I love tablets. I used a Windows Tablet PC for years and have been chomping at the bit for the Apple tablet. The iPhone and iPod touch have been and are awesome, but I have been longing for something a bit larger. When the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android came along, I thought it just might be the ticket. Here was a slick slate tablet with a 4.8“ touchscreen with 800*480 resolution. The 32GB model is just thin and light and… it runs Android. I bit.

It is an impressive device. But is it a “keeper”?

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It wasn’t that long ago that I expected TiVo to go the way of the Dodo.

It increasingly looked like its time had come and gone as cable companies added DVR functionality to their set top boxes and more and more of us started using our computers to watch and record tv content. Then TiVo started adding services such as Netflix streaming and in the process it got a new leash on life.

Now TiVo is adding yet another service to its growing list of new functionality. In addition to Amazon, Netflix, Walt Disney Studios, and Jaman support for Blockbuster On Demand will be live some time today. The service will be available on Series 2, 3, HD, and HD XL boxes and movie rental fees will range from $2.99 for “classic” or old films to $3.99 for new releases.

Between that and the ever-cool TiVo “blublup” sound TiVo is AWESOME!!

[AOL Money via Engadget via CrunchGear]

I’ve enjoyed being able to schedule DVR recordings from my BlackBerry using the TiVo mobile site, but missed not having a dedicated device application that would give me more functionality and a faster interface than having to access options via a web site.  As a TiVo and BlackBerry fan, I got just what I wanted with the new TiVo DVR Scheduler app, available through BlackBerry App World.

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Apple shook up their hobby project that goes by the name Apple TV. They just dropped the 40GB model entirely and discounted the 160GB model to what HAD been the 40GB price- $226. That is a $100 price cut.

I really like my Apple TV, but don’t use it nearly as much as I thought I would. Regardless, the 40GB version is gone, the 120GB version is $100 less, and most people STILL don’t get the point of an Apple TV.

via MacRumors

Some of you may recognize the name Joe Born from the company Neuros, whose open source products we’ve been reviewing and talking positively about for years. What you may not know is that Joe also founded the company Digital Innovations over ten years ago.  According to him, he hasn’t been “very active in it since starting Neuros, but recently they acquired a peripheral company called Micro Innovations that makes a host of commodity peripherals, and [he's] very excited about applying the Neuros open innovation formula there.”

Last night Joel and I had an opportunity to take a survey that Joe had forwarded us, showing some USB Hub concept products. Unlike some of the sillier ones that we often feature on the site – the ones which invariably get picked up when Engadget does another edition of “Crapgadget” – some of these looked both cool and functional. It’s not often that we get to see actual concepts and give our feedback, so it was a lot of fun.

Tonight, Joe surprised me by sending an email that said “I’m wondering if you’d consider featuring a 48 hour 40% off as a deal of the day for Digital Innovations. [Your readers would] have to fill out a survey (on usb hubs) to get the code, but hopefully they would find those concepts interesting too.”

I am almost positive that you will find the concepts interesting, and the 40% off is just gravy. The link to the survey is here; go tell Joe what you think.

I follow Joe Born(@joeborn) and Neuros Technology(@neurostech) on twitter and I read his blog and generally love Neuros Technology as a company.  They stand behind their products.  They also run open source software on their devices and have quite a community behind their products.  I also own a OSD and one of their original products, a MP3 player.  I still use both on a regular basis.  Well, imagine my excitement seeing Joe’s tweet regarding the OSD 3:

“..it’s probably two years off, but this time Texas Instruments is involved early: discussion of the OSD3: http://bit.ly/Qt5sl”

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This Moxi HD DVR is one of five units that’s looking for a good home.

When my wife and I moved into our new house, my office/work area/lab/dungeon got relegated to the basement -  not a full-size basement, mind you, more like a “large cubby under the stairs” sort of place.  Little did I realize though, that when she used the term “Man Cave” for the first time, it wasn’t a novel phrase.

My Man Cave is not much to write home (or even this post) about.  There are lots of books and magazines,  and old or malfunctioning PC’s to tinker with.  It’s not the kind of place that I can really invite “The Guys” over for.  But now, there might be hope for me yet, from the Cool Dudes at Digeo:

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For those who don’t know, the primary part of the Neuros Link is the Neuros.TV website that helps you find content on your Neuros Link from the web.  Well, Joe has let me know that you are not just stuck with whatever Neuros and their hackers will give you.  Now if you know of a site where a stream of a TV show is, you can add it via a link near the bottom of the page.  The Neuros Link and its companion site are attempting to extend the tradition of users adding content similar to how the cddb (which is now Gracenote) was started.  If you know of a site that carries the content you’ve searched for, you can now added it to the Neuros.TV website.

This Gamma device looks like it could beat Boxee and XBMC in functionality once the Gamma is ready for general users.  It’s almost there now, according to my friend, Linc Fessenden.

Oh, and one other thing that the Neuros Link does that Boxee doesn’t do is use Firefox for the actual video you see on your TV for sites like Hulu.  That makes it impossible to block from Hulu’s standpoint, as if they block Firefox, they block a good chunk of their audience.  If you’re looking for a nice, low resource box to use to watch Hulu, the Link is it.

Neuros has long offered bounties on different development projects that enhance their products; one I have been semi excited for is Netflix Streaming.  Well, sundevil98 has managed to get it working on the Link according to Joe.  He did it by installing Mediamall’s Playon software on top of XBMC.  The next version of the software on the Link should have XBMC built into it.  Eventually, Neuros will have a native client on the Link, but for now, this will allow you to stream movies from Netflix!

The Gear Diary Team is as opinionated and diverse as any I have worked with over the years, both in real life and on the Internet.  So we had to have a discussion on what we each thought were the best gadgets of 2008…

Joel McLaughlin

1. Neuros Link – Soon to be the mother of all set top boxes. With all the support it’s adding, it’s a matter of time where you can get rid of
your cable box.

2. T-Mobile G1 – The birth of a new phone platform. So far, it holds a lot of promise and is starting to deliver on those too.

3. Netflix Player by Roku – Now you can do the one DVD at a time plan and watch all the back catalog with this cheap little box. Continue Reading

Joe Born has posted the first bounties for the Neuros Link.

The first bounty is $2500 for getting Netflix working directly on the Neuros Link, or $500 when working through a intermediary PC.  This bounty has some stipulations: The programmer must beat Boxee, Ubuntu or Netflix themselves with the functionality.  All of these people are working on getting Netflix streaming to work on on Linux.  Once any of them get it working, the bounty is unavailable as they can easily incorporate this into the Neuros Link.

The second bounty is the Move Networks plugin.  The lucky hacker will get $2000 if they get it working and $2500 if it works in Firefox.

The third bounty is another biggie: Getting pre-purchased iTunes music from the iTMS to play on the Neuros Link.  $1000 is the bounty on this one.

The fourth bounty is a Network/Wireless Network wizard for $750.

The fifth is a Video Resolution/Xorg settings changer, also for $750.

The sixth is a error problem reporter collector, and the bounty for this is $500.

The seventh is upgrade applet that will work on TV for $750.

For details on these and how to claim them, please check out the OdNT Blog.

Joe also posted that the Neuros Link is now available from every geek’s favorite site, ThinkGeek.com.

Was going through my feed list and noticed Joe posted a update on the OdNT Blog about Joost and the Neuros Link.  Joost, which came from the creators of Skype and Kazaa, started out as a client you loaded on your computer that was similar to Boxee.  Now it’s a flash video site very similar to Hulu.  Well it too is now supported on the Neuros Link!

As we prepare to give thanks for all the things we’ve been blessed with over the past year and eat a bunch of food, I was thinking of one thing I am most certainly thankful for and that’s Open Source Software.  Without it, I could not be writing this post as we are a user of FOSS or Free and Open Source Software here at Gear Diary.  Most of us use Firefox and the software that runs it is WordPress.  With out FOSS, much of the internet wouldn’t exist. So I thought it appropriate to list and write about 10 things in the FOSS community I am most thankful for.

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Even though most people don’t even have the Neuros Link yet, Neuros is at work adding features to the Link in the form of Amazon’s Unbox video on demand service.  Now you can use your Neuros Link to watch any of the 20,000 titles you can rent via Amazon’s service.  They are still hard at work trying to improve the device as I type this.  The Neuros Link should be THE set top box to order on cyber monday!

Still being very geeked about the announcement from Neuros, at lunch I was perusing the forums on the Neuros site and discovered just how hackable the Neuros Link will be.  The answer is: VERY

The Neuros Link is running Ubuntu 8.10 according to Joe Born’s post in the forum and the specs page.  That means that you can pretty much run any variant of Ubuntu on it.  Joe himself has installed Boxee on the Neuros Link, so it may even be possible to get Mythbuntu running on the box since you can probably add a USB Tuner to it as well.

UPDATE: Found more….the Neuros Link runs a Athlon CPU, so it’s x86 box!  This is VERY good news!