Gossip

"I've even done it in the car" - mobile addiction shock horror!

Not since Michael Douglas revealed his sad "addiction to sex" have we been asked to sympathise with someone we are less likely to pity, than with the "mobile tech addicts" revealed to own all the toys we envy them for today.

"I've even done it in the car," Gentry revealed. Who is Gentry? Gentry is an American woman "who last month was in Galveston, Texas, and 'watched' the semifinals of the college basketball championships along with an SMS buddy in Denver," according to Reuters today. And she's talking about texting ...

The newswire claims to have discovered a distressing trend amongst Americans to become attached - biologically - to their BlackBerry mobile data devices, to become addicted - physiologically - to their SMS "fix" - and to be "in rehabilitation" at the hands of formerly co-dependent spouses who try to make them go "cold turkey" when they come home.

Reporter Lisa Baertlein in San Francisco quotes Jim Balsillie- a senior executive at Research In Motion, the company that gave us the BlackBerry - "or crackberries -as they are called by their obsessively dependent users" - as being the subject of marital rights deprivation -- he's not allowed to use his own BlackBerry at home.

Sniffer got all sniffy (naturally) at the idea that these people, who own every gadget the rest of us lust after, might be objects of pity. Having watched last night's Truth About Lesbian Sex" programme - in the company of remote friends on IRC, using his Handspring Treo, Sniffer believes that what these people really want is a voice-to-SMS dictation system.

Well, that's what Sniffer wants ...