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Numbers define us. Last night's U.S. election redefined government by numbers: 51 -- the number of Democratic seats remaining, and they are enough to retain control of the Senate; 239 -- the projected number of Republican House of Representatives seats, which is more than enough for the party to seize control. Birthday, social security, age, bank account and many other numbers define who we are and how we interact with things and people. This week and probably through much of November, I am defined by three numbers: 32, 64, 128 -- and they will likely impact you over the next couple years.

Thirty-two is the GB storage capacity of my iPhone 4; 64GB is storage capacity of my iPad; and 128GB is my new 11.6-inch MacBook Air's storage capacity. I received the Air on Monday and started using it yesterday. These three devices share something more than an Apple logo in common. They represent for Apple, and eventually other computer makers, a shift towards consumer electronics-style design, manufacturing and marketing. The iPad and MacBook Air are industry defining and leading products, by the numbers.

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ABI Research today made a bold prediction regarding WiMAX adoption in the United States: that Sprint will sell nearly 3 million WiMAX-capable smartphones by the end of 2010.

"Sprint's 4G smartphone sales have been partially responsible for its recent subscriber growth. ABI Research forecasts that the carrier will ship almost three million 4G handsets for its WiMAX network by the end of 2010,"
ABI Research director Philip Solis said in a statement today. "That number is greater than many observers expected."

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This week, government technology and communications contractor ManTech announced it had scored a $68 million contract to build a cellular network for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

ManTech will design and build the Expeditionary Cellular Communications Service (ECCS) in Afghanistan, which will include both permanent and moveable cell towers and the infrastructure to provide both voice and data coverage to forces stationed there.

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Google TV launched with a great deal of both fanfare and controversy in the United States, and products supporting the new Internet TV platform are available for purchase in the States now. Interested users in Europe and Asia, however, have to wait until an unspecified time in 2011 for the service.

So to capitalize on that downtime, Yahoo is stepping up the presence of its one year old Yahoo Connected TV service, which offers consumers a streaming video and app interface not too far from Google TV on televisions from Samsung, Toshiba, Sony, LG, Vizio and HiSense, 6 of the top 10 global TV manufacturers.

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A California law that prevents the sale of violent video games to minors may end up being struck down in the US Supreme Court as justices appeared to question its constitutionality. At issue is the First Amendment right of the video game developers, which may be infringed by the application of the law.

Justices suggested that if California was to ban violent video games, then it would also need to ban other violent forms of media. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, historically a more liberal voice on the court, may have summarized the overall sentiment of the court best by saying, "what makes video games so special?"

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In FileForum, We're hosting a piece of freeware you may have heard about after it became the first TechCrunch Disrupt Cup winner back in May, Soluto.

Soluto, in short, lets users quickly and easily customize the Windows boot process by breaking applications into three categories: Ones that are completely unnecessary to the boot process, ones that are potentially removable, and ones that are absolutely necessary to boot Windows. Soluto collects anonymous user data to give you an idea of what other users do with their applications, so if you have a piece of software that lots of other people pause during startup, you're presented with a pie chart telling you what percentage pauses, and what percentage keeps it in the boot process.

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New data confirms that the Android platform has taken a commanding position in the smartphone market, thanks to wider distribution and a much broader selection of phone models than the iPhone. Data from research firm Canalys indicates that Android phones made up nearly 44 percent of all smartphones sold in the US in the third quarter.

Apple took second spot with 26 percent of the market, and RIM third with a little over 24 percent. Apple can take some solace in the results however: the iPhone still remains the best selling smartphone model by a significant margin.

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ComScore's most recent qSearch Web search market share analysis gave Google 66% of the core search business, with the closest competitor, Yahoo trailing by 50%.

Of the more than 16 billion explicit core searches conducted in September, Google handled 10.6 billion of them. Yahoo sites handled 2.7 billion, Microsoft sites took care of 1.8 billion, Ask Network fielded 593 million, and AOL sites took 362 million.

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In yet another black eye for social networking site Facebook, the site disclosed Friday that several developers were selling user data to a third-party. User IDs, or unique identifiers given to every registered member of the site, allow an application to look up a user's public personal information.

As a result of the discovery the offending developers have been placed on a six-month suspension. While not identifying those at fault, the company did say at least one data broker -- RapLeaf, Inc. -- came forward to assist in the investigation. It was not immediately clear if RapLeaf was the purchasing broker, although it agreed to delete any user IDs in its possession.

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One week from today, the first Windows Phone 7 handsets go on sale in the United States. The international furor is over, but Microsoft's home country remains. The question: "Which Windows Phone 7 smartphone will you buy?" I asked in mid October, and Betanews readers answered in droves. Of course, since we have a global readership some of the respondents may already have purchased their phones. I asked the question before international sales started.

Microsoft's handset partners are offering nine Windws Phone 7 models this year, with a tenth model coming in early 2011. There are five choices here in the United States. On AT&T: LQ Quantum, HTC Surround and Samsung Focus. On T-Mobile: HTC HD7. The Venue Pro is available from Dell. Other models include the HTC Mozart, HTC 7 Pro, HTC 7 Trophy, LG Optimus 7 and Samsung Omnia. The majority of readers responding by e-mail and in comments choose Focus, although the HD7 is close runner up.

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Today, Windows Live Hotmail users will begin to be able to send email from other existing email addresses while using Hotmail.

In the Hotmail Options menu under the heading "Sending/Receiving email from other accounts," users can add their other webmail addresses, and then use hotmail to send and receive messages.

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Keeping true to the promises made by Sprint and Clearwire in October, the New York City WiMAX network was "switched on" today, along with Tampa, Florida, Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut.

"Sprint is the first national wireless carrier to make 4G a reality for our customers and with the addition of these six new markets we are now in 61 cities, including Chicago, Baltimore and Houston, and are growing. By the end of the year Sprint 4G plans to light up several major new markets including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Denver and Washington DC to name a few," Matt Carter, president of Sprint 4G said in a statement today.

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Every year, cable companies have to re-negotiate their carriage fees with broadcasters. These negotiations are essentially an evaluation of how much certain channels are worth to the cable company, and then the cable company agreeing to pay a certain amount of money to the broadcasters in exchange for the right to feature those channels in their subscription packages.

In a power play to show the value of its stations, Fox blocked Dish Network from broadcasting 19 Fox Regional Sports Channels for the entire month of October while the two companies negotiated their contracts.

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Despite the fact that Android OS is now outselling iOS devices as a whole according to most surveys, Apple is still managing to stay at the top of the heap in smartphone sales themselves. According to IDC's Worldwide Phone Tracker, Apple is now the fourth biggest manufacturer of phones -- smart or not -- overall.

In the third quarter of this year, the company shipped some 14.1 million units, likely due to strong sales of the iPhone 4. This was an increase of 90 percent over last year, and by far the biggest jump for any manufacturer.

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Well, it's not about customers.

Microsoft has quite aggressively touted HTML5 during PDC 2010, which wraps up today. It's seemingly inconsistent with Microsoft's revamped cloud strategy, which is very much about taking propriety software to the cloud. How then does Microsoft's platform-independent HTML5 approach reconcile with extending the proprietary Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack into the cloud?

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