Wakey wakey: All the news in 30 seconds

Thursday morning brings us the news legions of so-called casual gamers have been waiting for in the shape of the new Wii channel called, rather dully, Nintendo Channel.

The online console feed serves up the goods on everything to do with the Japanese games giant and includes movie-style trailers for upcoming games and previews of DS games.

Nintendo also uses the channel to make connected Wiis dial home and send information about the games we play, so don't come running to us if your privacy knickers get all in a twist, ok?

PS3 on the up and up

Speaking of games, Sony has been crowing to London journalists about the fact that European sales of its PS3 have just overtaken those of the Xbox 360 even though it came to the party 16 months later.

Next step for the latest PlayStation is to repeat the trick in Microsoft's home territory of the US - perhaps then it can even consider toppling the Wii.

Two iPhones for Italy

On the iPhone front, the notorious Apple business model where it allows just one carrier per country to sell the handset looks like crumbling, now that Telecom Italia has revealed it is to join Vodafone in selling the device in Italy.

Whether that means unlocked iPhones will go on legitimate sale or not, we don't yet know, but we do know that us humble residents of Europe definitely don't get deals as sweet as the latest NBC offer in the US.

The major TV network has just unfettered free streaming iPhone and iPod touch versions of top shows like The Office. And yes, the US version is at least as good as the original, ok?

That's it for now, but stay tuned to TechRadar for the rest of the day's news as it breaks or grab a feed here - get it while it's hot.

J Mark Lytle was an International Editor for TechRadar, based out of Tokyo, who now works as a Script Editor, Consultant at NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. Writer, multi-platform journalist, all-round editorial and PR consultant with many years' experience as a professional writer, their bylines include CNN, Snap Media and IDG.