Talking to your dog is pretty easy. Of course, it might not always understand...

Understanding your dog - now that's a different matter. So at what point did someone think "I wish that my dog's barks could be translated into text messages"?

Well, Japanese company Takara Toys claims to have succeeded - and Vodafone in Japan will soon be offering the service to its customers. Apparently a cat version will follow soon...

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/9947.shtml

http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=42064

Who'd have thought it?  Spending all your money on an expensive mobile phone doesn't necessarily mean that it'll sound better than a cheaper one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3210082.stm

Vodafone Japan plans to launch a Sharp mobile phone with a 2-megapixel camera by the end of this year. It'll also be selling a NEC mobile phone that allows users to watch TV programmes at no extra cost.

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/news/272578

Now, mobile phone networks make most of their money from customers who pay for services - whether that's making calls, sending texts or downloading stuff. So why would they want to offer free TV shows?

A couple of new smartphones have been announced this week, although there's nothing unexpected.

Sony Ericsson has confirmed that the successor to their P800 model will be the P900, although this information has been circulating on the web for a while. The P900 has a 65,000-colour screen, built-in video camera functions and increased memory.

Sendo, still embroiled in a legal argument with Microsoft over its cancelled smartphone, has announced the Sendo X, a mobile phone that uses the Nokia 60 (Symbian) operating system. It offers video recording and playback, an MP3 player and web browsing.

There's also a successor to the Sony Ericsson T610 - look out for the T630 soon...

There's a story in today's 'Scotsman' newspaper suggesting that signals from mobile phone transmitters could be used to trap speeding motorists in the future.

The system, which has been nicknamed 'Celldar', works out the position of moving objects by comparing the signals reflected off them with the background radio 'noise' from mobile phone base stations.