Under legislation signed Sept. 13 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California has banned the use of cell phones and other digital devices by teenagers while driving. California joins 15 other states and the District of Columbia in prohibiting teen multitasking while behind the wheel.

Search giant Google is offering a $30M prize to private firms that land a robot rover on the Moon. The competition to send a robot craft to the Moon is being run with the X-Prize Foundation.

To claim the cash, any craft reaching the lunar surface must perform a series of tasks such as shoot video and roam for specific distances. Firms interested in trying for the prize have until the end of 2012 to mount their Moonshot.

SanDisk announced the new Sansa View–a video MP3 player with a vast array of features and generous capacity, at an unbeatable price. The sleek-looking Sansa View marries the finest MP3 player attributes with full-motion video support, a larger screen, long battery life and generous capacity–all in a thin, easy-to-carry package. Expected to be available in October, the Sansa View will carry a suggested retail price of $199.99 for a 16GB flash-based player and $149.99 for the 8GB.

Are you on Facebook? Do you use Outlook and Windows Mobile? If you answered yes and yes, get OutSync, a free app to sync your Facebook friends’ photos with Outlook.

A Print via Bluetooth option has been added to the HTC’s TyTN II’s Messaging menu. This will presumably allow users to print off an email, document, or other text by way of a nearby Bluetooth-enabled printer.

WisBar Advance 3 expands upon the successful task management features found in the WisBar Advance 2. Included in WisBar Advance 3 is the ability to customize your running applications to a degree not seen in other programs. Utilizing a smaller memory footprint from previous versions, WisBar Advance 3 keeps your device running as fast as possible, leaving more memory available for any application you may use. WisBar Advance 3 also brings new life to your PocketPC with the ability to change the appearance of your system to a degree not matched in other software.

Mobile malware attacks will become a profitable target for cybercriminals in the next year, brought on by more powerful smartphones that make shopping and Web browsing much easier for users.

That was the message from a new report being issued this week by researchers at McAfee’s Avert Labs. Mobile malware is not yet a great threat in the United States, but mobile malware in Japan has skyrocketed and is rising precipitously in Europe, according to the report.

The report examined smartphones using Windows Mobile Microsoft operating system. But popular use of the Apple iPhone and rising use of similar Windows smartphones could make cell phone users a target, said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee Avert Labs.

Pocket QuickView is a powerful and versatile application for working with digital images. PQV’s code has been optimized to make viewing images on your phone quick and easy. PQV is very good at handling large color and bilevel images such as JPEG, TIFF, CAL and MOD:CA files.

Microsoft Hardware is taking mobile computing to a new level with the Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, the industry’s first rechargeable notebook mouse with 1 GB of flash memory built right into the transceiver. Designed to prevent Universal Serial Bus port shortage, the single transceiver is a three-in-one supertool that lets users simultaneously work wirelessly, save important files with 1 GB of storage and recharge the mouse without deficiency in performance–all through one USB port.

In our current age of gadgetry, a GPS device is one of the more in vogue devices. In this head-to-head comparison, Senior Editor James Booth will be examining the Garmin Nuvi 350 and the Delphi Nav 200. Both devices are entry-level units, geared toward the new-to-GPS consumer.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.