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I’m sure many of you have been waiting for Apple to produce an ultra-slim portable notebook — I know I’ve been. The wait is over.

This morning at Macworld in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air ($1799). Measuring only 0.16 to 0.76 inches and weighing 3.0 pounds, the MacBook Air is the world’s thinnest laptop.

Features include a 13.3 LED backlit wide screen display, a full-size backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight camera, and an iPhone-like trackpad with multi-touch gesture capability.

Additional specs include: a built-in iSight camera, USB 2, micro-DVI and headphone via a flipdown door, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

There’s no optical drive on the MacBook Air. A “remote disc” feature allows you to “borrow” any nearby machines optical drive or you can purchase the optional MacBook Air SuperDrive ($100).

Two options are available: 1.6 GHz version with 80GB 4200-rpm PATA hard drive ($1,799) or 1.8 GHz version with 64GB solid-state hard drive ($3,098).

Great news for all Mac fanatics, but my only qualm is the rather slow and small hard drive in the 1.6 GHz variety.

Splendid news on the Canadian front — it seems as if that proposed tax on digital recorders and storage devices (you know, like Apple’s iPod for instance) will actually not come to pass. According to Judge Karen Sharlow, the board “had no legal authority to certify a tariff on digital audio recorders or on the memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders.” The ruling enables all music lovin’ Canucks to breath a sigh of relief, as it makes tacking on fees ranging from C$5 ($4.95) to C$75 ($74) in order to “compensate the recording industry for music that was copied” illegal . From here, a decision still needs to be made to clarify the legality (or illegality) of copying music from discs to DAPs, but at least we’re seeing a touch of levelheadedness in the music biz, regardless.

[Via ArsTechnica]

Going out to club tonight, but you need to go home a get out of those boring work clothes and redo your hair first? If you’re short on time, here are a few tips from Hyori:

Step 1. Pull your black skirt up to your chest and turn it into a strapless dress.

Step 2. Slap on some black stiletto boots which are always hot.

Step 3. Fluff your hair with a bit of Vidal Sassoon hair wax for that messy yet sexy look.

What do you, if you need lots of cash? Rob one of the wealthiest and most secure banks in the world of course!

Academy Award® winner Diane Keaton (Something’s Gotta Give), Oscar® nominee Queen Latifah (Chicago) and Katie Holmes (Thank You for Smoking) star in Mad Money, a comedy about three ordinary women who form an unlikely friendship and decide to do something extraordinary.

Monster, well known for working with legendary musicians on countless productions recorded with Monster Cable and Monster Power products, is proud to announce the introduction of the first-ever product to be endorsed by legendary music producer and artist Dr. Dre.

The new “Beats by Dr. Dre” high-performance headphones were conceived by Dr. Dre and mutually designed, with groundbreaking and inventive engineering by Monster. The headphones feature both a unique and futuristic style as well as newly developed sonic technologies for unprecedented state-of-the-art performance.

“Beats by Dr. Dre” headphones will come in a beautifully designed carrying case with anti-microbial cleaning cloths, a special Monster headphone cable, as well as Monster’s iSonitalk, a microphone/headphone adapter for iPhones.

Beats will be available in spring 2008 for a suggested retail price of $399.95.

Now, we don’t have a whole bunch of info on Jook right now, and sure, the press photos claim that “actual products may differ from pictures,” and yeah, the patents are pending. Still, it seems like the dock connector-attached unit will be bringing some Zune-style social networking features to your lonely, non-WiFi iPod. Of course, we all know how successful The Social has been in Microsoft’s court — but with the massive proliferation of iPods on the street, this might gain a little more ground. We do worry about the use of the term “music standard,” the apparently-necessary headphones, and the fact that the company doesn’t appear to have a website, but hey — you never know.(Engadget)

Merging contemporary technology with an air of the 1920s - a heyday for aviation, this mobile phone holder is a warm-looking design in quality leather and imitation fur, set off with a metal logo rivet.

WINTER LUXURY MOBILE CASE

After only two shows, Ne-Yo has launched a lawsuit against R. Kelly’s concert promotion company Rowe Entertainment after the Chicago R&B star booted him off his current tour

Ne-Yo claims he was kicked off due to reviews and crowd reaction being more favorable for him than R. Kelly. That wouldn’t be surprising giving the popularity of Ne-Yo’s songs lately.

“I am disappointed that I won’t be able to perform for my fans,” Ne-Yo said in a statement. “I love being onstage in front of fans because of the immediate feedback you get. You know right away if they are feeling you — and they were really feeling our show.”

Ne-Yo is suing R. Kelly for $785,000 for the promised 25 show openings.

We’d already heard about Central Japan Railway Company’s not-so-near-term intentions to deploy a speedy new maglev system in the country, but it looks like it’s just now getting official with things, and it’s still promising to have it up and running no sooner than 2025. By then, there should be 180 miles of track stretching from Tokyo to central Japan, which’ll accommodate a maglev train capable of topping out at 310 miles per hour, apparently making it the world’s fastest. That, as you might have guessed, comes at a fairly hefty cost — $44.7 billion, to be specific — which makes some similar, but decidedly less speedy systems pale in comparison. As The Register points out, however, while Japan’s train will be the fastest maglev system, it won’t quite keep up with the fastest conventional trains around, or whatever else might be around in the year 2025.

[Photo courtesy of FYS]