The Windows Mobile Business Value Calculator gives you immediate visibility into the impact of deploying mobile business solutions on the Windows Mobile platform. Using a company’s unique information, such as number of mobile workers or types of applications to be mobilized, and summary data from IDC, the Business Value Calculator allows you to quantify the benefits and the direct and indirect costs of deploying mobile line-of-business applications, including measurable impact on revenue and income, operating expense savings, productivity enhancements, and other strategic business improvements. The resulting value metrics will help you build the business case for choosing Windows Mobile as the standard platform across your organization.

In the Windows Live Search 2.0 desktop version, new features include movie showtimes and the addition of more local data and user reviews. The Virtual Earth maps functionality has been improved and users would have the option of increasing the cache by using a storage card. The directions functionality has been bolstered as well, with better support for in-phone GPS and improved turn-by-turn navigation. The application would even prompt to reroute if it detects you have veered away from the given directions.

V2R has released SAMs Carousel, a new Active UI based Desktop Plug-in for Pocket PC and Smartphone which can be downloaded from V2R’s homepage. V2R Active UI is the first fully graphical animated user interface for the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Mobile 6 platform. V2R’s Active UI platform has been designed in a way to ensure, that the user may use the device quick and easy in the most intuitive and convenient way.

Mustek has introduced its new TRAVELFOTO digital photo frame/alarm clock, an ideal desktop accessory on a bedside table, in the office, or traveling alongside busy executives who want to glimpse far-off loved ones without carrying a wallet stuffed with prints.

About the same size as a deck of cards, the freestanding TRAVELFOTO features a 1.5-inch CSTN LCD color screen that displays JPEG or BMP formatted photos in bright, detail-rich 128×128 resolution. Users can load up to 70 photos on TRAVELFOTO’s internal flash memory, plus it lets anyone easily create a fun slideshow that switches stored photos every ten seconds. Uploading digital photos to TRAVELFOTO is done via its USB 1.1 port.

Apparently, Sony has decided that being dead last in the next generation console wars is a loss of face. Perhaps selling a game console for $599 wasn’t such a hot idea. On July 9th, Sony dropped the price to $499, leaving the console expensive, but no longer mind-blowingly expensive. Here’s where we’ve got good news for you recent purchasers. Read this article to find out how you can get $100 back, as long as you act fast. Right now, fast.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

Corel announced that Pioneer Electronics is bundling its next-generation Blu-ray Disc (BD) combo drive, the BDC-2202, with selected titles from Corel’s digital media software lineup. The software bundle includes special editions of Corel’s WinDVD 8, Ulead VideoStudio 11, and Ulead Burn.Now 1.5.

Affordably priced at $299.99, Pioneer’s BDC-2202 drive offers a compelling solution for consumers who want to use their PC to view the growing number of high-definition Hollywood movies that are being released on BD.

In addition to ensuring compatibility with commercially released Blu-ray Disc movies, the Corel software that comes bundled with the new Pioneer BD combo drive allows users to create and burn personal DVD movies and digital photo slideshows, backup files to a DVD or CD, and create and burn music to a CD.

Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player’s wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn. Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don’t attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does. When lightning jumps from a nearby object to a person, it often flashes over the skin. But metal in electronic devices–or metal jewelry or coins in a pocket–can cause contact burns and exacerbate the damage.

A spokeswoman for Apple, the maker of iPods, declined to comment. Packaging for iPods and some other music players do include warnings against using them in the rain.

Logitech has unveiled its latest mouse, the Logitech MX Air Rechargeable Cordless Air Mouse, and the company claims it can be used on a desktop like a traditional mouse or while sitting on the living room couch with no surface at all.

The mouse could also be ideal for use in meetings or during presentations that include PowerPoint slides or other multimedia sharing.

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world’s fastest walking robot. RunBot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.

RunBot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.

Household androids, like flying cars and Martian colonies, have disappointed generations of science-fiction enthusiasts by failing to materialize. Most research in robotics has drifted toward robots that, like Mars rovers and Roombas, have no resemblance to anything living, let alone human. And while it may be cute, let’s face it: Asimo can’t dance.

Bucking the trend, a small coterie of devoted professionals and amateurs are working to make fully articulated, humanoid and even sinuously dancing robots a reality.