Skyscape announced the release of an important Psychiatry reference–Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry–formatted specially for use by healthcare providers on PDAs and smart phones. The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry is a new reference directed at medical students, doctors coming to psychiatry for the first time, psychiatric trainees, and other professionals who may have to deal with patients with psychiatric problems. It is written by a group of experienced psychiatrists and is designed to provide easy access to the information required by psychiatry trainees on the wards or on-call. It closely follows the familiar format of the Oxford Handbooks series, and provides coverage that is comprehensive, evidence based and practical. The content of the handbook is written in the concise, note-based style characteristic of the series.

A Sony BMG CD has secretly installed DRM software and used “rootkit” cloaking methods to hide it. With the story sweeping across the Net, Sony is attempting to clean up its mess. Using technology developed by British software company First 4 Internet, the CDs limit the number of copy-protected backups that can be made. To enforce the restriction, software and drivers are installed without a user’s knowledge when the CD is accessed. The company has decided to issue a patch to eliminate the cloaking and “allay any unnecessary concerns.” The DRM software will not be removed, however, only uncovered; that means users will still be unable to delete it without risk of rendering their CD drive inoperable. Customers must contact Sony BMG support for removal instructions.

Nokia said it expected the market for smartphones to double next year, and launched three new premium models it hopes will take advantage of that growth. Nokia, which leads the market for cheaper phones, has been adding new models to its medium and higher price range to try to meet competition from second-placed rival Motorola and number-three handset maker Samsung Electronics.

WinBook announced its biggest desktop replacement notebooks yet–the new 17-inch widescreen WinBook A700 Series. The WinBook A700 Series is the first WinBook series to offer AMD processors exclusively, including the AMD Turion 64 processor. Starting at just $1,099.99 for the WinBook A710 and $1,299.99 for the WinBook A730, WinBook has designed the new WinBook A700 Series to bring a new level of affordability to widescreen multimedia notebooks.

Maxtor has announced a new storage solution for PCs that can be purchased with apacities up to 1TB (terabyte). The company said the new Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition will ship in either a 600GB or 1TB capacity point, at $549.95 and $899.95, respectively, beginning in December. There is a small catch, however; the OneTouch storage solution is a small array of two drives, which can be striped in either a RAID 0 array or mirrored in a RAID 1 array. Striping the data across the two disks essentially doubles the capacity, although it leaves both drives vulnerable to lost data should one drive fail.

FrogPad and Edmund Scientifics announced the launch of the specialized one-handed keyboard for the scientific community. The FrogPad keyboard is easier to use than a standard keyboard because it is one-handed and has been designed around the 15 most frequently used letters by all languages using the Roman alphabet.

United Online has launched NetZero Voice, a VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) phone service that provides local and long distance calling over dial-up and broadband Internet connections. With a free computer-to-computer calling plan and the limited time offer of three months free on its pay plans, NetZero Voice brings free domestic long distance calling to consumers just in time for the holiday season.

The trend for personalized mobile content has received a dramatic make-over and launched into a broader future. Known as Muglets, the popular moving images are the first stylized avatars to allow users to edit their own face into pre-programmed graphics for a unique portrait in a move away from the market norm of computerized caricatures. Muglets can be used as a novel form of caller identification as mobile users become increasingly more competent and demanding in their expectations of personalized downloadable content.

With the upcoming launch of Planetwide Games’ landmark Comic Book Creator Self-Publishing software, the company is making available a special 14-day trial version of the Comic Book Creator for a limited time. Comic Book Creator’s Self-Publishing software will allow a gamer or comic book enthusiast the opportunity to “Make Your Own Comic.” You, as the artist will now be able to easily self-publish and share your own comic book adventure captured and created from your PC based video game play. To create a comic, you need only select one of the 500 unique layout and design templates, drop in your captured digital images and insert text bubbles, icons, captions and clipart to bring to life whatever story you can imagine. Comic Book Creator will work with any jpeg, bmp or gif digital image, and the retail version will allow users to share their masterpiece with friends by printing or exporting the image into an HTML or PDF file for online distribution.

Ahusoft announced the release of Super Internet TV, a Windows application that allows you to watch more than 800 live television channels and listen to more than 1,000 online radio stations from 100 countries by streaming media. It also provides 200 live Web cams. There is no need for a TV Tuner card because all of the channels are streamed through your Internet connection.