It looks like a regular photo album. Pictures of family members or people you work with. But Flip Album Suite, from E-Book Systems, is different. It's virtual - on my computer. And there are versions for both PCs and Macs. Earlier versions of this software were panned, but the latest version (5.5) seems to have answered a lot of complaints.

You start by dragging thumbnails of your photos to the album and arrange and size them. And either turn the pages with your mouse or set it up to run on auto. You can vary the time between page changes.

Users can add text, borders, and MP3 music to personalize the album.

It also has editing tools to retouch pictures for red eye, contrast, and brightness. (I always recommend making corrections before importing pictures into "creative" software.)

Once you have created your album, you can burn it onto CD, email it, or save it to your computer.

This is not software to organize your pictures. It's more like scrapbooking. The idea is to make viewing digital pictures as close to the experience of flipping through a traditional photo album as possible.

Flip album Suite has a trial download so you can see if it's for you.

Color Blackberry from Nextel

This is the new Color Blackberry from Nextel - the 7510. It's an integrated phone and PDA. It handles email, calendar, address book and Nextel's Direct Connect feature. Previous Blackberry combo phones required a headset for hands free operation, but The 7510 has a speakerphone.

FeedRoom

Two New Products

Nextel's Kevin Hussey says that makes a big difference. "Having the external speakerphone is more akin to the experience they're used to having on our broad set of handsets. For the 7510, with its external speakerphone, gives folks the hands free option in the car on a cellular call, or the hands free traditional experience with our direct connect feature."

And that means being able to use the PDA function, writing notes, while talking on the phone. However, some people prefer to keep their phones and PDAs separate. Whatever works for you.