XM Satellite Radio signed a three-year $55 million deal with Oprah Winfrey to host a talk show. “Oprah And Friends” is scheduled to launch next September on the top U.S. subscription radio service. XM’s smaller rival in the U.S. satellite radio market, Sirius Satellite Radio has already inked a number of high-profile deals, most notably a five-year contract worth $500 million with shock jock Howard Stern. XM also has exclusive deals with Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and PGA Golf.

Global shipments of cell phones could hit the billion mark in the not-so-distant future. Approximately 812.5 million cell phones left factories last year, a 14 percent increase over the 713 million shipped in 2004, according to research firm iSuppli. That means that roughly one out of every six people on the globe bought a phone during the year.

Mobileplay and Volvo announced the launch of the first-of-its-kind new car configurator that runs on BlackBerries, Treos, Windows Mobile Smartphones, and other smart mobile devices. The Volvo configurator gives car buyers the opportunity to configure their dream Volvo right on their mobile device, including exterior color, interior fabrics, wheels and options packages. The configurator displays the buyer’s choices, along with pricing information, and allows them to contact a Volvo dealer if desired. Designed to promote the 2006 Volvo XC70 and XC90, the configurator was developed and will be distributed by Mobileplay, developers of a proprietary advertising-supported content delivery platform for smart mobile devices.

BoxWave announced FlexiSkin for O2 XDA Atom. BoxWave’s newly designed FlexiSkin for O2 XDA Atom comes in your choice of four colors: Coral Pink, Frosted Clear, Future Blue, and Smoke Grey, letting you customize the color of your O2 XDA Atom. FlexiSkin is durable, soft to the touch, and it can stretch and flex to help cushion your O2 XDA Atom from bumps, hard knocks, and everyday wear and tear.

Wikipedia has come under fire in recent months by critics that question the reliability of its information. But the site’s investigation into Congressional changes highlight how closely amendments to information are scrutinized. The online reference compendium has found that employees working in the U.S. Congress have made several changes to political biographies, removing facts considered negative and tweaking language to portray politicians in a better light. Wikipedia began an investigation after a Democratic representative, Marty Meehan, admitted that he had spiffed up his online biography page. It was found that articles on other senators had been changed, sometimes significantly, and that the edits could be traced to computers on Capitol Hill. Researchers discovered the links to the U.S. Senate and began checking the biographies that had been visited. Half a dozen pages were changed, according to Wikipedia, including those of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, and Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman.

With CloneDVD mobile you can put your favorite movies or TV series on your mobile video equipment and watch them wherever and whenever you want. CloneDVD mobile converts your DVD movies quickly and easily into a format that your portable device (Sony PSP, Apple iPod Video, iAudio X5, Creative Labs ZEN Vision, etc.) can play. You can also convert your DVDs to other file formats, such as DivX, XviD, AVI, MP4, etc.

Makayama Software has launched Palm Media Studio 1.0. The software converts DVD movies, downloaded TV shows, and other video clips to a mobile format for your handheld or smartphone. The software installs an encoding package on a Windows XP computer, users pick any video file from their harddrive, CD, or DVD and Palm Media Studio turns it into a compressed movie file which will play on the Palm.

StyleTap has released a platform to enable Windows Mobile for Pocket PC device users to run the more than 20,000 Palm applications on the market on their handhelds. StyleTap runs third-party applications written for Palm OS Garnet 5.2 (and earlier) devices. With it, Palm software appears and operates on a Pocket PC just like native Windows Mobile programs. You can even cut and paste between Palm and Windows Mobile applications on the same handheld.

A small South Korean company has become the second in the world to develop a humanoid robot that can run. Called RX, the robot can run about 500 meters per hour (the Japanese running robot, ASIMO, can hoof it at 3 kilometers per hour). The robot’s inventors say that RX is made with “modulated blocks,” which, like Legos, can be re-used for other types of robots.

European telecom regulators have backed the European Commission’s plan to outlaw excessive roaming charges for mobile phone users. They gave their support at a conference in Paris where EU Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding outlined her plans. The proposed law will force mobile phone companies to cut their international roaming charges to the level of domestic cross-network calls. Regulations could come into force in the second half of 2007.