Iambic’s Tipper is an indispensable everyday utility that saves time at the restaurant when it comes to pay the bill. It allows users to quickly calculate the total amount per person based on the percentage everyone wishes to tip and it evenly splits the total between 2 or more payers.

Previously available only for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Smartphones, Tipper is now available also for Palm OS based handhelds and phones. To celebrate the new edition, this week Tipper can be purchased for only 99 cents through Iambic’s “deal of the week.”

Weeks before he announced an “unacceptable number of repairs” to the Xbox 360, the Microsoft executive in charge of the video game console sold US$6.15 million worth of company stock, or about 20 percent of his holdings.

According to regulatory filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, sold 200,000 shares in four transactions between May 3 and May 30. The total take: more than $6.1 million.

On July 5, Bach was one of two Microsoft executives who spelled out the problems with the Xbox 360 to financial analysts and reporters. The game machine’s design, Bach said, was defective. “Over the past couple of months, the number of repairs for the Xbox 360 console have been unacceptable to us,” he said during a telephone conference call.

To handle the influx of customer complaints, Microsoft said it was immediately extending the Xbox 360’s warranty from one to three years for any problem diagnosed with the three flashing lights error message, dubbed the “red ring of death” by users. To pay for the anticipated repairs, and to evaluate and fix systems still in inventory, Microsoft will take a charge of more than $1 billion against earnings for the quarter that ended June 30.

Toysoft has released a major update to its FakeCall Treo utility. Fake Call is a program that is intended to give Treo owners a way to escape impromptu office meetings and unwanted social interactions–by accurately simulating incoming phone calls. The app gives you a number of clever and discreet ways to activate fake calls at your command. For example you can simply switch the silencer slider or schedule a specific time via an appointment or alarm and your phony call will come in. The program is designed to be identical to the Treo’s usual calling screens and will even simulate a voice on the other end of the line.

SplashData announced the release of the overhauled 2.14 version of SplashTravel in both Pro and Standard variants, featuring live global weather data, live foreign currency conversions, and live flight and airline info. This is mostly a bugfix release but with weekly updates to the program occurring since May, SplashTravel should continue to see additional new features and improvements added in the near future.

Palm has posted and an update that upgrades two of its smartphones, the Treo 700w and Treo 700wx, to the latest edition of the company’s Pocket PC Phone software: version 1.22. Released in January 2005, the Treo 700w was Palm’s first Windows Mobile-run product.

Has it come to this? Robots standing in for doctors at the hospital patients’ bedside? Not exactly, but some doctors have found a way to use a videoconferencing robot to check on patients while they’re miles from the hospital. One is at Baltimore’s Sinai Hospital. Outfitted with cameras, a screen and microphone, the joystick-controlled robot is guided into the rooms of Dr. Alex Gandsas’ patients where he speaks to them as if he were right there.

Besides his normal morning and afternoon in-person rounds, Gandsas uses the $150,000 robot to visit patients at night or when problems arise. The robot can circle the bed and adjust the position of its two cameras, giving “the perception from the patient’s standpoint that the doctor is there,” the surgeon said. A chart-review study of 376 of the doctor’s patients found that the 92 patients who had additional robotic visits had shorter hospital stays. Gandsas’ study appears in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

A group of experts in the field of voice user interfaces, speech recognition technology and navigation have banded together to create a voice-activated system, called DIR-ECT-IONS, that provides mobile phone users with driving directions and store location services via SMS/text messages.

The service, from Dial Directions, is free for any U.S. cell phone user, except for any SMS messaging charges that may be incurred by service providers, the company said. Dial Directions also claims it’s “the first of its kind” and will function with any handset from all U.S. carriers.

Now available from JRH Flight Sims is the Homebuilt Flight Simulator eBook. This 58-page eBook describes the techniques and methods used to build a homebuilt cockpit. Included in the book are detailed descriptions, build photos and 10 scale drawings.

The JRH Flight Sim was built using off the shelf materials available at most home improvement centers, hardware stores and electronics stores. Standard wood frame construction allows the use of conventional tools, such as hand saws and a hand drill. The book contains topics from what to consider before you begin building, how to build the frames, panels and PC interfacing to hardware and Windows setup. Also included in the book are 10 detail and assembly dimensional drawings.

A couple who authorities say were so obsessed with the Internet and video games that they left their babies starving and suffering other health problems have pleaded guilty to child neglect.

The children of Michael and Iana Straw, a boy age 22 months and a girl age 11 months, were severely malnourished and near death last month when doctors saw them after social workers took them to a hospital, authorities said. Both children are doing well and gaining weight in foster care.

The Reno couple were too distracted by online video games, mainly the fantasy role-playing “Dungeons & Dragons” series, to give their children proper care.

Through a collaboration between News Corp.-owned Fox Mobile Entertainment and its acquired mobile entertainment company Jamba, fans of Fox’s The Simpsons can now purchase ringtones, voicetones, wallpapers and screensavers based on the series just in time for the July 27 release of The Simpsons Movie.

Mobile products based on the series will be offered through a single brand subscription dubbed the Yellow Plan, the first mobile subscription plan built around one brand. At $9.99 a month, subscribers can make use of six “credits” to purchase content.