comScore is reporting that online gaming in the US has risen 22% from May 08 to May 09.
There are now around 87m American users of online gaming sites (up from 71m last year), with Yahoo! Games coming in at number one with 19m users.

The site with the biggest growth is the GSN Games Network with a 563% increase, just underlining the possibilities in the online and casual gaming arena.

“Online gaming continues to be one of the top gaining categories over the past year growing at ten times the rate of the total U.S. Internet population and reaching nearly one out of every two Internet users,” said Edward Hunter, comScore director of gaming solutions.

One of the stories to come out of the TechCrunch CrunchUp Live, which is happening now, is that the popular Twitter client TweetDeck has secured some more investment in the form of around £2m a $2m round.

What could they use this money for? There aren't that many complaints to do with either the desktop or iPhone client to invest in support and recoding those, so perhaps we'll be seeing even more TweetDeck clients.

Maybe an Android client is out there, or maybe the current services will improved, we don't know, but they've now got the cash to push the service.

UPDATE: The founder of TweetDeck has pointed out in the comments of the TechCrunch story that the round raised a few million dollars, not pounds.

We've been running a lot of stories about Google's Chrome OS over the past few days, but that's mainly because it's important.

Research has been done on users, and people really don't fancy Linux on their netbooks, they'd rather pay more for the Windows experience they're used to.

This is where I see Google falling down with their operating system.
Sure it might have Google's name on it, but they put their name on the Chrome browser (and whilst they've had an explosion of market share for a product less than a year old), they're not currently a major player.

Click the title to see why we think the future is both netbooks and instant-on.

The fire that is going on/was going on in London this afternoon is only just being picked up by the major news networks, but Twitter users have known about it for a lot longer.

The Soho fire is currently occupying 3 of the top trends on the microblogging site, as well as being a big part of the Twitter image client sites as well.

This is one of the killer features of Twitter, there have been a lot of people writing about the spam problems that are becoming commonplace on the list of trends, but when a story like this happens, people want to know now.

Armed with your trusty Flip, iPhone 3GS or camera-enabled phone as well as an account on Twitter, Youtube and Twitpic, anyone can spread breaking news in an instant.

Now, back to the regular #3wordsaftersex and #MrsSlocombesPussy service.

Realtime image search may very well be the next hottest thing, so we decided to check out PicFog, a service that integrates the best of the Twitter picture clients (TwitPic and yfrog) and combines their images into a realtime image search engine.

The reason why we discovered this service now is because we're tracking the happenings in London where there is a massive fire (in the Soho area), and tweeters are sending their mobile phone images into the picture clients.

Click the title for more.

We'll promise to stop talking about Chrome until we know some more firm details soon. Honest. However, if you're keen to try out a different operating system on your netbook, but don't fancy waiting a year to 18 months for Chrome OS, here are 3 alternatives that are either out, or just around the corner.

Of course, you should only install a new OS if you feel comfortable playing with some pretty important stuff on your netbook, or get someone familiar with the concept to do it for you.

Click the title to see our 3 netbook OSes to use whilst you're waiting for Chrome.

We received a sample of the brand-spanking new Flip UltraHD pocket video camera a few days back, and have had some time playing with the device.

First off, if it isn't easy to use, then there would be no reason to buy it. Thankfully Flip knows its market well, and has kept the UltraHD in line with its other offerings in being as simple as possible.

Click the title for more thoughts.