Huh, what’s this? Bell has begun shipping out dummy units of the highly anticipated BlackBerry Tour 9630? Yes indeed it has, alongside the typical promotional materials which, as per Bell’s general practice, means the launch is likely just a few weeks away. Does this mean we could see the Tour hit Bell the same week it drops on Verizon? It’s looking that way, folks – in fact our ninjas pin the date as Friday, July 17th. Excited? Yeah, we are too. Hit the jump for a few more pics.

• 
  It looks like Boost Mobile subscribers won’t be the only ones enjoying this homely entry-level messaging handset. We first saw the Motorola Clutch i465 get official late last month on Boost, becoming the Sprint-owned carrier’s first QWERTY handset…
• 
  Big day for Twitter yesterday. News broke, and people promptly turned to the service to spread the word. It’s a story that’s becoming increasingly familiar.
  Except… I have this nagging concern.
  Like a lot of you…
• 
  Palm’s (PALM) new CEO Jon Rubinstein just opened his first earnings call in his new role. (Palm lost a boatload of money, as expected.)
  His first big point, in our words: Palm doesn’t necessarily have to beat Apple (AAPL) to succeed…

• Google share of ad spending: 2.66 percent
• LIVESTRONG: 1.9 Billion Calories Burned in One Year
• Motorola i465 Clutch coming soon to a Sprint store near you
• Why I’m Not Upgrading to an IPhone 3GS
• Amazon’s Mobile Ambitions May Go Way Beyond Kindle
• China Telecom in Talks to Offer BlackBerry
• Michael Jackson is Dead, Jeff Goldblum is Alive. Can Twitter Tell the Difference?
• Palm CEO: Room For 3 To 5 Winners In Smartphone War
• Why We Need Steve Jobs
• RealPlayer SP Makes Mobile Video Seamless and Social

Much-loved TV pitchman Billy Mays passed away yesterday: his passing is currently among the top TwitterTwitter topics and inspired the #wearblueforbilly hashtag on the social media site (some users wore blue today to celebrate his life). Meanwhile, Billy’s son Billy Mays III (@youngbillymays) is using the service to converse with fans of his late father.

In tribute to the king of pitchmen, tonight we bring you some of Billy’s best bits, courtesy of YouTubeYouTube.

In his most famous ad, Billy pitches Oxi Clean stain removal. Here’s a classic pitch for the Oxi Clean ball:

• 
  Sometimes, it seems scams are becoming almost as common as social media experts on Twitter. The latest one, unleashed Monday morning and initially noticed by tech blog Mashable, centers on a fake blog hosted at the domain twittersblogs.com…
• 
  Social media has made it much easier for companies to tap into the crowd for everything from Wikipedia entries, to serial thrillers, and even Super Bowl ads-but at what…
• 
  Celebrity deaths dominated the news this week, and these tragic stories became the source of much social media chatter. While many used these tools to pay tribute to lost stars…
• 
  Only 44% of small businesses stick around four years or more. One big reason so many go away: Poor risk management.
  Fortunately, help is on the way from the guys at VC Experts (subscribe to their email here).

• Twitter Gains Upper Hand on Latest Scam
• LIVESTRONG: 1.9 Billion Calories Burned in One Year
• Crowd-Sourcing: Leveraging Social Media, Or Just Getting Cheap Labor?
• Oh FriendFeed, What You Really Need is Accountability
• Jackson, Twitter and Wet iPhones: Top 10 Social Media Stories This Week
• Step Aside, YouTube, The Pirates are Coming
• The Startup Entrepreneur’s Guide To Risk Management
• When Does a Social Media Policy Go Too Far? Ask the Associated Press
• The Benefit of Mobile Social Media
• #IranElection Crisis: A Social Media Timeline

• Doubles as a side table or cocktail table. Easy to assemble
• Ice compartment to keep drinks cool. Easy to clean with hose or damp cloth
• Treated for outdoor use
• Dimensions (L x W x H): (50.8 cm x 50.8 cm x 87.1 cm )(20 in. x 20 in. x 34.3 in.)
• Weight: 5.9 kg (13 lb.)

Well, there was some evidence earlier this month that some piracy issues in China’s mandated “Green Dam” content-filtering software could cause PC exports to the country to be stalled, but it looks like Sony has now gone ahead and included the software on its PCs regardless, albeit with a few major caveats. According to the document above (included with a VAIO PC sold in the country, and translated by RConversation’s Rebecca MacKinnon), Sony says that it is including the software “in accordance with government requirements,” but that it “cannot guarantee the authenticity, legality, or compatibility of the software’s content, function, service or any other feature.” It’s also apparently only including the program on the hard drive and providing installation instructions, rather than providing it completely pre-installed itself.

• 
  Sungale’s recently unleashed a WiFi-enabled, widget-having digital photo frame — the ID800WT — and the fine folks over at Zatz Not Funny have taken it for a little spin…
• 
  We don’t cover a lot of baby seat tech around these parts, but we found Air Protect, a new technology meant to soften the blow to a baby’s head in a side-impact crash…
• 
  John Carmack says that not one, but three Quake games are coming to the iPhone—1, 2, and Arena—though his involvement will mostly be to “make sure certain specific things are done the way I want them to be.

• Can we all please grow up and get a real ringtone?
• Sungale WiFi Widget photo frame gets a hands-on
• Air Protect Baby Seat Is Strong Enough to Take a Punch
• Supreme Court OKs DVR-In-The-Cloud Concept
• A Whole Lotta Quake Will Be Blowing Up Your iPhone
• MyDeskFriend: Creepy Facebook connected Penguin robot
• Libre: And now iriver preps its own e-book reader
• Comcast to piggyback on Clearwire and Sprint networks and offer mobile broadband
• Grossest Mouse Ever Works While Scraping Dead Skin Off Your Feet
• Levitating Projector, Or Really Expensive T-Ball?

Sungale’s recently unleashed a WiFi-enabled, widget-having digital photo frame — the ID800WT — and the fine folks over at Zatz Not Funny have taken it for a little spin. The 800 x 600 resolution touchscreen boasts 512 MB of internal storage, and widgets for weather, news, Picasa, YouTube, Gmail, and Internet radio. The reviewer didn’t find the widgets to be particularly awesome, in many respects — their implementation, for instance, made the Gmail app “nearly useless” because it displayed only a few lines at a time, and many had trouble connecting to the internet properly.

• 
  Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages…
• 
  It looks exactly like a Samsung Omnia, but don’t be fooled — what you’re actually looking at here is Spain’s first go at producing an Android handset (which is especially ironic considering we just reported on the andromnia project)…
• 
  BT Broadband customers and UK iPhone owners, rejoice – some 2,500 ATM machines near you will soon be converted to serve as free WiFi hotspots, courtesy of BT Openzone and Cashbox…
• 
  Firms like Cradlepoint have been dishing out generic portable hotspots for years now, but it wasn’t until recently that US consumers had a carrier-branded option for creating their own WiFi zone via EV-DO…

• Headline: Afore you go shopping, get thee to the iPhone widget
• Pirate Bay fires its copyright-busting cannon at YouTube
• Spanish firm GeeksPhone launches “One” Android set
• UK ATMs set to offer WiFi access, free for BT and iPhone users
• How would you change Novatel’s MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router?
• Hot For Tools Is a ‘Pleasurable’ ‘Tool’ Instruction Video
• WIRED’s Smart Guide For Know Your Smartphones
• Sprint May Get HTC Hero and Samsung WiMax Device
• Video: Sharp’s Mebius NJ70A unboxing
• Vizio’s VBR100 Blu-ray player is a $188 Wal-mart exclusive next month

We’ve all been sitting in a movie, waiting in a line, or sleeping in church, only to be annoyed by a dumb ringtone. For some reason, random people across all generations think that everyone else wants to hear a Boom Boom Pow or animal sound ringer. Well, we don’t. This is nothing new. There was a time before MP3 ringers when polyphonic ringtones were all the rage. In fact, I can remember back about seven years ago creating my own tone for my Sprint PCS Vision Samsung cell phone out of a N.E.R.D. song. I was the coolest back then, but thankfully for society, I have grown up and moved to a boring, stock BlackBerry ringtone.

• 
  Well, there was some evidence earlier this month that some piracy issues in China’s mandated “Green Dam” content-filtering software could cause PC exports to the country to be stalled…
• 
  Sungale’s recently unleashed a WiFi-enabled, widget-having digital photo frame — the ID800WT — and the fine folks over at Zatz Not Funny have taken it for a little spin…
• 
  John Carmack says that not one, but three Quake games are coming to the iPhone—1, 2, and Arena—though his involvement will mostly be to “make sure certain specific things are done the way I want them to be.

• BeamBox outs MiLi Evolution Mini Power Projector for iPhone, iPod touch
• Motorola Karma QA1 Built for “Social Networking”
• Olympus Discovers Will It Blend, Uses It to Sell Cameras
• Sony now including “Green Dam” filtering software on PCs sold in China
• Sungale WiFi Widget photo frame gets a hands-on
• Air Protect Baby Seat Is Strong Enough to Take a Punch
• Supreme Court OKs DVR-In-The-Cloud Concept
• A Whole Lotta Quake Will Be Blowing Up Your iPhone
• MyDeskFriend: Creepy Facebook connected Penguin robot
• Libre: And now iriver preps its own e-book reader

It seems like everyone who’s purchased an iPhone 3GS at this point has had a different reason for buying one. For some people, it was all about getting a faster CPU; for others, it was their first 3G-and-beyond smartphone.

My personal reasons for spending my hard-earned bucks to buy a 3GS were to take advantage of the higher-resolution (3 megapixel) autofocus camera, since I love taking photos with my iPhone, and to shoot video with my phone. Phone video is nothing new; I had it three years ago on a Palm Treo 680. But the ability of the 3GS to not only record video, but also allow limited editing before sharing the video in a number of ways, really made me want to get a 3GS immediately.

• 
  Sony Ericsson is reportedly working on a phone that combines PlayStation games with a cell phone. It’s not the first time that such rumors have floated, but Nikkei, a big Japanese business publication…
• 
  Dominating the Android world this week was the announcement by handset giant HTC that it will be releasing the most innovative phone to date using the OS by Google, the HTC Hero…
• 
  Round-up The iPhone 3G S is now upon us, bringing with it incredible new things like MMS, video recording, laptop tethering, stereo Bluetooth and the marvel of cut and paste…
• 
  We’ve been predicting that mobile video would explode in popularity for some time – we just weren’t sure exactly when. Now, with the arrival of the iPhone 3GS…

• Rumors surface of a PlayStation cell phone
• Android This Week: A Hero Rides Into Town
• Ten of the best… iPhone beaters
• Mobile Video is at a Tipping Point
• CHART OF THE DAY: New iPhone To Clobber The Point-And-Shoot Camera
• Inside iPhone 3G S: Seeing your direction on iPhone 3G S maps
• Occipital Brings Seamless Barcode Scanning To The iPhone With RedLaser
• iPhone 3G S fizzles out for global retail
• The iPhone Video Wave: Winners And Losers
• myTouch? Seriously?

Aardvark’s social search service has been allowing beta users to invite friends since March. But if you don’t already know someone on the service, you’ve had to wait in line. That wait ends today, though, at least for Facebook users. You can now create an account via Facebook Connect and start using the service.

The service, which we described a couple of months ago, lets users ask questions of their friends and friends of friends like “What’s the best place to go hiking in Marin?” But it only works well, the company says, when you’re friends are already on the service. That’s why people who weren’t able to get an invitation from a current user had to wait in line until now:

• 
  As impatient people craving access to Google Voice continue to wait for the arrival of that joyous invitation email, Google Voice head Craig Walker gives us a brief insight into just how long of a wait some users may be looking at…
• 
  There is no doubt that Microsoft (MSFT) is pulling out the stops with the launch of its renovated search service, now called Bing, spending $100 million in marketing dollars.
  But…
• 
  With well over 200 million registered users, Facebook is undeniably a giant on the web, and one that is sitting on an enormous amount of raw data about individuals and demographically selected groups at that…

• Text-Message Service Fields Flood of Jackson Queries
• Still waiting on a Google Voice invite? This could take a while…
• Microsoft’s Bing in travel trouble
• China throttles Google, U.S. ratchets up trade war over Green Dam
• Google Begins Adding New Customers for Voice Service
• Comparing Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Stock: A Bing Zing?
• Ever Wondered What The Most Common Names On Facebook Are? Here’s A List
• Twicsy Is A Killer And Kind Of Creepy Way To Search Pictures Shared On Twitter
• 5 Reasons Why Enterprise IT Professionals Should Attend Structure 09
• China Orders Google to Suspend Foreign Site Searches