Yesterday , history was made in iphone books. Thousands of iPhone users in Australia woke up to a rude shock of seeing 1980s pop idol Rick Astley’s picture on their phone. It comes with a message “Ikee is never going to give you up”, in reference to the idol’s song “Never gonna give you up”

The worm was created by 21 year ld student Ashley Towns. He is said to have created the worm to create awareness of the security flaws in the user’s iphone.

Currently, it seems like the worm only affects iPhones which has been “jail broken” (In which user’s phone operating system is changed to allow them to run any software), and users who did not change their default password of “alpine”

Thankfully, the worn does not major harm and is not malicious. But it has sure done it’s job of warning users to be careful with the security of their iPhones.

Goggle had another first, this time in the music arena. Goggle started google OneBox a service for searching and then listening and buying whole songs online. In essence, it does away with 2 annoying things that users often face previously. 1) Finding full length versions of the song samples t listen to. 2) Having to search through various sites to buy songs.

Goggle OneBox is currently only available in the US, but will certainly be strongly supported by music industry players. Many see this service as one of the way to reduce the increasing trend of music piracy by providing an easy and quick way for users to find original music labels.

News has spread that China reportedly has cut access to You tube without any official explanation or even confirmation that it has indeed clocked the site.

China’s silence on the access blockage is standard operating procedure, according to Usha C. V. Haley, an Asia fellow at Harvard Kennedy school, author of the forthcoming book, New Asian Emperors: The Business Strategies of the Overseas Chinese.

China is able to cut off access to certain sites because all Internet data in China is routed to central servers that it controls, said the Kennedy School’s Haley. China is not unique in blocking youtube: ”There are many countries in Asia and outside of Asia that have such controls over the Internet,” Haley pointed out.Turkey and Bangladesh have both blocked access to YouTube in the past, she noted.

Of course, there will be many ways for the tech savy chinese to get past this censorship. Proxies or cheap dailup. It remains to be seem how long the blockage will last.

Acer unveiled it’s first eight smartphone model in the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. The company plans to be the top 5 smartphone makers in 5 years. The current top makers are Apple, Research in motion, HTC and Nokia

The cheapest smartphone model is expected to be sold for less US$100 and is expected to do well espeically in such though economic situation

It is reported that the new Microsoft smartrphone wil be using the NVIDIA tera chip. This comes after HTC and NVIDIA is widely touted to power the next generation of smart phone screens

According to circulating rumors Samsung would be releasing the second Android-powered smartphone through T-Mobile in the 2nd quarter of the year

It is suspected to  feature 3G , full touch screen, a 5 Megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, and a memory card slot up to 16 GB.