Mobiles are becoming media channels.

Simon Dyson, senior analyst at Informa told the BBC News website:

“[By 2010] Mobiles will support MP3 audio formats as standard, just as cameras are standard on mobiles now, and models that have enough memory to hold 50 to 60 full tracks will be common place“.

Man, this guy is a veritable soothsayer.

Most mobile phones on the market today have memory exceeding 32MB – often double that – and most support MP3 audio as standard already. Most of the Sony Ericsson range also have memory card slots, allowing expansion up to 128MB or more.

At a paltry 64MB, the average person could load about 15-20 decent tracks on their phone – 128MB would allow about 40, so it’s not going to take another five years to get 60 tracks on a mobile.

Steven Spielberg’s remake of the HG Wells’ sci-fi classic War of the Worlds delivers everything audiences have come to expect from a summer blockbuster.

Within 15 minutes of the Morgan Freeman-narrated opening sequence, the audience is sent hurtling along on a careully constructed theme park ride, blending moments from Spielberg’s own Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Jurrasic Park and Schindler’s List, leaving little room from breath in a two-hour, action-packed demollition derby.

Despite the ropey plot, Tom Cruise’s lame attempts to portray a well-intentioned but flawed father-of-two – or the stereotypical Spielberg gush-fest towards the end; this is prime stuff from the blockbuster king.

However, the special effects never quite dominate the screen time and the story remains reasonably faithful to Wells’ original intention.

I will say one thing about it though; it’s grim – harrowing in places – managing to drop in subtle references to the terrorist attacks on the USA on September 11 2001 and giving the audience a glimpse of the desperate measures humans will take when faced with drastic circumstances.

Watch out for the initial attack sequence in the first 20 minutes; heavy stuff.

Wikinews: Armed police shoot man dead on London Underground.

Wikipedia has all the latest on the recent spate of London bombings.

Corante are reporting that the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive is being sued for breach of copyright.

I couldn’t agree more. They have no right to capture protected content without permission, then store it and serve it up for anyone to view.

The process of removing a website from the Wayback Machine is considered opt-out; it should be opt-in.

The same goes for Google’s caching system.

James Doohan, the Canadian actor most famous for playing the Scottish chief engineer Montgomery Scott on the Starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek series has died, aged 85.

Ye cannae change the laws of physics.

At the right-hand side of the page, regular Copydesk readers will now notice a single text advertisement across every page on the site linking through to the UK-based ink cartridge company eezytrade.

eezytrade are now the official sponsor of the Overdue Links section of The Copydesk, and are an affiliate partner of the site.

The Google AdSense program which was previously on display was lagging too far behind what I was writing about here on the site (sometimes 5-6 weeks behind), and the ads were starting to look dated and inappropriate.

If you read this site regularly, you will already know that the owner of eezytrade, John Pickering, is a friendly and affable character, and his prices for replacement cartridges are difficult to beat, as is his customer service and delivery times.

Don’t waste your time or money looking elsewhere for printer cartridges from now on, just follow the link here on The Copydesk.

Prison Planet ask an important question of the London transport bombers today:

Do you really believe for a second that guys with 8 month babies and guys who taught diasbled [sic] schoolchildren would want to blow themselves up and kill other innocent people?