HOW TO: BUILD YOUR OWN PVR

If TIVO's selling out to the dark side makes you skittish, you can always try BUILDING YOUR OWN PVR.

And here's a cool mod for placing a PVR in a DVD player case.

SILLY HACK OF THE DAY: BUILD A THRONE FROM AOL DISKS

(hat tip linkfilter)
What do you do with all those AOL CDs you get in the mail? Why, make furniture, of course!

VCR - R.I.P.

(hat tip slashdot)
With DVD players outselling VCRs 40 to 1, major retailers are phasing out VHS.

RAREWARE: OUT OF PRINT SHAREWARE

Looking for a particular shareware program? Try RAREWARE. It's in Italian, but you can translate it into English with Babelfish.

REDMOND REPLACES PIRATED XP COPIES

(hat tip PCWorld)
Redmond is offering to replace your pirated copy of XP with a legitimate one in an effort to make you a legitimate customer for upgrades. The program is designed to identify PCs that are SOLD with pirated copies of XP.

IPOD SALES TO SKYROCKET

(hat tip appleblog)
Sales of iPod are expected to reach TWENTY-FIVE MILLION by 2006. That's a lot of songs in your pocket.

In a related story, via slashdot, PC users are making the switch to the Mac after buying their iPods.

HACKER TAKES OVER FREEWAY SIGN IN FLORIDA

(hat tip engadget)
Though this has the potential to be very dangerous, it's pretty funny that a hacker was able to hack into a freeway sign in order to rag on the local mayor. Even funnier, the hacker locked out the sign so the message couldn't be changed and as such, the sign had to be disconnected.

RECORDING TV VIA BITTORRENT AND RSS

(hat tip pvrblog)
Could the future of PVR be bittorrent? For those of you with a broadband connection and no DVR/PVR, you can still get the TV programs you miss by downloading them via bittorrent. Here's the HOWTO.

I'm sure Hollywood loves this. NOT.

DELL EXPANDS INDIA OPERATIONS

(hat tip c/net)
Dell thinks it's a good idea to expand their India operations? Does anybody ELSE in the US think that's a good idea?

BIG BROTHER WATCHES COLOR PRINTS

It's been going on very quietly for years. But now the news is out. Every time you print something on that color laser printer or xerox machine, the serial number and manufacturing code of the printer/copier is encoded on the image. And it's all done at the quiet behest of UNCLE SAM.

DON'T SKIP COMMERCIALS, IT'S NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA, IT'S THE LAW

Last week, E-R reported that Congress is considering making commercial skipping on PVRs a crime.

Now, they want to force you to watch commercials on DVDs as well.

We're pretty sure that Orin Hatch has his grubby fingers all over this, since he gets about $200K a year from the industry - so we know their money is well spent. Way to be a servant of the People, Orin.

I'll tell you this much, they'll get my remote when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

MOD OF THE MONTH - A TYPWRITER PC

One of the coolest retro mods we've seen in a long time.
Taking an antique Underwood typewriter and modding it into a PC!

HOW TO: Build Your Own G4 ... or even G5?

(hat tip geekdyi)
Since the G5s are now out, I thought it would be fun to being back this how to on Building Your Own G4.

Anyone making their own G5 are encouraged to contact us with pictures.

THEY CALL HIM FLIPPER, FLIPPER, FASTER THAN LIGHTNING ....

(hat tip zgeek)
Now, you can swim with the Dolphin with this underwater bionic dolphin. Like a submarine, it can swim only 2 mph slower than the real mcCoy. A cross between Flipper and a fighter jet, the fully submersible watercraft is "designed to mimic the look and abilities" of its marine counterparts. The machine is capable of performing the same tricks as living dolphins, including dives, barrel rolls, jumping in and out of water and "porpoising".

Official site

Watch it in action here. (.mpg 110MB)

Me wants one!

IPOD TO GO WIRELESS?

(hat tip engadget)
According to the US Patent office, it might.

THE HISTORY OR SUPER GLUE - As a Battlefield dressing?

That's right, SuperGlue was used to to seal battle wounds in Vietnam.

JFK ASSASINATION NOW A GAME

(hat tip wired)
On the eve of the 41st anniversary of the Assisnation of President John F. Kennedy, Traffic Games has released JFK RELOADED, a video game where users play the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and prove that the lone nut could kill the President with a magic bullet.

Are we not surprised that the Kennedy family - and the rest of us for that matter - are pretty much outraged by it?

HOW TO - CREATING A DVD JUKEBOX

(hat tip The Dark Tipper)
Here's a bonus HOWTO - Creating a DVD PC Jukebox

YET ANOTHER REASON WHY AOL SUCKS

Wow, talk about black eyes. After a whistleblower leaked internal documents, AOL was forced to admit this week that nearly FORTY PERCENT of it's subscriber base "had no idea what a computer was, much less how to use one."

RIAA JIHAD GETTING PERSONAL

As the RIAA jihad continues, it seems they may not be satisfied with just going after file-sharers. They may want to sue you for ripping your CDs for your own personal use.

Now granted, this guy claims he didn't know he was actually sharing his mp3s online, and that seems like a flimsy excuse considering he admitted to downloading some files himself, but whatever happened to the concept of innocent until proven guilty?

STARBUCKS LOSING BUSINESS TO FREE WIFI COMPETITORS

(hat tip techdirt)

Starbucks' managers are complaining that the high prices of their wireless "Hotspots" are costing them business to their competitors who are giving bandwidth away for free.

And the worst part, T-Mobile - who provides the wifi access - doesn't seem to care.

Kinda puts a new spin on the phrase "get more," doesn't it?

HOW TO: POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS ON AN IPOD

Great how-to on using your iPod Photo to drive Powerpoint presentations. Wonder if it works with Apple's own Keynote - which seems more up to date than the 80s driven Powerpoint.