How many pics of your friends can you fit on one of these?

What: SanDisk Extreme III 12GB and 16 GB compact flash cards.

The buzz: The largest compact flash cards available (for the moment), these are designed for professional photographers and video camcorders. If you can afford one, you could probably shoot a year’s worth of family photos without having to stop and download them to your computer.

Get it: Available in December. $780 for 12GB and $1,050 for 16GB.

Link: www.sandisk.com

New stuff: Mom, you better hide the cat

What: A remote-controlled toy Hovercraft

So what?: Are you kidding? It’s a cool Hovercraft! Duh!

The buzz: Ever mindful of the holidays, the folks at the Tyco division of Mattel have come out with an all-season, all-terrain, cat-chasing toy called the Airblade. Controlled with a radio remote, the amphibious and watertight Airblade has three hover jets, making it more maneuverable than most hover-type toys. The rubber tires that encircle the fans and help create the air cushion can also spin and pivot for enhanced maneuvering. The airblade is powered by a rechargeable 12 volt NiMH battery with a 9 volt for the control unit. One drawback: The radio controller has only two frequencies to choose from, so only two people can play in the same area.

Get it: Available at most major retailers and toy stores for $70 to $80.

Link: www.tycorc.com

— Jim Johnson

Cars to automatically detect speed limit

Sorry, Smokey.

Speeding tickets might become yesterday’s headache for drivers who use an automatic speed-limit detection system in the works from German electronics giant Siemens AG.

The system, expected to debut in as-yet-undisclosed cars in 2008, includes an onboard camera that reads speed limit signs.

After it spots a sign, the system uses the car’s navigation system to check whether the number it detected is plausible: Should the speed limit really be 55 in this urban zone?

Once the limit is established, the system can alert drivers in a display beamed onto the windshield that they’re going too fast. Motorists also can let the system tap into the car’s cruise control and automatically reduce the speed to the posted limit.

The system won’t, however, automatically raise a car’s speed to match a suddenly higher limit.

Does this get us closer to a car that can be put entirely on autopilot?

Siemens spokesman Enno Pflug doubts it. In the clear blue sky, putting a plane in a computer’s hands is a pretty safe endeavor.

Training a machine to adapt to the weaving, halting congestion of life on the road is another matter.

Not to mention that few drivers likely want to just sit there.

“Our aim is more comfort for the driver,” Pflug says, “who also likes to drive.”

TV rating company to track video games

The company known for tracking television viewers now plans to do the same thing with video games.

Nielsen Media Research on Wednesday announced an electronic rating service to track who is playing what game.

The data will be collected from the same 10,000 sample households used for Nielsen’s television ratings.

Subscribers such as advertisers and video game makers will get weekly ratings reports and charts showing the most popular games, as well as information about the type of console and the genre of the game.

New York-based Nielsen said it is still putting together a database of games to be monitored. The system, set for launch by the middle of next year, will work on the current and next-generation line of consoles from Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co.

Advertisers have been looking for new ways to reach the lucrative demographic of video game players, and ads have been appearing within games.

Company officials said the service will give advertisers a precise way to measure their reach.

Jeff Herrmann, vice president of Nielsen’s wireless and interactive services division, said he expects the system will drive advertising investment and help convert video game advertising from discretionary to essential.

“The value of an entertainment medium is directly proportional to how well it is measured,” he said.

Sites let politic junkies post video snippets

Politicians always say every vote counts. But what about every video?

Atlanta-based ViTrue and Friendster are hoping to build buzz by allowing political junkies to post their own campaign videos online.

“This is the first time you’ve got mainstream consumers who can express themselves with video,” said Reggie Bradford, ViTrue’s founder and CEO. “You don’t have to go to the polls to express yourself. You can do that with this video and hopefully have a greater impact.”

More popular sites like News Corp.’s MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which Google Inc. is buying, also allow video, including politically oriented clips.

The ViTrue videos would appear both at ViTrue’s Sharkle.com and at Friendster, a pioneer in social networking that now lags behind MySpace and Facebook in usage.

Most of the videos now are more satirical than political. In one, a movie theater manager lays his claim to become a world leader. In another, a radio host mocks negative ads by calling his on-air partner a “sadistic hedonist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural.” The makers of the highest-rated videos win a $2,500 prize, a video camera or video iPods.

But Bradford said the small sample of videos has already earned more than 840,000 video views as of Wednesday.

— From wire reports