Asimo, the walking, talking child-size robot from Honda Motor Co. now manages an easy, although comical, jog — the latest in the Japanese automaker’s quest to imitate human movement. The 51-inch-tall, bubble-headed robot added a couple of infrared cameras and a sensor to better absorb shock and keep its balance for a steady, mechanical-looking run at a slow pace of 1.9 mph.

A hoax email circulating the Internet has millions of Americans scurrying to add their cell phones to a national “Do Not Call” list to avoid telemarketers. The email warns recipients that telemarketers will have new rights to call cell phones beginning Jan. 1, if people don’t request anonymity by Wednesday. In the last week, 9.5 million people registered with the “Do Not Call” list, many as a result of the warning.

pointUSA is not only an advanced time system, it’s also a knowledge database with quiz functionality offering nearly unlimited possibilities to test the knowledge of state capitals, population of the 50 biggest cities, and a lot more. Version 1.2 of pointUSA now provides information about the state nickname, the state flower, and the state bird of every state.

SMC Networks announced the newest member of the EZ Connect family of home networking products, the SMC-BT10 EZ Connect Wireless Bluetooth USB Adapter. The new Bluetooth USB adapter makes it easy to set-up a personal area network (PAN) that connects up to seven Bluetooth-equipped devices such as wireless phones or PDAs.

SplashData, developer of virtual wallet applications for mobile devices, announced free updates of SplashID and SplashPhoto. The updates were designed to leverage the technical capabilities of the latest Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian OS-based PDA and smartphone models.

A judge has ruled that Maryland’s anti-spam law, the first state law to penalize senders of junk e-mail, is unconstitutional because it seeks to regulate commerce outside the state’s borders. Last week’s ruling, which threw out a lawsuit against a New York email marketer, effectively overturns Maryland’s 2002 Commercial Electronic Mail Act.

Game fans stood in lines through a chilly Tokyo night to be among the first in the world to get their hands on Sony’s PlayStation Portable, the consumer electronics giant’s first handheld game machine. About 200,000 of the sleek black devices that play movies, music and games, went on sale early Sunday morning as part of a drive by Sony to loosen rival Nintendo’s iron grip on the market for handheld game machines. The PlayStation Portable (PSP), at a discounted launch price of 19,800 yen ($189), went on sale 10 days after the successful launch of Nintendo DS, a game machine the size of a paperback book with a wireless connection and two screens, one of which is touch-sensitive and works with a pen-like device.

Beiks, provider of reference and language titles for mobile devices, announced the launch of its English-Russian Dictionary for RIM BlackBerry devices. Beiks is the first company to enable the display and use of languages not natively supported by BlackBerries such as those based on Cyrillic, Greek or Hebrew. In particular, Cyrillic is vital for proper display of the Russian language.

Research In Motion (RIM) provided an update following receipt of a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in regard to the NTP Inc. vs. RIM litigation. In response to RIM’s appeal of a judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ordered the judgment vacated and the case remanded to the District Court for further proceedings. The Court of Appeals also ordered the injunction (previously imposed and stayed by the District Court) vacated.

Tracker Suite 7.0, designed for use with Lotus Notes/Domino, increasingly addresses the need for people to receive and access critical project-related information from home, field offices, or the road. The integrated suite includes ten powerful modules that manage and coordinate a wide range of business processes, including project management, time/expense tracking, customer and prospect tracking, personnel and application administration, and much more.