On Friday, an announcement was made by Singapore Telecommunications under which it confirmed that it will commence selling the HTC Dream or Google mobile phone in Singapore from 21st February. This will make Singapore the second market in Asia to witness their launch.

Since the HTC phone comes with preloaded software such as Google Web Search, Gmail and Google Calendar, it is more commonly known as Google phone. Via this new phone, SingTel will also provide subscribers with video-on-demand content.

The launch of the new Netbook, a predecessor of the LG-X110 Netbook released last year, was announced this week by LG Electronics at the GSMA Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. It seems that the novel LG-X120 might become a worthy contender in the Netbook market as it offers an integrated 3G HSPA connection and a 160GB hard drive.

LG informed that the latest Netbook is equipped with a 'Smart-On' interface that allows the user to trace most frequently used programs just a few seconds after hitting the power button without waiting for the OS to completely load on the desktop.

Today the Epson Stylus Office range was launched by Epson in India. It was announced by the company in a press conference in Bangalore that the latest Epson Stylus Office T30, T40W, TX300F and TX600FW were the company's exclusive latest business MFDs printers which have specially been designed to meet the needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the company also launched two sheet fed scanners, the Epson GT-S80 and GT-S50, as part of the line-up.

It has come to vision that Asus is mulling over to stop the production of its 8.9" Eee PCs by the end of this year as users prefer 10" models over 8.9" model. We saw the launch of Eee PC in late 2007 by Asus, the credit of its success in terms of unit sales and revenue largely goes to the commencement of the Netbook series.

This Thursday the Ottawa Hospital announced the launch of the Emergency Department Reporting System at www. ontariowaittimes. com.

The local hospitals have also welcomed other provincial initiatives including the Wait Times Strategy, the Aging at Home Strategy, Tele-Health and Health-Care Connect, in an attempt to strengthen emergency wait time performance.

"Our government is creating an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability in hospital emergency care with the public reporting of time spent in the ER," said Health and Long-Term Care Minister David Caplan.

Leon's Furniture managed to off set the effects of recession and posted a growth of 7.4 per cent in fourth-quarter profits and higher overall sales.

On Thursday, the company announced income of $23.2 million during the last three months of 2008, an escalation from $21.6 million in the same period last year.

Profits were worth 33 cents per basic share, up from 31 cents a share in the same time frame.

The revenues also showed a growth, up to $269.9 million from $185.9 million, partially on the acquisition of Appliance Canada in January 2008.