee that along the way, while you're using this, you'll be able to watch HD-DVDs once they turn on the DRM. But you gotta admit it, the whole package looks good.