It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S. We all know what that means: extra work doing family tech support. Mom and Dad, Grandma and Aunt Lucy have all saved up their dumbest and most annoying tech support problems, just waiting for you to arrive and fix them. But, in the spirit of the Memorial Day, we’ll take pity on all our readers who are in the trenches of the tech support war. For a short time, we’ll waive our usual site-license fee and sign up your company, group, school, or organization en mass to Computing Unplugged at no charge.

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The mobile-television industry is still very fragmented, but there’s enough room for several different players on the dial, according to industry executives. Mobile phone carriers are seeing enough interest in taking television on the go that they’re considering a variety of ways to deliver sports highlights or comedy routines to phones.

After reading this article, you will be able to take three simple steps that will help your protect your handheld or smartphone and the data contained in it.

Google and Dell have agreed to a first in a series of deals to preinstall Web and desktop search software on the PC maker’s computers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas, Schmidt discussed details of a long-rumored deal between the No. 1 search engine and the No. 1 PC maker, which is a strike against Google rival Microsoft. Under the deal, millions of Dell PCs will be loaded with the Google toolbar for Web and PC search, along with a co-branded home page, before they’re shipped to consumers.

Microsoft has renewed its interest in mobile computing. The software giant, which earlier in 2006 introduced its Ultra-Mobile PC, formerly code-named Origami, has created a new mobile marketing group with rising executive Mika Krammer as its director, and is working to synchronize not only what it says about its two mobile operating systems–Windows and Windows Mobile–but also the way they work together. Mobility, whether in the form of notebook PCs or smart phones, represents a rapidly expanding market, so Microsoft is paying more attention to it and working to better integrate its various marketing efforts focused on the space.

NS BASIC Corporation announced the availability of NS Basic/CE 6.5. Major new features include support for Code Modules and direct calls to Windows API functions. NS Basic/CE is a VB-like development tool. It allows the creation of applications on a Windows desktop computer which will run on Windows CE devices, including Windows Mobile and Pocket PC. A unique feature of the development tool is that it can be used to develop on the device itself or on the desktop. The release also delivers numerous user interface improvements. A utility for converting eMbedded Visual Basic apps to NS Basic/CE has been updated, and new samples and documentation have been added. There are also over 30 other improvements in the new release.

The first domain suffixes specially created for mobile devices became available on Monday, but some critics say a new domain naming plan is unnecessary. On Monday, Mobile Top Level Domain, the company put in charge by ICANN (Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers) last summer of allocating the domain names, opened initial domain name registration. Mobile Top Level Domain, or mTLD, is funded by a consortium of companies including Ericsson, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Develant Technologies has released GapiDraw 3.6, adding Visual Studio 2005 support and improved Windows Mobile 5.0 compatibility to the mobile graphics platform. GapiDraw 3.6 also features greatly improved Symbian display access routines for Series 60 devices. GapiDraw 3.6 is available as a free upgrade to all current GapiDraw 3.5 licensees. GapiDraw has been used in popular games such as Atlantis Redux, Ancient Evil, and EverQuest for the Pocket PC.

HP has just released a bundle of updates for the iPAQ hx2000 series running Windows Mobile 5.0 and the iPAQ Foldable Keyboard.

PIEPlus, a popular PIE/IE Mobile add on, has been released. New features in PIEPlus 2.0 include WM5 support, new toolbar UI, back/forward menus, URL tools, and more.