According to first quarter 2010 statistics from research firm Gartner, LG remains the third highest selling mobile handset brand with an 8.6% market share. But to remain competitive, the company is taking some bigger actions in the Android space.

As the second largest mobile phone maker in the Open Handset Alliance, LG has remarkably few Android-powered handsets. Six months after pledging to make Windows Mobile its primary smartphone OS, LG debuted its first Android handset, the GW620. Since then, it has only launched two other Android devices.

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The App Store may have an increasing scam problem thanks to shady developers, but so far Apple has yet to provide any official response on the issue. First reported on by The Next Web Sunday, several developers appear to be using methods to hack into user accounts and make more purchases of a particular developer's apps.

Developer Thuat Nguyen appears to be one of the first widespread examples of this. His apps in the books category at one point made up 40 of the top 50 applications, and users have reported in his comments that purchases of as much as $600 were made on their iTunes accounts without authorization, typically to his other apps.

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Friday's apocalyptic post "Windows Phone 7 is doomed" generated among comments assertions that I'm an idiot and demands that I be fired (Sorry, I'm a lowly freelancer). Nevertheless, I do read comments and seriously regard the ones written to extend the discussion (rather than just belittle the author or other commenters). Commenter rwalrond asked: "How about you write an article about how Microsoft can leverage its existing platforms to make WM7 a contender." Actually, Microsoft's trying to leverage its enterprise apps is part of the problem -- the Office and Windows hawks driving off the consumer and cloud service doves. But the spirit of rwalrond's comment is offering solutions, and that I will do here in response.

I don't want to open up a religious debate here, but the Biblical accounts of Nineveh and Sodom and Gomorrah are good metaphors for my "doom" proclamation and Microsoft's mobile future. In that context, I'll call my "Windows Phone 7 is doomed" assertion a prophecy. If Microsoft repents of its wicked ways, the company could end up like the Biblical account of Nineveh, which was spared destruction even after its doom was prophesied. The citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah didn't repent and, according to the Biblical account, they were burned with fire and brimstone. To reiterate: I don't want to open up a debate about God, the authenticity of the Bible or people's lifestyles (why these cities were targeted for destruction). I'm trying to say that Windows Phone 7 doesn't have to be doomed, if Microsoft is willing to radically change its behavior. I don't see much hope in that, particularly given how fast the mobile market is changing and how quickly upstarts Apple and Google are gaining market share and consumer and developer mindshare. So I'm sticking with "doomed," but hoping to be proved wrong.

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In November 2009, Google acquired IP telephony software company Gizmo5 and all of its engineers and products. The company's robust desktop Voice over IP client for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux seemed like an excellent extension of the Google Voice platform, which at the time was a Web application and related mobile app for BlackBerry and Android.

Since that time, Google Voice has had its official U.S. launch and it is still a mobile app and Web-based management system. There is no standalone desktop application to accompany it.

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While e-book reader manufacturers have done everything they can to mimic the experience of paper and ink, a study says it will take the reader longer to finish an e-book than its print counterpart.

Jacob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group tested three different e-book methods -- the PC, the Kindle 2, and the iPad -- and then compared them to reading a regular book. A short story by Ernest Hemigway was read by 24 different test subjects.

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Back in March, YouTube gave users the ability to run an automated closed captioning feature which uses speech-to-text technology to convert a video's audio track into live subtitles. This feature was in development for more than two years, and was in private beta testing since November 2009.

The Auto-captioning feature combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google's Voice Search, and automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, correct the mistakes, and then upload the corrected version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages.

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With hordes of folks flocking to movie theaters for Toy Story 3 and other 3D films, DirecTV and its content partner Panasonic have decided that the time is right to bring the TV industry's first suite of dedicated 3D TV channels into living rooms, for home viewing on 3D-enabled HDTVs from all manufacturers.

At a press event in New York City on Thursday, the two companies threw open the switch on a trio of new DirecTV channels, which offer movies, documentaries, sports and other 3D content around the clock, unspoiled by conventional 2D TV fare. DirecTV had already launched ESPN on channel 106 of its satellite-based TV service on June 11.

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In February, I asserted that Windows Phone 7 "is a lost cause." Matters are worse following this week's KIN killing and late May's Entertainment and Devices division reorganization. Microsoft mobile development has run aground, and at the wrong time. The company is poised to miss two crucial platform transitions that will doom its mobile strategy and assure that the Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack will join the mainframe in gradual obsolescence.

There's irony here: Microsoft succeeded during the 1990s by driving platform changes that doomed competitors. Companies like Lotus and WordPerfect had market-leading products that fell away after they missed operating system changes that Microsoft lept on (and through its market dominating position helped push forward). Now it is Microsoft that will miss crucial platform changes: Smartphones replacing dumb phones and the mobile Web (including services and resident applications) diminishing the PC's computing and informational relevance.

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Yesterday, Representative William Delahunt (D-MA) introduced the "Main Street Fairness Act" in Congress that would allow states to collect sales tax for online purchases. The bill, H.R 5660 is described as an attempt to "promote simplification and fairness in the administration and collection of sales and use taxes, and for other purposes."

The bill was praised by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) yesterday as an equalizer that creates a level playing field for all sellers, regardless of their status as a brick-and-mortar retailer or as a purely online seller.

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Dell on Thursday attempted to minimize the damage done by the release of documents related to a 2007 court case involving faulty PCs, saying it did not knowingly ship faulty motherboards to its customers.

The continuing fallout may be enough to force CEO Michael Dell to go public in defense of his company. The statement, published to the Direct2Dell blog by chief blogger Lionel Menchaca, seems to contradict what appears to be in internal Dell documents unsealed by the court. They included internal e-mails, studies done by the company themselves, and even instructions from superiors to play dumb when customers called.

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Facebook realizes that its photo application is sometimes cumbersome to use, and promised late Thursday that it is working to make things better.

The impetus behind making one of the most commonly-used features of Facebook better seems to be Facebook's acquisition of photo sharing site Divvyshot in April. In fact, the social networking site turned to Divvyshot co-founder Sam Odio -- now a product manager at Facebook -- to introduce the first enhancement: facial recognition.

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Apple has been in the habit of issuing very short press releases that simply and clearly address concerns of the public without much in the way of formalities. Today, in an unusually long and formal message, Apple says it has found the cause of the iPhone 4's poor reception when it is held in a "death grip."

According to the company, it's not a reception issue at all, but a problem with the way iPhones all the way back to the iPhone 3G have calculated signal strength.

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The last 24 hours has brought remarkable upset to the mobile marketplace, just one week after Apple and its partners started selling iPhone 4. Will this tsunami never end?

Late yesterday, the blogosphere, twittersphere and news media cosmos burst with reports that Microsoft had killed KIN just six weeks after the consumer smartphone went on sale. Today, T-Mobile revealed that Sidekick sales stop tomorrow, which isn't exactly shocking considering KIN's demise. In early 2008, Microsoft bought Danger, which makes the software used by Sidekick.

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Though Hollywood studios and consumer electronics manufacturers are pushing 3D home entertainment as the next big thing, opportunities to catch live events on 3D TVs are still very rare for people who haven't already taken the plunge and bought a new 3D-capable TV.

And even for those people, it requires a DirecTV, Comcast Xfinity, or AT&T U-Verse subscription with supportive 3D programming, and there have still only been a handful of events broadcast in 3D.

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When a new piece of software is released, companies frequently include a video of someone walking through the features of the software, explaining how it works. Unfortunately, videos like this lack the basic interaction of a step-by-step tutorial.

Now, a Web app called iorad has opened in beta, which lets developers create interactive instructions for their software completely within the browser.

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