Sony Ericsson today has announced the release of the new Walkman W880 model to their line up of Walkman phones available.

The W880 is the slimmest phone yet from Sony Ericsson, measuring only 9.4 mm thick (about the thickness of a CD case) housing a 1.8″ TFT display and 2 megapixel camera. This music phone also comes with a 1GB Memory Stick Micro included in the package to dispel concerns about enough internal storage space.

The mobile music phone comes with pre-packaged software for managing your audio media, including Walkman Player 2.0 and Disc2Phone to manage the transfer of music to the mobile device, as well as the playback on the gadget itself. The W880 also supports Bluetooth for streaming the playback to a wireless Bluetooth headset or stereo.

“Our Walkman phones have proven to be phenomenally attractive to our consumers – we have …

Eastman Kodak has entered the inkjet market with a new line of All-in-One (AiO) printers for the home.

The new Kodak Easyshare All-in-One Printers will focus on reducing the cost of printing and save consumers up to 50 percent on printing costs according to a Kodak press release. The AiO printers will use Kodak’s premium, pigment-based ink, priced at $9.99 for a cartridge of black ink and $14.99 for a five-ink color cartridge.

“For far too long, people have felt restrained from printing due to the high cost of ink,” said Antonio M. Perez, chairman and chief executive officer, Eastman Kodak Company. “Our new system gives consumers the freedom to print documents and photos frequently, easily and affordably with exceptional quality that lasts a lifetime under typical home display conditions.”

The family of Kodak Easyshare All-in-One Printers will consist of three new printers ranging …

Picnik is a super-fast online photo editing utility that allows you to quickly edit your photos from a single location. Picnik is a web-based application and other than Flash 9 it doesn’t require you to download or install anything to edit your photos. Picnik works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Picnik allows you to pull photos from your local hard disk, a website, or a WebCam. There is also a search tool that allows you to search Yahoo or Flickr for photos, so I did a quick search for “cake” on Yahoo to get a photo to edit. I’m certainly not a photog and Paint Shop Pro stretches my photo-editing abilities to their limits, but I was able to easily and quickly run through all the features of Picnik without any problems.

You can use Picnik to …

MUX is a any-to-any video conversion service that allows you to convert video files to different formats. The service allows you to convert to and from Quicktime (mov), MPEG-4 (mp4), Flash Video (flv), Windows Media (wmv), MPEG-1/2 (mpg), Windows AVI (avi), and Mobile 3gp (3gp).

In order to MUX a video, you provide a link to the video file and select the format you would like the video converted to. MUX will then give you a converted video in the size, bitrate, and frames per second that you specified. The conversion takes a couple minutes and the service will notify you when it is finished at the email address you entered. The email you receive contains a URL to your converted video.

I was able to convert a video on YouTube to a Quicktime file pretty easily. I selected the Rolling Rock Thong Ad …

Palm announced today that the Treo 750 smartphone will be made generally available to customers across Europe through the Palm online store starting February 6th, 2007. The Treo 750 was previously only available on Vodafone’s network in the UK since last September, but this announcement opens the device up to all mobile phone networks.

The Palm Treo 750 runs on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 OS and will feature Pocket MSN along with view and editing capabilities for Word and Excel, and allowing viewing of PowerPoint and PDF files all through a touchscreen interface.

The smartphone device is compatible with 3G UMTS/HSDPA networks and takes advantage of Microsoft’s Direct Push technology to give quick and wireless email and contact updates to the handheld gadget.

“The Treo 750 smartphone – made available first with Vodafone in Europe and recently announced …

After announcing they would distribute the game to Europe and Asia, Atari along with CD Projekt announced today that they will market and distribute ‘The Witcher’, an RPG game that will be released on Games for Windows this fall in North America.

“The Witcher is a tremendous game that has been on everyone’s radar since CD Projekt began development,” said Jeremiah Cohn, Product Manager, Atari, Inc. “With this publishing deal, Atari continues its quest to bring highly impressive titles to North America and we have our sights set on making The Witcher one of the most anticipated RPGs of the year.”

The Witcher, based on a world created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, will add a new twist to traditional role playing games in that decisions made by the player can make significant changes in the game outcome. …

Southwest Airlines finds a number of ways to cut costs and provide discount airfare to its customers, and they know how to reward their most frequent customers. The airline has partnered with Nintendo to give some Rapid Rewards members a free Nintendo DS Lite game system along with a copy of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day.

“We are helping our Members welcome the New Year with low fares, frequent flights and, of course, exercise … exercise for their mind while they travel,” said Blair McGrain, Director of Marketing Planning and Customer Loyalty in a press release. “We are thrilled to partner with Nintendo to give our Members some FUN in the New Year.”

Southwest has already mailed the free Nintendo DS and Brain Age game to 50 of the most long term and high mile …

NecSoft, a Japanese software company, has released some new authentication software that uses facial recognition as a different type of biometric security in order to gain access to a Windows PC.

In order to authenticate, a web cam views the face in front of it and matches it to an existing photo tied to the user account. The system also has a network management component in the works to allow a network administration of the facial recognition authentication for individual client PC’s.

As an added security feature, all of the images taken when trying to authenticate with the web cam are saved by the system. This, unlike trying multiple passwords, identifies the individual attempting to gain access to the system through the BiodeLogon facial recognition application.

We had reported last October about a Japanese mobile phone from NTT DoCoMo that also utilized …

An novel security hole presented itself last week with the new version of Windows Vista released by Microsoft to customers around the world.

George Ou, and online blogger, reported on Tuesday through ZD Net that he was able to access the Start Menu on Vista and could potentially run programs through voice command audio files played through the system speakers. This type of functionality could allow a hacker to run programs, delete files and any number of other harmful processes accessible through the voice command functionality of Windows Vista.

Microsoft has attempted to downplay the issue slightly, and has addressed the Speech Recognition Issue on their Security Response Center blog. “While we are taking the reports seriously and investigating them accordingly I am confident in saying that there is little if any need to worry about the effects of this issue on your …

This IDE to USB adapter from Vantec is a really handy tool. Whether you are trying to retrieve data from a hard drive or looking for some simple external storage, this makes the connection very simple.

The IDE to USB adapter had a 140cm cable that has an IDE interface on one end and a USB 2.0 interface on the other; pretty simple. The IDE interface is a 3.5″, but the device has a small adapter that brings it down to the 2.5″ models as well. When the cables are connected and the hard drive is powered up, the computer automatically detects the external HDD hardware and you can start transferring files. No software is needed for Windows XP or 2000, and the device is compatible with Windows 98/ME/XP/2000 as well as Mac OS 8.6 and above.

Powering the …

Sony seems to have had a change in their policies by producing a competitor product accessory. Calling Sony and Apple competitors might not be the best description of their relationship, but they do both produce portable audio players.

Sony has added to this definition when they started shipping the Sony iPod Audio Docking Station, which is the first accessory Sony has made for the Apple product and aptly named it the CPF-IP001.

The actual product from Sony appears to be a nice docking station stereo system. Designed specifically for the Apple iPod, the docking station is compatible with the nanos and minis as well as the full size iPods from the 4th generation on. The player works by simply docking the iPod and pressing play, and the song selection and volume can be controlled with an included remote control.

The iPod stereo system is a compact …

In a twist on the Comic Book Guy’s famous catch phrase, we are giving praise to some of the best, if not the best, earplug style headphones that we have seen lately. The M-Audio IE-20 XB Reference Earphones are professional grade in-ear style earphones, but they are more than that. They have a large bass driver that makes these earphones really stand out.

Usually earphones lack the low end oomph that larger head phones have. This is not the case with the IE-20 XB, however, as they deliver great bass performance, as well as high-end and mid-range. The XB stands for Extended Bass and M-Audio means it. The IE-20 XB has two dedicated speakers built in, one for low frequencies and one for mid-range and high frequencies. The earphones themselves are …

Apple has recently updated information on its website about iTunes compatibility with Windows Vista from Microsoft, urging iTunes users to wait for an new iTunes version before upgrading to the new OS.

iTunes software is the key to syncing up music from Apple iTunes to the iPod portable media players, and although it has worked well with the current XP and 2000 operating systems from Microsoft Apple has noted some issues with the new Vista OS and has a new iTunes release on the way to address them. Apple states that iTunes 7.0.2 may work well with Vista on many PC’s, but due to some known compatibility issues iTunes users should wait until the next release of the iTunes software is out in a few weeks.

Some of the known issues Apple has noted range from serious …

Stikkit is a productivity web application that helps you manage contacts, plan and organize meetings, and share and comment on ideas. You can use Stikkit with your email to forward notes and even transform emails into a stikkit – automatically noting your events, to-dos, contacts, and bookmarks.

Stikkit has released an API to give developers the ability to “fold and form” stikkits for their own purposes. The Stikkit API is easy to obtain – if you have a Stikkit account, you’ve got the key. The API is REST-based, and uses simple HTTP requests. The responses can be returned in your choice of Atom, vCard, iCal, json, or Text – depending on the method. The methods in the API will allow you to get, create, delete, update, and share stikkits; make and list comments; toggle todos; and list tags.

Stikkit mashups are sure to follow.

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most prolific polymaths who ever lived. A true Renaissance man, his interests allowed him to succeed as a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer. Leonardo’s studies were recorded in notebooks that were maintained daily throughout his life as he made continual observations of the world around him. Leonardo’s notebooks encompass over 13,000 pages of notes and drawings.

You now have access to page through the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci thanks to a joint effort between Microsoft and the British Library. Two of da Vinci’s notebooks have been digitized for an updated version of an application called “Turning the Pages” which allows people to browse parts of the British Library’s 150 million piece collection via a web browser.

The British Library will make selections from the Codex Arundel and …