Each month, AdMob, a mobile advertising network, rounds up the data from over 6,000 mobile websites and applications, analyzes it all, and releases their findings in their Mobile Metrics Report. In the September report, AdMob determined that the iPhone had become the #4 handset worldwide by count of ads requested. In the October release, the iPhone has skyrocketed all the way to #1.

Note that these rankings are not directly representative of sales numbers; while AdMob’s ad network is wide enough that these numbers can provide an accurate picture of usage trends, they don’t necessarily prove that one handset is outselling another.

September vs October Worldwide handset rankings:

Within the Top 5, the only major change is the iPhones sudden surge. Below that however, notice the BlackBerry 8100s sudden disappearance from the list - it has shifted down to #11 (not shown in image), sitting just below the BlackBerry 8300. Why might this be? Well, the 8100 is a good half year older than the 8300 - chances are, more 8100s are reaching retirement.

September vs October US handset rankings:

In September, we were a bit surprised to see the iPhone sitting all the way down at #7 in the US while it managed to snag the #4 spot worldwide. In October, the iPhone’s rank seems a bit more well aligned with it’s worldwide status, coming in at #2. iPhone requests have more than doubled, allowing it to knock the KRZR down a notch. The rest of the list moves in relation, though as with the worldwide rankings, we see the BlackBerry 8300 climb as the 8100 sinks.

One thing to note with all of these statistics, however, is that the AdMob advertisements embedded into iPhone applications are counted alongside web site statistics. If these same advertisements are not embedded into applications on all of the other platforms, wouldn’t the numbers be skewed in favor of the iPhone? Even if they were given the same real estate across all platforms, third-party applications are a far more significant part of the iPhone than they are for the vast majority of devices; if you own an iPhone, chances are great that you’ve installed (and regularly use) a handful of applications. Can you really say the same about the KRZR, or the Kyocera K24? Wouldn’t this, too, skew things a bit? I’d be interested in seeing how the results change when limited to data gathered from website ad units.

Other interesting tid bits from the report:

• 29.5% of the traffic that AdMob saw in October came from a smartphone - 59% of that was from devices running Symbian, while 15% ran the iPhone OS
• 77.7% of devices AdMob saw in October supported Polyphonic ringtones, down from 79.5% in September
• As in September, the Danger Sidekick II is the only Sidekick device to break the Top 20, though it has slipped down from #15 to #16.
• 62.8% of iPhone requests were from the US.
• Most popular manufacturer by carrier: AT&T: Apple, MetroPCS: Motorola, Sprint: Samsung, T-Mobile: RIM, Verizon: LG

If you’ve got a couple hours to kill tearing through page upon page of statistics (now including stats for Latin America!), you can find the full report here.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Garmin nuvi 350 GPS
Garmin nuvi 350 Personal Travel Assistant GPS Navigator 3.5′ Screen (Refurbished)
Price $169.96 Source: Tiger Direct

Refurbished doesn’t mean busted up m’friend. The nice folks at Garmin have taken a gadget destined for the Land of Misfit Toys and given it the old spackle and solder treatment so now you can get yourself a shiny GPS for your sweet hybrid ride that’s just like new, if not just a little world weary. Will it sigh when it gives directions? Probably, but then you wouldn’t have it any other way would you? Here’s a excerpt from TG:

Garmin nüvi 350
Personal Travel Assistant GPS Navigator
Introducing the nüvi: A versatile travel assistant that?s approximately the size of a deck of playing cards. The nüvi is a portable GPS navigator, traveler?s reference, and digital entertainment system, all in one. Combined with detailed maps, the nüvi provides automatic routing, turn-by-turn voice directions, and finger-touchscreen control?making it easy to find your way anywhere.

The nüvi also offers a travel kit of useful travel tools to help keep any journey fun: MP3 player, audio book player from Audible.com, JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter, and calculator. In addition, optional software packages such as the Language Guide and Travel Guide (sold separately on SD Data cards) can be added for language and content support.

North American versions include pre-loaded City Navigator NT maps of the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

The nüvi 350’s unique “text-to-speech” feature calls out turns by street name. In addition, this text-to-speech interface, gives users the spoken pronunciation of each entry in the word bank?along with gender and part-of-speech information.

The nüvi 350 is compatible with the GTM 10 FM TMC traffic receiver, which allows users to avoid traffic tie-ups by simply pushing a button that will calculate a new route.

The nüvi 350 also comes with an A/C charger and approximately 700 MBs of internal memory for storage of supplemental maps, MP3s, and audio books.

Sascha at PCMag writes a charming little piece on the death of Usenet as a method of discourse and its eventual rebirth as a repository for porn, spam, and pirated warez. He recalls the days of “serious conversations” on 8-bit Atari architecture and net.manners.

In a way inconceivable in today’s Web-fragmented marketplace, Usenet was where you went to talk. Conceived back in the idealistic, non-profit days of the Internet, it was?well, it is, but it mostly was?a series of bulletin boards called “newsgroups” shared by thousands of computers, which traded new messages several times a day.

Sascha brings us back to 1993, the year when most of the current blogger kings were just entering college. Their discussions were precursors to the open, sad eyed moping of JenniCam and her ilk, the snark of the Gawker empire, and the basis for just about every social network on Earth. After all, if emo nerds could create a complex network of interconnected forums, think of what Ning can do with VC funding!

I personally never got into newsgroups as a communications medium although I now use the network for another form of data transmission. Is Usenet dead, as Sascha posits? I don’t think so. As long as there are folks who thing a command line is better than a mouse, the original text-only social network will live on. Sure, ISPs will shut down access out of mislaid kiddie porn fears but the real pros know where to go to get their agnst-filled, nit-picking, obsessive fix.

Filed under things I really don't understand: Silver Towers/University Village, part of a residential superblock complex in Greenwich Village and designed by I.M. Pei, has been granted landmark status by New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Said the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who battled to preserve the buildings:

Silver Towers is the first post-war urban renewal superblock development in New York City to be landmarked. While such urban renewal projects rarely receive high marks for design, Silver Towers is considered a watershed moment for one of the late 20th century's most respected and influential architects. The design won awards from the American Institute of Architects and the City Club, was dubbed "one of ten buildings that climax an era" by Fortune Magazine, and was cited as a basis for which Pei received the 1983 Pritzker Prize -- the most prestigious award for architects -- for his body of work up to that time. Landmarking Silver Towers not only helps preserve an eminently livable place and honors a great work of architecture, but it also acknowledges the importance of our city's past efforts to create affordable housing and public art.

These may or may not be great buildings, but that whole complex is just this big sucky void between the Village and Soho that no one can get rid of now. Blech.

Last week have been a near hell week for me, as I had to run about between my operations offices, factories and clients in preparation of the Single District Single Industry (Satu Daerah Satu Industry) where everyone from the whole Malaysia gather about in Ayer Keroh Melaka and display and show off their products and goods at the MITC Expo Hall.

First off, the organiser done a good job but less to be said of their contractors and staff alike. Power lines and connections are not up, NO WiFi for us in the whole hall, and poor Wireless Cellular Broadband connectivity be it Celcom or Maxis alike. Signage were wrong, with the stickers up at the wrong booths.

And that we could only move in using the back loading bay doors about after dark. Ouch! Wiring was still messy. Never mind.

But then, the convention had under estimated the number of participants in the hall. Catered for just over 300 people, regional district offices booked just for about 400 odd people and the MITC Ancasa Hotel could only cater for less than half of that. Some are placed all over, like the Kings hotel and making thinsg even worse was the weekend, with Singaporeans flocking Malacca during the school holiday.

So, what happens next is a standard norm. 4 or even 7 people cramped and camped into a single double bed hotel room. No extra mattress or pillows, many had to make do with the carpeted floors. ME? I was ready. Darn right ready for this as it’s a standard for Malaysian expos, as it’s how the arrangements were during MIHAS or even others.

What is the after effect? Well, think of it as when I got too pissed off and woke up in the Guard Room or the Police Lock up cells. Hard flooring and full of mites. YES! Mites and Cockroaches flock the place.

Silly, and thus I got a nasty ache in my ear and a nasty bite on the ear lobes. Must be a mite I thought and so the antiseptic don’t seem to work. One reason is….dust mites don’t bite… Cockroaches does.

So, remind me to find my own accommodation ahead of time. And avoid any expos outside my own working area. At least I could sleep in the factory storeroom or something like that.

Sequencing DNA preserved in permafrost has allowed researchers to obtain roughly two-thirds of the genome of a mammoth. In conjunction with the announcement, Nature has published a perspective on what it would take to reverse the species' extinction.

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Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Is Yahoo done with search?  —  Among the many windmills Jerry Yang tilted at in his brief career as Yahoo's CEO was his devotion to Web search.  It veered on an obsession for him.  It played into his decision to resist Microsoft's offers to shower him with cash, first for his whole company, then for just its search business.

Telcos do this all the time but by George, what a whopping drop for the iPhone! The 8GB iPhone is currently experiencing a huge price cut to $99.00 from Orange just in time for the holidays. This is way below the suggested retail price of the phone leaving a lot of subsidizing going for Orange. Moves like this usually cater to the initial appetite for gadget lust without consumers realizing how “trapped” they are in their post paid cellular plans for the next so and so months.

[Photo c/o Apple Insider]

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Eastman Kodak has filed a pair of lawsuits against LG (SEO: 066570) and Samsung alleging that the companies infringed on patents involving digital cameras in some of their devices. The complaints, which were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York and with the U.S. International Trade Commission, involve technology related to image capture, compression and data storage and a method for previewing motion images.

Kodak is asking for compensation for damages resulting from the companies' alleged infringement and injunctions to prohibit the further sale and importation of products cited in the complaint, which are believed to be Samsung's Blackjack II and LG's Dare. Kodak didn't disclose how much money it was seeking in the suit. It said it's held discussions with both companies to try to resolve the matter, but they've been unable to reach agreement. Samsung and LG have both indicated their plans to fight the charges, but the dispute could, of course, end in a settlement before ever reaching a court's docket. Eastman Kodak makes a large slice of its revenue from licensing imaging patents to several companies including Panasonic, Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Olympus, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) and others. Kodak is making a bigger push in the mobile device space of late, most notably with the recent launch of the ZN5, a co-branded device from Motorola that features a 5-megapixel camera. Release.

Pictured: Samsung Blackjack II and LG Dare

Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page