The MacWorld 2008 week is just about to come to a close but the new product announcements aren’t quite over yet. XtremeMac, maker of Apple product accessories, has launched the InCharge Home and InCharge Travel as the latest addition to the companies lineup of chargers for the iPhone and iPod. The products bear the “Works with iPhone” and “Made for iPod” brands making them Apple approved, which is something we really like to see anytime we connect something between the wall outlet and our multi-hundred dollar gadgets.

The InCharge Home is basically a $30 wall outlet adapter that will charge your iPhone or iPod without the use of a computer and without the risk of burning it up. XtremeMac says that the InCharge Home will bring your iPod or iPhone to a full charge twice as fast as it will through your computer connection.

Amidst the new product announcements unveiled during the MacWorld 2008 keynote today Jobs slipped in a message about a new feature that will easily get your DVD content into your iTunes or Windows Media Player library called Digital Copy. Partnering with Twentieth Century Fox, Apple is offering the Digital Copy feature on DVDs from the Fox studio starting with “Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest” which releases today.

Anytime someone purchases a DVD from Fox that has the Digital Copy feature they can insert the disc into their computer, enter a unique code and transfer the movie into iTunes or Windows Media Player. The movie will then be available for unlimited viewing on their computer, iPod with video, iPhone, Apple TV or other video media player. There is of course some restriction on your purchased DVD’s Digital Copy feature however. It will transfer the DVD to only one instance of iTunes, limited by the unique code required.

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention, Steve Jobs is going to deliver the keynote speech for MacWorld 2008 today in San Francisco at 9am PST/12pm EST. Apple usually reserves this time to make its biggest announcements of the year in which they usually do a pretty good job of keeping under wraps until this time. As usual there are a number of rumors floating around with the more prominent that we know of being an SDK for the iPhone, movie rentals on iTunes and some type of super-portable MacBook. None of this we know for sure but we’re going to find out shortly after 9 this morning and pass it on.

Bang & Olufsen have announced their EarSet 3, as a “unique mobile accessory” pairing music headphones and a phone headset in a single device. They bridge your cell phone headset and MP3 player earphones in one. I know, that doesn’t seem very unique, but what are you gonna do? The company’s first stereo headset with a built-in microphone is compatible with the Apple iPhone.

The 1.09 oz set has been developed to closely match the contours and curves of each ear, ensuring that no sound escapes. The ear buds include foam rubber covers and should stay firmly and comfortably in place.

Apple has a new patent application in the European Patent Office that details out a new volume control feature to help prevent hearing loss when listening to an iPod. People that have messed around with the settings on an iPod have likely already noticed that you can already set the maximum volume for your iPod to avoid an inadvertent blasts of sound that could damage your ear. The new feature would be available in iPods and the iPhone and would take into account not only how loud the volume is while your listening, but also how long you’ve been listening to decide when the listener may have had enough.

According to the Wall Street Journal Steve Jobs has been in talks with Masao Nakamura, president of NTT DoCoMo, about launching the iPhone in Japan next. The iPhone has already made its launch overseas in the UK, Germany and France and could soon be trying its hand at one of the largest markets for mobile phones in the world.

The report says that Jobs is in talks wtih Softbank Corp. in Japan as well who could also have a shot at carrying the iPhone in Japan and of course makes some friendly competition for Jobs to deal between on an exclusive contract. If Apple ends up partnering with NTT DoCoMo, could this spark the launch of the 3G iPhone?

A new portable iPod/iPhone charger has surfaced for those on the go who find their Apple device without power. The iPowerRush Charger is priced at around $30 and available now.

The iPowerRush Charger draws its energy from six AAA batteries housed inside its casing. These batteries provide a self-described 10 to 15 extra hours of iPod life on average. The charger includes an on/off switch as well as a power indicator to let you know how much battery life is left. The unit measures 2 x 3-5/8 x 1/2-inches.

If you were looking to take advantage of, or get taken advantage of depending on how you look at it, the very expensive deal T-Mobile was offering for unlocked iPhones in Germany you’re now too late. A German court has ruled that T-Mobile can indeed be the exclusive operator for Apple’s popular handset in Germany by ruling against a complaint filed by Vodafone.

Apple had planned to launch the iPhone in Germany with T-Mobile being the exclusive carrier much as it did in the United States, however Vodafone filed a complaint stating that the exclusivity went against German laws to protect consumers. The complaint resulted in a temporary injunction against T-Mobile requiring them to offer the iPhones unlocked and able to connect to other operators including Vodafone. T-Mobile complied with the injunction but offered the normally $580 iPhone in an unlocked state for $1460. Despite the high price Klaus Czerwinski of T-Mobile told ZDNet UK that there were still “many sold.”

What do AT&T, Apple, Comcast, Cablevision and eBay all have in common? They are all being sued today by Klausner Technologies over visual voicemail patents the company says it owns and which it feels these well known, other companies have not yet requested a patent license for.

The suits were filed by the company which “was founded by Judah Klausner, the inventor of the PDA and electronic organizer.” Klausner Technologies says Cablevision’s Optimum Voicemail, Comcast’s Digital Voice Voicemail, eBay’s Skype Voicemail and AT&T/Apple’s iPhone Visual Voicemail services all violate patents it holds which allow “users to selectively retrieve and listen to voice messages via message inbox displays.”

At an event dinner in California on Wednesday AT&T Chief executive Randall Stephenson said that consumers could expect the iPhone to be available on a 3G network as soon as next year. This change would solve one of the major complaints many have of the iPhone with its currently slower EDGE network.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has said in the past that the iPhone didn’t initially launch on the 3G network due to the restrictions the faster network put on the battery life of the phone. He also stated that the 3G capabilities may be available by late 2008, so this news in general isn’t too much of a surprise.

Apple’s iPhone, winner of Time magazine’s invention of the year, went on sale in France tonight allowing residents to finally officially get their hands on the popular media smartphone. There’s more to the significance of this launch, however.

After months of bouts between iPhone hackers and Apple developers trying to keep the mobile phone “locked” and restricted to approved carriers, the French law requires that the phone not be restricted to any single mobile operator. France is the second country having this requirement for the iPhone after it was launched in Germany earlier this month and both countries are offering unlocked iPhones.

In a recent report from MacNotes.de, unlocking an iPhone sold by T-Mobile Germany is simple, done in only a few seconds and is handled by none other than Apple’s own iTunes. Due to a temporary injunction against Apple, the company has been forced to sell the iPhones with the ability to be unlocked in Germany. Apple will also be forced to sell them unlocked in France in six months after their launch on November 29.

In case you’re not familiar with what “unlocking” means exactly, it prevents the iPhone from being “locked” to a single network provider such as AT&T in the U.S., and allows the phone to accept any SIM card. Up until now there have been a number of hacks to unlock the iPhone and allow it to be used on other networks and other countries, and Apple has been in a constant battle to thwart the hacks and keep the phone locked-in with only approved providers.

On Friday the long wait is over for many law-abiding citizens of the UK and Germany as the Apple iPhone will be (officially) sold for the first time in countries other than the United States. The iPhone will be sold through O2 in the UK and T-Mobile in Germany and surprisingly will still be lacking the fast and common 3G connection that is already prevalent with many existing smartphones in those areas. Pricing is expected to be 269 pounds in the U.K. and 399 euros in Germany, which both convert to roughly in the high $500′s USD.

The new iPhones are expected to be basically the same models that the U.S. customers have received although they will come preloaded with the OS X 1.1.2 version which has a fix for the latest hacks that allow 3rd party apps to run on it, which will make it just a little bit harder for hackers to unlock in the next go-round. Apple is likely betting that the cool dual-touch screen interface and media playing integration will overshadow the lack of high-speed data connections with 3G, and users will be satisfied with a jumping from hotspot to hotspot instead. France will be the next country to get their hands on the iPhone later this month through Orange where Apple may run into problems with French law and restrictions on locking phones to exclusive carriers.

The latest in mixing advertising with games will take place on the iPhone Safari browser. The game is called Matchcaps and was specially designed for the browser.

The game will allow Dr. Pepper to interact with their consumers no matter where they are and at any time, through the iPhone. The game was developed by Imaginuity New Media, and based on the “match three” format that has been a hit with online gaming fans for years. They are expecting more games for the iPhone from February onward since Apple expects to distribute kits developers by then.

Expect more Dr. Pepper sales, followed by cooler games.

This morning Google had a phone open phone conference and made the much anticipated announcement that they along with 33 other companies are starting the Open Handset Alliance. The first and main project of the newly formed alliance is called Android, an open development platform for mobile handsets. The ultimate goal for Google with this is to overall make a better, more usable phone with more features where consumers will benefit, and of course to show advertisements on it where Google will also benefit.

Eric Schmidt was present on the call leading things off, with a number of other captains of industry including Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, Peter Chou from HTC and Ed Zander from Motorola. The members of the Open Handset Alliance include some big names like Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, eBay, Intel, NVIDIA and many others. Some notable big names we’re not seeing on the member list are Microsoft, Apple, AT&T and Verizon.