For individuals and traditional mobile phone users who want to stay connected with friends, family and co-workers, Palm and Rogers Wireless announced the Canadian launch of the Palm Centro smartphone, available at Rogers Wireless. The Centro is Palm’s smallest and lightest smartphone and has sold more than one million units worldwide.

Centro has a modern, stylish look that feels comfortable in the hand, and discreetly fits in a pocket or clutch. Centro helps users manage email and text messaging, keep track of their schedules, stay up-to-date on the latest news, capture and share pictures, and get maps and directions with Google Maps–all in one small phone. Its full keyboard also makes it easy to quickly type text messages and emails with complete thoughts and ideas.

Can’t find the instruction manual for your BlackBerry? Your old HP LaserJet? Adobe Photoshop? Head to SafeManuals, an online repository of instructions and user guides for a whopping 900,000 products.

You can browse the guide database or search for a specific brand, product, model number, etc. All manuals on the site are stored in PDF format, so you should be able to view them on any OS (and even many smartphones). If you have some user guides of your own that aren’t in the directory, you can upload them and they’ll be preserved for future reference.

U.S. officials are facing a potential glitch in a program designed to help television viewers make the switch to digital TV next year.

A Commerce Department official told House lawmakers that more money might be needed to mail out all the $40 government coupons that will be available to subsidize converter boxes that some TV owners will need for the February 2009 switchover.

Is instant messaging an IT irritation, a distraction or an excellent productivity tool? It depends on who you ask. For IT departments, IM is often seen–and rightly so–as a huge security hassle. Users may want it, but it means extra work for the techies who have to clean up the messes it can leave behind. In short, their ideal answer to employees who wish to use it would often be “No.”

They’d get little argument from most managers, who see IM as a distraction–something their employees do when they should be doing their work. But a new study discounts at least the latter view, finding that IM actually improves workers’ productivity.

If you aren’t sure whether or not your ISP is throttling your Net connection, you will soon be able to download a tool from Google that will tell you once. If ISP’s aren’t going to tell their users exactly what is happening with their network connections, Google wants to make sure that these people have the ability to tell for themselves. This announcement is Google’s most recent attempt at raising awareness about Net neutrality.

In this all-new book review shootout, we put two books to the test. Read on to learn how iPhone Open Application Development by Jonathan Zdziarski, and Switching to the Mac by David Pogue stand up to our editorial review.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

Momail is offering support for the latest mobile devices, this time from Apple and Samsung. As the handset specifications were officially released after the companies’ respective launches on June 9th, Momail can confirm support for the new iPhone 3G and the Samsung Omnia.

Verizon Wireless and Palm announced that the Palm Centro smartphone will be available online at Verizonwireless.com and in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores beginning June 13. Dressed in a crisp cobalt blue, the Centro provides customers with the a tool to manage the busiest of lifestyles with voice, text messaging, email and the Web.

Expressivo 1.4–the latest version of the software that reads books with a beautiful voice–has been launched. Buying the software with the English-speaking voice of Jennifer you also receive a free collection of 50 popular e-books in English.

The free collection of e-books–supplied with the version of Expressivo which speaks American English with the voice of Jennifer–includes 50 of the most popular literary works of the world made available as part of the Project Gutenberg. Users of Expressivo have free access to a collection of books including Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, James Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Additionally, you can download, free of charge, other e-books and then play them on your computer or save them as MP3 files and then play them, e.g. on an iPod. Such an MP3 book can be a perfect, eye-friendly entertainment during long holiday travels.

Concrete Software announced the launch of Magic 8 Ball for BlackBerry smartphones. Concrete Software is excited to bring this popular title, originally published by Oasys Mobile in January 2008, to BlackBerry–one of the fastest growing mobile platforms in the U.S. In addition to launching on Blackberry, Concrete also plans to release a version for Windows Mobile.

Magic 8 Ball has been a long-time, pop culture icon selling in excess of 8 million copies since its original release by Mattel, Inc. in 1946. This popularity is evident in the appearance of Magic 8 Ball in television shows such as: The Simpsons, Friends, and Survivor. The design for the original game was based on that of the 8 ball in a game of billiards and was intended to provide different answers to life’s questions when shaken.

Magic 8 Ball Mobile incorporates all aspects of the fortune telling original and puts it on your mobile phone. The BlackBerry version is currently available on all color BlackBerry smartphones and the soon to be released BlackBerry Bold. The Windows Mobile version is scheduled for release later this summer.