President-Elect Obama is a well-known BlackBerry addict and has expressed more than a little anxiety about being forced to give up the mobile messenger when he officially becomes #44.

Now, in what is sure to send Apple fanboys into a psychological tailspin (they’re already apoplectic that he’s not using an iPhone), some are suggesting Mr. Obama could adopt a more secure handset, namely General Dynamics’ $3300 Sectéra Edge, which the NSA has certified “as being acceptable for Top Secret voice communications and Secret e-mail and Web sites."

The Obama adoption of Windows Mobile isn’t official, but it is interesting that a Windows Mobile device may be the only solution that can serve the world’s most powerful person. 

If true, maybe it’ll force Microsoft to work on its outdated UI since its business and security credentials will be on such solid ground.

via PCWorld

Google has a stronghold in today’s tech world, but that’s not to say every project it attempts reaches great success. So, like many other companies these days, Google is feeling the need to cut back. Recently, the company announced plans to end support for some of its less popular Web-based applications. Some of these applications include Google Catalog Search, Google Video, and Jaiku. Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering, said Jaiku will be ported over to Google App Engine. After the migration, Google

China has become the world's third-largest economy, surpassing Germany and closing rapidly on Japan, according to government and World Bank figures. The Chinese government revised its growth figures for 2007 from 11.9 percent to 13 percent this week, bringing its estimated gross domestic product to $3.4 trillion — about 3 percent larger than Germany's $3.3 trillion for the same year, based on World Bank estimates.

Although the world's top economies, the United States and Japan, are in recession, the most pessimistic estimates for China's growth in upcoming years runs about 5 percent. That could allow China's GDP to overtake Japan's, currently $4.3 trillion, within a few years. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, was about $13.8 trillion in 2007.

Spb Software has updated one of its most popular Windows Mobile applications, Spb Weather, to version 2.0.  The new version includes a touch friendly UI, forecast data from Foreca (MSN’s weather data provider), updated/expanded city listings and an animated 3D globe with forecast data.

Spb Weather 2.0 is designed for Windows Mobile touchscreen smartphones and will run on Windows Mobile 5 and 6.

Download Spb Weather 2.0 or browse other Weather Software for Touchscreen Windows Mobile Smartphones & PDAs.

In a series of separate posts on various official Google blogs Wednesday evening, the company announced that it is terminating, stopping development on, or restricting access to six products that clearly haven't been adding much to the Google brand or bottom line lately.

The clock started ticking on Google Video when it bought YouTube in 2006. Starting, “in a few months,” Google Video will no longer allow user uploads. Google Catalog Search is getting the ax. Google Notebook is losing its developers. Dodgeball, acquired by Google in 2005, will be shut down “in the next couple of months.” Google's Mashup Editor, which never made it out of private beta, will be terminated, “in favor of the more powerful App Engine.” Jaiku, as it is today, may live on with support from a “volunteer team” of Google employees, but the main product is getting ported to the Google App Engine, and will be release as open source. Other blogs are calling Grand Central and Knol as the next projects to join Google's scrap bin.

A broad U.S. economic stimulus package cannot be the major vehicle for achieving the high-speed Internet goals of the incoming administration, a top technology adviser to President-elect Barack Obama said on Wednesday.

Blair Levin, a top aide to Obama, said the broadband piece of the stimulus package should “only do things that are timely, targeted and temporary and can lead to lots of jobs.” Speaking to a meeting of the Congressional Internet Caucus, Levin said Obama will still pursue goals of expanding broadband access for the unserved and underserved and getting public safety officials a national network. “You kind of have to use existing structures,” he said.

Visit our forums and read all about the GeForce GTX 285 and other reviews! The following is what [H]ardOCP has to say:

NVIDIA is launching the GeForce GTX 285 which is a refreshed GTX 280. We take a look at EVGAs GeForce GTX 285 SSC Edition with some insanely high clock speeds. Higher clocks hopefully mean better performance, and we see what kind of gameplay experience is delivered compared to the holder GeForce GTX 280.

After yesterday’s announcement that Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence from Apple until June, some analysts are speculating that Steve Jobs won’t come back at all. In a letter to Apple staff on Wednesday, Jobs said he was taking a five-month medical leave because his health issues are “more complex than I originally thought.” In that same letter, Jobs said he is looking forward to returning to Apple in the summer. Jobs will still be around for major strategic decisions, and Tim Cook (Apple’s COO)

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It was only last year that many of the major U.S. mobile phone service providers eventually settled on a rate of $99.99 per month for unlimited, nationwide voice calls. This has been a boon for heavy users of mobile phones as it has brought down the cost of their monthly phone bills. But folks who also use their phones for data access usually have to pay an additional fee for that service. A few smaller service providers, such as MetroPCS and Cricket, are able to undercut the big companies by offering nationwide,