Peter Cohen

Each year car, more and more new cars include built-in connection options for iPods, iPhones, and Bluetooth devices. But if you're not yet in the market for a new car, you can still get such connectivity via an aftermarket upgrade. Sony's MEX-BT5700U, a member of the company's Xplod line of automobile head units-is a solid option that lets you connect both iPods and iPhones.

The MEX-BT5700U is designed to occupy one DIN-a standard unit of measurement for car stereos, about two inches tall by seven inches wide. The vast majority of cars on the road have either a one-DIN or a two-DIN opening in the dash for the audio system. My car, a 2004 Kia Sedona minivan, has a two-DIN spot, so the custom-stereo installer used a spacer pocket to fill and cover the extra space. The unit Sony supplied for this review fit well, with installation taking about an hour.

If there's one thing that 2009 will be remembered for in the annals of Apple-related gaming, it's the year that the iPod touch (and the iPhone) clearly eclipsed the Mac as Apple's dominant gaming platform.

Certainly the seeds were sown in 2008, when iPhone OS gaming took off like a rocket thanks to the efforts of many developers. But by 2009, iPod touch customers were buying devices in droves--Apple says that the touch makes up 40 percent of the mobile devices running the iPhone OS--and Apple responded by beefing the system up with better performance and more marketing to help get the word out that the iPhone and iPod touch were really fun game systems, too.

All the way back in 1982, Data East released a coin-op arcade game called BurgerTime. Simple gameplay and a memorable theme ultimately led to versions that ran on the consoles of the day. Twenty-seven years later, BurgerTime has been resurrected by Namco, this time as a casual game for the Mac and PC. Don't go looking for it from Namco's Web site, though, as it's available from Macgamestore.com.

You can play either as Peter or Sally Pepper, apprentice chefs who must help their uncle thwart the dastardly plans of Vinnie Vinegar. To do so, you need to stack burgers by assembling them from a giant scaffolding while you're being chased by food monsters like Mr. Hotdog, Mr. Egg, and other bad guys who will kill you if they touch you. I've never been so afraid of ham and pickles in my life!

After more than ten years of sitting behind a news desk at Macworld, I'm moving on. Today marks my final day as a Macworld employee.

I've been writing news and covering Apple online for fifteen years. That's about three years longer than it would have taken me to get a Ph.D. So I'm delighted to matriculate from Macworld after such a great run.

Aliph made quite a splash when it introduced its original Jawbone Bluetooth headset, partly because of the unit's DARPA-developed noise-reduction technology, and partly because of the earpiece's stylish design. The company's latest iteration, the Jawbone Prime, enhances both with an evolving design and even better "NoiseAssassin" noise reduction technology.

Externally, the Jawbone Prime isn't dramatically different from the Jawbone 2: a new texture graces the gently curving, rectangular outer shell, and new color choices let you accessorize. The most notable functional change to the design is the Prime's lack of a required earloop. While one is still included in the box, it's optional, as Aliph has redesigned the earpiece with a flexible tip that holds the Jawbone Prime in place by itself.

Able Planet's claim to fame is the development of headphones designed for people with hearing disabilities, but the company's Linx Audio technology has enabled it to expand into the mainstream headphone market. The PS500MM True Fidelity Multimedia Stereo Headphones is a recent model designed for users looking for a stereo headset with a microphone for gaming and Voice over IP (VoIP) services such Skype. I've found the PS500MM to be adequate, if pricey, for those purposes.

The Linx Audio technology, according to Able Planet, was originally designed to help compensate for hearing loss. It creates high-frequency harmonics to enhance sound quality and speech clarity, especially for people who have trouble hearing higher frequencies--a common effect of aging.

Boggle has entertained generations of word game players and now it's available for the iPhone and iPod touch thanks to Electronic Arts. Unfortunately, EA has foisted a mediocre product on the public hoping to sell it with a brand name--a trend for the company's casual game line.

In Boggle, you shuffle 16 six-sided dice, each imprinted with letters, in a tray that holds the dice in a 4-by-4 grid. You must find words in sequences of letters on adjacent dice. You can go up, down, left, right, or diagonally. In the desktop game, you're timed using a sand-filled hourglass; each turn is three minutes.

Sony's PSPgo is a new portable version of its five-year-old PlayStation Portable handheld gaming platform. The device launches in US and Europe in October, and it's set to go head to head with Apple's iPod touch. But Sony has revealed that its software strategy for the PSPgo lacks some critical features that Apple already makes available for iPod touch games.

According to a report on game site Gamasutra, Sony has confirmed that Sony's "Mini" games for the PSPgo will not have wireless multiplayer functionality, downloadable content or software updates -- all features available to iPod touch and iPhone gamers in iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

A Bluetooth headset needs three things to be great: comfort, good audio quality and decent battery life. Plantronics' Voyager Pro hits it out of the ballpark on all counts.

The Voyager Pro probably won't win any fashion awards--it has a bulky earclip and a protruding boom mic that stretches from your ear to about halfway down your cheek, so it's not as chic looking as, say, Aliph's Jawbone. But if form follows function, Plantronics' design is perfectly suited for what's under the skin.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Tuesday announced the release of the MediaSmart EX490 and EX495 Home Servers. They're available for pre-order for $549 and $699 respectively.

MediaSmart devices are billed as "all-in-one" home servers that act as a central point for network backups for your home computers. They also act as media servers for any music and video you'd like to share. Included software centralizes the collection of media to keep it in one place.

Adobe Systems on Tuesday announced the release of Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5, updates to its photography and digital photo decoding software, respectively. Both are available for download through Adobe's Web site or through the update mechanisms in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.

Adobe's Tom Hogarty posted the information to the Adobe Blogs. The "final" release of Camera Raw 5.5 comes following the release of a "final candidate" version for testing.

Apple has updated Xsan to 2.2. The software is used to manage a Storage Area Network (SAN) -- a cluster of high-speed hard drives connected using Fibre Channel networking technology. Xsan 2.2 documents a security issue that has been addressed involving screen sharing.

"Screensharing via the Xsan Admin application could present an error dialog containing the user's name and password," according to Apple.