TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Sometimes showing PowerPoint slides on your laptop screen just won’t cut it, in which case you might want to think about Microvision’s new battery-powered Show projector. The Blackberry-sized device connects directly to laptops, mobile phones, media players and other devices and can display widescreen images at 840-by-840 resolution, The battery lasts for 2.5 hours, enough to get through the average movie or a really torturous slideshow.

Microvision will be demonstrating a Show prototype at CES and expects to have product on the shelf by the end of the year. Price TBA.

Microvision To Unwrap Small Mobile Projector At CES [InformationWeek]

Axiotron’s ModBook is now shipping. The tablet-style, GPS equipped MacBook mod has been in the pipe since January last year, and we reported last week that it would be appearing some time this January. The price? $2280 and $2580, depending on model. Our advice? Wait until Macworld on January 15th. Apple might just be making its own touchscreen Mac.

Victory in the next-gen war is far from decided, but analysts are already predicting the extinction of the plain vanilla DVD format. Michael Nathanson of Bernstein Research notes that sales of regular DVDs were down more than 4 percent in 2007, and he attributes the decline to competition from HD DVD and Blu-ray. Upshot is that retail shelf space devoted to regular DVDs will shrink to make room for next-gen discs.

But there’s less upside for participants than previous format changes, Nathanson says. Unlike going from videotape to disc or vinyl to CD, the DVD to hi-def migration isn’t compelling enough to get consumers to re-buy movies they already own.

Wayde of Gizmo Republic took a peek behind one of those "Can You See The Monster Difference" displays, which purport to show the difference between Monster’s pricey cables and generic brands. And he found a filthy lie.

Instead of comparing the Monster HDMI cable to, say, a generic HDMI cable, the display has one TV hooked up with the Monster lead and the other TV hooked up with … composite cables.

Most of the TV-related hubbub for CES has centered on the increased quality and availability of larger LCD screens, leading us to wonder about what exactly the Plasma brigade will have up their sleeve in response. According to the Daily Yomiuri, Panasonic will unleash something extremely large and imposing: A 150" Plasma TV prototype, beating the current record-holder from Sharp (at 108") by far. It’s enough to make the local Kong go ape.

According to the report, the super-sized TV will be publicly released in 2009. There are no current cost estimates but since the 108-incher runs about $50,000, you can expect it to be available for over $75K (if the rumors are true and our panel-sizing math is correct).

The fake fur LED overcoat, containing more lights than a christmas tree, needs no further explanation: describing or otherwise communicating its qualities would only serve to dilute the horror of seeing it.

The moment I set eyes on iRiver’s latest device, the D27, I decided that I didn’t want to know what it does. That was because whatever purpose it actually serves, it would not live up to the perfect dream UMPC I imagine it should be.

The keyboard is compact but complete, with tactile, well-shaped keys;
and yet the device itself is no larger than needed. There is no fat battery sticking out like a spare tire, and the screen, while small, is generous and colorful. "Please be a kind of mini word-processing CE
device, with web browsing and EVDO," I thought.

Last month we reported on the possibility that Mac OS X Leopard was causing MacBook keyboards to die. Specifically, my MacBook keyboard, along with scores of others at this Apple discussion thread. Well, it might not have been a Leopard only problem, but good news! Apple has fixed it with the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1.

So, if you are one of the poor, frustrated MacBook users suffering from this trouble, go get the update, and stop balancing that crappy USB keyboard on top of your notebook.

according to the Wall Street Journal, Steve Jobs has been in talks with the president of NTT DoCoMo, Masao Nakamura, about the Japanese iPhone.

The majority of the article is hidden behind the WSJ paywall, but from what we can gather, Apple is also in talks with Softbank Corp, the third largest operator in Japan (NTT is the top dog), with Jobs presumably playing the two companies against each other to get his infamous cut of the telco’s profits.

Most interesting, though, is a little fact pointed out by Engadget: NTT DoCoMo is an HSDPA carrier.