The price of text messaging in the US has doubled over the past three years, and the chairman of the US Senate Antitrust Subcommittee is now asking the heads of the the nation's four biggest wireless phone companies why.

In a letter, US Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) has requested an explanation of the texting price hikes from the CEOs and presidents of Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, giving them a deadline of October 6, 2008 to answer his questions.

3:20 pm EDT September 12, 2008 - Apple has released an updated version of iTunes 8 to correct the BSOD problems some users have been experiencing after installing the software. The issue relates to a driver that conflicts with Windows Vista.

In a support posting, Apple said: "After installing iTunes 8 for Windows, some users may see a blue screen error message when connecting iPhone or iPod to a Windows Vista computer. In some cases, the computer may immediately restart when connecting iPhone or iPod to the computer."

Following up on the Yahoo Open Strategy announced in April, Yahoo this week opened up its annual "Hack Day" to outside developers, while also giving glimpses to journalists of the forthcoming new features on its home page and various other properties.

"[Yahoo Open Strategy] platforms will harness Yahoo!'s unique strengths -- our rich and relevant user experiences (we're #1 in 7 verticals), our massive audience (half a billion users/month), and our deep data repositories (content, content, content) -- and open them to the innovations of the developer community. Our aim: to fundamentally transform how people experience Yahoo," wrote Cody Simms of Yahoo Open Strategy's product management group, in a blog post introducing the strategy last spring.

In a rare moment of clarity for a company known for secrecy, Apple has detailed the changes and security fixes that come with the iPhone's 2.1 software update, released Friday.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised during an iPod event Tuesday that the new iPhone firmware will fix some of the device's most egregious issues, including call drops and truncated battery life. In addition, security watchers note the update patches 8 security vulnerabilities, including a code execution risk for mobile Safari and the previously disclosed passcode flaw.

Harkening back to the early days of the BlackBerry, a new mobile device known as the Peek -- slated for availability next week -- definitely escapes featuritis. If e-mail is your main interest when you are mobile, maybe the Peek is for you.

It might be hard to imagine now, but RIM's first Blackberry devices acted as dedicated e-mail pagers. Next week, Target stores will start to sell the Peek, which mimics that old e-mail pager, in both appearance and for the most part functionality.

Microsoft has released its latest installment of the much-discussed advertisements featuring former CEO Bill Gates with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, revealing a tiny bit more of what the company is aiming to achieve with its abstruse ad campaign.

Last week, I recorded my immediate reactions to Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign with a mix of confusion and reproach. One week later, Microsoft has released the second installment in its ad series. While its intent remains on the vague side, Microsoft's serial ad campaign has engaged viewers with its esotericism.

Continuing BetaNews' interview with the user experience chief of Mozilla Labs, we discuss whether it's possible, even with an estimated quarter-billion Firefox users, to build a semantic functionality network on the strength of volunteerism.

Of the billions of people linked together through the modern Internet, and the tens of thousands of services available to them -- a great many of which are operated by folks who believe they have the capability to serve the Web's principal application -- the number of institutions formed among them that we talk about on a daily basis, that command Web users' everyday attention, and that promise "solutions" to these users' needs, can be counted on two hands.

After acquiring Helio only three weeks ago, Virgin Mobile USA has launched its first device from its new subsidiary: an EV-DO handset by Personal Communication Devices, LLC -- a spinoff of UTStarcom -- called the Shuttle.

Mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Helio has passed hands several times in the last year. Earthlink and SK Telecom were joint founders of the service, but Earthlink later backed away from the project, placing the financial burden on SKT. Earlier this year, Virgin Mobile, a similarly youth-oriented MVNO that leases bandwidth from Sprint PCS, expressed interest in acquiring the brand.

On one front, Yahoo is introducing a new tool that can synchronize address lists between social networks and Apple's iPhone. But maybe more importantly, a new Yahoo SDK may enable this and other apps to find their way to Symbian and WM6.

Extending its battlefront against Google to the mobile playing field, Yahoo this week rolled out plans to build its own applications for Apple's iPhone, as well as to produce new tools for outside developers that will enable their applications to migrate more easily among various smartphone environments.

After agreeing to allow access to Live Messenger and Hotmail in May, Microsoft's addition of search to its RIM partnership further signifies the company's embrace of Blackberry.

Under the terms of an extended agreement announced this morning, Microsoft's Live Search will be given prominent placement in the Web browser and mapping applications of RIM BlackBerry handsets.

After a brief delay, AOL and Nullsoft's Internet radio service Shoutcast has launched its overhauled and upgraded site, in addition to receiving a number of goodies.

Shoutcast has received an official team blog, site skinning, and an embeddable widget, as well as an upgrade to its popular Winamp portal.

Though the Web browser has become a popular BlackBerry feature, users on the go don't have time to fiddle with browsers. For them, Google has released a mobile version of its basic services that skips the formalities and gets down to basics.

If you're a BlackBerry user, chances are that you've already noticed Google's classic, plain vanilla screens and menus often seem more suited for the PC than for the handheld. There's a much greater chance that a mobile user will need to see a map of nearby restaurants or a list of incoming e-mails than, say, the proper spelling of "esophagus."

Ad revenues at AOL are no longer 'growing like a weed,' a Time Warner exec admitted at a conference this week. The CFO didn't mention, though, that AOL had just intentionally canceled some of its contracts with advertisers.

Advertisers are now starting to pull back from AOL's Platform-A ad platform, acknowledged Time Warner CFO John Martin, speaking this week at Merrill Lynch's investors conference.

A shareholder lawsuit accusing Apple and its executives of improper accounting as a result of its stock options practices will yield a $14 million payout to the plaintiffs.

As a result of a settlement in a shareholders' derivative action, liability insurers will pay Apple a total of $14 million, effectively restoring to the company -- and, in the "derivative," to its shareholders -- what executives of the company allegedly took for themselves through options backdating practices.

How much does your cell phone say about who you are and where you are? Last year, the US government wanted the authority to use the information cell phones put out naturally in its own investigations. Yesterday, a judge said no.

Pennsylvania US district court judge Terrence McVerry late yesterday denied the US government's appeal of a federal magistrate's order last February, that effectively prohibited the government from acquiring location information from individuals' cell phone location tracking devices without a warrant.