Introducing the BlackBerry Remote Stereo Gateway, hot off the presses at the FCC, coming to an executive's office sometime in the future.

It uses Bluetooth to enable a wireless transmission of music from your BlackBerry device to your home or portable stereo. Simply pair your BlackBerry to the Gateway, and plug the Gateway into your stereo (via a 3.5mm line-in or RCA aux input).

Magically all your music tunes get streamed to the speakers of your choice. Think of it like a dock for your phone, only without the wires.

What was it that the NAB used to define satellite radio? Oh right, "nationwide, multi-channel, audio programming." So... what would you call streaming audio over mobile devices?

[via Gizmodo]

Amazon announced today that they will buy digital audio book provider Audible.com for $300 million.

Audible has been partnered with XM for several years now, from including Audible support in the Helix/Inno, to the XM Audible Store, to various co-sponsored events and XM's Sonic Theater (ch 163) featuring Audible content. But I'm assuming none of that will change, since there's no reason for it to.

One interesting thing to think about is Amazon's increasingly aggressive foray into digital media distribution.

Not only do they have a massive DRM-free digital music service, but now they have the leading spoken-word provider as well.

And with the Amazon Kindle (pictured above), users can access and download all of that content over a built-in high-speed wireless EVDO connection... for free.

While Kindle (which Amazon is struggling to keep up with the demand of) doesn't necessarily market itself as a music player - it's primarily an eBook reader - but the capability is currently there. And there could be more to come.

"There are a number of experimental features. We have made them accessible so customers can tell us if we should work on them and make them part of the product," said CEO Jeff Bezos on the earnings call.

It's nothing, yet, but it sure makes you go "hmm."

[ZDNet, TechCrunch]

The smartphone is a quad-band HSDPA device, equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth, full Web Browser, PIM, and - you guessed it - GPS functions. It'll run off of Garmin's own operating system with the user interface based on the current one Garmin's PNDs utilize. Oh, and that 3.5-inch LCD display? It's, of course, a full touchscreen.

Pricing and availability will reportedly be announced soon.

Now, if there's any gripe folks have had about satellite radio's retail strategy - it's been the lack of integration in PNDs and Cellphones. Well, now Garmin's gone and made those two, one and the same.

[Engadget]

If there's one thing I know about spectrum, it's that it's terribly boring to talk about. So when news hits the wires about the coveted 700mhz spectrum auction starting today, most folks' eyes glaze over and their brains switch to hold-music.

Thankfully, the good folks over at Engadget Mobile have put together a handy list of need-to-know items about today's auction and have translated the FCC-speak into Normal-speak. GigaOm has a nice breakdown as well.

There's some 214 bidders in this auction. Some of the big-boys to keep an eye on are AT&T, Verizon and Google, not to mention Cox, EchoStar, and Paul Allen (the deep pocketed co-founder of Microsoft) - check out USA Today for a nice chart breaking down the interests of some of the key players.

What does this mean to satellite radio? Nothing right now. Ultimately I think Block C, which is the nationwide block with the most bandwidth, will lead to the much fabled Wireless Internet (one of the FCC's requirements is to make Block C an "open-access" network), but that's all just pipe-dreams right now. There needs to be a winner first.