Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at the Macworld trade show on Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it’s opened. Jobs also confirmed the consumer electronics company’s foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections within 30 days after they’re released on DVD.

Nothing beats sifting through months of Congressional testimony to make the prospect of building a ping-pong shooting machine virtually irresistable. This was the opportunity facing me when the book Forbidden LEGO arrived at Computing Unplugged for review. What happens if you marry a power drill to a LEGO kit? This and other questions are answered in this wonderful article.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

PC Dynamics announced the release of its new SafeHouse 3.0 data privacy and encryption software with dozens of new features including greatly-enhanced support for USB memory sticks. SafeHouse locks, hides and encrypts sensitive files and folders using passwords and super-strong encryption. SafeHouse is completely transparent to the way users work and is compatible with all Windows applications by masquerading as a password-protected Windows drive letter.

It’s not exactly the sleekest portable media player, but it’ll outlast your iPod during, say, a 10-day hiking trip in the boonies–and it’ll charge your dying cell phone in the process.

The eMotion EM-SOL1GIG is pretty chunky as media players go: at five inches across, an inch thick, and a hefty 10 ounces, you won’t be putting this sucker in your jeans pocket anytime soon. Open it up, however, and you’ll find a pair of solar panels that’ll charge the player’s lithium-ion battery in about three or four hours (good for 17 hours of music playback). Even better, the player comes with a set of six connectors for charging laptops, cell phones, and other portable devices.

For those of you who have been following the ongoing discussion about White House email and David’s series of interviews promoting Where Have All The Emails Gone?, we have two new interviews for you to listen to and enjoy.

On Tuesday, David will be on 1140 AM KSOO radio, “The TALK of Sioux Falls!”. He’ll be doing Viewpoint University with Rick and Ruth at 4:15 Central. Unfortunately, KSOO doesn’t have a Web broadcast, so you’ll only be able to tune in if you’re in or near Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

For those of you in other areas, you can listen to an NPR podcast, broadcast through KCBX FM. The full interview can be downloaded from the An Evening With… program. Just right click the link and save the file. It’s a clean MP3 that you can listen to anywhere.

Fictionwise announced that it has acquired the eReader.com retail electronic book business unit from Motricity. eReader.com is one of the largest and longest-running eBook retailers on the Internet, with a large customer base and over 23,000 titles available from major publishers and authors.

The company formerly known as PeanutPress was first acquired by Palm Inc in 2001 and became part of the Palm Digital Media Group. It then changed hands to PalmSource after the spin-off and was then sold to PalmGear/Motricity in 2003 who would rebrand it as eReader.com in 2004.

Fictionwise plans to maintain ereader.com as an independent web site to capitalize on the strong brand and loyal customer base achieved by the site. However, Fictionwise plans to build on the success of the eReader eBook format by expanding the product to function on an even wider range of handheld devices, allowing customers the flexibility to read on whatever devices best meet their needs.

ShSh Software has released an update to its TAKEphONE software. TAKEphONE is a telephony & contact management application, designed to simplify and enhance using your contacts and making calls. It also sports enhanced search capabilities, as well as telephony features, such as calling-card support, extra digits dialing on all contacts, Internet phone number search and much more. New in this version is improved graphics and a number of other user interface improvements.

Palm has posted a note on its blog that it will soon no longer be providing the IBM WebSphere Micro Environment Java Virtual Machine on its site. As of Jan 12, Palm will no longer provide a download for the JVM runtime. The Java Micro Environment JVM is required to run J2ME Java based applications on Palm OS devices such as Opera Mini and Google’s downloadable Gmail client.

MobiForms announced the release of MobiForms 4.0. MobiForms version 4.0 has been certified with the open-source HSQLDB database. MobiForms includes a free copy of HSQLDB forserver, standalone or mobile database applications, complementing the MobiForms Developer tool and the Mobiforms runtime interpreter. MobiForms offers all the tools in one “box” for the creation and deployment of any type of mobile application–from surveys to field service, from signature capture to bar coding. New features include timers, SMTP email and commands that dynamically change object attributes at runtime like font colours and sizes. The Deployment Wizard has been extended to include more device and operating environment combinations, and a tab for database deployment.

Agendus for Windows Mobile has been designed from the ground up with one goal in mind: to bring order and peace of mind in the busy life of today’s windows mobile phone users. It accomplishes such goal by seamlessly unifying schedule, contact management and task organization in a homogeneous, straightforward and pleasant to use interface. Its out-of-the-box ready to use functionality is complemented by a variety of fine tuning options and preferences aimed at satisfying the novice as well as the power user audiences.

Version 2.1 in addition to various functionality refinements brings in a number of new features, most noticeable are the ability to set Agendus as default PIM for specific type of information, layout and navigation enhancements, more details to the stock quote information retrieved over the air, and additions to the Power Search Local feature.