If you're a fan of Google's Picasa Web Albums and you're trigger happy with your camera, you'd love this new camera from Panasonic. This gadget directly uploads your photos to Picasa straight from your camera. Details in the full article.

We have another CeBIT 2008 update for you. It's Panasonic's new line of mobile computers - actually, Ultra Mobile Personal Computers. At CeBIT, they're showing off their upcoming Tough Book, a UMPC sporting an Intel Atom processor. More info at the full article.

No less than Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates, Panasonic President Toshihiro Sakamoto and Intel CEO Paul Otellini will keynote the 2008 International CES organized by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in Las Vegas Nevada on January 7-10 of next year.

This was announced by the CEA as it ushers in the latest that the industry has to offer for people who like to live off the high-end. The show is known as a stage for previews of upcoming products and campaigns of each firm.

Gates is scheduled to kick things off with a pre-show talk discussing the state of the computer world and how his company is pushing it forward. Sakamoto and Otellini are set to do similar speeches as the first day progresses.

Some 2,700 exhibitors will show off their latest gear encompassing some 30 areas which include entertainment, wireless connectivity, audio and gaming. Products such as gaming consoles, TVs, notebook computers and portable audio are just some of the many devices which have been shown off in the past CES gatherings.

The Washington Research Foundation just sued a couple of phone companies for allegedly infringing on  their patents. The weird thing is, they're suing for patent infringement over Bluetooth technology.

The Foundation sued Nokia, Panasonic, and Samsung, saying that the companies "have manufactured, used, imported into the United States, sold and offered for sale devices which, or the use of which, infringes at least the '963' patent."

Most of the companies in the suit have been unable to comment as of yet, though a Nokia spokesperson has said they're looking into the claims.

On a related note, the suit's targets were devices that used CSR-brand Bluetooth chips, though they haven't sued CSR for these infringements, whatever they may be.

Rise of Antares 2, an all-new turn-based space strategy game from HeroCraft, is back and its a very bitchy mood. The game is designed for all gamers with political ambitions bigger than Hillary Clinton's. As head of an interstellar corporation, gamers must take the reigns, set a successful plan and fight elections in order to rule the freaking galaxy. Oh and there's one more thing on the agenda: kick Star League Bureaucrats asses back to where they belong! Which is anywhere but your turf.

Rise of Antares 2 is packed with features to help fight for intergalactic dominance including:

• Full stepwise space strategy
• A diverse array of technologies
• Masses of different ships and buildings
• Easy-to-follow training system and a captivating campaign
• Game graphics to advanced interstellar standards

Rise of Antares 2 is supported by various handsets from Alcatel, BenQ-Siemens, LG, Motorola, Nokia Panasonic, Samsung and more.

Who says there's no such thing as a free and legal lunch? MobileRated, a company that believes in the concept of free mobile phone games and entertainment services, has launched a mobile games portal where everything is free and legal. The portal offers almost a hundred free mobile phone games which can be downloaded direct to your mobiles or to your PCs and then loaded onto your mobiles.

Among the titles available at website are:

• Mobile Fighter
• Absolute Trivia: Games
• JCaro
• Jamtris
• Brik-Link
• M-SuDoKu
• ePinball
• G3tr1s
• Sameness
• Klondike
• Bombs

Aside from the free mobile phone games, the portal also has puzzles, trivia, calendars, calculators, personal productivity applications, and much, much more. The free mobile games and applications are supported by Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Benq, LG, Audiovox, Panasonic, and other handset manufacturers. You can reach MobileRated's free game portal by clicking here.

In UFO Predator, a lost alien ends up on planet Earth and settles among us. But the ungrateful guest creates nothing but carnage and turns giant creatures and advanced weapons into worthless rescue teams! In most games, players assume the role of the alien buster. In UFO Predator, gamers become the evil alien and battles the good guys for a change.

Your objective as the nasty visitor from space is is to launch a campaign to capture Earth. By flying over the humans you get to snack on them and increase your power. Other weapons of mass destruction at your command include manipulating items such as trucks dropping it over your opponents.

The game also features:

• Real-time destruction with stunning explosive effects
• Intelligent enemies respond strategically to attacks
• High-level physics on manipulating background items

UFO Predator is now playable on selected models of Symbian, Nokia, N-Gage, Siemens, SX1, Sendo, Panasonic, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Sharp mobiles.

More screenshots after the jump!

We are all quite familiar with homebrew applications like games and programs for our DS. What we quite don't know is that somewhere in the DS universe (quite specifically in The Netherlands), Infrared function is being developed. And with 60% of all the work already done, it is fast nearing completion.

Dubbed InfrareDS, the idea was thought of by Mark (frozenone23@hotmail.com). And the whole project is exactly just that: it adds an IrDA to the Nintendo DS in just few minutes, allowing the user to send images and sounds from a mobile phone and vice versa.. As of now, InfrareDS is compatible with Sony Ericsson (T310, K750i),  Panasonic X60 and Nokia 8850.

Although it has not been tested yet for DS lite, InfrareDS features direct compatibility to all firmware versions of NDS, not to mention its high speed transmission capability. Currently, Mark is working on the touchscreen function and making a graphical interface.

We thank Kravos for this exciting heads up.

Is it a trend these days to recall laptop batteries? Is it some sort of marketing/publicity stunt, perhaps? Or maybe it's an international conspiracy staged by misunderstood bandits?

Matsushista Electronic Industrial Co. (Japan) just recently pulled a Dell by recalling batteries for Panasonic's Let's Note CF-W4G notebook. It was established though that the batteries were not manufactured by Sony, but as to whom exactly, company spokesman Akira Kadota could not say due to an agreement of confidentiality.

There have already been two reports of battery trouble early this year in Japan, and it has been observed to have stemmed from faulty battery covers which could warp from the heat.

Well, in any case, we can't quite point (burnt) fingers at anyone in particular. What's important is that this whole "battery as fire hazards" phase gets solved soon. And it's a good thing that Apple, Dell, and Lenovo are up to the task.

The first open source Java code is expected to be released in October. Sun Microsystems is still considering which open source license to use and has created a website called Open Sourcing the JDK to elicit comments and recommendations from Java developers. Hotspot VM and Java C will be the first Java components to be released under an open source license, with the remainder of the code scheduled for release by the end of 2007.

Laurie Tolson, Vice President of developer programs and projects at Sun, said that, "our primary focus is to be compatible, putting programmes in place that people can rely on for compatible implementations of Java." The company is also planning to expand its open source initiative to include Sun's Java ME technology for mobile phones.

It is not yet clear if Sun's Java ME technology (which allows mobile phones to run Java code) will be included in the first round of open sourcing planned for October or at a later time. According to Allan Brenner, Vice President of Mobile and Embedded Devices at Sun, there is a, "clear trend towards the use of open source on mobile phones, [in the mobile phone industry in general]."

A consortium created by Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, NTT, Docomo and Vodafone which aims to create a standard version of a mobile Linux is evidence of the shift towards using open source software in the mobile phone industry. "So far we have clearly seen that going in an OS direction for Java ME is the right and logical choice at this point," said Brenner.

"We really do want to lead and establish that direction in the market," Brenner further explained. He also added that "most" of the Java ME code will be released by the end of 2006, pointing to a swift completion of the move to open source licenses for the entire Java code-base.