Tech Bytes

Count 'em: 4 billion phones

Largely because of the mobile phone boom in developing countries, telephone service has quadrupled in the past decade to 4 billion lines worldwide, according to a report from the United Nations telecommunications agency.


The International Telecommunications Union counts 1.27 billion fixed lines and 2.68 billion mobile accounts. The total number of people represented by those figures is unclear because many people, particularly in industrial countries, have both kinds of service.
The increase has been especially strong in developing countries that have been able to provide cellular phone service to tens of millions of people much more cheaply than having to wire homes and offices for fixed-line telephones.
-- Associated Press
Putting Wikipedia to the test

Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Web encyclopedia's reliability varies wildly. Now a computer science professor hopes to give users a better baloney detector: software that flags questionable lines in Wikipedia entries.
Developed by Luca de Alfaro and colleagues at the University of California-Santa Cruz, the software will color text some gradation of orange if there is reason to doubt its content. The deeper the orange, the more likely it is malarkey.
By diving into Wikipedia's open volumes of edit histories, the software counts the degree to which any given contributor's work survives subsequent edits by other people. In general, the less tinkering your work on Wikipedia engenders, the more trustworthy you are deemed to be.
-- Associated Press
Palm drops Foleo product

Palm has canceled plans to release a laptop-like gadget that was supposed to serve as a smart- phone companion, months after the product was announced and ridiculed by analysts.
The Foleo, which had been slated to ship this summer, looked like a small notebook PC with a 10-inch screen, full-sized keyboard and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities. It ran on a version of the Linux operating system and did not have a hard drive.
Analysts questioned why consumers would want to carry yet another device when they already have PCs that are getting smaller and cell phones that are getting smarter.
CEO Ed Colligan said early market feedback indicated there was still work to be done to make the Foleo a strong product.
-- Associated Press