Apple, Cingular to team for cell phone ... HP offers touchscreen Vista on new PCs

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Apple, Cingular to team for cell phone
News: Second U.S.-German investor groups to bid on BenQ Mobile
News: HP offers touchscreen Vista on new PCs
News: Hack will help kill HD DVD copy protection
Opinion: January's coolest gadgets
Podcast: Today's IT news audio update
ITwhirled: Fake or foto?


NEWS UPDATES

Report: Apple, Cingular to team for cell phone
Apple Computer Inc. may finally end the rumors and announce its own cell phone on Tuesday, with wireless service from Cingular Wireless LLC, a news report said. The device, which will combine a cell phone with Apple's popular iPod music player, is expected to be announced at the MacWorld show in San Francisco.

Second U.S.-German investor groups to bid on BenQ Mobile
A second U.S.-German group of investors, led by Sentex Sensing Technologies Inc., plans to make an offer for insolvent mobile phone maker BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co. OHG, following a bid by a rival group of American-German investors, Sentex said Monday.

CES: HP offers touchscreen Vista on new PCs
Hewlett-Packard Co. reached for the consumer market Monday with two new PCs that allow customers to control Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista OS with a touchscreen interface instead of a mouse.

Researchers: Hack will help kill HD DVD copy protection
The recent release of software that can be used to decode encrypted HD DVD and Blu-ray movies is the first step toward making the encryption standard used by these next-generation video players obsolete, Princeton University researchers said Monday.

Brocade acquires Silverback for storage chips
Storage network equipment maker Brocade Communications Systems Inc. has acquired Silverback Systems Inc. for its network acceleration processor technology.

Pegasus Mail put down
New Zealand e-mail pioneer Pegasus Mail is to cease further development of its software, which is used by millions of users worldwide. Pegasus will also cease developing its Mercury mail transport system.


OPINION

January's coolest gadgets
With the new year comes a lot of buzz from the phone industry. Not only are regular cell phones improving by getting smaller, smarter and lighter but a host of new network services, like higher-speed data transmission, are making them more useful. There's also a new breed of handset packing digital TV reception, and you can find examples of these in this month's round-up of hot gadgets. Looking ahead to the rest of the year we're sure to see more advanced phones with features like VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony too.


PODCAST

Daily IT News Audio Update
Jobs expected to introduce cell phone at Macworld ... Chambers and Dell are next up at CES today ... Brasil Telecom blocks YouTube


ITWHIRLED

Fake or foto?
They've been predicting for years that CGI would supplant the need for real humans and sets in photography and film. Take this test to see if you can distinguish physical objects from craftily arranged pixels.