The coolest feature is being able to lock and unlock your car with your phone.

I think the horn honking is more useful since your Zipcard already does the un/locking. Although I suppose it's nice to be able to carry around one less card.

For me, it's always going to be faster to pull out my phone than find my Zipcard in the black hole that is my wallet.

Yeah, I only have a few cards I carry around all the time. That would be super handy.

Judge overturns Uniloc's record $388M victory over Microsoft [link]

World's first 3D point-and-shoot camera comes to America

Good on Fujifilm for making good on its promise to launch the Finepix Real 3D W1 point-and-shoot camera in the U.S. this September, albeit barely. The camera, capable of shooting both still pics and video in 3D, is available for purchase starting today for the tidy sum of $600.

So how do you view the 3D pictures? No need for any glasses — the special rear LCD shows the photos in 3D, and you can buy the separate V1 picture viewer with an 8-inch screen for $500. You'll also be able to order prints through Fujifilm for $6.99 each.

I got to play with the Real 3D for a few minutes during a meeting with Nvidia earlier this month (the graphics-processor maker says Fuji's system is compatible with its 3D Vision tech, meaning the pics are viewable on regular screens with special glasses and software). The camera is simple to use, and depth really appears to pop out of images on the rear LCD. It looks a bit "shiny," rather like those hologram comic book covers that used to be everywhere, but it's unmistakably 3D.

Oct. 1, 1982: Portable Music Enters the Spin Zone i.e. the first CD player.

The CDP-101 did not come cheap nor did it come svelte. Early adopters had to part ways with the equivalent of $2,200 in today’s ducats for a single 14 x 5 x 12½-inch unit. Worse yet, the CD player’s media library was pathetic. At launch a mere 113 albums were available for purchase.

Compact discs themselves were not exactly inexpensive either. A single album sold for around $33 to $45 in today’s currency.

I didn't buy my first CD player until Jan. 1988. Plus I bought three CDs - The Velvet Underground's third album and Elvis Costello's This Year's Girl are the two I remember....

I remember when my dad bought our first CD player but not the exact year (must have been mid-80s) - it was my mom's birthday present and he also bought a Beatles box set to go with it. It was about the size of a microwave.

My first CD player was the one my parents gave me when I went off to college. They got a new stereo system that summer so I got all the old stuff. A Sony Amp, a CD Player, and two big speakers that my dad bought in Thailand during the war.

What was amazing to me about DVD players is how the price came down so much faster than CD players did. And at first everyone thought DVD player pricing would follow the model of CD players.

I upgraded my computer. Since the whole basement--where my computer lives--was in disarray it seemed like a good time. My computer was all disconnected and up on a table anyway. For the first time I did an upgrade without having to change my two year old motherboard. That also meant no memory upgrade and no video card upgrade.

I went from a 2.2Ghz E4500 Core 2 Duo to a 2.8Ghz Q9550 Core 2 Quad. Microcenter is selling the Q9550 for about $40 less that the cheapest price I've seen anywhere else.

The same video transcoding went from 140 fps to 350fps. I can transcode a 480p Spongbob show MPEG2 to MP4 in two minutes. It's very nifty.

Windows 7 now tells me the limiting factor in my windows experience rating is my video card which is a 8800GT.