By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

I admit it’s been a slow week … and I’ve been trying to set up a new laptop … a process made longer by having to uninstall all the Dell bloatware that comes with a new system. But I couldn’t resist posting this. A Colorado woman has decided to get rid of some of her spare snow from the dual blizzards that have hit that state by selling some of it on eBay.

Only 10 offerings of snow are available and the proceeds are earmarked for a used snowblower for Jim or a pair of shovels. She says she doesn’t really expect to find a buyer for their blizzard overstock.

“We just wanted to just give some folks a laugh,” she said. Source: Yahoo! News

We Say: Yep, it’s worth a laugh. And, I guess, the listing fee at eBay.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Hot on the heels of Chief Gizmateer’s story earlier this week, about the popularity of Apple on the Amazon.com, came some bad news … investigations into stock options grants and faked documents at Apple. These stories triggered wild fluctuations in Apple stock price as the stock took a hit.

Today Apple indicated it would be restating its earnings for the last 3 years as well as defending CEO Steve Jobs.

In its delayed annual report, published early on Friday, Apple said it would restate its financial results for the last three years and also take a charge of $84 million.

Apple also said that while Jobs was “aware or recommended the selection of some favorable grant dates, he did not receive or financially benefit from these grants or appreciate the accounting implications.” Source: News.com

We Say: Steve Jobs did hire a lawyer, so he’s definitely concerned about this, and although it looks like he is in the clear, he is being careful.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

This is crazy. I can’t believe this guy … he booked a flight to visit his girlfriend, but made a typo and booked the flight to Sydney, Montana instead of Sydney, Australia. Coming as he was from Germany, at first he thought it was possible he was making stops in the U.S. before heading for Australia.

Dressed for the Australian summer in T-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany on Saturday for a four-week holiday.

Instead of arriving “down under”, Gutt found himself on a different continent and bound for the chilly state of Montana. Source: CNN

We Say: I still can’t understand it. He never checked his ticket, didn’t notice the signs in the airport indicating destination? Someone sure was flying on “autopilot”.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

What am I missing and what is the catch? divShare offers free accounts, picture galleries, no expirations, full-size pictures … all for free. I signed up for an account, ran all over the site … and can’t find an ad anywhere either.

According to their site blog, it looks like they went online on 12/19 and as of the time of the blog post, they had 700 users.

Check out some more stats:

Total Users: 701
Co-branded Users: 119 (17%)

Total Uploads: 2,226
Total Downloads: 50,531
Average File Size: 3.52 MB

Unique Visitors: 22,445

Source: divShare Blog

We Say: Naturally, with no source of income, there is the concern that this place might go “poof” like many sites during the original Internet boom / bust. I’m also wondering if this is just a “teaser” before a pay-for site emerges, and how the site will respond with more users. On the other hand, at least for trial purposes, I can’t see anything wrong with using it for a backup … to your backup.

By: Chief Gizmateer, Gizmos for Geeks
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Amazon released their numbers for the holiday season and Apple did quite well.

According to MacRumors, six of Apple’s iPod models placed in the top ten in the MP3 Player category while three MacBook models placed in the top ten in the Laptops category. Apple also placed three iMac models and one Mac Mini model in the desktop category. Granted Amazon update’s their top items hourly, but having watched these categories over the past month to make sure our predictions came true, the placement and items have not changed much. Also, Amazon does not really sell all manufacturers such as Dell , the leading PC maker, but top spot at Amazon proves the resurgence of Apple continues.

Apple made the top spot in each of the categories with the 30GB iPod (Black), MacBook and an iMac.

In addition to winning the Amazon battle, online shoppers overwhelmed the Apple iTunes store on Christmas and the day after with four times the number of visits to the store this Christmas over last Christmas.

By the way, Amazon had 4 million orders on December 11th eclipsing the previous record of 3.6 million on December 12th, 2006. This helps prove that Cyber Monday is nothing but a farce!

Source: Gizmos for Geeks

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Shoot, you can’t even trust chess players now. Much as many students have tried to do, a chess player was discovered to be using a Bluetooth headset to cheat at a recent tournament. The player, Umakant Sharma, had risen so quickly officials were suspicious.

Sharma was finally caught at a recent tournament when officials discovered that he had stitched a Bluetooth device in a cloth cap which he always pulled over his ears.

He communicated to his accomplices outside the hall, who then used a computer to relay moves to him, Indian chess federation secretary D.V. Sundar said on Wednesday. Source: Reuters

We Say: Hey, at least it wasn’t steroids, right?

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

I’m sure you couldn’t have forgotten, not with all the picture of fiery laptops on the web, but just a few days before the end of the year, Dell wants to make sure you remember: check your laptop batteries to be sure they aren’t part of the recall.

On Dec. 21, a spokesperson confirmed that the Round Rock, Texas, PC maker had issued the reminder to its customers as part of the company’s effort to recall more than four million notebooks that were shipped with faulty Sony battery packs.

Dell was the first PC maker to issue a recall, and company officials told customers that Sony would replace the faulty battery packs at no charge. Following the disclosure by Dell, Apple, Lenovo and several other PC manufactures also announced recalls of certain notebooks that used Sony battery packs. Source: eWeek

We Say: Thanks Dell for reminding me how, for the second straight year, Sony screwed up.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, intends to start his own search engine. The project would be called Wikiasari (from wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, and asari, which is Japanese for “rummaging search”). He indicated it would use the same user-based technology, which sounds like the idea would be to have users contribute to the search engine, much as they do with articles on Wikipedia.

“Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results,” he said.

Mr Wales believes that Google’s computer-based algorithmic search program is no match for the editorial judgment of humans. Source: Times Online

We Say: He’s right about some of the results, but really, for the most part, I am satisfied with Google results. On the other hand, this could be a good idea, but as we know with such famous incidents as Stephen Colbert asking his viewers to edit the article on elephants to state that the population of African elephants had tripled in the last decade, since “wikiality” would make it so, user-contributed information can be easily corrupted. In fact, Wales himself has said Wikipedia should not be used for academic research (for obvious reasons). Will Jimmy tell us not to trust his search engine results “if you really need to find something”, too?