Monday's Mini News

A couple of quick stories that caught my eye, today. I'm going out of town tomorrow but will update the news on Thursday.

• Rock band U2 has made a deal with Apple to sell custom iPods promoting the band's next album. Steve Jobs and Bono will announce the special black iPod at a press conference on Tuesday, October 26. The MP3 player will be loaded with the band's new CD plus songs from older albums. The iPod should ship November 23 - just in time for my Regis appearance. How thoughtful of them.
• The real question, though, is will Apple announce the rumored PhotoPod with a color screen that stores both music and images at the same event?
• Dell is once again the number one PC maker, gaining ground on second place HP. Gartner and IDC both reported that the PC maker had increased shipments by more than 20 percent over last year to give it an 18.2% market share. IBM, Fujitsu, and Toshiba round out the top five.
• According to USA Today, Googles new desktop search tool can index Hotmail and other webmail caches, so if you're on a shared computer with the desktop tool installed, someone could theoretically read your email.

Listen in Tuesday at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.