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MobilityDigest has posted a few videos today relating to Microsoft Office playback on upcoming Windows Phone 7 smartphones, and the productivity suite looks great.

The clips are short, but they show off how email and calendar support will work, how PowerPoint and Word will act, and how the overall "Office hub" will look and feel.

First announced in February, the smartphone OS tries to differentiate itself from the iPhone and Android phones, which use home screens of widgets and icons, by blending applications together for a more "integrated experience," allowing the OS and applications to "share information with the user in a natural and seamless fashion."

Read more about the OS here: https://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2010/02/15/video_daily_the_introduction_of_windows_phone_7_series

The nation of Israel has ended its ban on the Apple iPad, with the Israel Communications Ministry saying that after a second technical review, the device will be re-allowed into the country.

The device was banned right after launch earlier this month with the CM saying that the device's wireless strengths violated Israeli law and would overpower other wireless devices in the country.

10 of the devices were seized from citizens and tourists, with tourists only getting their devices back when they left the country.

Starting today, they are once again allowed in the country.

Apple, at the time of the ban, had said: "The iPad complies with international industry standards for Wi-Fi specifications."

Although this story is slightly outside of our niche, it is still particularly interesting. Republicans have come out swinging today, claiming that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) was too busy watching pornography to properly police the nation's financial system as it collapsed in 2008.

Says California Rep. Darrell Issa, the head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee: "It is disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation's economy on the brink of collapse."

The SEC internally had talks with 33 employees that were caught looking at "explicit images" over the past five year, all on their government-issued computers. 31 of those problems have come since 2008, when the stock market and the nation's financial system almost came full crashing down thanks to billion dollar losses caused by derivatives.

The SEC Inspector General, in response to a probe by Republicans, added some incredible findings to the already devastating situation.

Reads the Chicago Tribune:

After HTC dropped out of the hunt, it appears that Lenovo is now the front-runner to purchase struggling smartphone maker Palm.

Lenovo is the world's fourth largest PC maker, but has struggled to make any headway into the phone market.

"A most suitable candidate will be a mainland Chinese company," adds Lu Chialin, an analyst at Macquarie Securities in Taipei. "They've got a lot more free cash and don't have the brand presence in the United States, so that will all give them that boost they need."

HTC passed on bidding after reviewing Palm's balance sheet and books, leaving Lenovo as the top "mainland Chinese" company left in the running.

"There just weren't enough synergies to take the deal forward," says an anonymous HTC source, via Reuters.

Officials from all three companies declined to comment.

The German airline Lufthansa has said today it would fly Apple developer Gray Powell (the guy who lost the iPhone HD) to Munich for free beers, on them.

Nicola Lange, the airline's director of marketing and customer relations says she knows "how frustrating it can be to lose personal items, especially when it is such a unique item." Also, because Powell lost the phone in a Beer Garden, Lange says he "can literally pick up where you last left off," after he flies to Germany.

Powell has yet to take up the offer, but he likely should, given how mad CEO Steve Jobs most likely is at Apple's latest product being leaked months before launch.

New to the "iPhone HD," are a front-facing camera for video conferencing, a better standard camera (including larger lens and flash), a Micro-SIM slot (just like the iPad), 960x640 resolution, a second mic, metallic exterior (not plastic) and split side buttons for volume.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft and ex-News Corp. president Peter Chernin are discussing creating a TV channel dedicated to the Xbox 360 gaming console.

The channel would be available only to Xbox Live Gold subscribers, which may see its monthly price rise by $1 for the added programming.

The "Xbox TV" channel would be owned by Chernin and Microsoft jointly, and the channel would offer original programming as well as reruns.

Chernin's publicist would not comment but to say: "Peter is talking to lots of people about lots of ideas in the digital space." Microsoft declined to comment.

The former president stepped down from News Corp. in June, and took a film and production deal with Twentieth Century Fox.

Wedbush Morgan video game analyst Michael Pachter has said today that he expects video game consoles to add 3 million subscriptions to Netflix in 2010.

Netflix gained about 800,000 subscribers in 2009 after they made the streaming service available on the Xbox 360 and Pachter says he expects at least the same amount of additions from the PS3 and Wii.

After Netflix's recent earnings report, Pachter said (via GI): "Subscriber growth exceeded our expectations in Q1. And the company increased full year subscriber guidance by 1 million, implying that contribution from the consoles may be running closer to 3 million this year."

Overall, 55 percent of those with Netflix subscriptions are now "actively" streaming content, up from 48 percent last year.

Additionally, Pachter says that once the current installed base of consoles has been saturated by Netflix, Netflix will make subscribers of about 5-to-10 percent of all new console purchases for the year, expected to add up to 1 million for all three consoles.

A group of hackers with the group name "SkidRow" have announced today that they have found a way to completely circumvent Ubisoft's "always on" DRM, DRM that forces gamers to remain connected to the Internet at all times or lose the ability to play their legitimately purchased game.

The controversial DRM was implemented first in Assassin's Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 but Ubisoft said recently they would keep the DRM on for all upcoming games.

The new hack (a modified .exe) by SkidRow disables the DRM entirely and allows for users to play their game without worrying about losing their progress if their Internet cuts out for a second.

As an extra poke at Ubisoft, the .NFO file attached to the hack says: "Thank you Ubisoft, this was quite a challenge for us, but nothing stops the leading force from doing what we do. Next time focus on the game and not on the DRM. It was probably horrible for all legit users. We just make their lives easier."

Microsoft's Entertainment division, which includes the Xbox 360, Zune and PC software has shown a strong profit for the Q1 2010, along with larger revenue.

The company saw a rise in revenue to $1.67 billion from $1.63 billion year-on-year, and showed a profit of $165 million USD. Overall, the company had a record month, bringing in $14.5 billion in revenue and $4.01 billion in net profit.

Microsoft sold 1.5 million consoles during the quarter, which was down from 1.7 million for the same quarter in 2009, and 8.8 million consoles in the last nine months, which was down from 10 million in the comparable period a year before.

Despite the drop in sales, manufacturing costs for the 360 fell 22 percent, helping to lead to the strong profit. Sales and marketing expenses fell 6 percent as well, or $60 million. On the other end, R&D costs increased by $31 million, and Xbox Live operating costs increased as well.

Mainly, the growth was attributed to the strong launch of Windows 7, as well as strong growth in Xbox Live revenue.

Google has denied today that it will be bringing its free Navigation GPS system to the iPhone, squashing rumors that had started earlier in the week.

The rumors had started when a Google executive was quoted as saying the search giant was planning to bring the GPS to unspecified mobile platforms in the future.

"We did not say we would bring it to iPhone, we said to date we've had it on Android and that in the future it may come to other platforms but did not confirm this will be coming to iPhone at all," says Google, via PCWorld.

Maps Navigation, which is completely free and available for Android 1.6-2.1 users, offers 3D maps, turn-by-turn voice navigation, rerouting, real-time traffic, weather and more.

The software also pre-caches the entire route, so if you lose your data connection for a few minutes you can still see your progress towards the destination.

The war of words between Adobe and Apple over the latter company's apparent campaign to dethrone Flash as a standard web development technology continues to escalate.

Besides declining to work with Adobe to bring Flash to the iPhone OS, Apple has recently changed the Terms of Service for the iPhone SDK to disallow development with unauthorized tools like Adobe's new Creative Studio 5.

Earlier this week Adobe's Mike Chambers indicated that due to the new restrictions in the iPhone SDK TOS, Adobe won't contine development of tools to create iPhone apps in Flash CS5. Chambers wrote that Apple wants to "make it difficult for developers to target other platforms."

Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller shot back in a statement pointing out that the iPhone OS supports common open standards like HTML5, CSS, Javascript and H.264, calling Flash "closed and proprietary."

But does support for open standards actually make the iPhone OS itself open? After all, Flash also supports H.264, but as Muller correctly points out that doesn't stop it from being closed.

T-Mobile USA has announced that it will become the exclusive carrier of GPS maker Garmin's first ever smartphone, the Android-based Garminfone.

The phone has a 3.5-inch screen, 3MP camera with autofocus, and because of the GPS, the pictures can be geo-tagged. The GPS, as standard, works over 3G and Wi-Fi.

While those specs are not impressive, the Garminfone is notable because of its GPS system, which has on-board US maps, text-to-speech, full driving/walking/public transportation directions, real-time traffic, weather, local events, movie listings and even gas prices.

The next best feature is "Garmin Voice Studio" which lets users "record and customize voice directions which can also be shared with family and friends."

Because it is more a GPS with phone capabilities than anything else, the device will come with a charging window and a dashboard mount for the car.

Blizzard has announced today that they have removed 320,000 "cheaters" from Battle.net, shutting down the accounts of those playing Warcraft III and Diablo II and using hacks.

A first time ban gets your account suspended for 30 days, and a second time offender will be banned for good.

"We would like all players to remember that abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net, and can subject your account to disciplinary action up to and including a permanent ban of its access to the service," says the Blizzard forum post. "These types of activities can severely impact the stability of our servers, and we'll continue to aggressively monitor Battle.net in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating."

The account closures are final, and the company says most of those banned were first reported by legitimate users who emailed the company claiming those users were cheating.

The company says if you know of any other cheaters or sites responsible for distributing hacks, email them at hacks@blizzard.com.

YouTube has opened their video rental store today, offering up movies and TV episodes for .99 to $3.99.

The rentals last for 48 hours and to buy them all you need is a Google Checkout account.

There aren't any big names movies so far, with most of the current catalog being independent, Bollywood, Manga and documentaries.

In February, YouTube expanded the store from just Sundance films, but the catalog is still small.

You can check the Store here: http://www.youtube.com/store

Nokia reported today that their smartphone business saw strong growth, shipping 21.5 million units in the Q1 2010, a 57 percent jump year-on-year.

That number is expected to give Nokia a 41 percent share of the global smartphone market.

Overall mobile phone shipments grew 16 percent to 107.8 million which helped Nokia boost its quarterly profit 60 percent year-on-year.

Apple, on the other hand, saw 131 percent growth in the quarter, thanks to strong sales in China of the iPhone.

Nokia says the entire smartphone industry will continue to grow 10 percent in 2010, but the company says its share of the market will remain flat. Says CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: Nokia faces "tough competition with respect to the high end of our mobile device portfolio."

The smartphone maker's new operating system, Symbian^3, has been delayed until the summer.