File this one under “big nothing” in my book. Hilton is installing alarm clocks with a “line in” jack for MP3 players.

Why is this a waste? First, FM transmitters are really only any good in stationary places like a hotel radio of all places, so most people are covered. And second the speakers in those clock radios are garbage.

Note to Hilton: Invest in WiFi for every room and you’ll have happy guests. Offer it for free and you’ll have happy frequent guests.

I ran this about a year ago, but to those who recently got TiVo, here’s a treat for you!

The only feature missing on my beloved TiVo is not really missing at all - enable the 30 second commercial skip button with this elegant hack. From weaknees.com:
1 Start playing any recording.
2 During playback press:
Select - Play - Select - 3 - 0 - Select
3 You should hear three bongs (if you don’t have the TiVo sounds disabled), and you’re done. Your “skip to beginning/end” button (the arrow pointing to a line) is now a 30 second skip button. During fast-forwarding or rewinding, the button will still “skip to tick.”

Now They Tell Me Dept: After I finished ripping my 500th CD in my attempt to go all digital, here come the slew of services designed to take the monotony out of converting to a digital music library.

RipDigital has a well-designed website and decent prices. Here’s how it works:

“To begin, tell us how many CDs you want to convert into digital music. We will deliver your digital music library on data DVDs for easy transfer onto your computer. Next, tell us if you want to purchase a portable hard drive preloaded with your music, in addition to the DVDs included in your package.

“RipDigital will send you everything you need to ship your CDs to us for conversion. Our customer kit includes spindles to hold your CDs along with protective padding, a pre-paid FedEx return label and packing tape. Simply load your CDs onto the spindles, seal the box and call FedEx for pickup. RipDigital insures all FedEx shipments for $10 per CD.”

Everyone knows that the day they solve the battery bottleneck, is the day we really get cooking with technology. Today we all are held hostage by a host of electronic devices with limited battery life, a clogged jumble of chargers, and the endless beeping of these gadgets as they lose battery power. (Or is that just me?! — Alice)

So what of we are doomed to charging things daily for awhile? That’s what some smarty at Toshiba must have decided when he tackled the problem in a new way: make the charge time shorter. Much shorter.

“According to an announcement made today, Toshiba has improved on its existing Lithium Ion battery technology through the implementation of nanoparticles which aid in preventing the rapid disassembly of organic electrolytes witnessed in current batteries, allowing for rapid charging and a massive improvement in battery capacity loss over time.

“Toshiba claims its new battery is capable of obtaining a charge of 80% in as short time as a minute, and also produced test results showing that following a test cycle of 1,000 charges and depletions, the decrease seen in battery capacity was a mere 1%. Aiming to commercialize the technology in 2006, Toshiba did not comment on whether pricing levels for batteries based on the new technology would remain similar to current battery pricing.” Source: InfoSync World

Not sure if this appeals to me or horrifies me, or maybe a bit of both, but there is a new trend afoot my friends. It’s called “Social TV” and the idea is that PVRs (TiVo and PC based) allow you to watch TV on your own time, so why not watch your TV with your online friends where ever they may be.

I’ll point in a sec to a detailed look at this over at PVR Blog, but just wanted to detail out why I think this is creative stuff (Did I mention this came from Xerox PARC?). Network TV in the big 50s sense of the word was about everyone tuning into the same thing and then talking about it the next day. PVRs are about having things you want when you want it - a very satisfying but deeply solo experience. Social PVR TV, is a blend of the two that also allows you to watch “with” someone who may not even live near you. Very interesting.

“Watching the shows on DVD like this kills the water cooler effect. There’s no one to talk to about what you’re watching. My friends who are long-time Alias fans are most likely tiring of my emails to them asking about particular plot twists or characters — depending on what episode I’m watching, we’re two or three years out of sync. They’re having trouble just remembering the episode, much less the scene that spurs the question.

“I wonder if there’s an opportunity here for subscription services like NetFlix or TiVo or for retail outlets like Amazon or Blockbuster to create micro-communities of episodic entertainment viewers. Folks who aren’t watching the shows “as they happen,” but who are catching up. Netflix knows who else is watching Alias Season Three; could those users be connected for some watercooler conversation? Because I’m dying to talk with someone — anyone — about Sydney’s missing two years, while season four piles up on the TiVo…

“Unfortunately the Social TV research at PARC isn’t going to help Michael, they want to bring people together across three dimensions and he wants to bring people together across the fourth. There’s also the positive social aspects of PVRs to consider, like being able to put The Big Game™ on hold until everyone gets to the TV or pausing a movie to fight with your spouse over the remote.” Source: PVRBlog

I think the electronics industry should fire their design people and go with the ones who are coming up with these compelling fakes. Earlier this week we had a piece on the fake iPod cell phone, and today Nikon allegedly had info “leaked” about an upcoming entry level DSLR.

“Nikon Germany accidentally let the product manual for the new Nikon D50 leak on the web for a bit. It’s been pulled already, but not before the pertinent details of the new entry-level DSLR were extracted. Expect the the D50 to have a 6.1-megapixel sensor, a silver case, and use SD cards for storage. Now all we need is a price (expect it well under a grand).” Source: Gizmodo

The details may be correct but alas, the image is a fake.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news that HP has found a new CEO. “Mr. Hurd has run NCR since February 2003. When he took the helm, sales were shrinking, pension and retiree costs were swallowing profits and the company’s stock was at a nadir. He pulled the company out of the red, partly by slashing costs. In late January, the Dayton, Ohio company reported that its fourth quarter net income had surged 55% and raised its 2005 earnings forecast for the second time in nine days. NCR makes automated-teller machines and other retail and financial-electronic products.

“H-P directors chose Mr. Hurd because he is a strong executive able to improve operations quickly and execute strategy, one person close to the situation said. Also, “he’s very, very driven'’ and “has run a mini H-P,'’ this person said. BusinessWeek floated Mr. Hurd’s name as a possible CEO candidate earlier this week.

“Mr. Hurd will succeed Carly Fiorina, whom the technology giant forced out last month after she disagreed with the board of directors over how to structure the company. Ms. Fiorina, who ran H-P for five turbulent years, had grown the company largely through the acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. But she failed to produce new growth after the combination.

“Mr. Hurd will arrive at a company that currently faces a host of challenges in markets such as server-computers and desktop computers. Competition from rivals such as Dell Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. is fierce. While NCR, like H-P, also plays in a variety of markets, the scale of the two companies is very different. NCR is much smaller than H-P, which produces $80 billion in revenues annually and has 150,000 employees worldwide.” source: Wall Street Journal

This is not a new debate, but I found a column on Gamershell that covered the topic in some interesting detail. Personally, I love gaming on the PC and as the article stated, I am one of the few willing to put money into creating a top notch gaming system while the rest of the world plunks down $150 and fires up the Playstation. PC gaming also has an easy connection to the internet for multiplayer action, but as more and more systems open up to multiplayer, maybe there is a real threat to my favorite platform. Some points to consider:

“Case Study 1 – Pulling an Ion Storm: Ruining your own reputation with dumbed down console ports.
In 2000 Ion Storm, in conjunction with Eidos, released Deus Ex, an unparalleled classic of role playing, action, and story telling. It won 35 game of the year awards and sold nearly a million copies, a poor showing for such a critical success, but still solid for a PC game, and enough to warrant a sequel. In 2003 they released that sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War (made possible by those solid PC sales of the first game), as an XBOX game with a shoddy PC port tacked on as an afterthought. Very few cared when Ion Storm was finally put out of their misery two weeks ago when Eidos closed the studio down, but unfortunately they managed to tarnish both the Deus Ex and Thief series with craptastic console ports of games that owed their original existence to the PC. Why did this happen?

“Case Study 2 – Pulling a Rockstar: Capitalizing on cross platform potential.
Rockstar (then called DMA Designs) released the original Grand Theft Auto on the PC in 1997, and the free form, non-linear gameplay, with the added ability to be a badass criminal and kill cops, was something nobody could resist. It was one of the most popular games of the year, and eventually Rockstar went on to make Grand Theft Auto III and GTA: Vice City, two of the most popular games of all time… on the PS2. Sure, the games were eventually ported to the PC, and ported fairly well at that, but why did they move to PS2 development (thus forsaking things like multiplayer modes and next generation graphics) and sell out their core audience that made them successful in the first place?

“Case Study 3 – Pulling a Polyphony Digital: Never even touching the PC market at all.
This case study is the most irritating of all, and also perhaps the most telling. Polyphony Digital is the developer behind the incredibly successful Gran Turismo series, and while the publisher is Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), part of the same company that makes the console the game is exclusive to, that doesn’t tell the whole story. Sony has published many games for the PC, and many exclusively for the PC (Everquest being one example, and that retarded PS2 port doesn’t count as it wasn’t the same game), so they certainly could have brought the Gran Turismo series to the PC without too much trouble, even improving it a great deal with improved graphics, controls, and multiplayer support. Why didn’t they?”

Some more facts and points from the article:

“The console game industry saw 6.2 billion dollars in retail software sales in 2004, an 8 percent increase over 2003, so clearly the game market is growing into an even larger behemoth than it was before. However, when you factor in PC game sales, a paltry 1.2 billion in 2004, and a decline from the sales in 2003, you begin to see where this is going. All by itself, Grand Theft Auto - Vice City sold 5.1 million PS2 copies at retail, for a total of around 250 million dollars. That’s a fifth of total PC game sales worldwide. One game. Also consider crap titles that were thrown together for movie tie-in promotion, like Shark Tale or Bad Boys 2 : Miami Takedown – These games, made for relative peanuts and with extremely short development times, consistently outsell all but the biggest PC titles – Games which took years to develop and that usually offer much more value for your entertainment dollar. How do you think it feels for a talented developer like S2 with their top notch PC exclusive title Silent Storm when it is outsold 20 to 1 (estimated) by the ridiculously bad console title “Bad Boys: Miami Takedown”?”

Read the complete article here and then let me know what you think. Agree?Disagree?