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"This video has been shown at internal Microsoft events a few times. It always draws a great response from the audience, followed by internal email aliases flooded for days with requests for a link or high bandwidth version. I finally found it on MSN Soapbox and YouTube (thanks to whoever posted it there). It shows a whole bunch of Microsoft consumer technologies working together in this average guy's "digital lifestyle". Most Microsoft products featured in this video, including Windows Mobile, Zune, XBOX 360, and Windows Media Center fall under the Entertainment & Devices (E&D) division, arguably the best division to work at within Microsoft (biased personal opinion)." How many of those Microsoft technologies are in your possession?

As anyone with a computer knows that pays any attention to the updates their system receives, support personnel for operating systems and time management applications have spent a lot of time preparing daylight savings time patches for all manner of computing devices. We are often told that DST saves energy . There was a unique opportunity recently to study this claim as the state of Indiana in the US converted to DST in 2006. "Their finding: Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills. They conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings. "I've never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this," says Mr. Kotchen, who presented the paper at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference this month." So you save a bit on some incandescent lighting. More and more people are switching to the florescent bulbs in their lights anyway, which saves a ton of energy. What is happening though is people are cranking up the AC when they get home an hour earlier because the house is warmer and turning up the heat a bit in the morning because it is still dark and the sunlight hasn't had a chance to creep into your windows providing a bit of warmth. Don't you just love it when politicians get it in their head some preconceived notion of how the world works and start driving forward oblivious to the facts? And who pays? You and I. And that doesn't account for the time wasted by IT departments and end users trying to figure out the various tool to fix their software to correspond to the ever changing DST rules around the world. I'd be perfectly happy if they just got rid of DST and if politicians would quit telling me how the world works and legislating my behavior to fit their idea of being a good steward of the planet.

Palm, Inc. couldn't resist taking a jab at RIM for their recent blackout in North America earlier this week in their latest ad in the New York Times. Quote: includes voice, email, text, web, calendar and contacts. And most importantly, uptime. Palm Smartphones. They connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server. No third-party servers. No hassles. And more importantly, no nationwide blackouts.

I'm running out the door for an appointment, so I'll just quote Rocco off Smartphone Thoughts: "modu mobile has released a teaser video to help get the masses excited as well as getting our blood pumping. From what I can tell, the modu is a very tiny gadget that appears to plug into stuff. There really isn't much information floating around, but from looking at the video one could assume that with the constant shots of digital cameras, GPS equipment, video games, and other fun stuff in this video that modu might come out swinging in the realm of tying all your digital products together in one little bundle of awesomeness. Until we hear something official from modu though, your guess is as good as mine. In the meantime, enjoy the teaser video below!" What *is* this thing?

"We love OQO, and we love their readiness for the next big thing. They think it's WiMax this time around, and while we do somewhat agree, we'd have loved for real U.S. HSDPA support instead of a technology that may or not take off, and isn't even available for a good calendar year or two. Nevertheless, we're bringin' you the news, and OQO is demonstrating a WiMax-certified OQO 02 model at CES." Hot on the heels of the non-US HSDPA configured OQO O2 comes a new version with WiMax, 64GB SSD and a reflective screen that can be read in daylight. Unfortunately, all these technological advancements come at a price which BGR forgot to mention - would you believe an extra $2k on top of the regular price of the standard model ? Most of that price difference (about $800 worth) comes from the addition of the SSD. I do agree that adding WiMax support might be a little questionable, unless they intend this purely for European and Asian markets - the EVDO version already does a pretty good job stateside, unless you're hot for a version that will run on AT&T or T-Mobile networks. I still can't get over the price difference though.

"After much work, stress, and wringing-of-hands, I'd like to officially unveil Digital Home Thoughts, the new home, and new name, of the site formerly known as Digital Media Thoughts. When I launched Digital Media Thoughts a few years ago, the name and focus of the site made sense to me at the time. In truth, a bit more research would have told me what I later discovered: the term "media" in the site was confusing. "Media" means one of three things to almost everyone you ask: people involved in advertising and PR would say that "media" means the press (journalists). Some people would say that "media" means blank CDs and DVDs - as in, blank media. And others (definitely the minority) would say that "media" in the context of the word "digital" means different digital audio/video/photo formats." The remainder of the explanation about why I changed the name, and of the upcoming re-launch complete with prizes, can be found over at Digital Home Thoughts (DHT for short, nach). Digital Home Thoughts is for everyone, because we cover digital cameras, video cameras, audio players, photo editing software, HD everything, and all sorts of gadgets. Please stop by and contribute to the community!