Netflix users who take advantage of the company's free streaming video service (and frankly, you're missing out if you're subscribing and not taking advantage) are in for some upgrades this year, but still have a wait in store for a full HD experience.

First, the good news: within the year you should be able to access Netflix streaming content HD content with the addition of 5.1-channel surround sound and closed captioning. Though those sound like pretty basic features, they're just the kind of things that get removed from movies when they're being prepped to maintain the best quality when streaming.

The bad news is that it will be at least another year before you'll be able to find 1080p content. For now, you'll just have to live with the 720p already being offered.

It's not easy to take a great snapshot with a camera phone. At the risk of oversimplifying things, when you're looking for a digital camera that takes high-quality images, you want one with a big, heavy glass lens (to let in lots of light) and a big image sensor (so more light falls on each pixel). When it comes to cell phones, though, space and weight are two commodities in short supply, making camera phones that perform at the level of stand-alone digital cameras a hard target to hit. Last week we looked at a new autofocus system that could help camera phones fill that gap, and today we got news of an NEC image processing chip that's also geared towards enhancing camera phone performance.

You won't ever see NEC's Camera Engine 151 chip, buried deep in your phone's guts, but if it's there it will be analyzing the signal from the phone's image sensor, weeding out digital noise and trying to squeeze the highest-quality it can out of the hardware. NEC says that the chip will use a quarter less electricity than its predecessor, which is a godsend for chips running in portable gadgets. The CE 151 supports images up to 13 megapixels in resolution, and can output 1080p video. NEC hasn't announced any partnerships with phone manufacturers yet, but seeing as the CE 151 was designed to be compatible with existing chips, it shouldn't take too long to find its way into upcoming handsets.

If you were holding off on buying a Nook until you could actually walk away with it from a Barnes & Noble store, rather than check out a demo unit there, only to have to place an order for your Nook to ship to you, your wait is almost over. The e-reader that has been long-plagued with shipping delays and supply shortages is finally set to be widely available.

Starting this Wednesday, B&N retail stores will have the $250 Nook ready for purchase, cash and carry. This coincides nicely with the latest 1.2 release of the Nook's software, which all new Nooks should be equipped with. The update tweaks the original UI and reportedly speeds up page transitions. This timing is also appropriate as a means of stepping up to the competition with the soon-to-be-released iPad, which will also share a retail presence. There's no word yet on how many Nooks each B&N store will receive; we just hope each has enough to avoid a repeat of the holiday season's stock disappointments.

It may not be a flying car or personal teleporter, but we're one step close to living in the future as Google announced it's working on a universal translator.

Though working prototypes are still a few years off, Google has shown that it has a handle on some of the basic technologies needed for such a device. You can already translate one web page into another of dozens of languages with Google's help. If you've ever tried the company's free 411 service, you've used its speech recognition technology. Combine those two, add in text-to-speech (arguably the easiest task in the mix), and you've got all the basics for a speech-to-speech translator.

Right now the project is a pipe dream of Google's translation department, but it's nice to get a hint at what sort of tech to expect from the company in coming years. If nothing else, the world of prank phone calls is about to change forever.

Now, it's not the much-anticipated Windows Mobile 7 release, but we've reached another stepping stone along the way. Sony Ericsson has announced the first smartphone that will feature version 6.5.3 of the mobile operating system.

The big change in 6.5.3 is much improved touchscreen support. Rather than force you to use a stylus and resistive touchscreen, WM 6.5.3 lets you interact with a capacitive screen directly with your fingers - the same type of screen found on the iPhone. The system interface has been tweaked all over to allow for touch control with broad fingertips instead of a narrow stylus.

Besides the touch control overhaul, the next largest change is a series of improvements to the mobile version of Internet Explorer. Microsoft claims you'll be able to load sites faster and that the browser will require less memory than before, freeing up system resources for other apps.

The Sony Ericsson Aspen, the first device to feature the OS, should be available before summer.

Love it or hate it, Microsoft's subscription-based Xbox Live service has been a major selling point of the Xbox series of consoles. While others like Sony have been offering networked play for free, Microsoft's service has at least been compelling enough to convince millions of users to sign up since the service launched for the original Xbox in 2002. Those gamers who have been around since the beginning may have to get in a few lasts hurrahs of classic play online, as the company announced today that it's terminating XBL connectivity for original Xbox games.

Even though most gamers have migrated to the 360, there's still a dedicated fanbase playing original Xbox titles, either on old consoles or through the 360's emulation. These games are popular enough to warrant the company publishing a separate ranking of the most-played original Xbox titles online. Despite this, Microsoft claims that in order to make internal changes to XBL which are necessary to continue evolving the service, it's going to have to break compatibility with these older games.

You have until April fifteenth to get in a few rounds of Halo 2 or Counterstrike before Microsoft pulls the plug. Gamers adversely affected by this decision are to be compensated by Microsoft, though the company hasn't yet revealed just what it has in mind. If you're one of those users, check your email and XBL messages for updates.

Barnes & Noble has released an update to its Nook e-reader that improves performance, tweaks the user interface, and enhances touchscreen response.

Updating your Nook to version 1.2 adds a lot of little changes that address small issues that might have been keeping you from fully enjoying the tablet. For instance, now the Nook correctly keeps place of where you were in a document when you power-down. There's also more sensible sorting options available, better notification of which of your books you're able to digitally lend to friends, and improved in-store WiFi notifications.

Perhaps the most significant parts of the upgrade are the performance and battery boosts. Though the company hasn't revealed exactly what it's changed, users who have installed the upgrade report a faster, more responsive Nook. B&N also claims that there's now better battery management at play, but as the update just came out, we may need to wait a day or so to get reports of just how effective that change is.

Right now Barnes & Noble is slowly sending the update out over-the-air to Nook users, but if you're impatient like us you can download and install the file yourself. Instructions are available on the company's website.

With all the modern conveniences digital cameras afford us, the notion of an idiot-proof "point-and-shoot" camera has probably never been more true. Our cameras correct for red eye, sense when to engage the flash, and can even wait until everyone's smiling before snapping the shutter. It's gotten to the point where we can take these little things, though technically impressive on their own merits, for granted. Near the top of that list would be autofocus, saving us from missing out on preserving fleeting moments because we couldn't bring the subject into focus in time. LensVector is hoping to make a good thing even better, as it's secured funding for the production of a solid-state autofocus system.

As any high school physics student could tell you, lenses focus an image by bending light. By taking multiple lenses and adjusting the distances between them, you can change what part of the image comes into sharp focus. When using your camera's autofocus, you can likely hear the lenses moving, or even see how they shift around. The LensVector system forgoes those moving parts for a system that modulates how light behaves inside a lens by running electricity through it. Similar to the differences between hard disks and solid-state drives, the lack of moving parts should lead to a faster, more resilient product.

LensVector's investors have pooled $30 million into the project, which should allow the company to produce five million focus assemblies a month. There's no word on what companies will be the first to use the lenses, but with that many being made we expect to start seeing them in digital cameras and camera phones soon.

Google appears to be secretly at work on an interesting expansion to its Google Maps Street View, allowing you to virtually step inside stores and walk through the aisles, just as if they were streets on a map.

The tentatively-titled Google Store View, according to store owners who have been approached by the company, features the same sort of imagery as the Street View we're familiar with: a series of still photos every few feet, stitched together to form a panorama. With no formal word from Google we're left to speculate as to the intended use behind Store View. It seems likely that the company will annotate the images with links to product manufacturers, and maybe even suggestions on where to get the best deals on the same or similar items. That sounds like a daunting task, but we know Google Goggles technology can identify many products from a pictures, so the company may be able to automate quite a bit of the process.

The only wrinkle we can think of is that store shelves change much more frequently than road layouts, so keeping the imagery up-to-date could pose an ongoing challenge. It will be interesting to see what Google has in mind to address that issue, and to hear some official word on the company's plans for the service.

Is AT&T getting more confident in the capabilities of its 3G data network, or is the company just getting nicer? Just a couple days after Apple decided to finally start allowing VoIP apps for the iPhone that work over 3G - no doubt after consultation with AT&T - the cell provider has given the go-ahead for Apple to approve an unrestricted SlingPlayer for the iPhone.

Sling is basically a DVR crossed with a media server, letting users watch their favorite shows remotely. Since it's pushing all that video, there are some significant traffic concerns involved. Until now, if you wanted to watch your Sling feed on an iPhone, it had to be over WiFi.

AT&T and Sling have apparently been working to minimize the chances the app overloads the 3G network, so hopefully one Sling user won't suck all the bandwidth from a cell tower being shared by many users. Existing iPhone SlingPlayer users can upgrade to the 3G version for free; if anyone gets a chance to try it out, let us know how the network handles this stress test.

Amazon's recent acquisition of a tech startup is fueling rumors that the company's Kindle will soon have a touchscreen interface of its own.

The company, called - appropriately enough - Touchco, has developed a touchscreen technology that supposedly can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of the capacitive screens found on devices like the iPad. It's a resistive technology, which makes us a little uneasy; resistive touschscreens can have problems with multi-touch and can sometimes distort the display when in use. Touchco claims its "interpolating force-sensitive resistance" is both transparent and able to handle multiple simultaneous inputs, so maybe this is time for us to reconsider our prejudice.

The obvious drive behind the move would be that Amazon wants to more directly compete with the iPad. It could also help bring the Kindle's cost down, if adding a touchscreen means the company can remove the Kindle's keyboard components and rely on a virtual keyboard instead.

This deal just went through, and Touchco hasn't yet manufactured any commercial-ready screens featuring its technology, so it will likely still be some time before Amazon manages to work the tech into the Kindle. Odds are we can expect to hear something more official within the next year or so.