series4

Home cloud: Hands-on with the new Pogoplug Series 4

Sick of living in the cloud?

The new Pogoplug Series 4 is a device that looks to take the best of cloud computing and home network-attached storage and combine the two into a seamless experience. Available today, it certainly seems like a perfectly timed idea in the wake of seemingly daily frustrations with services like Apple's own iCloud and iTunes Match.

Maybe the fourth time's a charm: I've reviewed multiple Pogoplugs before, but none of them came close to what this new version offers. The Pogoplug is a NAS drive without the complications, and it's finally hit a sweet spot for price, size, and feature set. The newly released Pogoplug Series 4 is a latecomer to the holiday shopping season, but if you're getting fed up with iCloud and what other cloud services have to offer, then this $99 device might be what you're looking for.… Read more

YouTube's spin on 'American Idol'

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Motorola will sell the Wi-Fi-only Xoom for $599.

YouTube announces YouTube Next Up, its spin on "American Idol" for the Web.

The European Union is going to revamp its 16-year-old online privacy laws.

Apple changes in-app purchase protocol so that any additional purchases require a password.

Samsung releases a new line of laptops for students and office workers.

Google updates collaboration messaging within Google Docs.

Mozilla announces that Firefox 4 will be available for download next week on March 22.

Samsung announces Series 2, 4, 6 business notebooks, including a few 12.5-inchers

Samsung's new Series 9 laptop may have started a trend--in fact, the new business laptops announced by Samsung today are known as the Series 2, Series 4, and Series 6.

They bear no resemblance to the ultraslim 13-incher; instead, they look like sleek competitors in the territory inhabited by the likes of the Dell Vostro, HP ProBook, and Lenovo ThinkPad. While the naming convention is a bit confusing, here's how they break down.

Series 2 laptops are the budget line, coming in both 12.5-inch and 14-inch sizes (the 12.5-inch with a Celeron processor, the 14-inch with … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1177: Nerd freestyle

We stayed on the rails pretty well in this episode, but there's a whole long thing about cake toward the end that the chat room dubbed "nerd freestyle" and, well, we love that. In other news, new TiVo underwhelms a bit (other than the remote) and Viacom goes all anti-Internet with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." That's the cake part.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) Episode 1177

TiVo unveils Series4 ‘Premiere’ DVRs with enhanced online integration http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10462438-1.html?… Read more

TiVo to unveil new DVR on March 2?

Looks like those of you waiting for the next TiVo won't have to wait much longer. The company sent out a press invite for a March 2 event in New York with the teaser "Inventing the DVR was just warming up."

Anticipation among hard-core TiVo fans over the possible release of Series 4 TiVo has been building for the last few months and it did make our list of the most anticipated tech products of 2010. A bit of info has leaked about a possible next-gen TiVo system, which may or may not be called the Premiere. … Read more