CNET News reports that U.S. Senator John Sununu is preparing legislation that would keep state regulators out of voice over Internet Protocol. He would rather it be placed under the purview of the FCC to prevent over-taxing and over-regulation by individual states if it can’t remain totally unregulated.

In Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, Audiovox unveiled their new CDM-8910 mobile handset with a built-in digital camera and flash. The phone has a 1.3 megapixel digital camera with macro function, is Java-capable, and data capable with a USB interface.

On January 8, 2004 in Las Vegas, SanDisk introduced its new 2 GB Memory Stick Pro, the largest memory stick available. The high capacity cards are designed to meet consumers’ growing need for more available storage in variety of portable devices such as cameras and PDAs.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Palmsource announced their release of Expert Guides. The guides are a collection of Palm OS software, e-books, online resources, and user experiences covering topics such as astronomy, games, real estate, medicine, word processing and much more to help people get more use out of their Palm powered devices.

Toshiba has released its new postage-stamp sized miniature hard disk drives to be available in 2.0 GB and 4.0 GB capacities. They are designed to increase the possibilities of the next generation of PDAs, digital cameras, camcorders, and digital music players.

On January 8, 2004 Sprint and Gameloft announced a partnership to begin offering wireless gaming to Sprint PCS Vision customers. The games can be downloaded to and played on select Java-enabled wireless phones and played on Sprint’s nationwide network.

The Seattle Times has a fascinating story about how the ultra-cheap DVD players we’ve been seeing at Wal-Mart and other large retailers are able to be so inexpensive. Things I didn’t know: according to the article, all DVD players are made in China (I’m not sure I believe that some other asian countries aren’t in the game), cheap DVD players are often produced without paying royalties on patents (saving $10-15/unit), and to get these produced at these low prices, slave-like labor needs to be used. So, do we buy or not? Read the article. The author’s as conflicted as I am.

CNET News.com reports that Broadcom has introduced a Wi-Fi chipset that it says can speed the performance of 802.11g networks to 125mbps, potentially creating new opportunities for routing high-bandwidth media across wireless networks. The company’s 54g MaxPerformance chipset, with AfterBurner technology, is designed to be compatible with existing 802.11g networks, with an added performance mode that offers the equivalent to a signal rate of 125mbps.

TiVo will soon offer new services through its Home Media Option, notably the ability to transfer and burn recorded programs using a PC. According to PC World, owners of the TiVo Series 2 hardware who have networked the device with the $100 Home Media Option will be able to transfer recordings to a PC to view or burn to DVD disc.

IBM and RealNetworks struck a deal to provide businesses provide subscription-based, on-demand digital video and audio services to their customers. InternetNews.com reports that the joint offering, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, will help media companies cut start-up costs associated with forging a digital media service, which may include TV programming, mobile music services and in-car digital music from scratch. RealNetworks plans to bundle its newly-announced Real 10 digital media platform with such IBM middleware as WebSphere Digital Media Enabler, WebSphere Commerce and DB2 Content Manager.