Research company comScore has published a survey comparing mobile usage and behaviour in Japan, the United States and Europe. It found significant differences between the three regions, with almost twice as many Japanese mobile users using their mobiles to go online (browsing, accessing applications or downloading content) as European users.

The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act has passed both chambers of Congress in the USA and is expected to be signed by President Obama. In general terms, the new law would requires telecommunications equipment to be usable by individuals with disabilities unless it's too difficult or too expensive to arrange this.

Google’s Gmail email service already includes instant messaging along with voice and video chat. The company has now added conventional phone calls to the Gmail interface. This option is currently only available within the USA, although the company says its working on making this available more broadly. A special voice and video plug-in needs to be installed; it’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

NTP Incorporated – co-founded by the late Thomas J Campana, who invented many of the technologies used in wireless email – has filed lawsuits against Apple, Google, HTC, LG Electronics, Microsoft and Motorola in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The company says eight of its patents, which relate to the wireless delivery of electronic mail, have been infringed.

NTP is probably best-known for a lengthy legal case with Research in Motion that's now been settled. The US government was forced to intervene after RIM was ordered to stop infringing the patents, which would have shut down BlackBerry email in the United States.

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has just published Mobile Access 2010; a report that looks at wireless internet use in the USA.

It says as of May 2010, 59% of all adult Americans use their laptops or mobile phones to go online wirelessly – either via WiFi or a mobile broadband card.

The percentage of people using their phones to browse the mobile web is up from 25% last year to 38% this year. 34% have used their mobiles for email – also up from 25% last year – with gaming, instant messaging and texting all showing increases as well.