In the new version of VITO AudioNotes–mp3 and wav recorder–you may choose to automatically turn on the speaker when calling. This enables VITO AudioNotes to record phone calls practically on all Pocket PC Phone Edition devices.

Today, Palm announced the Foleo, its first smartphone companion product. The Foleo mobile companion has a large screen and full-size keyboard with which to view and edit email and office documents residing on a smartphone. Edits made on Foleo automatically are reflected on its paired smartphone and vice versa. Foleo and its paired smartphone stay synchronized throughout the day or at the touch of a button. This powerful combination is for productivity-minded business people who want a more complete mobile solution for email, attachments and access to the Web. Unfortunately, I missed the press event with complete details, and I’ve been unable to find out exactly how large the Foleo will be, but from pictures I can say somewhere between HTC’s upcoming Advantage, and a small laptop. With a retail cost of $600 before a $100 mail-in rebate, I don’t know who Palm expects to buy this device. I can get a laptop that will perform all the functions of the Foleo, and still be a standalone device in its own right. Our eyes and ears will be open though, and we’ll keep you posted.

Microsoft has taken the wraps off “Surface,” a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

The machines are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Harrah’s Entertainment.

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

AT&T and Research In Motion announced the introduction of the BlackBerry Curve, the smallest and lightest full QWERTY BlackBerry handset. AT&T will be the first wireless carrier in North America to offer the BlackBerry Curve in wireless retail and business channels.

Fashioned in a liquid silver finish with chrome highlights, smooth edges and soft curves, the BlackBerry Curve strikes a unique balance of features, usability and design. It combines the renowned BlackBerry email and messaging capabilities, premium phone features, comprehensive organizer and fast Internet browser with a new 2 megapixel camera with zoom, enhanced media player and new desktop media manager, microSD expandable memory slot and RIM’s intuitive trackball navigation system.

The HTC S710 is the first Pocket PC from HTC to offer Windows Mobile 6 and is one of the smallest offerings to include a slide out keyboard. To ensure no damage comes to your new feature packed device, Proporta has released two accessories, the Alu-Leather Case and Advanced Screen Protector.

Boxwave has released a variety of cases for different mobile devices, including a Leather Snap case for the Cingular 8525/HTC TyTN and Motorola Q, their Designio Leather Case and Sleeve for the O2 XDA, the Active Caser for the Blackberry 8800, and the Armor Case for the HTC P3400 and Nokia E61i.

Palm has released a ROM update for the Treo 680 on the AT&T (Cingular) network. The update cobbles together patches that have already been released for the smartphone plus some additional fixes.

A group of Carnegie Mellon University programmers have launched a service called ReCaptcha that can help cut down on spam while letting people digitize books.

The project is a variation of the widely used “Captcha” technique to weed out computer abuse such as e-mailing spam or posting spam on blog comments. Captchas require users to pass little pattern recognition tests, commonly reading distorted or obscured words.

ReCaptcha turns this chore into a productive task by letting users digitize scanned images of words that computers couldn’t figure out.

The era of tax-free email, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful.

State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on email.

At the moment, states and municipalities are frequently barred by federal law from collecting both access and sales taxes. But they’re hoping that their new lobbying effort, coordinated by groups including the National Governors Association, will pay off by permitting them to collect billions of dollars in new revenue by next year.

Target Technology filed suit earlier this month, seeking damages for alleged patent violations related to Sony’s Blu-ray technology, which is used in the PS3 system.

The suit, which names Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Pictures and Sony DADC, claims that products marketed under the Blu-ray name infringe on a patent Target owns for reflective-layer materials in optical discs. The patent addresses what Target called a need for specific types of silver-based alloys with the advantages (but not the price) of gold. According to the patent, the alloys are also more resistant to corrosion than pure silver.