Stuck in France: The officially unlocked French iPhones aren't as unlocked as you think. The phones are tethered to work with only French carriers. In other words, you can't buy an unlocked French iPhone from Orange and use it with an American, German or UK based sim card. I'll be right back, I have some Ebay bids to rescind.

All the worlds data in your pocket: According the Google all the world's data will eventually fit inside an iPod. No word on if that iPod will have a Wi-Fi sync or an FM receiver.

I want to believe: Apple Insider is reporting on mysterious grey-ish tiny notebooks being seen around the Apple campus. The slender mystery book is possibly the rumored subcompact notebook we've been hearing about. Expect a fuzzy mobile phone picture by the end of next week.

Out of the way Vista, here comes Windows 7: A Microsoft blogger revealed that the next version of Windows will contain touch features similar to the iPhone. The successor to Vista will be out no sooner than 2010. By then the iPhone should have all the world's data on it.

Fire up the spreadsheets: Chomping at the bit for the latest Office for Mac? Well you're in luck! Office 2008 has gone gold and is being released to manufacturers. The product is launching January 15 at some Expo you may have heard about. Ars Technica wraps up its preview series with a look at Excel.

Dig in the gub: British sister site MacFormat ran across an interesting article on the BBC's website about a man with $85,000 phone bill. (That's why you get the unlimited texting plan.) The BBC used an iPhone image to sex up the story and MacFormat clearly doesn't condone those shenanigans.

And finally: Mac vs PC animated. Thanks nameless commenter!