More on Voice Over IP. Back from Vermont, and I see that the Mercury News' Personal Tech section is running two good pieces today on... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Live traffic videos coming to your mobile [CNET News.com]

DoCoMo plans fuel-cell mobile phones. Mobile phones made with platinum that use fuel cells instead of batteries are expected to become available in 2004, according to an announcement by Japan's DoCoMo:

Fuel cells require platinum as a major component to enable them to generate energy. Platinum increases electrical conductivity in PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells. It is critical to fuel cell commercialization and can alone command 10% to 20% of a fuel cell system's cost. Accepting the U.S. Department of Energy's target for platinum use in fuel cell vehicles - 0.2 grams per kilowatt - total platinum use by fuel cell systems could bring an 8% to 12% increase to the world demand for platinum by 2013, according to ABI projections.

Link, Discuss (via Viridian list) [Boing Boing Blog]

The Palmbutler. From Denmark, interesting alternative to those wireless home entertainment hubs, like PRISMIQ's MediaPlayer or SMC's EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver. It seems a bit convulted, even when compared to setting up a home network, but rather than connect your TV and stereo to your PC via Ethernet or 802.11b, the (poorly-named) Palmbutler is a little box which converts your PC's audio and video output into a television signal, which it then "broadcasts" to your TV over your home's coaxial cable. Then you use a remote control, which needs to be within range of the PC, to select and play whatever movies or music you want. Yeah, it sounds like a pain to us, too. Read... [Gizmodo]

Is RadioLover illegal?.

Some folks on #joiito turned me onto "radio ripping" (I don't know what it's really called). This is software that stores songs played on Internet radio stations as mp3's with meta data and everything. RadioLover lets you record multiple radio stations in parallel. You can drag and drop the songs into iTunes and sync to the iPod. The quality seems fine. I can listen to my favorite radio stations from all over the world when I'm walking in the park with my iPod. Is this illegal? It is SOOO useful it MUST be illegal. ;-p

By Joichi Ito jito@neoteny.com. [Joi Ito's Web]