Motorola has been unable to duplicate the success it had several years ago with its RAZR handset. Motorola is looking to regain some of its glory and its latest attempt to separate the mobile phone user from their cash is three new ROKR handsets.

The coolest one of the trio is the ROKR EM30. This phone uses Motorola’s ModeShift technology to illuminate the keyboard. When the phone is in music mode the keypad with controls for music are red. When the phone is in talk mode, the handset keys are blue. The EM30 also features a FM receiver built-in with RDS 4 technology for identifying the song and artists being played. The EM30 is also compatible with Windows Media Player 11 and has a 3.5mm headphone jack built-in.

The geek world waited in anticipation for Apple to announce the 3G iPhone this summer and now that it is here (and sold out in most places), geeks are on to the next round of speculation about coming Apple products. According to Daily Mail in the UK, a source has told it that another iPhone will be coming in time for holiday shopping.

The product is rumored to be an iPhone Nano. This is not a new rumor; many had a smaller iPhone pegged to be launching with the iPhone 3G this summer. That failed to materialize so now rumors point to a launch in time for the holiday shopping season.

For a portable hard drive to be truly portable, it needs to be able to be powered totally by the USB port on your computer. That means that users don’t need an AC adapter for the drive to operate. When portable hard drives first started to hit the market most of them needed an AC adapter and some larger capacity portable drives still do.

Today Memorex launched a new line of portable hard drives available in 160GB, 250GB, and 320GB that are all powered by the USB port of a user’s computer. The line is called the Essential TravelDrive series and uses 2.5-inch drives inside a case designed to fit inside a purse or laptop bag.

I grew up on Atari, moved on to Nintendo and then to PC gaming as the years went by. I am always looking for cool gaming gear that will make games more fun and enjoyable. Driving and racing games are one of my favorite genres and things like force feedback steering wheels make the games much more fun. I am still waiting for full-motion simulators to get affordable so I can add one to my collection of gaming gear.

Gyroxus released what it calls a full-motion video game chair this spring. The chair sold for $489 when it was first launched — not too bad for a full-motion simulator. The Gyroxus price was cut significantly today making the chair now sell for $389. The chair is compatible with the PS3, PS2, Xbox, and Windows PCs. The chair has an adjustable back to accommodate users of different heights and a USB port on the chair so you can plug the controller and chair in with one cable.

Digital cameras are hot and there have been a slew of new and cool ones introduced so far this summer. I am sure we will see even more digital cameras introduced as the holiday shopping season gets closer. The most recent digital camera introduced comes from Fujifilm and is called the FinePix S2000HD.

The camera has a 15x optical zoom lens and a 10-megapixel CCD sensor. The camera can shoot images and record HD video at 1280 x 720p. Still images are recorded in JPEG format and movies are recorded in AVI. Video and still pictures are stored to 55MB of internal memory, andSD/SDHC memory cards.

Cell phones are one of the most common electronic devices that people carry with them. Smartphones and other feature rich handsets are fast taking over the cell phone market as consumers look for devices that can do more and offer entertainment on the go.

Research firm IDC has released its rankings of the top five cell phone makers for Q2 2008 along with some information on the cellular market as a whole for Q2 2008. IDC says that the worldwide cell phone market grew by 15.3% in Q2 2008 compared to Q2 2007. Total handset shipments in Q2 2008 were 306 million units compared to 265.4 million shipped in Q2 2007.

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) announced today that it was developing what it calls a Personal Transport Assistance Robot known as Winglet. TMC says that it is still in the process of refining the Winglet and it plans the device to be a small and compact robot that will offer ease of movement and expand a user’s range of mobility.

I can’t tell from that description if it intends the Winglet to be a scooter for the masses to use rather than a car, or if this is one sort of assistance device for those with problems walking like the elderly. At any rate, TMC has created three different Winglet models that only vary in how tall they are. The height difference for the models is from the different length handles used that give riders something to grasp.

I have said on several occasions that I really like my iPhone, but the battery life isn’t that great. Now that I can get games on my phone, the battery life is even worse. Spend an hour or so playing a game and half the battery is gone in a flash.

Chinavision has a new iPhone case that has a rechargeable battery built into the case. The battery in the case charged via the Apple charger that came with your iPhone. An adapter cable is included that turns the iPhone connector into a mini USB from the looks of it.

External hard drives are great for backing up data or adding more storage when your internal hard drive gets full. External drives are especially helpful for notebook users who typically don’t have very much storage to start with inside their computers.

Imation has announced a new model of its slim Apollo Portable Hard Drive that has a fat 500GB drive stuffed inside the case. Despite the fact that the hard drive inside the Apollo has tons of storage, it is still completely powered by the USB port. That means that no batteries or external power is needed making the drive much more portable.

I am a big fan of movies; especially HD movies form my PS3 Blu-ray drive. I was glad when Blu-ray won out over HD DVD, not so much because I liked Blu-ray better, I was simply glad to see one format win despite the fact that I am now stuck with a worthless HD DVD player.

Now that Blu-ray is the standard, we are starting to see players with some cool features show up. LG announced an interesting player called the LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player. The BD300 does everything you expect a Blu-ray player to do like play full 1080p resolution Blu-ray movies, upscale standard DVDs to 1080p, and it supports BD Live.