Welcome back to the real world. You’ve had your fun under the sun. For about a week, those days of frolicking and letting your hair down, you had your break from the constant noise and barrage you and your mates have come to call “the office.”

Now, it’s more of the usual humdrum, of running after buses, taxis and FX, and praying for a space to crawl in to inside those MRT trains. And endless hours spent with your unsmiling devil of a supervisor. Yes, by all signs and symbols, it is back to your old and usual life.

Now those days and nights spent on those sandy beaches, too few if you’d have the final say, will be mere specks among your collections of bright and shiny memories. Their existence merely to balm your soul, ease the pain, and provide you with the strength you need until the summer break comes again.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Microsoft has snagged a number of big-name contributors and collaborators for its Windows Marketplace for Mobile applications store. Some of these significant partners include EA Mobile, MySpace and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi.

Previously, Microsoft announced that AccuWeather.com, the Associated Press, CNBC and Gameloft have joined the list of companies planning to offer applications to mobile device users through the Marketplace for Mobile, enabling Microsoft to offer a wide range of mobile applications online.

Apple has met huge success with its App Store, having made possible more than 800 million downloads in less than three quarters. Google has similar plans for its Android mobile operating system, while Nokia is working on its Ovi Store, as is RIM with its Blackberry mobile platform.

Market research firm In-Stat has predicted that the market for mobile applications would quadruple in five years, whetting everybody’s appetite and desire to dominate the market.

Kill Pill

LM Ericsson AB has developed a laptop modem technology that comes with a “kill pill” feature that can send a signal via wireless broadband to a laptop, totally disabling the mobile computer. Deadlier than any “morning after” pill, this feature has various possible security applications.

Mobile network operators, for example, are installing the modem on netbooks, which they subsidize and provide their wireless Internet subscribers. Now, with a mere push of a button, mobile operators can disable the netbooks of their delinquent subscribers. Neat as a digital-age repo man, that’s what it is.

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT, and some other things.