A cordless extension cord?

Power cables and plugs may soon become obsolete because scientists have developed a way to wirelessly charge electrical devices from a distance, says The Australian.

WiTricity can already power a lightbulb over a distance of 2m, and its inventors believe that, within three to five years, the system will be able to charge mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronic devices.

The appliances would only need to be within range of a WiTricity transmitter to work.

When the iPhone was first introduced in January, Steve Jobs said he expected to sell 10 million of the devices by the end of 2008, reports PC World.

That sounded like wishful thinking back then. But with all the global hype around the device leading up to its 29 June launch, Jobs` projection sounds almost conservative.

BusinessWeek believes Apple will be selling $10 billion worth of iPhones a year by 2009. As a point of reference, financial analysts say sales of the iPod are expected to come in at around $11 billion for 2008.

Gearing up for next week`s Patch Tuesday release, Microsoft announced on Thursday that it`s preparing six security updates - four of them for critical bugs, says InformationWeek.

One security update can patch multiple vulnerabilities, so it`s unclear at this point how many flaws next week`s releases will fix.

Microsoft, though, did announce in its Security Bulletin Advance Notification that each of the four critical updates will affect Windows software, while only one affects Internet Explorer.

Parallels on Thursday released an updated version of its Parallels Desktop software, which enables users of Intel-based Macs to run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously, according to ZDNet Australia.

The software has gained quite a following since the release of its first version last June, quickly finding its way into retail stores and even getting a plug on Apple`s Web site.

Version 3.0 of the software adds a number of new features, including SmartSelect, which lets Mac users choose which program opens a particular file type, regardless of whether it is stored in the Mac or Windows desktop.