Mobile Subscribers Top 97.3 Million in Pakistan

Pakistan ended with 97.3 million mobile phone subscribers in April 2010 up from 96.77 million subscribers in March 2010, according to recent stats released by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

Cellular industry showcased a positive growth of 0.55 percent in April 2010 while maintaining the growth rate of 0.56 percent in March 2010. Cellular teledensity in the country has hit 59.40 mark.

Other than Zong, all cellular companies showed addition in customers.

Valve: Big Surprise Isn't Episode 3 (Booooo!)

So much for that theory.

ZoomLooks as though the speculation that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 would be Valve's "big surprise" come E3 2010 was shot down in fiery flames. Although it seems rather odd that Valve head honcho Gabe Newell would shoot down candidates for the mystery reveal, apparently heconfirmed Episode 3's exclusion in a recent private message, simply saying "it isn't Ep 3." Bummer.

Newell also confirmed that a recent teaser image--depicting the Half-Life symbol with the words "Freeman" and "June 14th" centered underneath--was a fake. The history of the document also shows a lot of tampering although the edits appear to have taken place on June 4. Clearly someone was really hoping for the long-delayed, third installment, and wanted to spread the love.

So what exactly will be Valve's big surprise? The company recently hinted that the mystery reveal wouldn't interest Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamers, indicating that PC gamers will receive some sort of high-profile treat come June 14. That's a nice surprise in itself given that many PC developers are slowly shifting over to the dark side (namely heavy console support).

Intel's Core i7 Solution for Shopping at the Mall

Intel makes a giant "Minority Report" style touch display for... shopping?

Well know what we like to do with Intel Core i7 CPUs inside our systems. But Intel has a different sort of application that it demonstrated using its latest chip technology.

At the Intel booth, we saw an interactive floor plan that could be used by retailers to both help the customer find what they are looking for, adding things to their shopping list, as well as advertise new products.

The software runs on Windows Embedded 7 and a Core i7 CPU.

Japanese Surgeon Uses an iPad in Operation

Though there are tons of tablets being announced at Computex this week, the iPad is the one attracting all of the attention outside the show. With more than two million units sold, the device is showing up in some pretty strange places.

The iPad was just launched in Japan last week but one surgeon is already making use of the device in his operating room. Though it's unclear exactly how he's using the iPad, the surgeons in the video (seen here on Wired UK) pinch, zoom and drag their fingers across the screen, examining what appears to be the patient's insides or reference photos.

Watching how new gadgets and technologies affect medicine is interesting and we're eager to see if some of the cheaper, more open tablets scheduled to hit the market will enter hospitals on a more widespread scale. Digital hospital charts would be just one of the possibilites.

Wired points out that another Japanese doctor x-rayed his iPad back in April. Just because you're a doctor, doesn't mean you don't like x-raying random crap for fun.

HP: No, No, We ARE in the Smartphone Market

Yesterday, HP CEO Mark Hurd ruffled a few feathers by saying the company didn't buy Palm to get into the smartphone business. Rather, HP purchased Palm for the company's IP and WebOS and wants to put WebOS on tablets, netbooks and more. 


However, it seems all the talk has Mark Hurd rethinking his statement. Despite admitting at the time that "it doesn't seem to resonate well" when he tells people HP didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business, the HP CEO was last night retracted his remarks about not wanting to be in the smartphone business. Hurd said in a statement (via Engadget) that they yes, will be putting WebOS on pretty much every web-conntected device they can get their hands on, but that includes smartphones.