For those who **do not** have young kids, this is an idea that's about 30 years overdue. With all of those "Wall Warts" aka Power Transformers under my desk at the office, I have 3 power strips all plugged into different wall plates.  The Power Strip Liberator fixes that.  No need to describe any further- you can see it here. A 5-pack will run you $8.95 over at Cyberguys.com.  Just in time for Father's Day.

Courtesy SmartHome and Coolhunting.com

Intel launched their new Pentium D-series processors yesterday, starting with the model 820 (2.8Ghz) expected to offer affordable dual-core performance for about $300, maybe even closer to $250 and going up to the 840 Extreme Edition with Hyperthreading support for closer to $500. If you're not familiar with Dual Core- now is a good time to get up to speed, prior to the upcoming holiday season.  Dual Core processors are the wave of the future for both Intel and AMD, and while the benchmarks are decidedly mixed (see ExtremeTech), the idea of effectively 2 processors in one is a winning combination. If you're heavy into encoding or media conversion, or a multitasking junkie with 20 apps open and running at a given time, this may be right for you.

More news: News.com
Read More: ExtremeTech
Dual Core Defined: Wikipedia

Lots of interesting tid-bits I haven't had much time to write about:

The BBS Documentary is finally out.  Tons of chatter on aliases in MSFT among those of us who used to BBS.  I got my start in the industry as Operations Manager for Excalibur Communications Inc., creators of the first GUI-based BBS, Excal BBS for Windows (via Way Back Machine).

Speaking of way back and given the recent escalation in "we're better" mantra's in the console wars, check out the hype way back for a certain game console. I'm still looking for my real-time rendering of Toy Story. :)  Xbox 360 guru Major Nelson has his take here, while Sony has theirs here.

Through the din, dust, and ashes of the latest salvo in the console wars, you might have heard about Xbox 360 supporting display of photos, music, TV, and even high definition content and services from Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 PCs. Personally I was waiting to see who was going to be the first to announce RSS and Podcast support for their console ;). I've been tracking this since long before we launched MCE05 and I can say I was super-skeptical they could get the polish of the MCE experience on "Xenon" as Xbox360 was known.  I was dead wrong. Consumers will now have two premium choices if they're connecting to an HDTV: a full-fledged Media Center PC, or an Xbox 360 with Extender built-in (BTW: this functionality was codenamed "XeSled"- a play on Xenon and the codename for the first-generation extender, "Bobsled".  I'm looking forward to putting mine through it's paces but security keeps stopping me from liberating one of these bad-boys from Xbox offices over at Millennium campus- go figure.

Speaking of High Definition and Xbox, the team posted a whopping 17 WMV-HD gameplay trailers here. Download em all.

Lastly, I had a good chat with Ian Dixon over in the UK this AM via Skype.  My wife and I used Skype to make calls home from the UK and Greece just a few weeks ago and it worked great. I was surprised at how low the latency was.  It wasn't without issue (couldn't find peer nodes from time to time to help connect) but that was a small price to pay for free calls!

More tonight...

Matt Muller (AussieinSeattle) wrote a nifty plug-in for Seattlites looking to check up on current traffic conditions.  Features include:

1. SR-520 Cams (4 of them)
2. I-90 Cams (4 of them)
3. Bridge Traffic Flow
4. Carillon Point Cam 1 (good for checking wakeboarding conditions )
5. Carillon Point Cam 2
6. North Taffic Flow
7. South Taffic Flow

More details on this thread at The Green Button.  

BetaNews is reporting on Samsung's new development which enables them to store up to 16GB of data in and hard drive-only it's Flash memory.  They're reporting this could lead to extended battery life for notebooks and Tablet PCs.  During WinHEC a number of weeks ago, I was in a Sr. Exec meeting and had an opportunity to see this technology first-hand. It did in fact fit right into the HDD slot on an existing laptop. BetaNews reports access to data up to 2.5x that of regular HDD. Can you say fast? If the economics can be worked out, this could usher in a new generation of computing devices.

Competing with Google Earth, MSN's new Virtual Earth was demo'd earlier today by BillG according to reports.  Features include:

• Satellite images with 45-degree-angle views of buildings and neighborhoods 
• Satellite images with street map overlay.
• Ability to add local data layers, such as showing local businesses or restaurants

Screenshots and more here. theunofficialMicrosoftweblog has more here.

www.startsomethingpc.com is now open for online submission of competition entries to win up to $125,000. Downloads of the entry kit are 3x what we expected.  Apparently some folks have an idea about next-generation PC hardware design. What are your ideas?  What would you like to see?  Share you thoughts here.

Do you have Tiger "Widget" envy?  Konfabulator is available for both Mac and Windows PCs, delivering a solid level of polish and productivity (if you can call it that) to your desktop, even if you don't have Mac OS X "Tiger".

What's more, the new Konfabulator 2.0 is out with redesigned plug-ins and enhanced APIs.  While I cannot vouch for system resource usage or security- they may have have issues like Apple is having now with its own Dashboard Widgets.  At $19.95 to buy and free trial.  Be sure to check out the Widget Gallery. 

Unfortunately I am very tardy in writing up my thoughts on the Geek Dinner in the UK.  We had a great time and in typical fashion, not only was it Cinco de Mayo (which apparently is not celebrated in the UK- go figure <g>) and Election Day which may have helped to reduce the attendance. Either way, we had about 20 attendees and had a great time. More thoughts here and from Ian Forrester.  Next time I'm in the UK, we'll definitely do this again. 

I finally broke down and joined LinkedIn at the suggestion of some friends and co-workers.  You can find me there- just use my email address here.  Let's get the digiital media network growing- link in.

From Vincent Flanders' Web Pages that Suck:

I just got through reading that Bill Gates wants to start a blog. Why would anyone in their right mind want to read it? Do you think it will contain Heroin Content? As Seth Godin points out, blogs only work when they meet four of the following five conditions:

1. Candor
2. Urgency
3. Timeliness
4. Pithiness
5. Controversy

Check out Bill's speeches. Unless he's chatting with a comedian, there's no Heroin Content. If his blog were like this one from a Microsoft employee who worked with Bill at the CES trade show, it might be interesting.

Thanks Vincent.  I think... :) He may pull me for my page not being up (it's uploading now).

Gamespot says, "We're offering our HD-quality movies exclusively to our GameSpot Complete members, though we're offering several free samples to give the rest of you a taste of what you're missing." Excellent! or so I thought.  I don't have much time for playing games these days but I love to watch trailers and see what the current  state of quality is.

I took a look and it appears I'm still missing something.  I don't understand how they can call these "HD".  Sure, they're WMV files, but they sure aren't my understanding of HD quality. The first warning sign I saw was the video resolution - 640x360 for the Forza Motorsport sample and 640x480 for the Doom 3 sample.

When we talk about HD- as defined by the ATSC standard, the resolution has to meet a minimum bar of 720p - that's 720 progressive horizontal lines of video resolution. So why am I downloading a sample that purports to be HD as a part of a sales pitch, but delivers half the resolution of HDTV? Ok, it's 16:9 aspect content - on a 4:3 display it could be considered 640x480 resolution but that's still 480p- not HD. Am I missing something?

WMV-HD can handle this no problem and in J Allard's talk at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, he made it clear that the next Xbox will "usher in the era of HD gaming and entertainment". He gave away 1000 Samsung HDTVs. If this was the definition of HD, he could have just given away standard TVs or perhaps EDTVs.

I hope others are calling this to the attention of Gamespot. The technology is there- WMV-HD can do what they're asking.  I hope others are calling their attention to this fact.

Check out this amazing Media Center case with a touchscreen LCD display.  The unit also has full MCE-compliant IR (Philips RC-6 spec) support and much more.  Personally I'd love to take one of these for a spin as Joshua Schipman at HTPCnews.com just did last week.  Be sure to check out the last page for a very interesting use of Konfabulator Widgets.