The cell phone giant Nokia announced this week that they are finally going to launch their N-Gage gaming service. This will mark the first mobile phone manufacture to make a large venture into the online mobile gambling sector with expectations of generating over $7 billion in revenue by the end of 2008.

If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on this, you have to get yourself Nokia’s top performing handset, the N95. The service will also be available through the N81, N81 (8Gb), N82 and N95 (8Gb). A little disappointing for all of those who thought this was going to happen also with the iPhone. Apple is still not ready to be your portal to mobile online casinos.

If you don’t have an N95 or one of the variations, don’t worry. Remember back in the 90’s when people said that you would get a brain tumor from your cell phone but now they say it’s all good? Well research now tells us that too much time on your cell phone might not be as great as they now say. If you want more to read up on this issue check it out here.

cell phone gambling

If you had the pleasure of surfing the Internet in 1993, you might reminisce about dumb terminals, Usenet and Lynx. But even the most old-school Web curmudgeon has to prefer the way things are today. Technological advances have made the Internet sizzle with video, graphics and applications galore.

The online betting experience is no different. Graphic design has improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade. The content itself is sharper as more and more people turn to the Web as their information provider. Security measures are savvier, and performing financial transactions online is now par for the course, even with the UIGEA running interference.

But let’s get back to the graphics for a second. The Internet of the 1990s reminds me of the television of the 1950s: clunky, minimal and accident-prone. Now sports betting is a virtual casino experience, and the casinos just keep getting swankier. How soon before online martinis are served?

Last month, tennis legend and commentator John McEnroe expressed his fears that the Russian mafia may be corrupting the sport. Actually, the U.S. Senate drew the same conclusion over a decade ago after a 15-month investigation. But fresh betting scandals have prompted McEnroe to speak and governing bodies to take action.

Last week, the ATP, WTA and ITF joined forces with the organizers of the four major tournaments to announce a review of their policies. “(This) independent review will help us ensure we are protecting the integrity of professional tennis into the future,” WTA Tour chief executive Larry Scott told reporters.

Whether anything more can be done, or whether the review merely pays lip service, remains to be seen. According to Scott, we may see the establishment of an anti-corruption unit with policing powers. But if the problem is organized crime, do you really want to send in the tennis police?

The best tip you could have received for NBA betting before the season began was to bet it all on the Celtics right from the start. But since the time machine hasn’t been perfected yet, you’ll have to do your homework to make some profit on your NBA bets the rest of the way. You can still keep dumping money on the Celtics, but Boston has since failed to cover the spread for the first time this season and fell to Orlando Sunday.

One factor you can take advantage of in NBA betting that doesn’t exist in the NFL is lengthy opposite-coast road trips. In the NFL teams play one week and get at least six days off before playing again. In the NBA fatigue can become a big factor when an east-coast team heads west, or a west-coast team heads east. Most coast-to-coast trips aren’t for just one game, and during a two- or three-game road trip across the country, the second or third game can be real tough on the visiting team. Give the schedule a closer look, find the teams making the cross-country journey, and try betting against them. It will often pay off.

The alternate universe that is Great Britain looks better and better every day. We’ve praised them for their legalized gambling, and if you’ve ever leafed through one of their newspapers, you might think Kylie Minogue is their new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Sure enough, those two worlds have collided. The Sun and the News of the World have gone into partnership with Ladbrokes, the largest retail bookie anywhere. Check out the Sun website, scroll down their table of contents (past “Ibiza Exposed” and “Superbabes”) and you’ll find SunBet or “Betting”.

We need this type of partnership on this side of the briny. Bookies need the exposure, and newspapers desperately need the revenue. All Page 3 kidding aside, there are some of us who still care about good journalism (like The Guardian), but not nearly enough to fund it through our patronage. So let us gamble already. It could even help make the comics page relevant again.