Expect to see California and Washington drivers using cellular phone headsets come July 1 (click here for details on the law). New laws in these states restrict use of hand-held phones while in a motor vehicle. Drivers will start risking being ticketed if they're caught holding a phone to their ear.

These states join New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in restricting hand-held cell phones and require the use of only hands-free phones behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. California has the largest number of licensed drivers of any state (almost twice as many as second-ranked Texas) and so it is no surprise manufacturers of bluetooth hands-free devices are chomping at the bit at the promised spike in bluetooth hands-free devices.

Motorola announced plans to roll out a "car-specific" bluetooth headset in the coming months. The question is, "Is it better than a portable Bluetooth car kit?"

California Drivers! Get up to 80% off cell phone accessories before the July 1 law.

Motorola says the new H620 Bluetooth headset is superior because it has noise reduction and echo-canceling technology as well as the ability to adjust the volume automatically to compensate for road noise. It comes with a car charger so you don't have to worry about draining the battery on long drives as well as a dashboard holder in order to place it in a convenient location. The new headset also has voice-dialing for entirely hands-free calls.

With bluetooth now being built into everything from portable navigation systems to car stereos, drivers in California and Washington have plenty of options. Even econo cars like the Nissan Sentra and Ford's Sync system have bluetooth technology as standard equipment making a hands-free system a no-brainer if you're buying a new car. If you drive an older car though, the Motorola H620 may be just the ticket for not getting a ticket.

Motorola said the new headset will be available soon but we're betting it will be released sooner rather than later and at a cost under $100 in order to take advantage to the expanded market for these products.

Microsoft is going to feature a touch interface with it's next major release of Windows. This was demonstrated in the Windows 7 demo at the D6 conference on May 27. Microsoft is pushing this new "multi-touch" interface as the new way to interact with computers not only on the desktop, but in portable computers and even entertainment centers, appliance PCs and more.

A Micro soft spokes person is quoted in saying,

"During Bill Gates’ and Steve Ballmer’s keynote this evening, Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President, Windows Experience Program Management, will take the stage to demo a new feature for the Windows platform: multi-touch. This feature will be available in the next version of Windows, Windows 7."

A new post on the Windows Team blog added this:

“Touch is quickly becoming a common way of directly interacting with software and devices. Touch - enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere including laptop touch pads, cell phones, remote controls, GPS devices, and more. What becomes even more compelling is when this experience is delivered to the PC –on a wide variety of Windows notebooks, in all-in-one PC’s, as well as in external monitors. In working with our broad ecosystem of hardware and software manufactures, we’re excited to be showing some of the great work and investments we are working on in Windows 7.”

A video of this Windows 7 multi-touch functionality is now available via the Vista team blog.

After using my new HTC Touch XV6900 for two weeks now with the new Windows Mobile 6 software, I can say that I am looking forward to this style of input and user interaction gaining traction in all other computing platforms. Anyone who has used an iPhone or any other intuitive touch interface device will agree!

Samsung's announces their first 256 GIGABYTE SSD (Solid State Drives). The MLC-flash SATA II drive has speeds of 200MBps read and 160MBps sequential write. They will be available come September, with a 1.8-inch version due in Q4.

These leaps seem to be moving Moore's Law to the digital storage side of computing. We haven't seen this level of progress in the CPU side of things in 5 years!