The US geographic market for the G1 Android phone is now expanding a second time, while also this week, T-Mobile USA lobbies the US Congress for new funding around broadband wireless.

Extending across only 95 US cities on the G1's launch date last October, availability of the Android smartphone grew to 130 cities by the end of 2008 as T-Mobile USA further built out its 3G wireless network.

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Download Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 from Fileforum now.

In the clearest sign to date that the company's roadmap really is being fast-forwarded, Release Candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 8 -- a critical component of Windows 7 -- was released this morning.

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The .tel top level domain, which strives to become the standard for virtual contact information will finally be available for public purchase on February 3, more than two and a half years after it received ICANN approval. A .tel domain is intended to be a virtual rolodex card, a place where a business or individual can store phone numbers, addresses, userIDs and even GPS coordinates that launch appropriate communications protocols when clicked.

Corporate launch for the domains took place on December 3, and the global consumer landrush will begin on February 3. During that time, it will be around $300 to purchase a .tel domain for three years. Normal pricing will then go into effect on March 24, when it will be about $10 to $20 for a name per year. Pricing will vary by registrar.

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Symantec today opened the first beta of its GoEverywhere service, a browser-accessible cloud workspace that centralizes user data from a variety of cloud services and makes them available through a single interface and single user ID and password. GoEverywhere features more than 100 of the popular communications and productivity apps available on the Web today, and it could be described as something of a cloud-based virtual machine. Interested users can sign up on goeverywhere.com to participate in the free beta.

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It looks as though the UK won't cut off music pirates from the Internet after all, even though the global music industry is now promoting this form of punishment over fines and prison.

UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham stated last year that the government had "serious legislative intent" to force ISPs to sever the Internet connections of music pirates. But in a recent interview with The Times of London, Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the UK government has now decided not to forge laws that would disconnect pirates.

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Systemax Inc, the company which owns TigerDirect, purchased nearly defunct computer retailer CompUSA's remaining assets at the beginning of the month in January 2008. The acquisition swept up the remaining CompUSA stores (around 16 of the formerly 104) and the ever-important brand name into Systemax's portfolio.

However ironically, CompUSA this morning issued a press release offering shopping tips "in light of recent big box electronics store closings," which cautioned consumers not to succumb to the pressure of buying from "disorganized sales" because of their closeout prices.

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Over the weekend, a proof of concept and downloadable demos for multi-touch on the Android open source mobile operating system were made available to the community.

In the time that I've been an Android user and owner of the HTC/T-Mobile G1, I've seen one thing happen dozens of times: when people ask to play with my phone, one of the first things they do is open the browser and try the iPhone "screen pinch." I don't know why, but it has happened literally dozens of times. Work and social colleagues, strangers, male, female, young and old, from the random people sitting next to me in airports to BlackBerry-faithful family members, almost everyone does it.

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Apple's iLife '09 creativity suite will be released tomorrow, according to the company. The software package will include updates to the iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and IDVD products made famous for being pre-installed on Macs.

iMovie '09 received the a new Precision Editor mode, video stabilization, animated travel maps and improved drag and drop functionality. iPhoto '09 now recognizes GPS tags, face detection and face recognition technologies for improved indexing of photos. GarageBand '09 has added instruction modes with 18 lessons on how to play piano and guitar, bolstered by the star power of Sara Bareilles, John Fogerty, Norah Jones, and Sting.

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Right on schedule, the nation's largest carrier is rolling out the first deployment of cellular signal-boosting femtocell equipment on private premises, using high-speed Internet as the backbone.

In perhaps one of its more radical experiments -- at least for Verizon Wireless -- the carrier is offering its Wireless Network Extender device for a lump-sum payment of $250. It's not a service, you don't subscribe to it, but you also don't need Verizon's wireless Internet service to use it either.

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It's hard to complain when someone offers you his top-of-the-line operating system for free. But it's hard not to complain when you're all ready to install it and you discover, surprise, it may not be free after all. That's the situation facing perhaps hundreds of recent recipients of Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, as gifts for attending the company's MSDN seminar tours.

To ensure that recipients register their copies and only use them once, Microsoft printed a promotional code inside the jacket, which is not the usual product key. By visiting the Web site www.registerwindowsvistasp1.com and entering the promotional code, recipients are given the full product key, and that way they will also be registered with Microsoft. Perhaps as part of a plan instituted months earlier, Microsoft set the Web site to discontinue operations after December 31, 2008.

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Sprint this morning became the first of the major US telecommunications companies to announce layoffs brought about by recent economic conditions. The third largest provider said up to 8,000 jobs will be eliminated to reduce labor and operating expenses.

Additionally, the company said it has frozen 2009 salaries and 401(k) matching bonuses. The measures are expected to cost Sprint $300 million in the first quarter of 2009, but reduce operating costs by an annual $1.2 billion.

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As if current job-seekers don't have enough woe, Monster.com is warning its users that data kept on its servers has been breached -- names, user IDs and passwords, e-mail addresses, contact information, phone numbers, and "some basic demographic data."

The announcement on the Monster site is dated January 23 (Friday), but considering Monster.com's track record over the past couple of years, they might as well just keep a copy on file for reuse. August 2007 saw an attack on the service that breached 1.3 million accounts and led to a mini-epidemic of phishing; later that year, another attack resulted in malware infections for hapless seekers who clicked to compromised pages on the monster.com site.

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Google Docs get lost in translation

On the Cyberstrategies Web site, Tim Bass tells about a "crossover" in document ownership that happened between himself and a user located in Thailand. Evidently, one of the documents mis-assigned to Bass had been created in the Thai language.

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How much could you accomplish in 115 days? The DTV Delay Act, provisionally delaying the switchover to DTV, appears to have overcome GOP objections and is moving toward a full Senate vote sometime next week. The Act would push mandatory rollover back to June 12.

Reports state that Senate Republicans were concerned that television stations ready and eager to switch would be forced to delay their move; the revised Act says they're free to make the hop as they see fit, and the feds can thereupon take up the unused and discarded spectrum for public-safety communications, as has been the plan all along.

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Nextgov reports that the ambitious Transformational Communications Satellite (TSAT) system, a $16 billion program that would allow surveillance satellites to move masses of data to troops in and near battle, is in a holding pattern.

The program is designed to make available over broadband masses of intelligence and surveillance data from its sources -- satellite and otherwise -- and move it to fighters in the field. It's a crucial part of the comprehensive Future Combat Systems program developed by the Army to modernize its capabilities. The Air Force's space program has undertaken the TSAT project, but other branches of the Armed Forces would have access to its capabilities.

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