May 12, 2006, 3:55 PM PDT
Yet more Apple cell phone rumors
Posted by: Kent German

Engadget is citing a Japanese news story that claims Apple has partnered with Softbank, now the owner of Vodafone Japan, to develop a cell phone that will play music from iTunes. Details are slim, of course, and you can bet that with Apple involved, they'll stay that way until a handset (if there is one) is announced. The story predicted, however, that we could see a product as early as next year.

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May 12, 2006, 3:49 PM PDT
New Nokia 6103 for T-Mobile
Posted by: Kent German

T-Mobile has added a new Nokia phone in its lineup with the Nokia 6103. The handset is almost identical to the Nokia 6101, except for a couple of design alterations and the addition of Bluetooth. The phone is now on sale on T-Mobile's site for $69.

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May 12, 2006, 3:42 PM PDT
T-Mobile and Verizon don't dish to NSA
Posted by: Kent German

The Associated Press is reporting that Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile have not supplied the National Security Agency (NSA) with customer phone records. A Verizon spokesman told AP that his company "was not involved with the situation," while T-Mobile said in a statement that it did not participate "in any NSA program for warrantless surveillance." Yet, AP also said that reps for Cingular and Sprint were less explicit and did not deny turning over customer call records. USA Today first reported Thursday that the NSA had collected telephone records of American citizens.

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May 12, 2006, 3:21 PM PDT
Back up your blog
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Blogs are great tools to record your thoughts and ideas for posterity. There's only one problem: Posterity could be interrupted by a server crash, which could not only take your blog offline but wipe out your hundreds of pithy blog posts.

You want to back up your blog, then. One way to do so is to use a specialized tool, such as BackupMyBlog. This service is for people who run their own servers, so not (yet) for users of hosted solutions such as TypePad or Blogger. Once hooked into your blog, it regularly copies your posts to two separate locations, either of which can be used to recover your data should you need it. (Found on SolutionWatch)

Or, here's an alternate solution: Every few months, or once a year, print a book of your blog. Use a service like Blurb, BlogPrinting, or BlogBinders to print out a nice archive of your work. It won't help you rebuild the electronic version of your blog, but it is something you can pass along to your children, long after blogs have faded into history.

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May 12, 2006, 2:12 PM PDT
A2DP puts Bluetooth-enabled MP3 players in the driver's seat
Posted by: Kevin Massy

In the world of in-car communication, Bluetooth devices have worked a minirevolution, allowing drivers to receive and make calls without taking their hands from the wheel. Now it looks as if this technology is about to be applied to the in-car entertainment market as well.

Making use of a sophisticated Bluetooth profile called A2DP--which stands for advanced audio distribution profile--drivers and passengers will be able to stream high-quality audio from portable MP3 players, cell phones, and PDAs through their stereo head units without wires or the loss of audio quality that's associated with FM transmitters. Rollout of this technology will necessarily be dictated by the pace at which car-stereo manufacturers and producers of portable MP3 players make their respective products A2DP-compatible. At present, only a minority of new cell phones and even fewer portable MP3 players ship with any kind of Bluetooth capability, but things might be about to change.

According to the Japanese tech site Akihabara News, Pioneer Electronics has started the ball rolling for A2DP car stereos with the release of its DEH-P810 Bluetooth-enabled head unit, while French audio company Parrot has also taken up the next-gen Bluetooth gauntlet, offering A2DP-enabled in-car stereo kits for OEM integration. Among mobile devices, Samsung has taken a lead, having released its A2DP-enabled SBH-300 MP3 player in March and just this week unveiling its SGH-D900 slider phone that also supports A2DP.

Samsung's press office couldn't immediately confirm whether either of these devices will be available in the United States any time soon, and so it may be that this technology will take off in Asia and Europe before it comes here--quelle surprise!)

When A2DP does arrive, however, it could spell the end for the auxiliary input jack.

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May 12, 2006, 11:04 AM PDT
Who needs apps? Online video and image editors are here
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Everybody's familiar with the new model for distributing video, thanks to YouTube, but most of the good videos on YouTube and other services are edited the old way: on a PC or a Mac. That may change soon, as online video editors roll out.

There's a very good one that's live now: JumpCut. With this tool, once your videos are uploaded, you can splice them together, overlay audio tracks, and add effects similar to the ones you'd find in a traditional software-based editor. Since all the editing happens online, you suffer through the slow upload only once.

You can also re-edit other people's videos, which is fun and may be a big hit with music tracks. I can see artists and labels posting their own video resources online and letting fans make their own music videos. There's a danger when you open up material like this (see the GM ad contest fiasco), but it could give a big boost to artist/fan relationships.

I first saw this product when the CEO demonstrated it, and I was blown away by its capabilities. In trying to use it, though, I ran into some frustrations. No matter how good the tool, editing videos is hard from both a technical and a creative perspective, so you'll need to put some time into it before you can churn out acceptable results.

There's another good online video editor in development, MotionBox [via TechCrunch]. Also, interesting photo-editing tools are coming online. Try Pixoh and Pxn8. These let you do with your online photos what you're probably doing right now offline, in Picasa or a similar app.

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May 12, 2006, 10:24 AM PDT
More momentum for the Wii: a $200 price tag?
Posted by: Molly Wood

A Merrill Lynch analyst predicts that Nintendo will price the Wii at just $200, which would not only make it more desirable to consumers, but to game publishers as well. A Sega exec made the same speculation, and analysts said the Wii's broad appeal (to both hard-core gamers and casual or even newbie types) will make it a hit. Yeah, I think a $200 price tag could go a long way toward making the Wii a hit--although the bajillions of fanboys and girls waiting in a line the equivalent of three blocks long at E3, just to get a chance to play it for a few short seconds, indicate that it's going to do just fine at almost any price.

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May 12, 2006, 9:20 AM PDT
Facing your e-mail
Posted by: Elsa Wenzel

Know how when you meet someone in person for the first time after e-mailing back and forth, they look different than you'd imagined? Google's plans to match your e-mail account with a face could put a stop to that. Expected within the next week, you'll be able to attach a photo to your Gmail account so that message recipients will spot your mug in their in-boxes. Google Pictures will let you display different pictures to different people and show when you're online. Instant- messaging apps have let users express themselves with GIFs, JPEGs, and animated avatars for years now, but this is a first for e-mail. Google's been announcing a bunch of tools this week that add social networking features to its many free services.

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