Skyscape announced the release of Oxford Handbook of Respiratory Medicine formatted specially for PDAs and smart phones. “Oxford Handbook of Respiratory Medicine” provides a fast, reliable look-up reference on all chest diseases–for junior doctors, trainee specialists in respiratory medicine, and other health professionals.

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

Verizon Wireless’ new music service for mobile phones was unveiled with much fanfare last week. But it comes with a catch: those signing up for service will give up the ability to play MP3s on their phones. The company’s new song download service, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, is being built around Microsoft’s digital-media technology. As part of that service, Verizon decided to eliminate the phones’ previous ability to play MP3 files, hoping to keep the phones’ music features simple, a company spokesman said. In most cases, customers can still transfer their own music to the phones, and many may not even notice a difference. Microsoft’s Windows Media 10 software will automatically make a copy of MP3 songs on a computer’s hard drive and load them onto the phone in the correct Microsoft-based format, leaving the original unchanged. But that software is only available for PCs.

We here at Computing Unplugged have officially declared the music industry insane. On the one hand, companies manufacture MP3 players. On the other, they sell music. Then those same companies sue the people who download music and put it on MP3 players. It’s like they’re selling the crack, but then suing people for snorting or sniffing or whatever the heck you do with crack. But now, it’s worse. Circuit City is running a promotion for a company that will take your CDs and rip them to MP3s–for a fee of about $1.29 per CD. It’s insane. First, they sue people for copying music, then the music stores sell a service for ripping CDs to MP3s.

We’ve got ourselves a spiffy, new, interactive ZATZ bar at the top of most ZATZ magazine pages. It’s now interactive (oooh, aaaah). When you roll over certain words, things change or highlight (ooooh, ahhhh). We’re so proud. So very, very, very proud.

Cell phone software company Access has introduced a new version of its NetFront mobile browser for smartphones that run on Nokia’s S60 platform. New features for NetFront Version 3.3 include support for multiple browser windows, a pop-up blocker, and support for RSS feeds. The updated browser is available now from Nokia’s Web site or Handango. NetFront browsers are deployed in some 200 million devices worldwide, according to officials at Access. And in case you forgot, Access is the company that purchased PalmSource last month.

For people craving a dedicated picture display, a 15-inch Portrait-sized CEIVA Digital Photo Receiver is uniquely styled, and has the ability to receive and display up to 100 digital photos every day. These models are available for wall mounting in the home or office, and feature new wireless connectivity as well as a broadband and dial-up options.

According to Reuters, Yahoo is unveiling a new service that would allow mobile phones and TVs to control its Web services in the way that computers currently do. The three products, under new brand name Yahoo Go, will be available in the U.S. in the next few weeks. The Yahoo Go service will be available via millions of Nokia phones, although the company is also working with AT&T and Cingular.

OpenOffice 2.0.1 now comes on a flash drive–but an analyst claims the software is too bloated to be truly portable. The latest version of Portable OpenOffice.org, an edition of the open-source office suite fits on a USB stick. It includes a number of updates, such as full support for Windows 2000 and launchers for each OpenOffice.org application. But 144MB is still too big, considering that many USB sticks only store 256MB, according to Gary Barnett, a research director at analyst firm Ovum.

A presentation by Palm Chief Financial Officer Andrew J. Brown is scheduled to be Web cast on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006. The presentation at the Eighth Annual Needham Growth Conference in New York at The New York Palace Hotel will begin at approximately 11 a.m. Pacific Time.