A forthcoming national identification card will do little to thwart future terrorist attacks and instead will endanger Americans’ privacy, speakers at a conference warned.

The digital ID card requirements, scheduled to take effect in May 2008, are likely to spark a revolt among states concerned about the complexity of the federal rules and the cost of complying with them, said Jim Babka, president of DownsizeDC.org, at the Liberty Forum conference.

The 2005 Real ID Act says that drivers licenses and other ID documents issued by state governments must comply with a stringent set of rules devised by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that have not yet become public. But dozens of state legislatures are debating whether to stand up to the federal government and oppose federalized IDs, a step that Maine’s legislature took in a vote last month.

Verizon Wireless said that it has won a permanent injunction against a company it accused of sending text message spam, a significant step in keeping the unsolicited messages off cell phones.

In the judgment, Specialized Programming and Marketing and its owner, Charles Henderson, are prohibited from sending text message spam to Verizon Wireless customers. They are also required to pay damages in excess of $200,000. Verizon Wireless filed the suit after nearly 100,000 text messages were sent to Verizon Wireless customers offering them a prize vacation for a cruise to the Bahamas.

For those who like to email or word process on the go–it is not always convenient to carry a laptop, or full-sized keyboard with you whilst on your travels. Busy conference rooms, trains and other tight spaces just won’t allow it, which is why Proporta is happy to introduce the Freedom Mini Duo Keyboard.

The Freedom Mini Duo Keyboard is just over the size of a credit card when closed, and opens out to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard with 63 individual keys–you can connect via Bluetooth to your PDA or Smartphone and write an email or document much more quickly and efficiently.

GPXS, a software and services company delivering BlackBerry enterprise solutions and expertise, effectively and efficiently manages the large scale deployment of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry DST patch via its Condor Mobile Services Manager product. RIM is distributing the BlackBerry DST patch to prepare users for the moved-up 2007 Daylight Savings Time change in the United States. Condor MSM provides a set of tools that will substantially reduce the amount of effort and time to manage the “push” process and that will assure the completion of the deployment of the BlackBerry DST patch in enterprises with large numbers of BlackBerry handhelds.

Parallels, a software company that specializes in enabling Mac users to run other operating systems without rebooting, has released an update to its Parallels Desktop software.

The biggest update to the new version is Coherence, a feature that enables Mac users running Parallels to run and access Windows applications from their Mac desktops via virtualization rather than switching between operating systems.

Apple has delayed until March the launch of its gadget for streaming video and other content from computers to TVs, but the company would not explain why.

Apple TV is designed to move digital content from a user’s computer to a TV set and is anticipated to be a highly competitive product in the growing crop of offerings that deliver Internet-based videos to the television.

The first laptop computer to feature an HD DVD-R drive, Toshiba’s Qosmio Q30, went on sale in Japan over the weekend.

HD DVD-R is the read-only version of the HD DVD format and a single-sided disc can hold up to 15G bytes of data. The format, which is principally backed by Toshiba, is in competition with Blu-ray Disc, which is backed by Sony.

The Qosmio G30/97A is an upgraded model of the existing Qosmio laptop computer that is already on sale in several markets worldwide. It is based on an Intel 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor and has a 17-inch widescreen display with 1,920 pixel by 1,280 pixel resolution, which means it can show high-definition images from HD DVD movie discs.

Little-known Texas MP3 Technologies is taking on Apple, Samsung, and Sandisk with a patent-infringement lawsuit.

The small firm says the larger tech companies are infringing on U.S. patent 7,065,417, which was awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel and covers “an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method.” SigmaTel said it had sold the patent about a month after acquiring it.

In its lawsuit, Texas MP3 Technologies said it is the “assignee of all rights” of the patent and holds “all rights of recovery.”

In Windows Vista, there is a new software called Windows Mobile Device Center, which replaces ActiveSync to synchronize your files and information to your handheld. By default Microsoft included some illustrated generic images for either Smartphones or Pocket PCs. This is well and good, but this short tutorial will show you how to change the image.

A new utility from Oxygen Software enables fast, easy and free uploading of new ringtones, music files, wallpapers, pictures, themes, games and any other files to your cellular phone, Pocket PC, or other mobile device. Oxygen SimpleUp works with Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Blackberry devices as well as with Symbian OS or Windows Mobile smartphones.