According to a HDBeat tipster, the Tivo Series 3 may be making its debut on September 17th set with a retail price of $799! According to Engadget, the Tivo will have dual HD recording and 300 hours of recording space. It also will support dual CableCARDs, and connections to external SATA drives. The price will force you to wonder if they might at least discount the subscription service. So far the device looks good, but the price will probably prevent it from becoming a popular consumer item.

Quinn. Possibly the best tetris client ever made. A couple weeks ago The Tetris Company forced Simon Haertel to stop the distribution of Quinn and threatened legal action. After seeking legal Advice, Haertel removed all mentions of tetris from his website and instead calls it an “implementation of a popular falling-blocks game”. The app uses amazing graphics, and has great networking features allowing you to play with friends over bonjour or over the internet. I’m glad to see that Quinn is back in development and is once again open to the public.

Quinn
Official Website
Direct Download (2.7 MB)

Lexus will introduce a new technology into their LS460 this fall that senses “pedestrians, pets, and other road hazards”. The technology was co-created by NEC Electronics along with Toyota. After the introduction into the LS460s, presumably the technology will be used in other Toyota owned vehicles. The image processing chip is very energy efficient and only uses 2 watts of power. The new technology will be a significant leap in safety systems and hopefully will prevent many crashes in the future.

Yoshirou Miyaji, the general manager of NEC predicts the technology will become more popular in 2010. Miyaji is expecting 50% of cars in Japan and 20% of the cars in the world to begin using the image processor. It will also be used in the areas of security, gaming, and robotics, though the article doesn’t go into details.

Apple recently posted three new Mac/PC Ads, starring Justin Long and John Hodgman. The three new ads are titled “Accident”, “Angel/Devil”, “Trust Mac”. “Accident” is used to advertise Apple’s Magnetic power cord for its MacBooks, and involves John Hodgman sitting in a wheelchair after getting knocked over. “Angel/Devil” advertises the photo albums you can create with iPhoto and involves the classic devil and angel trying to persuade John Hodgman to either tear up the book or ask how to make one. I thought it was mediocre compared to the other two. The final advertisement shows Hodgman dressed up as a spy to protect itself from spyware. This was probably the funniest of the three. All 3 ads can be found here.

Following the universal release of Firefox, the good people over at Flock have made their application a universal binary. If you haven’t heard of Flock, it’s a web browser based on Firefox that has special features that keep your social life up-to-date. Some of the features in Flock are unlike any other browser, and make you wonder why other browsers haven’t done these things before.

My favorite feature is the shelf. Clicking the clipboard icon on the bottom bar will bring up the shelf, which lets you save URLs, text, and images for later reference. This is especially useful for research, or is just nice for when you want to organize information in a browsing session.

Another great feature is the star button. The star button gets rid of the clumsy bookmarking system that plagues every other browser I know of, by allowing you to click the star button next to the URL bar. This automatically places these URLs into your bookmarks. Flock has some other great features that you can try out for yourself in the app.

Apple almost gave me a heart attack this morning… I open up my computer, start looking through my RSS subscribtions and what do I find? “BootCamp”. Bootcamp is an application that is going to be featured in Mac OS X: Leopard, but there is a public beta available today. Bootcamp burns a CD that contains all the drivers you need for your mac including (drumroll please) graphics. It guides you through the installation and everything.

We are edging closer and closer to Leopard, and further away from Tiger aren’t we? We’ve already gotten to 10.4.6, which is a standard update from Apple that brings some nice bugfixes and security fixes.

From Software Update:

The 10.4.6 Update is recommended for all users and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes for the following applications and technologies:

- login and authentication in a variety of network environments
- file access and byte range locking with AFP file sharing
- network access when using proxy server automatic configuration files
- connecting to Cisco VPN servers using IP/Sec
- using Bluetooth wireless devices
- searching iWork ‘06 and Microsoft Office documents with Spotlight
- saving Word documents automatically when using a network home directory
- creating Automator workflows for iPhoto 6
- synchronizing contacts and calendars to .Mac and mobile phones
- mounting and unmounting iDisk volumes
- compatibility with third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n303411.

For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.

After the update, PowerPC computers will restart twice.

IGN.com is confirming that the next Halo game is set for release in Spring of 2007. IGN is saying that their source was an anonymous one at Microsoft. Luckily for Nintendo and Sony, Halo 3 will not coincide with their release of the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Revolution. There are not really any details regarding the game so far, but previews are expected at E3.

William H. Gates, a man who has been reported to have not smiled since he became a billionaire is now making cracks about himself. In fact, it is rumored that the last time that Bill smiled was after he was arrested for the infamous driving violation. At Mix ‘06, a new event that highlights web technolgies, Bill does a search for “Bill Gates” on YouTube, and finds humerous videos such as “Bill Gates Runs Like a Girl” and “Bill Gates gets Smashed“.

This all comes after a report from Seattle PI that Microsoft was spending $120 million to erase the “huge company” image that they have had for too long now. I’m glad to see that Bill is not taking himself so seriously now, and being less robotish.

New videos of “The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass” have surfaced for the Nintendo DS. I have to admit, when I first saw this story I wasn’t very excited, despite having beaten “Ocarina of Time” numerous times. I actually haven’t played the Zelda games in a few years, but once I watched this trailer, and I heard the distinct Zelda sound effects, something went off in my head that said “I must get this”.

Download
Low Resolution (320 by 240) (.mov format)
High Resolution (460 by 480) (.wmv format)

At this point, who knows if the rumors are true… Apple really hasn’t said anything about Leopard except that it’s going to be named Leopard and going to be shown in August at WWDC. Despite this, MacOSXRumors is claiming that they have “reliable sources” telling them there will be virtualization in 10.5, or in other words, you will be able to easily run alternative operating systems such as Linux and Windows.

According to the rumor site, the upcoming software is code named “Chameleon” and is being developed alongside both Intel and Microsoft.

Virtualization software would potentially allow users to run alternative operating systems alongside Mac OS X. There has been previous discussion about Virtualization Technology support in Intel’s processors.

In a continuing competition with Yahoo, Google has announced a financial service properly named “Google Finance”. The new service gives you 15-minute delayed stock quotes, and incorporates some very nice Flash. If you type in a stock quote, say IMAX for instance, it gives you a list of news stories on the right side of the screen, and in the charts, it points markers to when those news stories were released.

Apple has unveiled their new iPod nano ad, which takes a departure from their normal sihlloute and random hands commercials. This one builds a city with album artwork and features music from Rinôçérôse. The music can be found here and the ad can be found here.

If you’ve ever owned a Dell product before, you’re probably familiar with Dell tech support. I remember back when I owned my old 8-pound Dell laptop I had so many problems with it. The screen constantly was flickering, it completely stopped working twice. The CD drive broke, and so did the touchpad. Yes, it was a terrible, terrible computer. That’s when I had my first few experiences with Dell tech support. The wait times were long, and the tech support agent was talking to probably 2-4 other people at once. That was a few years ago.

Maybe now, things are a little better. Maybe Dell is so concerned with the quality of their product, that they will even take the steps to fix a product that isn’t broken. That’s what happened to a reader of The New York Times. He wrote an email to Dell praising their 19″ flat panel screen to “balance the negative karma from the assertive complaining I do”. This was the email that Dell sent back to him:

Thank you for contacting Dell about your issue. I’m glad to be of assistance. I sense you are not getting optimal performance from your system. I want to help you get it working quickly so you can enjoy your computer.

I will ensure this situation is corrected. I’m committed to resolve this issue with the monitor.

Please provide the verification requested below so I can send you the replacement for the monitor.

Yesterday, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (both shows on Comedy Central) were added to the iTunes Music Store. The shows can be bought for a much more reasonable price than other shows, as long as you use the Multi-Pass. This new feature allows you to do the same thing you do on Tivo with a season pass. Multi-Pass requires you to pay $9.99 for 16 episodes of either show, where as the individual episodes cost the average price of $1.99 a piece.

iTunes Links
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report

In a recent forum post at AfterDawn, a user explains how to burn GameCube ISOs to mini-dvds, which are afterwards playable. The process is long, and requires the purcahse of specific hardware. The whole thing seems like it takes more trouble than it’s worth, and I have not been able to verify the validity as I do not have a GameCube, but if you can verify these claims please post in the comments.