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The Zune HD is coming in colors. But none of them are brown. And do you really care? We also talk about the ePub format. Will it change the landscape of eBook publications? And also, while we're at it, how the heck should we express fuel efficiency in electric cars? So many questions. At least Kernels are now bug-proof.

China backs off Green Dam http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125013563611828325.html

Now we know what colors the Zune HD will be … Read more

Obama extends the Guzzler's program--how long will it last? Nissan prepares to get its first EV to market ahead of schedule. California makes new rules about car insurance company snooping. And we take a ride in the stunning BMW Z4.

• CNET's BMW Z4 review

• CNET's Kia Soul Exclaim review

• Nissan Leaf electric car coming to market soon

• Take a look at a Smart car with three seats

• Replace your GM head unit but keep the DIC

A new tremor on Thursday traversed a photography world already shaken up by the arrival of digital technology as Phase One, a Copenhagen-based company that caters to professional photographers, announced a plan to acquire some high-end photography assets from Eastman Kodak.

To nobody's surprise, Kodak wound down its 35mm Kodachrome film product on Monday. In the rarefied realm of medium-format photography, where film sizes are much larger, and the demand for quality is much higher, the change to the digital era has been equally jarring.

Phase One, though, was digital from the outset, and it's become a force … Read more

Smule, the makers of popular musical iPhone application, Ocarina, has just released a new music application today that pushes its social music experiment even further. Leaf Trombone (99 cents) lets you "play" your iPhone like a trombone by sliding your finger on the touch screen to create different notes and you can even play with a musicbox-like accompaniment.

After you launch Leaf Trombone, you can practice on your own to the tune of several user-uploaded old standbys like Auld Lang Syne, Yesterday, and even Happy Birthday. To help you follow the notes, leaves gently blow across the screen … Read more

One of my favorite jobs in college was at a loose leaf tea shop. I had all of the free tea I could drink, and on principle, they refused to serve coffee. The coffee ban made several customers angry (and me too, when I first started to work there), but after several months of serving and talking about tea, I considered myself lucky to have been exposed to its many benefits. To this day, one of my favorite things to do in winter is curl up on the couch with a cup of freshly brewed hot tea.

Any tea snob … Read more

Last year's Sound Leaf headset, which caught our eye during CommunicAsia 2007, is back this year and makes no bones about going Bluetooth.

Like its wired predecessor, NTT DoCoMo's Sound Leaf Plus is almost its twin in design, sans the wires. What's less visible are the tweaks, from a vibrate feature to signal an incoming call to a three-step tone control for comfortable sound levels while talking. It's also a mite lighter at 45 grams compared with its older sibling's 52. Not surprisingly, the tradeoff for wireless convenience is a dip in battery life, dropping … Read more

For years now, it generally has been accepted that the earliest known photographs made using easily repeatable techniques (photogenic drawings) were made about 1839. Some photographs had been made earlier, but they required extremely long exposures and were considered impractical. However, the world of photography might soon be turned on its head if a photogenic drawing that was recently removed from auction at Sotheby's turns out to have been made in 1802, as one photographic historian thinks it might.

David Schonauer, editor of American Photo magazine, has a detailed account of the story on the State of the Art … Read more

Hasselblad, a manufacturer of high-end medium-format cameras, is dropping its H2 product line, a move that spotlights the company's transition from film camera roots to its digital future.

The H2 can record images on either film or a digital sensor, but there wasn't sufficient demand for the product, so the company is devoting more resources to its more popular digital-only H3D family, Hasselblad Chief Executive Christian Poulsen said in an announcement to customers Monday.

"We have made a decision to discontinue the H2 camera line," Poulsen said. "Demand simply no longer justifies the dedicated manufacturing … Read more