The Dom Perignon IV Speed Contest ended on November 7th, with the forty participants recording an impressive average speed of 52 words per minute for text entry in a Palm device or Pocket PC. In addition, it saw the 80 WPM mark broken for the third time in the history of this biennial contest.

Hot Lava Software’s Math Facts courses will help your children with the core Math Facts needed in school. The Math Facts for Fourth Graders was created by teachers and tested by fourth grade students. This course will build your child self confidence with the innovative testing feature and help them get better grades. All our learning modules are designed as real self paced and run on Pocket PC and Palm OS based PDA devices.

If you have a modded Xbox, it appears that Microsoft has added new “security” checks that could kill your access. There’s an excellent post on Xbox-scene that provides details. If you have a modded Xbox and don’t want to lose Xbox Live once you get Halo 2, you better be prepared.

SanDisk announced significantly higher capacities and faster read/write times for its industrial product line, including Industrial Grade and Standard Grade Flash ATA cards. These new cards now provide memory options of as much as 16 gigabytes (GB) for PC Cards and up to 8GB for CompactFlash cards.

McAfee has bundled together its latest security applications into a single suite aimed at home users. MIS 2005, announced Monday, includes upgrades to the company’s VirusScan, Personal Firewall Plus, Privacy Service and SpamKiller packages, which are designed to protect computers from viruses, hackers, spam, phishing scams and other online dangers. It’s also meant to act as a safeguard against threats targeting instant-messaging software from America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft.

TI’s new Hollywood digital TV chip will combine the two biggest consumer electronics inventions of our time: the television and the cell phone, according to Gilles Delfassy, senior vice president and general manager of TI’s wireless terminals business unit. These devices will be able to receive a live TV broadcast at 24-30 frames per second, acting as a combined TV tuner, signal demodulator and channel decoder. TI expects to provide samples of the Hollywood chip to its commercial customers in 2006, so the first units won’t go on sale until 2007.

Iomega announced an external hard drive in 20 GB and 40 GB capacities that is small enough for the shirt pocket and weighs just 3.5 ounces. The new Iomega USB 2.0 Mini Hard Drive is the first Iomega hard drive to receive 100 percent of its power from a standard USB data port, allowing mobile professionals to travel lighter and still have plenty of storage capacity for all their important files.

Doubling as a portable media player, the pocketable VAIO U-series notebook PC allows you to download entertainment content and enjoy it virtually anywhere you go. Integrated 802.11 b/g wireless LAN, multiple input modes, like stylus and handwriting recognition software, along with a virtual keyboard on the unit’s touch panel screen allow you to compose email messages or navigate files even while standing up. The unit’s 5-inch display with XBRITE LCD technology is powered by an Intel Ultra Low Voltage Pentium M processor and Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system.

Research In Motion (RIM) and Dobson Communications announced the launch of the BlackBerry wireless platform to rural professionals in the United States. BlackBerry features integrated support for email, phone, SMS, browser and organizer applications and feature optimized keyboards ideal for composing and responding quickly to messages. BlackBerry will operate on Dobson Communications’ GSM/GPRS network.

We’re doing some preventative maintenance this weekend. Expect the network to be down for a little while during that time. Also, for those of you who obsessively check your email every five minutes on mailing days (yeah, we know who you are!), the mailings will be going out on Monday instead of Sunday (so give your download button a break for a day).