The browser wars are heating up. Just in the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera have all set new records for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent. The period is also significant because it is the first time Chrome has beaten Safari to third place, and all of the numbers come at the expense of IE, which is losing users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month.

Sure, Microsoft’s 62.7 percent slice still looks nice, but projections from Net Applications suggest that it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of 2010. Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites to generate a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors per month, so if they say that it’s so, it likely is.

Pre-paid mobile provider Virgin Mobile USA unveiled a new device on its network today called the LG Rumor 2. The handset is available now for $129.99 making it an affordable device. The handset packs in many of the features that shoppers are looking for.

The device sports a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, and a 1.3MP camera. The handset also has a MP3 music player, maps, IM, and email capability as well. Other features include text and pic messaging and mobile web access.

Toshiba has another first on their hands with the 55-inch Cell Regza 55X1, the first LCD HDTV to be equipped with a Cell chip. The 55X1 offers a peak luminance of 1250 cd/m2, LED backlighting, a dynamic contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1, a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, 240Hz scanning, and Super Resolution technology which makes use of Cell power for greater image quality.

Some other features include a 7-speaker sound bar, DLNA support, an internet browser from Opera Software, HDMI and USB, and an SD card slot. You also get a ‘tuner box’ with 3TB of storage space, 2TB of that will be devoted to the “time-shift machine” feature, which can simultaneously record up to 26 hours of programming on up to eight channels.

Life got much easier with the advent of tabbed browsing for desktop browsers. It’s something we take for granted, but how great is it that we don’t have to open up a bunch of windows on our computers? It would be great if you could do this on your BlackBerry.

Well, RIM is all set to introduce a similar feature in their upcoming operating system, the BlackBerry OS 5.0. In fact RIM has been working on getting tabbed browsing right since around 2007, so let’s hope they’ve finally nailed it. We’re hoping that it doesn’t affect BlackBerry speeds very much.

Those living in Europe will have a few versions of the upcoming Windows 7. The operating system is called Windows 7 E and will leave out Internet Explorer as well as other browsers so that users can choose their own browser.

It’s a regulation that Microsoft will work around by offering free copies of IE8 to OEMs. Consumers will be able to choose their own copies through CD, FTP or retail channels.

HTC makes some of the coolest smartphones on the market and is the maker behind the T-Mobile G1 running Android. HTC has all sorts of different smartphones with features like touch screens and other niceties.

HTC’s latest smartphone, the Touch Diamond, will be available starting today with Verizon Wireless through its business sales channels. The handset has a 2.76-inch touch screen display and uses Opera web browser for surfing the net. The device has a 3.2-megapixel camera and offers memory expansion via microSD cards up to 16GB.

Sony’s got a brand new walkman phone dubbed the W205. It will do all the usual stuff like displaying the album art with ID3 tags of the tracks that are playing. Some other features are the Opera browser, speaker phone and Bluetooth. I have to admit it looks pretty good with the 1.8 inch display screen.

The phone also sports a 1.3 megapixel camera with 2.2 X digital zoom and a video recorder. Sadly it’s available only in black. You’ll get a sufficient 5 MB of memory with up to 2GB memory expansion with a M2 card.

Samsung has announced an updated instinct handset called the instinct s30. The device offers full touch screen functionality and 3G connectivity. The device offers a default web browser and Opera Mini 4.2 to browse the web. Samsung and Sprint also preload the device with Guitar Hero World Tour and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader games.

The s30 is thinner than the original Instinct and will come in two colors — cobalt metal of touch of copper. The device offers quick access to Microsoft Outlook and utilizes Sprint Mobile Email Work to access corporate email, contacts, and calendar from Exchange Server or Lotus at no additional charge.

The image above is another press photo of the Motorola ZN300 that has leaked and is making the rounds. It’s a nice looking phone for sure. The navigation pad seems a little odd, but check it out, they’ve included a 3.5mm headset jack that will make a lot of users happy.

Some features include a 3 megapixel camera, Opera Mini browser, QVGA display and a Linux-based OS. It looks good, but with so many options available to users from other manufacturers, the only way this does well is if it has a crazy cheap price.

The Clarion MiND appears to be a GPS navigation device at heart, but expanded into a special type of mobile internet hybrid device packed with connectivity and applications bringing dangerously close to a mobile PC, but just not quite. The mobile device has many addition features such as an internet browser, YouTube viewer, media player, file storage, weather, news, maps and of course navigation but runs its own type of hard-wired OS that leaves little for customizations.

The MiND is basically a small mobile computer running on an 800 MHz Intel Atom processor with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage (with an additional MicroSD card slot) and connects to the world via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and of course GPS. It also houses a couple of USB ports for connecting and transferring data, a headphone jack, speaker and docking port for an included dash mounting kit.

Opera on Tuesday has announced the final release of the latest and greatest version of its mobile browser, Opera Mini 4.2. We saw the 4.2 version go into beta release only earlier this month sporting some new features including skins, additional servers and faster performance, video and Notes sync.

The final v4.2 release that we downloaded today appears to be very similar, if not exactly the same, as the beta version we got a couple of weeks ago. Opera boasts increased speed of as much as 30 percent, support for multiple languages, the ability to skin the browser to match your preference and of course the ability to play mobile-targeted YouTube videos (provided you have a newer Sony Ericsson or Nokia phone, for now). Users can also sync up notes between the mobile browser and the Opera desktop browser with Opera Link.

Opera has a beta version of the latest Opera Mini browser for mobile devices, boasting some cool new features for on the go, and faster connections for those in the Americas. For starters, Opera Mini 4.2 beta has brought back the skinning features from version 3, allowing a little customization to look of the browser. Users of the newest version of this browser who also have select phones such as a new Sony Ericsson or Nokia might also have some luck getting YouTube to run on it as well.

The new 4.2 browser will also make use of the new servers available in the U.S., making browsing faster for those in the Americas and Asia-Pacific areas. Opera says this will make things faster for those in other parts of the world as well since the new servers will off-load some work from the existing servers. Opera 4.2 also has a feature to sync your notes to your Opera Desktop with Opera Link.

Google has decided to get into the browser business. Meet the Google Chrome browser. They will release the browser in beta, refining it as they go just like Gmail. Google’s plan is to simplify the interface while simultaneously improving it’s inner workings. Will it eventually take on IE, Firefox and Opera? It says Google doesn’t it?

It should be released by Wednesday, if you can believe the rumors and should be available on Windows only, while Mac and Linux versions will be available later. Some of the features include: A UI that places the tabs above the address bar, Incognito mode, which allows users to browse the web in privacy, without recording any your activity, and a new JavaScript engine for speed.

AOL launched this morning a Flash-based Web version of its instant messaging AIM service. It is called AIM Express and you need not install any software to make it run.

AIM Express includes as features tabbed IM conversations, status message indicator, text messages to cell phones, rollovers of friend names to see status and compatibility with most popular browsers. The company also unveiled AIM for Windows Mobile, offering functions for phones like the Motorola Q, Samsung BlackJack and many Palm Treos such as status messages, buddy icons and text messaging. It works with devices using …

We all know from Sci-Fi movies that phones will be strapped to your wrist, and you will learn to like it! The Epoq EGP-WP98B runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and has a 1.4 inch OLED touch screen display with a quad-band GSM radio with GPRS. It includes support for WMV, AVI, 3GP, MP4 and MP3 media files with full screen playback and the 128MB of internal memory can be expanded with a trans-flash memory card.

You also get a WAP and web browser. If paying GPRS fees doesn’t sit well with you, it even has wifi b & g. Other software included will give you calendar functions, voice recorder, e-book reader, handwriting input, MMS, calculator, memo and a world clock. The Epoq EGP-WP98B has 100-180 minutes of talk time per charge, with 80-100 hours of standby. No details on pricing or availability.