Hannspree does produce some pretty nifty LCD TVs, but so far the ones that they are famous for would be those plush-covered LCD TVs that are meant for a single person or two pairs of eyes at max. The company is now looking at the bigger picture with the Hannspree Lounge model that comes surrounded by a curved panel of faux wood, making it a totally different proposition when it comes to positioning and placing this LCD TV in the living room. This particular form factor will surely defer anyone from hanging up this 37″ High-Definition ready display on a wall, but instead placing it in the middle of the living room where everybody can watch their favorite movies and shows in picture perfect quality.

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Al and I spent a few hours at the “best of stuff” show yesterday, checking out the new toys that should arrive in time for Christmas. One of the more innovative things we saw was the new Portable Media player from Archos.

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How many of you own a pair of Nikes, and iPod, and a Nike+iPod Sports Kit? For those who do not have the extra dough to pick up one of those expensive running shoes from Nike that are compatible with the Nike+iPod Sports Kit, take comfort. As necessity is the mother of invention, so has Switcheasy taken up the task to allow iPod owners worldwide enjoy their morning runs with the Nike+iPod Sports Kit with just about any other pair of shoes with the RunAway AnyShoe Adapter.

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The Office is one of the best shows on network TV. It’s clever, witty and very funny. But according to the Nielson ratings, The Office was a dud. The ratings were so bad that NBC almost cancelled it before the end of its first season. But since NBC owns and produces The Office, they had nothing to lose by posting it in the iTunes Store. At the very least, NBC thought they might make a little money on iTunes before canceling the show. But once episodes of The Office were available online, they became an iTunes overnight best seller. The Office had a huge fan base and the low Neilson ratings were basically just a lie.

Angela Bromstead, president of NBC Universal Television Studios, had this to say in Newsday:

“I’m not sure that we’d still have the show on the air” without the iTunes boost… The network had only ordered so many episodes, but when it went on iTunes and really started taking off, that gave us another way to see the true potential other than just Nielsen. It just kind of happened at a great time.”

Personally I think the Nielson ratings are a total joke. They only put a few thousand viewing monitors in dumb people’s houses. How is this an accurate sampling of US households? It’s not. Think I’m wrong? Consider the following:

• Why is COPS still on the air and getting good ratings 10+ years later?
• Why were shows like Family Guy and Futurama cancelled for low ratings, only to be renewed after doing well on the Cartoon Network and DVD.
• Why is wrestling now on the SciFi Channel?
• Why did Fox cancel Firefly before the end of its first season? The show went on to be a best seller on iTunes as well as on DVD. It was also made into a major motion picture called Serenity.

The answer to all these questions: only dumb people have Nielson boxes and the networks don’t have enough guts to ignore Nielson’s lies. Also, ponder this little tidbit. Until recently, the Nielson boxes were NOT compatible with home TV systems that had a TiVo, satellite dish or digital cable box. That’s a lot of people Nielson just decided to conveniently ignore.

If you are also a fan of The Office, just remember that the iTunes Store is responsible for keeping the show alive. Fans of the show voted with their wallets while dumb Nielson households were busy watching COPS reruns. Again.

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I was on Jason D. O’Grady’s PowerPage when I saw this article and started cracking up. We’ve all heard of the iPod’s vaunted “clean design,” but this is ridiculous.

Apparently someone named Sean bought what he thought was an iPod from Smalldog.com. However after removing the shrink-wrap and opening the box, he instead found inside two bars of soap and a package of cheap batteries.

As you can imagine, Sean was pretty pissed off. I found a write up of how his conversation with a Smalldog customer service rep went on Consumerist.com.

“I picked up the phone and gave Smalldog a call… I was ready to really tear into someone when a supremely polite and nice customer service rep answered the phone. When I told her about my situation (and not too nicely, I might add), she started laughing. For a second I was shocked! I mean, first you screw up, and then you laugh at me!? But the next thing I knew, I started laughing too. She used just the right amount of humor and seriousness in helping me figure out what had happened… She also wanted to know if I took any pictures, saying that she’d love to have a few to show the other people in the office… It was good to see that someone could have a sense of humor and still be incredibly accommodating at the same time.”

The big mystery to this story is how was the iPod box shrink-wrapped if it had already been opened? There are two theories.

1. Someone in the iPod factory swapped out the iPod with the soap and batteries before the box got shrink-wrapped.

2. Someone at UPS or Smalldog might have done a homemade shrink-wrap job. All you need is a roll of plastic and a heated cutting device.

We will probably know exactly what happened, but this tale does have a happy ending. Sean got a replacement iPod. The moral of the story: just because something is shrink-wrapped, doesn’t mean it’s actually in the box.

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Picture this scenario – you’re running too many applications on your desktop that your screen real estate is not large enough to display every single window that you want to see. Or imagine yourself as a prima donna blogger who has more RSS feeds to go through than you can shake a stick at, and yet you do not want to constantly switch between windows as the distraction will disrupt your train of thought. Getting a larger monitor won’t help either, hence the introduction of the Alphacool LCD display as a secondary monitor. For $240, you get a fully programmable 240 x 128 pixel display.

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With the proliferation of iPods today, you would think that we would be faced with half-deaf senior citizens four decades down the road. Most youth today do not give two hoots about the health of their ears, turning the volume knob way up on their iPods and digital audio players without a care in the world. If you are going to purchase an iPod for your child or know somebody who is stuck to his/her digital audio player like a leech, perhaps picking up the iHearSafe earbuds for them would be one of the best things you could do on their behalf.

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Want to be a rebel and break the law in the United Kingdom? It’s easy. All you need is an iPod and a CD.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Pop a CD into you computer.
Step 2: Import the songs into iTunes.
Step 3: Sync the songs onto your iPod.

Millions of people in the United Kingdom break the law everyday just by using their iPods. Why? The music industry in the UK claims that the illegal practice of coping music onto your iPod costs them hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Anyone else getting a 1998 Napster flashback here?

Apparently the UK music industry is about a decade out of sync with reality. In an effort to help the UK music industry get with the times, ministers in the UK are being urged to relax copyright laws to prevent music fans from facing prosecution for using their iPods. A UK think-tank called the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has recommended an overhaul of the legislation to allow a “private right to copy” music, and thus stop home users being treated the same as large-scale pirates.

Ian Kearns, deputy director of the IPPR, had this to say on the subject:

“Millions of Britons copy CDs on to their home computers, breaking copyright laws every day. British copyright law is out of date. When it comes to protecting the interests of copyright holders, the emphasis the music industry has put on tackling illegal distribution, and not prosecuting for personal copying, is right. But it is not the industry’s job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of Government.”

The dawn of the digital age of music was initially damaging to the music industry… but only because the industry failed to embrace the change consumers desired. As a result, people turned to illegal file-sharing sites such as Napster to find digital music. However, since the launch of the iTunes Music Store, digital music has proven to be a successful business model and the laws in the UK should be changed to better reflect current times.

Duh!?

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