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Sundance Head
Sabrina Sloan
Chris Daughtry - Season 5
American Idol will soon be banned from being recorded on my Tivo forever - or at least until America gets her act together. Last night, the American Idol elimination round just set me over the edge when America voted off Sabrina Sloan (powerhouse singer) and Sundance Head (bluesy rocker). Yes, I admit it, along with loving gadgets, VoIP, and consumer electronics, I'm also an American Idol fan - along with some 34 million other fans. The sad thing is after the Chris Daughtry shocker last season when he got voted off by idiotic voters that somehow thought Elliott Yamin was better than Chris Daughtry, that I am no longer surprised by the voting results.Can I ever buy another notebook computer again?
Or maybe they can just come up with better power supplies for notebooks -- you never hear about notebook recalls, only battery recalls.
Lenovo's recent recall of 100,000 battery packs used in ThinkPad notebook computers got me to thinking about this. This time, the fire hazard is if the battery is struck forcefully on the corner, such as from a direct fall to the ground.
Holy Batman!
Yes indeed, it's too good to be true, but one of the classic computer hardware manufacturers has come back from the digital grave as the manufacturer of "high specification" gaming computers.
Yes, we're talking about Commodore, which launched the best-selling personal computer of the late 20th century some 25 years ago. Commodore's C64 defined the early computer games experience for millions of people worldwide -- and the whole computer experience for that matter.
At the Game Developers Conference 2007, Microsoft announced it will be launching a 512MB memory unit for the Xbox 360 -- eight times the orginal 64MB unit! It's also increasing the official size limit of Xbox LIVE Arcade games from 50MB to 150MB.
With 512MB, Xbox 360ers will now have greatly expanded storage capabilities for gaming on the go, enabling gamer profile and save game data to be stored and transported, as well as LIVE Arcade games and Xbox LIVE Marketplace content.
Not too surprising, but it also give 360ers the ability to download exclusive content from any of the 45,000 Xbox 360 kiosks accessible at retail outlets worldwide.
A wireless communications device includes a motion-detecting device, such as a pedometer, that generates a signal upon detecting the user's motion.
Some surprises just don't seem like surprises, do they?
If we are all waiting for the iPhone (well, maybe not all), then why shouldn't Microsoft follow Apple's lead and launch a ZunePhone?
And why shouldn't Microsoft take the same route as Apple again by denying that they are working on a product of the mobile phone type?
So, despite denials from Microsoft about the ZP existence, don't be too surprised if we see that product later this year -- and most likely after the iPhone (just in case there are any cool features that can be "added" to the ZunePhone).
According to this report, Microsoft has filed a whole bunch of patents -- speech enhancement/filtering, an on-screen keyboard, capacitance touch slider, contact display, health monitoring, clamshell form factor and remote control of playback on a remote device.
Adobe intends to offer a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing program in the next three to six months.
According to reports, this hosted version of Photoshop is part of a bigger company strategy to introduce Internet-delivered services that complement its "shrink-wrapped applications" and head off likely competition from Google.
And that's good news for us folks who are used to buying the "shrink-wrapped" stuff or downloading it to get what we want.
Now you're talking!
The Marriott Corp. said this week it will begin installing a new technology that will give its patrons the ability to connect various personal devices (let's just call them gadgets) to HD screens in its hotel rooms.
(About time!)
Current in-room sets reportedly are being replaced with 32-inch LCD HD units.
