Music phones pass half a billion. That's how many units MultiMedia Intelligence reckons the market shifted globally in 2007.

The research company says the figure beats the iPod and other personal media players by 300 million units, making phone the most popular portable music device.

MultiMedia Intelligence says it expects music phone shipments to reach 941 million units in 2011 - accounting for half of all handsets sold.

The reports also states that the global mobile music content market ringtones, ringback tones, streaming audio and full-track downloads) will hit $6 billion this year.

MultiMedia Intelligence defines a music phone as a device with audio codec functionality (MP3, AAC, etc) and an expandable memory card slot. More at Mobile-ent. Thanks to Luca.

Today's free eBook is The Padre, the Rabbi, and the Devil His Own Self by Melanie Fletcher- "When someone finally pulled the gunnysack off Father Ray Marotta's head, the first thing he thought was, Let there be light.

And there was. And it wasn't good at all.

He was on the floor of what looked like an old backwoods shack, with three men in flannel shirts and jeans staring down at him. The pungent scents of body odor, old barbecue and gasoline drifted off the trio in an invisible but nose-shriveling cloud. The one in the middle, wearing a mesh trucker's cap with the slogan "Redneck And Proud Of It," scratched his armpit meditatively. "I s'pose you're wonderin' why we brought you here," he said.

The banjo theme from "Deliverance" went though Ray's head, and his butt muscles clenched. "I swear, I never even looked at an altar boy," he pleaded.

The man on the left shook his head. "He's a Cath'lic preacher, all right. I don't know about this, Jimmy James—"

Trucker cap sighed. "I do, DeWayne, and a Cath'lic's what we need. Y'all saw the movie."

The other two nodded reluctantly. Jimmy James gave the priest a quick, uncertain look. "You are a Cath'lic, aincha?"

Ray blinked. Having to point to his Roman collar was just icing on the surrealistic cake, but it seemed to reassure the other man.

"All right, then," Jimmy James said. "I'll take him to see Gramma.""

Long, long ago PDAs used to be like ordinary computers and run all of their software from RAM...and lost everything when the battery ran out.

In recent years, however, most devices have used either Flash RAM or some other form of persistent stotage. Has persistent memory made a different to you and the way you use your device?

Don't all cheer at once, but I’ve finally seen a benefit from the release of the iPhone!

It’s not that I’ve bought one or anything like that. While that particular pleasure may lie in my future, it certainly doesn’t exist in my present. What seems to have happened is that the hype and media attention surrounding the iPhone have finally driven my bank to optimise their online banking software for mobile devices.

OK, I admit that I’ve managed to bank via the G900 in the past, but I only managed it using Opera (which isn’t my personal choice of a browser) and it didn’t look particularly nice, nor was it that easy to use.

Now that the iPhone’s come along, however, and is regularly pushed at the masses on the television (like no other smartphone that I can remember) banking executives seem to have woken up to the idea that some people might be able to bank online on the move and have finally done something to facilitate that.

I know it’s the iPhone that’s to blame because the bank goes out of its way to point this out on the page offering this new mobile wonder, "...provide a seamless online experience for all iPhone and iPod Touch users...". The fact that it will also work with a whole load of other mobile browsers as well (even PIE under Windows Mobile) which probably represents a greater proportion of their customer base, just doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. (It still doesn't work under Blazer on the TX, by the way.)

So I finally have a reason to say thanks to Apple for releasing the iPhone because I’ve got one of my ‘Holy Grail’ items of PDA/Smartphone use as a result – Internet banking from my own bank that now works anywhere.

You'll notice that a number of articles are currently blank - apologies, we're sorting this now. In the mean time you can always visit our advertisers! :) (*shameless plug*)

Shaun: All blank articles have now been removed, but it does mean less news today. We will be sure to have more tomorrow:)