By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

As a hard-core techie, I may not drive an SUV, but I am not exactly easy on the environment. When I took an online quiz that measured how many planets the earth would need to support someone like myself, I ended up somewhere on the land-raping monster scale. (You can view my scary results here) But I also applaud the efforts of an organization called Collectivegood, a site that collects old cell phones and then makes donations to charities. You can also dump off your old cell phone at the US office supply chain, Staples. We say: Good job!

Q: What is the purpose of the CollectiveGood mobile phone recycling program?
A: The CollectiveGood mobile phone recycling program serves several important purposes:

* There are more than 500 million used mobile phones in the US sitting on shelves or in our landfills, and another 125 million will be added to the shelves or landfills this year alone! The problem is growing at a rate of more than 2 million phones per week, putting tons of toxic waste into our landfills daily. More

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

The wacky beer drinking guys Alex and Kevin at Diggnation - the Podcast for the website Digg.com have covered our story on Yahoo’s new email beta. Way to go RTN contributor Dave Zatz! If you want to listen to the Podcast, click here for the download. (Our piece is about 30:00 into the show.)

Diggnation Episode 13
Make your own post-it mosaic, Jobs says pirates will “Burn in Hell”, Yahoo’s new email kicks some Gmail ass, 28hr Day, Google begins Wi-Fi testing, Office Space: SE, Plague in WoW, Buy it - burn it - return it, and Opera is free.

Download Diggnation’s Podcast Here
About Yahoo’s New Email Beta and Why It Kicks Gmail Around the Block

Our question to you: Should we start doing a Podcast?

By Martin A. Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

We made a brief mention of the OZiQ All-in-one PC some weeks ago. Since then, we’ve met and interviewed the guy from Tucana Innovations who designed the OZiQ and also spent a few hours with the very capable all-in-one machine. Verdict: probably one of the most eco-friendliest PCs.

Highlights
* The OZiQ comes with either a touch screen or a standard LCD.
Some applications absolutely demand the interactivity that can only come from using a touch panel and some folks can happily do without one. Personally, I love the touch screens on my iPAQs and Flybook and would not want to have my new PC without that feature.

* Which is the proper way to power down your computer?
Microsoft wants you to go to Start, Turn Off Computer and then press one of 3 options…Why not just switch it off like your TV? The OZiQ is automatically programmed to shut Windows XP down properly. More

By Nicolas Fogelholm
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Nokia announced the release of a new music phone, the Nokia 3250. The Nokia 3250 is a Series 60 Symbian smartphone. It has a fully rotatable bottom section with a 2-megapixel camera, dedicated music controls, and up to 1 GB of memory.

Why We are Intrigued: The Nokia 3250 is an good alternative if you plan to buy a music phone. In terms of technical specs and features it seems to be somewhat better than the Motorola Rokr iTunes phone. The Motorola Rokr has USB 1.1 (can take up to 40 mins. to transfer 100 songs), 512MB TransFlash memory, and the iTunes software is limited to store 100 songs. The Nokia 3250 uses the Nokia Audio Manager software to transfer music files from PC to phone. This is a clear disadvantage compared to Motorola that syncs with iTunes.
More

By John Tintle
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Today I will be reviewing the newest entry to the blogging world, WordPress.com. You may be saying to yourself, “but isn’t Real Tech News run on WordPress software?” You are correct - Real Tech News is run with WordPress software. Today’s review of WordPress.com is for people who don’t want to worry about domains or hosting issues, and that aims it squarely at this site’s old home, Blogger.com.

What is WordPress.com?
WordPress.com is a hosted, free blogging solution just like Blogger. While WordPress.com is in a very early Alpha stage, it is drawing the attention of bloggers around the world with its inclusion of AJAX scripts and other new features such as a rich WYSIWYG that allows you to drag and drop photos or images into your posts, and a new and improved Dashboard that allows users not only to check on the Top 5 blogs on WordPress.com, but up and coming blogs too.
More

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

We don’t get to toot our horn very often - blogging is mostly slogging your way through links and hoping you find something of interest for your readers who move on like wolves in search of better hunting the second you let up. Tech blogging is ugly business, but it does have its rewards (and one that someday will be financial as well!) One is the amazing list of contributors I am lucky to call my team. Please review this list of our dedicated contributors and check out their wonderful websites. And two, is making it to a list of very skilled company - huge blogs like Gizmodo who are kind enough to point to us from time to time (like today.) We could not do it without you. And thanks most of all to our readers for keeping us honest and yelling at us when we get it wrong, and offering up tips on everything from cat care, to how to avoid dying in a fireball. Thanks guys (and gals) and please let us know how we can make this the very best technology blog on the planet for you.

Source: Technorati

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Viewing your webcam via cell phone is definitely the “next big thing” and DLink has jumped into the arena today with a a new offering. Why this is hot: You can have a security system call your phone today - car alarms and burglar systems have been doing that for years, but actually watching your office lobby or front steps, or whatever place you place your camera on your cell phone is a major leap forward. I saw a guy in LA with a similar system he was using on his cell phone to peek at his lobby, so I know more systems are out there, but DLink’s announcement is key because they offer low cost solutions that tend to be easier for the average user to deploy.

The D-Link Wireless Internet Camera with 3G compatibility is a fixed lens camera supporting resolutions up to 640×480 with user selectable JPEG or MPEG-4 compression rates. The camera supports a wireless interface for attachment to any existing 802.11g or 802.11b wireless LAN as well as a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port for direct attachment to a wired network. In addition to cellular phone monitoring, the compatible formats of the D-Link 3GPP/ISMA Wireless Internet Camera also allows for playback on a network attached computer or media player. The camera is also viewable from any Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) compatible device and offers support for RealPlayer® 10.5 and QuickTime® 6.5 viewing. More

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Call this window shopping Internet style. Forbes has just released its list of the priciest sports cars for 2005.
Drool….

More Here