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Best Buy $50 gift cards for HD DVD suckers

Feel like a sucker for buying an HD DVD player? Well, if you happen to have bought it at Best Buy, you're in line to get a $50 gift card from the retail giant as part of its pity program for HD DVD owners. OK, I'm kidding about the pity program, but the $50 gift certificate is real, and you don't have to give up your HD DVD player to get one.

According the official release, Best Buy is giving $50 gift cards to "Customers who purchased an HD DVD player or HD DVD attachment from … Read more

Webware from beyond the grave: JustInCaseIDie.com

Here's a creepy site that is based on a sound idea: JustInCaseIDie. On this service you can set up a message to be sent to a single recipient if you don't check in by a certain time or reply to a reminder e-mail. The idea is that, if you die, you can't check in, and your canned message will be sent. Said message could be a posthumous love note, a terrible expose, the combination to the safe in the house, and so on.

It's implemented in a pretty lightweight fashion, so I can't imagine it … Read more

Will plug-in hybrids stress the grid?

Plug-in hybrids are coming. General Motors, Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and Toyota are all coming out with gas-electric cars that can be charged from a socket.

The question now is can the grid handle it. The latest voice on the debate, Stan Hadley of the Cooling, Heating and Power Technologies Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, says it won't be easy. Hadley examined 182 scenarios on how plug-ins might be used in different regions in the U.S. between 2020 and 2030. Hadley assumed a 25 percent penetration of plug-ins by 2020.

In a worst case scenario, Hadley postulated … Read more

American Airlines and Virgin America promise in-flight broadband

Editor's note: This blog initially misidentified the provider of JetBlue's in-flight broadband service.

In-flight broadband is coming soon for travelers on some American Airlines and Virgin America flights. But will the companies hit the right price point to attract customers?

Aircell, a company that sells air-to-ground telecommunications equipment to airlines, said this week that its in-flight broadband system will be used on some Virgin America and American Airlines flights originating from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York and Miami.

American Airlines will initially enable 15 of its 767s with broadband, and eventually it will offer Internet … Read more

Microsoft's self-inflicted handicaps

I woke up this morning to a great Techcrunch review of Microsoft's new/old strategies. For those who watch Microsoft on a regular basis, it's no surprise to hear that the company's dedication to its 20th-century businesses (more billions, please!) cripples its ability to move forward and catch up with the 21st Century.

Microsoft is a company with a lot of good people doing amazing things, but those people are like a horse that has been handicapped out of the race with the baggage of Microsoft old. They are putting up a good fight to be seen and listened to, but it's a hard ask. Microsoft is clearly a company that is changing, the only remaining question is will the whole organization transform into the new Microsoft quickly enough to survive the rapidly changing way companies and individuals interact with technology.

And so Steve Ballmer at Mix'08 was relegated to old jokes about Apple and panicky suggestions that Microsoft is the "little engine that could" against Google. It's not. At some point Microsoft will have to admit that its old model of install (Microsoft) once, control everywhere" is precisely why it isn't relevant in the 21st Century of software.

How do we know that Microsoft is struggling to catch up?… Read more

Cut the cord with Brother's newest wireless all-in-one printer

With spring just around the corner, it's time to clean up your workspace. To help you clean up your clutter, Brother is releasing two multifunction printers: the MFC-7440N ($249) and the MFC-7840W ($299). Both are significant upgrades to their predecessors, with the MFC-7840W living up to its prefix multifunction name.

The MFC-7840W is the standout product here, it includes all the features you would expect from a high end all-in-one printer, such as a speedy 23 page per minute output, 2400x600 dots per inch resolution, and a 35 sheet auto feeder. We're excited to take a look at … Read more

$25,000 uber-box gets Blu-ray

When SE2 Labs debuted its "ITC One" media system late last year, one of the complaints was that it lacked a Blu-ray player. That might seem picky at first blush, until one surveys the laundry list of functions this uber-box already provides: an Xbox 360, HD personal video recorder, digital amplifiers, surround-sound processor, touch screen, and iPod dock, to name a few.

If they're going to jam all that into a home entertainment system that's "roughly the size of two PC consoles," the thinking goes, then it doesn't seem altogether unreasonable to expect … Read more

LinkedIn's latest updates take a few hints from Facebook

Business social-networking site LinkedIn unveiled a redesigned homepage with a number of updates on Wednesday night. It's the latest step in an ongoing initiative to prove that LinkedIn is more than a glorified address book by encouraging more professional interaction among users.

The newly revamped home page, with its focus on a left sidebar and tabs along the top of the window, certainly echoes of the wildly popular but far less business-centric Facebook.

New updates to the site include "status" messages to indicate current activity, similar to Facebook's, and a number of new personalized "modules&… Read more

Bill Gates to get LinkedIn

Just a short while after abandoning Facebook due to being overwhelmed with friend requests, Bill Gates plans to experiment on rival service LinkedIn.

On Thursday, the Microsoft Chairman will post a question related to "how technology can be better utilized for charitable causes" to LinkedIn's entire 19 million members. I'm interested to see whether Gates finds LinkedIn scales to someone of his stature any better than Facebook.

The move comes as part of a set of announcements that LinkedIn plans to make on Thursday. A pitch from LinkedIn noted the company will have a revamped home … Read more