Recently in Hardware Category

Canon announced a bunch of new cameras today including two new SLR's, but the most significant camera is the long awaited replacement for the popular 30D camera....the 40D. I've been waiting 2 years to replace our 35mm Canon SLR with a digital SLR and it is finally here. Hopefully, it will ship on time and October 1st will be a good day!

Rob Pegoraro, the Personal Technology Columnist for the Washington Post reviewed the HP TouchSmart IQ770 in today's edition.

This obviously isn't the type of press we want. He beat us up pretty good on this one. I was hoping this was just an anomaly so I did a quick search and there have been some good things said about it here, here, and here.

I'm sure we'll get the kinks worked out. I'm sure we'll add a lot more bells and whistles. And I'm sure we'll speed the thing up. Hopefully one day we'll send an updated version to Rob to test and get some better press.

I was browsing through HP's July patent applications and there are some great patents in there. Try reading the Tagging Systems patent description (NOTE: It's not what it seems). If you can understand that you should be working for HP.

It is the Data Center Robotic Device patent that sparked this note. It that makes me wonder. I'm pretty sure this one is padding for the proverbial patent wars.

If that is patentable then an idea I've had for many years must be too. I call it The Automatic Toilet Paper Replacer. When the roll is empty a little light will flash and a robot with a camera and a manipulator will roll in and replace the roll with the manipulator. That's it! I'm a freaking genius. Put that patent in the bank!

I was updating my son's nano to the latest iPod version so I could set and control the maximum volume. It is a must-have, must-set feature for all children with iPods.

It was just my luck that my computer locked up in the middle of the update. The iPod was in a state where I couldn't do much of anything. All of the songs were gone. The computer would recognize there was a drive in the USB port, but that was about it. iTunes wouldn't recognize the iPod at all.

I went through every debugging technicque on Apple's site. I reset the iPod. I reloaded iTunes and the iPod software. And I attempted a restore (which didn't work). I eventually gave up and called Apple. Luckily I had the one complimentary support call, otherwise I'd be out 50 bucks.

I got lucky. The technician I got was awesome. He walked me through something I would have had no problem doing if the instructions were on the site. He did say they'd be out there eventually but this process was something they haven't tested enough to actually put on apple.com. I'm a little upset because I should have tried this before calling. Here you go. If you want to start from scratch with your iPod this is how to do it:

1. Turn off all running programs on your PC (IE, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.)
2. Conect the iPod to the USB port
3. Start Disk Manager by right-clicking on MyComputer, select Manage, select Disk Management. This may take several minutes to come up.
4. Select your iPod (mine was D:); right-click and select Fomat...
5. Take most of the defaults. The primary options to select are FAT32 and Quick Format
6. When the format is complete, eject the iPod safely by right-clicking on the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Task Tray, select USB Mass Storage, and then select the iPod to stop it
7. Unplug the iPod from the computer and start the iPod updater. Start, All Programs, iPod, iPod Updater 2006-03-23, and iPod Updater 2006-03-23.
8. Plug-in the iPod. Once it is recognized by the Updater the Restore button will become active. Click on Restore to restore the iPod to its factory state.
9. When the restore is complete iTunes should start and the iPod should be usable again

Did you know that Hewlett-Packard hardware was bulletproof? If not, check out the video on this marketing page.

This could open up whole new markets for us. I'm thinking store fronts in Iraq or kiosks on street corners in the hood. I'm not sure what we'll try next. I'll recommend the submersion test and if it keeps on ticking after that I will really be impressed.