Now that the Nokia 770 has been on the market for quite some time now, the world's largest mobile phone maker has unveiled the new N800 Internet Tablet just yesterday at the CES show in Las Vegas as it hopes to keep customers interested in the "laptop supplement" product with built-in wireless (WiFi and Bluetooth at the moment).

We're taking a bit of a break to be with our loved ones over the holiday, and we hope you are too. A very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you, and we'd like to pass along a heartfelt "Thank You" for your readership. We'll be back posting again tomorrow once we can burn off some of the egg nog!

Obopay can be sued to perform several "money sharing" functions from a mobile handset, such as sharing money with friends and transferring funds using a mobile device -- as well as making physical payments at merchant sites.

Ultra wideband technology, which has sort of fallen by the wayside ever since the effort to define a single standard fell through a while back, may have gotten some much-needed momentum with the approval by the European Commission's Radio Spectrum Committee to allow UWB to be used on the continent.

Despite a number of issues raised by some groups who argue that UWB has the potential to interfere with other wireless services because it transmits low power over a wide band of spectrum, the EU says it will allow supporters and manufacturers of UWB-enabled products to move forward to eventually introduce it into the marketplace sometime next year.

Of course, after all of the battling to define a single standard, it remains to be seen if in the long run UWB can gain any sort of niche in the wireless arena. Even though the Bluetooth Special Interest Group has seen fit to align itself with UWB supporters, it may not be enough to sustain it over the long haul. But, we'll just have to wait and see how it all shakes out.

As the winter chill begins to set in, here are five sizzling hot stories from the past week brought to you by The Wireless Report. Enjoy!

1. What is Palm doing now?
   Palm, the handheld operating system company that seems to not know where it is headed, has now paid Access Co. -- the Japanese outfit that bought the operating system from Palm -- to get access to the latest Palm operating system version, called Garnet.
2. Vancouver, British Columbia hesitates on jumping into the muni WiFi fray
   City officials in Vancouver, British Columbia have been studying the possibility of developing and deploying a wireless network to its residents, but there are concerns that the project could end up costing the city up to $12 million, and some are not sure whether the project is worth the investment.
3. Consumer Reports rates the top handsets and services from all carriers
   Consumer Reports has rated the top wireless carriers and their handset selections recently, and mobile operators Cingular Wireless and Sprint Nextel were somehow singled out as poor performers in this report. Now, honestly, I don't pay to much attention to Consumer Reports -- the reviews are almost always to vague, they don't rate what's important to many of us and the reviews are not comparative enough to be useful. But, the country pays attention and that is what counts here.
4. New Jersey counties to conduct wireless network feasibility study
   The southern New Jersey counties of Gloucester and Camden said they will join together to conduct a feasibility study to see if a wireless network will be beneficial to their residents. The study is expected to cost $250,000, and officials from both regions say they will split the cost equally in order to have it done.
5. Too much complexity in the mobile content space
   KISS -- Keep It Simple Stupid -- is a method for delivering content, ideas, products, marketing, messages and other things with little to no complexity so that consumers and business users can grasp the value of whatever the object it without going into deep specifics (which usually make eyes glaze over).

Boy, how things change over time! I remember way back in mid-2000 writing stories at a previous gig of mine about how Bluetooth technology was struggling to find a toehold in the wireless marketplace and that if chip costs didn't come down, it would never find a niche.

Cut to six years later, and I and many others have come to discover that Bluetooth has not only gained a toehold in the wireless marketplace, it has kicked the door down. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) says that 1 billion devices worldwide are using Bluetooth, including cellphones, laptops, headsets, and so on. In addition, a new market study from ABI Research indicates that the 2 billion mark will be broken by 2010.

In other words, Bluetooth is here to stay. It is finding a home in an array of products, and there may be more on the horizon, especially in the home entertainment and appliance sectors.

The Bluetooth train keeps a-rollin' along...

As we put the cap on another busy week here at The Wireless Report, we ask that you take a glance at our Top 5 stories from the past seven days before we shelve them and get ready for another week of wireless news and information. Enjoy!

1. Have vehicle, surf web
   Many folks like me can't get enough of the web. We surf the web at home, at work, at the airport, on vacation, and on and on. But there is still one place where most of us haven't tried to surf the web yet--until now.
2. Astrology dictates mobile phone love usage
   I wonder if the global wireless providers look at subscriber birthdates and group customers into astrological signs in order to predict revenue levels? They should, according to Virgin Mobile UK, which recently conducted some research which it claims is rather revealing in the way in which your astrological sign impacts upon the way you use your mobile phones.
3. What's on your wireless holiday shopping list?
   As I'm sure you are quite aware, the holiday season is just around the corner. (In my family, I think it started the day after Halloween.)
4. Can RFID e-Passports be hacked?
   With newer international passports being enabled with RFID technology, can these systems be hacked and compromised easily? There are some that say any electronic representation that communications beyond its own chips can be hacked given enough patience and persistence. When it comes to electronic passports, though, that is a scary potential situation.
5. Despite growth of smartphones, many of us still carry more than one wireless device
   Despite the proliferation of smartphones and other wireless devices that can do it all--telephone, e-mail, web browser, camera, text messaging, streaming video, downloading of music, and so on--it seems that many of us have more than one device to perform one or more of these applications.
   

As I'm sure you are quite aware, the holiday season is just around the corner. (In my family, I think it started the day after Halloween.)

In any case, it's gift-buying and gift-giving time, and for our purposes, there are a TON of wireless devices that are either out on the market or about to be, just in time for the holidays.

So, we would like you folks to answer this simple question--What's on your wireless holiday shopping list? Is it a new smartphone? A new laptop? A Bluetooth-enabled headset? Or something else?

Please let us know what you're thinking about spending money on or, better yet, what you would like for someone to buy for you, for the holidays. Leave us your comments below, and we'll compile them and post the results by Thanksgiving.

Happy shopping!