Sony is set to debut a new 16 and 32GB drag and drop Walkman during CES 2009, according to trusted inside sources. This will be the most advanced music, video and photo Walkman music player ever released by Sony to date. While it was revealed before to Wired that Sony’s new Walkman would have Wi-Fi capabilities, we have now learned that Sony’s new Walkman will also be touchscreen and WQVGA. The touchscreen will not be the usual LCD, but a brilliant three inch OLED with a contrast ratio around 10k. OLED display capabilities in terms of color reproduction are far beyond the average LCD, which means 100% color reproduction across a wider viewing angle.

While most of the usual menu structure of the current Walkman series will be retained in this new model, there are several new exciting features included. For example, upon listening to an artist, you may click on the artist name and watch music videos of the artist on YouTube through Wi-Fi (WPA and WEP support included). Additionally, there will be a Youtube icon on the main screen that will allow full access to the website - search, pause, FF/RW included very similar to Youtube access on the iPhone/iTouch. Additionally, this new Walkman will be able to subscribe to audio podcast and Crackle video feeds; this means automatic download of new updates, the ability to delete old feed content, all over Wi-Fi. Audio codec support includes MP3, WMA, AAC, PCM, while video codec support is AVC (h.264), MPEG-4 and WMV.

For the second year, YouTube on Friday unveiled a holiday feature that lets users create hosted video cards to send to friends and family. Users can select this option from any YouTube video, or from a special page that houses selected community videos and links to a user’s own clips.

There’s also an option to make a more personalized greeting straight from a connected Webcam. For now, only one video can be attached to a given greeting card.

When users are finished picking a video for use in a greeting card, they can choose from a handful of themes that house the video player, then add up to 230 characters of text and send the complete card to up to 25 e-mail recipients.

Gmail has just added a solution to address this: its own viewer that lets you view PDFs in your Web browser. It’s blazing fast, includes a search feature, and lets you download or print the PDF if you really need to.

The way it works is pretty simple. If you’re the recipient of a PDF, you’ll now get a “View” link along with the previously existing “Download” link. When clicked, the “View” link opens up a new tab, which promptly loads the PDF in Google Docs, without opening up any desktop software (ie – Adobe Reader). Other features of the viewer include options to zoom in and out, as well as quick paging via next/previous arrows.

A pair of US inventors are bringing to market a computerized car key that prevents people from chatting on mobile telephones or sending text messages while driving.

Key2SafeDriving adds to a trend of using technology to thwart speeding, drunken driving, and other risky behavior proven to ramp-up the odds of crashing.

Once slipped into a car’s ignition, the key created by US university researcher Xuesong Zhou and Dr. Wallace Curry sends a wireless signal to a driver’s mobile phone blocking calls or texting.

“If you’re in driving mode, you can’t talk or text — period,” a character tells a friend trying in vain to send a text message while driving a car in a YouTube video demonstrating how the keys work.

The keys are being pitched as a way for parents to stop teenage children from focusing attention on beloved mobile telephones instead of traffic.

Engineers in the company’s Live Labs have released the company’s first application for Apple’s popular smartphone–even before making it available on Microsoft’s own mobile platform. Seadragon Mobile, which was added to Apple’s App Store on Saturday, is a free image-browsing app that allows users to quickly “deep zoom” images while online and is intended to demonstrate what is possible with a mobile platform.

Seadragon is the backbone for Microsoft’s Photosynth, which allows users to take a grouping of photographs and stitch them together into a faux 3D environment.

Other iPhone apps are reportedly in development in Redmond; Microsoft’s Tellme unit was expected to release the company’s first iPhone app in the form of a voice-activated search for a variety of phones, including iPhone and BlackBerry. A Microsoft representative told my colleague Ina Fried in September that a public version of that program would likely be released in a few months.

Google Inc has approached Internet carriers with a proposal to create a “fast lane” for its own content, countering its previously stance of equal network access for all content providers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

One major cable operator in talks with Google said it has been reluctant to forge a deal because of concerns it might violate Federal Communications Commission guidelines on network neutrality, the newspaper said in its electronic edition.

Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same.

Google’s proposal, called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers, the newspaper said.

The setup would accelerate Google’s service for users, the newspaper said.