A new weapon in the “enforce the law while being as lazy as possible” war has been announced. A company has announced that it has developed a system to detect drivers using their cell phones while driving. The system would then (similarly to traffic cameras) initiate the legal proceedings against the ghastly offender with no real involvement from law enforcement.

Aside from the obvious Constitutional issues with what I like to deem “auto enforcement” of laws, I’d be very interested to find out how this system differentiates between a driver making a call as opposed to a passenger. Considering the accuracy of triangulation is a lot bigger than most cars, it would be very difficult for an automated system to figure that kind of thing out. Never mind that in most places where phoning and driving is illegal, using a headset or other hands-free device is generally allowed.

Add to these issues the fact that the article mentions some very bizarre things like marking the car with a paint gun or using EMP to disable the cell phone, and this smells of a hoax. Regardless, I’m sure there are some cash-starved municipalities out there who’d give their eye teeth for yet another way to soak drivers without the pesky need for costly law enforcement officers.

Via TechDirt

In what will surely be heralded as the new current future death knell to HD-DVD (and to the Blu-Ray crowd, what isn’t heralded as a death knell to HD-DVD) Blockbuster is expected to only stock Blu-Ray titles on the shelves of their retail stores.

Honestly, with the struggles Blockbuster’s had in the recent past competing with online rentals from Netflix I’m not sure how relevant they remain to be. While a lot of consumers still use the brick and mortar Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos of the world, most of the home theater buffs I know use Netflix for their rentals. These are the same consumers who’ll be more likely to have an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.

Engadget Mobile has renderings of what looks like two new T-Mobile Sidekicks.

I had one of the original Sidekicks.  It was affectionately dubbed by my peer group as the “birth control phone”… not because it contained hormone therapy.   It sucked as a phone and I’m really older than the demographic that forgoes actual conversation for short text messages featuring one-or-two-letter abbreviations like “U R Kewl” or “L8R d00d”.

That said, the new Sidekicks look pretty cool, but I just don’t think they’re my cup ‘o tea.

David Cann has put together a nice little iPhone simulation built entirely in HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The app is a digg-API interface, but you can scroll the screen just like the demos of the iPhone interface. Pretty cool web app if nothing else.

The source code is also available for all your would-be web hackers.

Declare your unhappiness with Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote in a shirt available from MacMerc.

The lack of an iPhone SDK (seriously Steve, web apps are the best you could do to squelch that particular flame?), no new hardware, Safari for Windows (we don’t need another browser on Windows) and an overall underwhelming set of “new” Leopard features (the 3D dock is lame and will look like crap on the side of the screen) combined to make this one of the lamest keynotes ever from the turtlenecked one.

Apple really should have held the new MacBook Pros for this event, it probably would have helped keep their stock from taking a temporary nosedive.

More details on Apple’s upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” (can we give the cat names a rest please Steve?) are expected to surface during Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco this morning. The keynote is set for 10AM Pacific, so we’re about two hours away at this point. If you’re looking for a spot to watch a liveblog of the event, Gizmodo has the coolest “live” feed I’ve seen so far.

This has been around a while, but it bears repeating on this blog. Everyone on my Christmas list is getting a USB Humping Dog. That’s right folks, it’s a USB device in the shape of a dog that humps your USB port. Staying true to it’s roots as useless kitsch, it has no redeeming value and is not a USB flash drive.

Check out the demonstration video after the jump.

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From John Gruber’s recent iPhone post Taps:

Let’s just assume for the sake of argument here, though, that the iPhone on-screen keyboard works well, at least by handheld device standards.

To be honest, this aspect of the iPhone is the biggest question mark in my mind. We all know Apple makes cool interfaces and the iPhone looks to be yet another one in almost all ways, but the on-screen keyboard has some serious usability issues that I’m really skeptical that Apple addressed.
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Apple today announced a revision to their MacBook Pro line of notebook computers. As predicted, it appears the new laptops incorporate the Intel Santa Rosa chipset with a faster 800MHz front-side bus. Also included are faster processors across the board, 2.2 and 2.4 GHz up from 2.16 and 2.33 GHz.

Other notable changes are the move back to nVidia graphics on the MacBook Pro, an increase in max RAM to 4GB, and the $100 option of a 1920×1200 screen resolution on the 17-inch model. The new models ship with either a 128MB or 256MB nVidia GeForce 8600m GT graphics card, a performance increase from the ATi Radeon X1600 in the previous two generations.

The case and form factor as well as expandability appear to be unchanged. Apple also touts 802.11n as a new feature, but this capability was built into the previous generation and disabled in software. A $2 enabler from Apple allowed the Core2 Duo MacBooks (both Pro and non-Pro) to function on 802.11n networks.

The new models show a ship date of 1-3 business days and start at $1,999 for the base 15-inch model and go up to $2,899 for a 17-inch with the higher resolution screen.

The makers of Parallels Desktop, the virtualization software that’s won the hearts and minds of millions (ok, maybe not millions, but I’m sure a few) has announced the upcoming version 3.0 on their blog.
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