The chairman of the House oversight committee wants more information from the Federal Communications Commission about how commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker got her new job lobbying for Comcast, The Wall Street Journal reported late last week. FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker FCC Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) sent a letter on May 18 asking FCC Chairman …

E-readers are seeing a real boost in the Australian marketplace; however, many Australians are still wary to adopt this unfamiliar technology. Here we answer some common questions to help demystify the e-reading experience. Want to check out the e-readers available and make a comparison before you buy? Head on over to our round-up of the best e-readers in Australia. BeBook …

NEW YORK–The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue turns 100 years old on Monday. As part of the centennial celebration, 500 people spent the night in the library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Friday finding clues as part of a scavenger hunt designed by game developer Jane McGonigal and collectively writing a 600-page book in a single night. And …

Today’s launch of the Quick Tap contactless mobile-payments service means Orange customers with a compatible phone can now pay for goods at some 50,000 UK stores by simply tapping their handset on a payment reader. A rebranded version of the Samsung Tocco Lite, the Tocco Quick Tap, is the first Orange handset to include the near-field communication (NFC) chip and custom software required …

Are customers ready to drop $500 for this 7-inch tablet? HTC Best Buy announced late yesterday that it will begin offering a Wi-Fi version of the HTC Flyer on Sunday, May 22. The retail giant is already taking preorders for the 7-inch tablet, which sells for $499.99. The Flyer runs Android 2.3 with a tablet-optimized version of HTC’s Sense UI, …

The patent portfolio of defunct Israeli phone manufacturer Modu has been bought by Google for around £3m. Modu manufactured tiny phones that could be slid into a range of different jackets, with various designs and functions. For example, the Modu 1 could be inserted into a dock that turned it into a digital picture frame, or a jacket that added a 3-megapixel …

We have the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Josh P. Miller/CNET We’ve seen the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play before at Mobile World Congress and have managed to play a game or two on it ourselves during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Now, we finally have our hands on the Verizon version of the phone that will be making it …

Apple customers downloaded more than 5 million games each day in March from the company’s App Store, say market researchers Distimo and Newzoo, and that’s just among the 63 million users tracked for a recent survey. Combining their individual data for a single report, Distimo and Newzoo found that games are the single biggest category of apps on Apple’s App …

The right to browse without businesses tracking your every move has just come to the latest Firefox beta for Android. Mozilla released the new mobile browser beta today with a Do Not Track feature that will keep business from issuing tracking cookies. The update comes almost a month after Mozilla took the wraps off of its official Firefox for Android …

Amazon App of the Day – 5/20/11 Amazon If you’ve tried Seesmic, Twitdroyd, TweetDeck, the stock Twitter-type application on your phone, or the official Twitter app, but continue to search for that “one,” why not try another? On Amazon’s Appstore for Android you can download the full, ad-free version of TweetCaster Pro for Android (normally $4.99) by Handmark, for nada, …

Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc and Xperia Play will waltz into the land of Android 2.3.3 next week, reports Recombu. Assuming that UK mobile networks approve, users should see their handsets ready for upgrade very soon. As always, there may be a variation in exactly when the update rolls out. All that should be solved with the Ice Cream Sandwich release later …

Nothing, but nothing, can take the place of a good teacher. Especially a good music teacher, like the ones who helped turn my daughter into the amazing piano player that she is. They’re worth every penny. That said, music lessons can get expensive, and they’re not always easy to work into your schedule. For example, I recently acquired a guitar, …

Three will introduce a 1p charge for every SMS delivery notification requested from 6 June. We discovered the change while reading about the recent Ofcom rulings on cross-network call charges. While O2, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone dispute the regulator’s calculation of what they can reasonably charge for accepting incoming calls from another network, Three is calling for a drastic reduction, …

If you believe the person standing in the rain in Times Square in New York City wearing a doomsday T-shirt, clutching a Bible, and handing out fliers about the end of the world, then Judgment Day is Saturday. That’s tomorrow. Naturally, you’re wondering: What smartphone apps should I try before the rapture? Alright, I admit that may not be the …

Optus today announced that pre-orders are open for the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. The telco says it is aiming to deliver pre-orders on 1 June and will reward customers who get in early with 2 months of free access and an official charging dock. Plans for the Galaxy S II will start from AU$5 per month on …