Five states have passed laws making it illegal to hold a cell phone while talking on it in a car. The California law takes effect July 1, 2008 and will cost drivers $20 for the first offense.

Personally I haven't found an ideal alternative to holding my phone up to my ear. Aliph's Jawbone has the best repution for sound quality and noise reduction but there are universal complaints about the fit on your ear. At CES this year Jawbone ran a promotion that offered a free Jawbone with a trade-in of any bluetoo  read more »

The HD DVD camp is reeling from the Warner Brothers announcement to distribute Blu-ray only discs as of June 2008, . Warner is one of the largest DVD producers and could significantly change the balance in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war. In reaction, the HD DVD group cancelled a big press event at CES. To make matters worse rumors have Apple's new Macbooks sporting Blu-ray DVD drives. This has got to have the Microsoft camp riled up and huddling with Toshiba to plan a counter attack. On the other hand I think it was Bill Gates who said this will probably be the last physical media format  read more »

 CES is about to get underway in Las Vegas on January 7, 2008. Last year HDTV displays were the hot items but Apple stole the show with the introduction of the iPhone. The boys must have made a deal this year because the "rumored" new Macbooks built around Intel's new 45 nm Penryn processor will not be revealed until well after CES ends.

Speaking of Penryn, we expect to see many laptop announcements at the show from manufacturers including Sony, Fujitsu, Aser, Dell, and more. Penryn offers a faster front side bus and lower power requirements. We'll be looking for LE  read more »

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This year, the hot new feature in HDTV just might be "motion control motion enhancement," or MEMC. MEMC chips can help reduce blurring in fast-action programming like sports. This has been a differentiation between Plasma TVs and LCD TVs. Plasma TVs have had fewer problems handling fast moving subjects than LCD TVs.  LCD TVs have countered with faster refresh rates (120 Hz) and faster pixel response times (8 ms. and lower).

MEMC promises to narrow the gap further. MEMC has been used for some time in the compression and decompression (CODEC) schemes but is  read more »