It was the week when Nokia recalled 46 million phones, Skype went down, VMWare made a stylish debut and white space generated some heat.
Nokia said its BL-5C battery, made by Matsushita, might overheat and asked customers to swap them out. Nokia said it had sold 300 million of the batteries, but that the problem would affect "only"46 million. Unfortunately, Nokia forgot to tell the retailers, the result being confused customers from Hong Kong to New Delhi.
They might have comforted themselves at the prospect of a paper battery, now at prototype stage at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US.
Another malfunction that has had the message boards humming is a software bug at Skype that prevents users from signing in. Or, as the Skype homepage puts it, "a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software". At time of publication, Skype had been down for more than 12 hours, with intermittent service.
VMWare, which has popularized the hot new segment of software virtualization, defied the stock market turmoil to make the year's best debut. Its shares rose 75% on its first day on the New York Stock Exchange, making it more valuable than Ford.
Microsoft and the FCC exchanged words after the agency rejected as unworkable its proposal to open up unused white space between spectrum channels. Microsoft said the prototype used in the test was faulty. Yes, it was a Microsoft product.
South China Morning Post columnist Jake van der Kamp said PCCW's interconnection offers was an insult to the regulator Ofta. The incumbent promised to pay 1.43 HK cents a minute to mobile operators to deliver calls to their networks - currently it pays nothing. In return it expects 9.5 HK cents from the cellcos, or more than double the existing charge. If Ofta were to move faster "the idea would be just laughable rather than outrageous," he said.
In other news, Zimbabwe's Telecell lost its license after it rebuffed attempts by the president's nephew to grant him a stake in the firm. Iraq kicked off the auction of three new mobile licenses at $300 million apiece.
The CIA and the Vatican have been caught editing Wikipedia entries on former presidents Nixon and Reagan and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. Fox News has been revealed editing its own, thanks to new scanning software from a California Institute of Technology researcher.
The Beatles might still be on the long and winding road to the digital age, but John Lennon tracks are now available on iTunes. And China's State Language Commission has rejected a couple's application to name their child @.