The lifespan of mobile phones is getting very short, and CTIA is packed with evidence to prove it. When I met with HTC at CES in January, they had an array of eight handsets to show off, most of which had only been released into the market within the last six months.

Now, just two months later, HTC has added four new high-end smartphones that put the entire batch that I saw in January to shame. Smartphones only remain on the cutting edge for a matter of weeks before they're usurped by the latest hot device. In the case of Android, sometimes it's only a matter of days.

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The vision of an Internet without the FCC

Now that the Broadband Plan (which some say is more a list of goals than a concrete agenda) has been published, there is renewed debate over whether a federal government agency should be dictating just how broadband buildout in this country is to be completed, and which companies should be the ones doing it in what areas. What Verizon would want is an authority comparable to Bill Kennard's 1990s vision of the FCC in the broadband space. But if Julius Genachowski's 2010s FCC resembles something different, maybe there's a new way to go about realizing that early vision.

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Two years ago, Lexar brought the Eye-Fi brand into the mainstream when it released 2GB SD cards endowed with Eye-Fi's 802.11b/g wireless connectivity. The capability turned any camera with an SD slot into one with Wi-FI. Since that time, Eye-Fi has grown its product line to include support for 802.11n, improved security features, improved capacities, and overall performance improvements.

On Tuesday, Eye-Fi's new X2 series of wireless SD cards hit retail, bringing the 4GB Connect X2 ($49.99), 8GB Explore X2 ($99.99) and 8GB Pro X2 ($149.99) to photographers across the country.

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For years, people have accused Microsoft of being an imitator, rather than innovator. Finally there is evidence: The ways Windows Phone 7 Series imitates the very worst of Apple's iPhone.  Unless there is the strangest of coincidences -- like two students having the same wrong answers on a high school history test -- Microsoft is imitating Apple, using the same strategy to make the same mistakes. It's either imitation or incompetence, and out of fairness I assume the former.

The first imitation is the most baffling: Limited multitasking. Like iPhone, Windows Phone 7 Series will allow multitasking for some of its own applications, but not others. When open but not in use, third-party apps go into a pseudo-off ("dehydrated") state. By comparison, Google's Android, Nokia's Maemo or Symbian OS and Palm's WebOS all multitask (e.g., run background applications) just fine.

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Mission: Find an affordable alternative to cable/pay TV using only off-the-shelf products.

Deadline: Today (with a clause for extension)

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Of all the things we expected to come from a conference about wireless technology, an interview with a two-time gold medal olympian was not one of them, but today, Betanews got an exclusive interview with professional snowboarder/skateboarder Shaun White about his first skateboarding-only videogame from Ubisoft.

Truth be told, running into Shaun was purely accidental. I was scheduled to talk to Marvell about its Armada 600 platform at the very same time the he was scheduled to do an autograph signing for the company. As a huge line amassed around Marvell's booth, I completely expected to have my discussion time bumped. Instead, Marvell invited me to ask Shaun a few questions.

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The other third-party test batteries

Since we started testing browsers in early 2009, Betanews has maintained one very important methodology: We take a slow Web browser that you might not be using much anymore, and we pick on its sorry self as our test subject. We base our index on the assessed speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista SP2 -- the slowest browser still in common use. For every test in the suite, we give IE7 a 1.0 score. Then we combine the test scores to derive an RPI index number that, in our estimate, best represents the relative performance of each browser compared to IE7. So for example, if a browser gets a score of 6.5, we believe that once you take every important factor into account, that browser provides 650% the performance of IE7.

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In the past, having too many different screen resolutions to support was a problem for Windows Mobile developers. For the users of Android phones, it seems like too few screen sizes could become a problem. With Android, there are only three general screen classes: small, medium, and large.

And the trend lately among Android devices has been to have bigger and brighter screens. When the Motorola Droid debuted last October, the device's 3.7" screen looked downright huge. Yesterday, the 4" screen on the Samsung Galaxy S and 4.3" screen on the HTC EVO made the Droid look small by comparison. Unfortunately, the shape of the chassis must reflect the size of the screen. What's happening is that we are seeing bigger, flatter phones.

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What, exactly, would one be blocked from seeing now that the "Great Firewall of China," as it's been dubbed, separates citizens of mainland China from Google? This morning, Betanews used a fabulous Firefox 3.0 add-in tool called ChinaChannel, created by independent developers in Hong Kong, to set up a proxy connection using a China IP address, so we could peruse Google as though we were in China itself. Then using an ordinary copy of Opera 10.51 on the other side, we browsed Google.com.hk -- the server to which Google is now redirecting Google.cn requests -- using our regular US-based connection.

We've used this tool in the past, and we had an easier time obtaining a proxy connection with a China-based proxy. At first this morning, we found proxy servers were frequently denying connection requests, although repeated requests often got through after 10 or more tries. However, sometimes our connection only lasted as long as a minute.

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Late last year, I took a look at how search services were being affected by the unchecked growth of ultra-digested, 140-character-or-less news blips. In my research, I talked to a Vancouver-based startup called Worio that was tackling the difficult problem of creating a search engine that "understood" what kind of data was important to the user.

Now, the team is working on creating a new content discovery service, which it is calling Zite.

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Rather than debut anything unknown or surprising, mobile network operator T-Mobile today presented everything it had already announced, and then concentrated on talking about the widespread 3G network upgrade it's rolling out this year.

While this doesn't always get people drooling, T-Mobile looks to be taking a level-headed approach to network growth which the company says will result in the overall fastest 3G network in the US.

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Literally on the wheels of a gourmet cupcake truck, Lenovo this week rolled out the 14- and 15-inch editions of its emerging ThinkPad Edge laptop line-up.

Priced starting at $499, and slated for availability in April, Lenovo's latest notebooks offer the same capabilities as the 13-inch Edge released in January, while adding wider screens and an illuminated keyboard, said Jay McBain, Lenovo's director of small and medium business. McBain gave Betanews a briefing aboard what can easily be described as the most unique setting we've ever experienced for a product demo: a concessions truck operated by an early user, a New York City-based mobile cupcake company named Cupcake Stop.

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HTC and Sprint's EVO may have stolen the show at CTIA today, but Samsung showed off its own Android 2.1 superphone called the Galaxy S. It's just as impressive as the EVO, just without the 4G muscle.

And while it may look like the fraternal twin of Apple's iPhone, especially with the TouchWIZ UI, Samsung's Galaxy S is no iClone.

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Sprint and HTC this afternoon finally took the wraps off of the "Supersonic" 4G smartphone, the HTC EVO 4G, and everything about this device is killer.

HTC and Sprint have spared nothing in this top-of-the-line device. It has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD8650) processor, a 4.3" (800x480) capacitive touchscreen, an 8 megapixel dual flash camera, and a 1.3 megapixel forward-facing camera. Add Android 2.1, 4G WiMAX/3G EV-DO Rev. A, the ability to act as an 8-device 4G hotspot, an FM radio, Bluetooth 2.1, digital compass, proximity, velocity, and light sensors, GPS and 3.5mm headphone and HDMI output. In short, pretty much everything you could want.

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A spokesperson for Adobe told Betanews this afternoon that on the morning of April 12 at 11:00 a.m. EDT, the company will hold a global online launch event for all of the components of its Creative Suite 5.

Among the most anticipated new components -- or as Adobe tends to present them in its periodic table, "elements" -- is a vastly improved HD video rendering engine called Mercury. Unlike other manufacturers, Adobe tends to retain the cool names for its products and platforms even after public release. Mercury will utilize the graphics processing power of video cards to expedite the decoding and playback of HD-encoded formats, especially for the Premiere Pro editor.

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