Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"If you love puzzles, photography and stickers (like us), this project is definitely for you. As part of our MOOvie Mania Competition we asked people to share their "how tos" or "tutorials" that featured MOO. John Arnold has created a brilliant video that shows how to create a collection of stickers out of one photograph - in essence turning the 90 stickers in to a giant puzzle. He then brilliantly arranges all 90 stickers on his new laptop giving it a unique cover."

I'm not sure whether to call this project brilliant, or masochistic - one thing is for sure, I respect his attention to detail and precision. I'd have a hard time getting that final result to look good - hell, I couldn't even get my DecalGirl iPod Touch sticker on completely straight! If you skip to the 9 minute 30 second mark, you can see the final result. Impressive!

"Dell introduced Dell Wireless 700, an option that adds location awareness to the Dell Mini 10 netbook. With the $69 upgrade, users will be able to get turn-by-turn directions and use location-based services. I sat down with Hari Ganti and Alan Sicher for a demo of the GPS-enabled Dell Mini 10. Dell has partnered with Skyhook so that users' locations are accurate even when a GPS signal is not available."

Do you have a Dell Mini 10? Want to make it GPS-enabled? Then you'll be interested in the Dell Wireless 700 - head on over to Notebooks.com to check out two videos on this add-on and how it works.

"If you upload videos to YouTube and feel restricted by the 1GB limit, YouTube now offers 2GB of wiggle room as well as the ability to directly link to and embed high definition video."

If you use YouTube, you're going to like this: YouTube has expanded upload limits to 2 GB, which is around 60 minutes of 720p HD quality video. And if you have a blog where you like to embed your YouTube videos, you can now embed it in HD. One thing worth noting: if you're embedding at 600 pixels wide, there's not much point in using the HD option. The high-quality (HQ) option looks quite good at that size. To show the HD option, you'll want 800+ pixels in width - or tell people to go full screen. Good stuff - thanks YouTube!

"The Fit PC 2 is an inch thick, about 4 inches each way, and pipes 1080p video through an HDMI port. Though a perfectly usable PC with a 160GB hard drive, Atom Z CPU and a gig of RAM, it's so small that it makes even netbooks look bulky."

Like netbooks, nettops (or whatever you want to call them) have existed for quite some time before gaining any attention, but the current net-noun craze is getting manufacturers pushing the technology in them further. The Fit PC 2 is such a wee device, it likely can fit on the VESA mount on the back of certain monitors. It's performance is much like any current generation net-device, even going so far as making non-flash 720p video playback watchable. I could see this as handy for offices, and some use in homes with geeks who like small toys everywhere around the house, myself included, who is still waiting for the right device that I can put one in every room. I have to admit that netbooks will probably dominate over nettops since you don't really seem to be saving all that much with these wee machines.

Two new Web sites have launched recently, and since I know the people behind both of them as respect what they do, I thought I'd let you know about them. First up, we have gdgt (pronnounced "Gadget"):

gdgt is from the team that brought you Engadget: Peter Rojas and Ryan Block. gdgt is a different sort of site - it's less about up-to-the-second news and more about a community of people that love gadgets. When you register on the site, you create a profile (here's mine) where you can add gadgets that you own, gadgets you want, and gadgets that you've had in the past. I've added a handful to my "have" list - anything more would take me many hours! gdgt looks like a cool site and is definitely worth checking out.

The other new site that launched recently is MIDstories.com, a new site from Xavier Lanier, the guy behind Notebooks.com. This new site of his is focused on Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), a type of gadget that has yet to really take off in terms of mainstream popularity - maybe Xavier's new site will help with that. Worth checking out!

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the Dell Inspiron Studio 14z (I mistakenly thought it was called the Inspiron 14z, but it's not an Inspiron, it's a Studio notebook). This notebook, shown here in ruby red, is a little different that most notebooks in that it lacks a CD/DVD drive - but it's no netbook! It has a 14 inch, 16:9 aspect ratio screen running at 1600 x 900 resolution, which is Dell's 900p resolution option (an upgrade). The standard resolution is 720p, which is 1280 x 720. Read more...

This video is a bit different than my normal videos - it's designed more for you to pass it along to others interested in netbooks, because if you're reading this site you probably know all the answers I give. In this video, I tackle the ten most frequently-asked questions that I see in YouTube comments. Rather than endlessly answering the same questions over and over again, I thought I'd make a video that handles the most common questions and then point people to it to have their questions answered. I hope you find it helpful!

"The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a blow to the television networks when it declined to hear a case about a digital video recorder technology, opening the gate for wider use of DVR systems. The case began in 2006 when Cablevision Systems, the New York-area cable operator, announced plans for what is called a network DVR system."

The decision paves the way for Cablevision to implement its network DVR system across all of its customers. The setup is fairly clever and looks like a great way to provide DVR abilities to everyone without a costly investment of hard drive based PVRs. I have concerns that the technology may end up being locked to just one provider, instead of being available to all cable companies. I suppose you could consider this the moment of when DVR starts moving into the "cloud." With everyone hosting their emails, documents, spreadsheets, personal videos and social life online, it was only a matter of time before our tv shows made that transition. The market must be limited though, since I imagine this would only be preferred by those with limited or no Internet access since streaming solutions provide a comparable service.

"1) Tell us who you would like to have your photos printed and mailed to on a regular basis. 2) Email your photos to your own @picwing.com address or upload them through the website. 3) Your recipients will automatically get professional-quality 4x6 prints of your photos in the mail twice a month."

If you send lots of prints of your digital photos to family members on a regular basis, this is a pretty nice way to automate much of the process. At $0.19/print, it is not overly expensive and surely makes up for the time it would take to print, collate, and mail to multiple individuals. But, I'd make sure none of your frenemies get a hold of your @picwing e-mail address, or Grandma might be getting some unexpected pictures.

That's what I see for choices when I look on Amazon.ca, and this is something I've seen before: the studios release a Blu-ray version of the movie that has less features on it than the special edition DVD version - at least in Canada they do. In the example above, both movies are the Directors Cut, but the Blu-ray edition ($27.95 CAD) has no indication that it has the same bonus features as the special edition DVD ($33.99 CAD). The lower price of the Blu-ray version seems to back that up. Yet when I look on Amazon.com, the only Blu-ray version is the special edition, and it has all the bonus features listed. Curiously, it's the same price ($22.99) as the special edition DVD. What a headache - it looks like I'm going to have to wait for this to be in stores before I can figure it out.