By Chief Gizmateer
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

As DVR Playground reported last week, Sling Media officially will release three new Slingboxes on September 28th. This release marks the first hardware upgrade of the Slingbox which won several innovation awards this past year.

Slingcommunity got a sneak preview of the new Slingbox line containing the Slingbox Tuner, A/V and Pro as expected. With each Slingbox uniquely tailored towards a specific type of user, the choice of which Slingbox is right for consumers could be confusing so Slingcommunity has released another article to help choose which Slingbox is right for you. For instance, if you use basic cable and an antenna, the Slingbox A/V would be your choice. On the other end, if you have multiple devices you would like to control or connect your HD sources through component input into your Sling, you need to consider the Slingbox Pro.

Source: DVR Playground

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Windows XP has a ton of hidden utitlities that often go undiscovered for years. Case in point, a hidden icon creator called Eudcedit. The name is awful, but it is handy for creating desktop icons, fonts, and even logos.

To start the program go to Run in the Start Menu then type eudcedit and click OK.
Source: Smartbro

By Chief Gizmateer
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

In an effort to make the Intel Viiv platform useful, Intel has partnered with DirecTV to allow the recently released HD DVR stream video and audio from Intel Viiv systems with the Digital Media Server software.

Intel leased a huge space at CES back in January showcasing their Viiv technology. While the Geeks thought Viiv was “kinda cool”, we were drooling over the dual core laptops.

DirecTV’s HD DVR could definitely use an ability to grab digital media from other sources around your house. Not based on TiVo, these units have yet to be hacked and made more useful… yet.

Source: Gizmos for Geeks and DVR Playground

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

In a recent post from Ben Edelman, he details how the TRUSTe seal could be helping bad actors infect users pc’s, because they trust these seals mean that the site is trustworthy, du huh. So Ben took an empirical look at TRUSTe and compared their sites with the findings of SiteAdvisor, and found that TRUSTe sites are more than twice as likely to be untrustworthy.

When a stranger promises “you can trust me,” most people know to be extra vigilant. What conclusion should users draw when a web site touts a seal proclaiming its trustworthiness? Some sites that are widely regarded as extremely trustworthy present such seals. But those same seals feature prominently on sites that seek to scam users — whether through spyware infections, spam, or other unsavory practices.

It’s no great surprise that bad actors seek to free-ride on sites users rightly trust. Suppose users have seen a seal on dozens of sites that turn out to be legitimate. Dubious sites can present that same seal to encourage more users to buy, register, or download.

What do I find? In short, nothing good. I examine a sampling of 500,000+ top web sites, as reported by a major ISP. Of the sites certified by TRUSTe, 5.4% are untrustworthy according to SiteAdvisor’s data, compared with just 2.5% untrustworthy sites in the rest of the ISP’s list. So TRUSTe-certified sites are more than twice as likely to be untrustworthy. This result also holds in a regression framework controlling for site popularity (traffic rank) and even a basic notion of site type. Source: Ben Edelman

We Say: Wayne Porter posted about it on Revenews with an interview of Ben, and one of the people from TRUSTe stopped by to comment, and he has asked them for an interview. No response as of yet, but I’m hoping they take them up on it, I think with a little education TRUSTe could become a seal that we can all trust, and not just a way to legitimize bad websites.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

In another of those “I’m not surprised” type stories, AOL has been sued over the release of search data for 650,000 users which occurred in August. The suit was filed in California which could complicate matters since it’s unclear how many users out of the 650,000 reside in California.

The suit was filed in federal court for the Northern District of California by the law firm of Berman, DeValiero, Pease, Tabacco, Burt & Pucillo of San Francisco. It accuses AOL of violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, plus several California consumer and advertising laws.

In seeking class action status, the suit asks for no less than $1,000 in compensation to those nationwide for violations of federal law, and an additional $4,000 in damages to those in California under the state’s own laws. Source: BetaNews

We Say: This also falls in the category of “what took you so long” stories but that’s beside the point.

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

The latest build of Windows Vista, RC1 Build 5728, is now available to the public for download. Click here to get it. If you are not experienceing any problems, you may want to skip this update, as this release has not gone through the same internal testing process and could be unstable in certain situations.

By Chief Gadgeteer, Gizmos for Geeks
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews.

If you’re considering buying an HD radio, then you may want to hold off for 2 months or so. TWICE magazine is reporting that at least 21 HD Radio SKUs for the home will be available from 14 brands by November. They’ve got a preview of some of these brands and models, including models from Cambridge SoundWorks, Denon, and RadioShack. Many of these models also come in or are XM and/or Sirius-ready. Now why should you care about HD radio? Read on…

Read the entire article over at GizmosForGeeks.com.

Source: Gizmos for Geeks.

By Chief Gadgeteer, Gizmos for Geeks
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews.

This isn’t a completely surprising headline: there are 2.73 TV sets compared with 2.55 people in the typical American home. The statistic that I would like to see is how many computers there are in the average home. For comparison, my 2 person household only has 2 televisions, but 7 computers! Ok, I’ll admit that not all of those computers are used equally, and I’m a computer geek, but still. If you think of your computers as televisions or video transports (how many YouTube vids or movies have you seen on your computer?), then the above stat goes up.

Source: Gizmos for Geeks.