An anonymous reader writes "At the last Apple special event, Steve Jobs was almost bragging about the fact that 70% of new cars sold in the U.S. this year had (optional!) iPod 'integration' available ... Obviously, he didn't talk about the rest of the world. But most of all, what Steve didn't tell us is how crappy the existing "integration" solutions actually are! Here is a review of actual iPod car integration solutions showcased Apple Expo 2006 Paris. Some of the nicest cars (like the Audi TT for example) don't necessarily have the best iPod interfaces."

RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"

Editorgirl35 writes to tell us Design News has posted their annual engineering salary survey. While it does offer encouraging results with salaries up a bit from last year it also shows that engineers are, on the average, doing a lot more to earn that paycheck including supervisory and budgetary functions. From the article: "Kody Baker, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer agrees, "Yes, we are doing far more than just designing products," he says. He's a project manager, manufacturing engineer, product designer, R&D engineer, test engineer, CAD systems specialist, CAD instructor/mentor, and more, juggling many roles in his job as a mechanical application engineer at Honeywell."

2bepissedoff asks: "According to my T-mobile phone bill, I have been receiving incoming calls from a 'NBR unavailable', since February, with talk time ranging from 1 minute to an hour. The strangest thing is, I have never received these calls (my phone doesn't ring and I haven't talked to the caller). I only started noticing them when my phone bill was charged over $40 more than my regular bill. Of course, I have a family plan (2 people only, 2 lines) and I talked to my partner. The answer: he too had not received any of these calls, especially over 300 minutes per month of them. We called up T-mobile twice and claim the possibility of phone cloning. Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something. Any advice to what this could be?"

The Nintendo conference seemed to be the perfect opposite of Sony's conference yesterday. It was polished, the presenters were poised, and the demos conveyed exactly the message they were aiming for. Notable info includes 27 playable Wii titles on the E3 floor, a speaker in the Wii controller, a StarFox title for the DS, and a confirmation of motion sensor in the nunchuck attachment. There will be two versions of Twilight Princess (one for Wii, one for GC) and they'll both be out on Wii launch day. Launch is slated for Q4 of this year. The presenters kept the launch price and date under wraps as the tone of the event was inspiration, not information. The number of playable games available this week confirms their commitment to a launch date this year, and the hilarious tennis game played onstage by the Nintendo honchos and the contest winner made their 'playing = believing' slogan really hit home. More flash than substance, but a solid presentation overall

Ticron asks: "Like most of you, my job and lifestyle revolves around drinking lots and lots of caffeine - usually in the form of soda. I've been trying to cut back on my sugar intake lately, and am interested in what some of you drink that isn't loaded down with the sweet stuff. Diet drinks have little to no flavor, and fruit punches have almost (sometimes more!) sugar than sodas themselves. Is there anything out there that maintains the convenience of a canned drink, but without all the sugar?"

jwb4273 writes "Microsoft has released another weapon in its battle against Google. Steve Ballmer has announced today that Microsoft's web properties (MSN, Live, etc.) will no longer use Yahoo!'s advertising services, and will instead use Microsoft's new advertising platform 'adCenter'. For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship."

Next Generation follows up on news last week of the enormous financial burden the 360's launch has placed on Microsoft. CEO Steve Ballmer sent around an email discussing the company's bright outlook with the new console. From the article: "While Xbox 360 hardware itself is the most prominent area of videogame-related investment, Ballmer indicated that further development of Xbox Live is also integral to the success of the platform and its respective division, saying, "We must execute our Live strategy with speed and precision." Relatedly, Live's downtime yesterday has resulted in an underwhelming feature addition: messaging.

IGN says that 'sources' have confirmed Halo 3 will be part of Microsoft's E3 Event. From the article: "The video is allegedly two minutes long, although its contents weren't divulged. We're guessing a wild breathtaking battle on Earth. Knowing Microsoft, the publisher will want to show all real, in-game engine footage to counter Sony's fantastical CG videos from E3 2005. When Microsoft was contacted, the company issued its standard reply, 'We don't comment on speculation and rumors.'"

theodp writes "Just in case Microsoft bashers don't have enough ammo, Robert X. Cringely has a couple of interesting tales in this week's column. The first explains how Bill Gates used Paul Allen's moonlighting at MITS to justify awarding himself 64% of Microsoft's stock vs. Allen's 36% (and Gates' failure to adjust the shares after he accepted a $10/hour part-time MITS job). The second heart-warming tale concerns a conversation Allen reportedly overheard late one night (as he was finishing up DOS 2.0) between Gates and Steve Ballmer discussing how to get Allen's Microsoft stock back if the Hodgkins disease Allen was battling killed him. Yikes."

Since nothing else really interesting is happening, here is a CNN story about Apple vs Apple where you can read about the latest developments in the latest round of the never ending court battles as two bazillion dollar companies fight over who gets to use the word 'Apple' to sell music.

An anonymous reader writes in to say that "Rob Braun (OpenDarwin core developer claims Apple's open source efforts are now dead, because Apple is afraid of assisting OSx86 piracy. First, Apple withheld the source of cctools required to to build Darwin. Now it seems they are no longer releasing the source to OS X's xnu kernel. "