By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

It makes sense. CDs are looking like VCR tapes when you compare them to digital downloads and MP3 players. Why carry around a scratched up disc with a few songs on it, when you can transport 20GBs of music and have everything you own at your fingertips? Cars are quickly trying to integrate iPods and digital players but one company called Visteon is tossing out the CD player and going all USB. We say: Sign us up!

By linking a USB port to a car’s entertainment system the car maker can offer customers audio and video options unavailable in most other models. That means a customer can play music loaded onto a memory stick in the car. The stereo system recognises the USB port as if it was the car’s CD changer so the car’s regular stereo controls can be used to scroll through the songs on the memory stick. Visteon says the benefits of the technology are cost and convenience.

“A CD changer is two or three times the cost of the USB interface,” said Visteon mobile electronics project leader Ian Randall. “Those CDs would have only 70 to 80 tracks. With a 1-gigabyte stick you can get 400 or 500 songs.”

With all that entertainment on a pocket-sized stick, a car owner no longer has to risk leaving stacks of CDs in the car, where they can get damaged by the elements or stolen. Visteon’s connector has a USB port for the memory stick as well as an input for an Apple iPod MP3 player. Source: Just Auto.com via Digg

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Not sure which side of the law you want to be on? Now you can play either side.

Oct. 31, 2005—NCsoft® North America announces that City of Villains™, stand-alone sequel to the hit massively multiplayer online PC game City of Heroes®, has gone live in North America. Developed by Cryptic Studios™; and published by NCsoft, City of Villains introduces a host of new features including the ability to create massive evil lairs from the ground up, and player-versus-player (PvP) zones where villains can battle against hero players from the City of Heroes game.

City of Villains is available at retailers in North America at an anticipated price of US$49.99 for its standard edition and US$69.99 for the feature-packed collector’s DVD edition. Both editions include the first month of online game play, and after the first month, players will be charged a monthly subscription fee of US$14.99. Earlier this month NCsoft announced that existing City of Heroes’ customers can purchase City of Villains and subscribe to both games for the single subscription price of US$14.99. Source: VE3D

We Say: It’s been a great ride with this game until now, and it’s a good idea to make the subscription fee cover both City of Heroes (CoH) AND City of Villains (CoV). However, recent nerfs to certain aspects of CoH have led to a near-riot in the forums, as well as a host of players leaving the game … speculation has been that once the newness of CoV wears off, further defections may occur.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Class-action lawsuits against wireless telephone providers and manufacturers over radiation emissions will be able to go forward, after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by the companies.

The high court rejected hearing an appeal by companies like Nokia and Cingular Wireless challenging a decision by a U.S. appeals court that reinstated the lawsuits that argued manufacturers knew about and hid the risks of radiation emissions wireless phones posed to users. Source: Reuters

We Say: This is a subject, that much like (here it comes) global warming, is so polarizing that it can become a very contentious item of discussion. Cellular phones are so pervasive in society that there’s no way they are going away … but human beings have not had to deal with all the electromagnetic radiation we now have for very long … so can we be certain we are “resistant” as we are with many viruses and bacteria? (I’m not just speaking of cellular phone radiation, by the way … think of all the other devices we have, from TVs to microwaves to radar towers to medical X-rays to …) For my own personal use I generally look for phones with a lower radiation rating. There’s no reason not to play it safe.

By Mark Evans
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Eleven years ago, Microsoft held an “Internet Strategy Day” in Redmond to discuss how it was about to finally get serious about the Internet after choosing to pretty much ignore it despite the Internet’s move into the mainstream and the emergence of Netscape. In some respects, Microsoft has lost some of its strategic focus on the Internet in recent years. While MSN is a major online player and MSN messenger is one of the top instant messenging services, Microsoft’s core software products - i.e. Office - have mostly stayed offline even as software as a Web-based service becomes more of a real business. All you have to do is look at NetSuite and Salesforce.com for signs of what’s on the horizon. Tomorrow, Bill Gates and his chief technology officer, Ray Ozzie, will hold a press conference in San Franciso (the location is telling, isn’t it?) to talk about how Microsoft is going to more jiggy about the Web. In particular, they will likely offer some strategic direction on how Office will be Web-enable so corporations can run it off a Web server. Also look for MSN Messenger to become better integrated into other Microsoft applications. It should be interesting to see what kind of vision/action is in the works.

We Say: Can Microsoft really change it stripes? When I hear about Microsoft becoming serious about a new market, I wonder whether it makes more sense for it to be split apart so that each business can become super-focused. I’m not talking about a re-org but, rather, the creating of independent companies (i.e. Windows, Office, Internet, TV/Entertainment, Xbox). For more thoughts, click here.

Alice Adds: Can a Perl Harbor/Sleeping Giant Memo be far behind?! Say it isn’t so.

By Nicolas Fogelholm
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

A recent survey shows that people want camera phones. Maybe you are planning to buy one as a Christmas present? Here´s some basic facts and advice.

Most cell phones have a built-in camera, but if you are serious about taking photos and would like to order prints and fill the family album the basic mid-range phone with a camera of 1-megapixel or less wont be enough. This is because the picture quality is limited by the resolution, and cameras on a typical cell phone today use 1.0 megapixels or less rather than the 2.0 or 3.0 megapixels common in digital cameras.

So buying a camera phone is more than a matter of picking a phone with a camera (don´t they all have one?). First you have to decide if you want a phone with a camera or a camera phone.
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But … for BlizzCon attendees only, so far.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Well! It looks like BlizzCon attendees will have a chance to sign up for a Beta of an unannounced Blizzard game - just hop over to the website and enter the code on the back of your BlizzCon pass. The notice on the site says “Be advised that it may be quite some time before this beta test begins, and this sign-up may not be for the next beta test to become available.”

Could this be the new Diablo game people have been waiting for? A WoW expansion? Or something else altogether? Source: 1Up

We Say: Loved Diablo 2. Loved StarCraft. Loved WarCraft. Avoided World of Warcraft for sanity reasons (sanity of my spouse, that is). You can bet that people are going to want to a) sign up, b) get a key TO sign up, if possible. And yes, you can currently search for and find auctions on eBay for these keys already.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

If you’ve watched television shows like “Law and Order” you’ve seen detectives ask officers if the area had been “canvassed” … meaning, had someone gone and done a door-to-door search of the area … for witnesses and information, not necessarily for culprits. As technology advances, there are twists on this traditional method that, with care taken for privacy, can help police in situation where normal methods will not work.

PARIS - When soccer fans rioted in Rotterdam last April - this time targeting the police, not just rival fans - they might have expected a fierce chase. There was no way to foresee, however, the unique wireless wrinkle used in the pursuit by prosecutors determined to round up as many of the offenders as possible.

After the initial phase of the investigation left many of more than 200 suspects on the loose, the Dutch authorities turned to a kind of cellular door-to-door search - mass text messaging in search of criminal information. Source: International Herald Tribune

We Say: This was a clever application of technology in a situation where, since it was a soccer riot, there were no doors to knock on. According to the article, privacy of those messaged was ensured by receiving only the numbers and not the names of those whose cell phones were in the area of the riot. And, the occasions for its use would probably be limited to special situations. Still, it’s likely that privacy advocates would take a close look at this technique if more instances of its use occurred.

By Mark Evans
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Another much-anticipated Web 2.0 beta has been released: Sphere, which has an ambitious goal of bumping aside blog search rivals such as Technorati and Mark Cuban’s IceRocket. So what is Sphere’s secret sauce? Apparently, relevance rather than the most recent posts. My first take is it’s intriguing but there’s plenty of room for improvement if Sphere wants to become a serious blog search player. Because the focus is on relevance, the search results can be hit and miss. The top result, for example, could be several days old, which, at first, seems strange. Then again, Sphere has a lofty goal of producing better results rather than what someone fired off five minutes ago. I think Sphere needs to improve its search results and demonstrate why they are superior to Technorati, et al.

We Say: Much like the Flock is trying to find a niche in the crowded browser market, Sphere has high hopes of establishing a foothold in the competitive blog search arena. Unlike Flock, Sphere’s beta is pretty much baked but like Flock, Sphere needs to get a lot better to be taken seriously.

For more a detailed review, click here.