The Inter­na­tional Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show 2008 just launched today in Las Vegas! It will take place Jan­u­ary 7-10. A lot of gad­gets & good­ies will be released during these days. One I would like to show you is this enter­tain­ment system called the Lady­bug from Vestal­ife.

There’s simply noth­ing quite like the Vestal­ife Lady­bug. Flip out the speaker “wings” on this sleek, high-​tech device and you have an iPod-based enter­tain­ment system fea­tur­ing a built-​in sub-​woofer for lots of bass, a dig­i­tal ampli­fier and one of the coolest soft-​touch fin­ishes you’ve ever expe­ri­enced. Sit it on a counter. Take it with you. The Vestal­ife Lady­bug is designed to be part of your life.

The Show­down between Blu-​ray Disc (BD) and HD-​DVD is prob­a­bly over. Warner Broth­ers announced that they would be moving their titles from HD-​DVD to the Blu-​ray format. Many have sug­gested that this marks the end of the next gen­er­a­tion DVD battle, though two major stu­dios con­tinue to have exclu­sive HD-​DVD dis­tri­b­u­tion deals in place.
Warner Brother’s switch, places the major­ity of movie releases on Blu-​Ray.
Even before this new mar­ket­share advan­tage, Blu-​ray titles out­sold HD-​DVD offer­ings as much as 2 to 1, and had even been chosen for exclu­sive dis­tri­b­u­tion by Block­buster.
This is also a seri­ous jaw­breaker for de VC-1 format (sorry, Bill), BD which includes both AVC and VC-1 favors AVC. AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding) is from a tech­ni­cal point of view a supe­rior format.
Apple has been a member of the Blu-​ray consortium’s Board of Direc­tors since March 2005, but has not pub­licly announced their Blu-​ray plans. Let’s hope Apple will offi­cially launch Blu-​ray sup­port at Mac­world San Fran­cisco 2008.
Update 05-01-2008: It is now clear that New Line (Owned by Warner Bros.) will also drop HD-​DVD in favor of Blu-​ray. The announce­ment comes on a day that can only be described as a night­mare for the HD-​DVD camp.Rumor 08-01-2008: Para­mount Pic­tures is poised to drop its sup­port of HD-​DVD in favor of Sony’s Blu-​ray format, land­ing a deci­sive blow to the Toshiba-​backed next-​generation DVD format and all but assur­ing Blu-ray’s role as the future stan­dard for all high-​definition dig­i­tal video discs.

Accord­ing to online trend research firm Net Appli­ca­tions, Apple con­tin­ues to gain market share. Last month, Net Appli­ca­tions reported that Apple’s share was up to 6.8% with cor­re­spond­ing declin­ing Win­dows market share. Today, Net Appli­ca­tions reports that the Mac has crested the 7% bar­rier and is at 7.31% for Decem­ber 2007. Mean­while, Microsoft’s Win­dows OS con­tin­ues to decline in market share, with a still dom­i­nant 91.79% in Decem­ber having eroded from 92.42% in Novem­ber. Apple (and to a lesser extent, Linux) have been steadily taking market share from Microsoft for the past 6 months.

I would like to wish the read­ers of this blog a Happy New Year and may all your wishes and dreams come true. In a couple of days I will become 33 years old. Many famous people even didn’t make that age. A new year for me is a time to reflect my life and to take a look at my “track record”. Are we still enjoy­ing our­selves enough with our work, hob­bies, life in gen­eral? Do we pay enough atten­tion to our wife’s, family, friends and our lives?
It’s like Buddha (563 - 483 BC) said:

…All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain fol­lows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, hap­pi­ness fol­lows him, like a shadow that never leaves him…

Intro­duc­ing Send-​To-​A-​Friend: you can now send your favorite arti­cle to your friends. At the bottom of each post you’ll find an enve­lope icon. Send­ing an arti­cle to a friend is lim­ited to a 10 min­utes inter­val (for spam­bot pro­tec­tion). Please be polite and don’t spam anyone (your e-mail will never be pub­lished). This a 1.0 release, so there might be some quirks

A merry Christ­mas to all you read­ers! There are a lot of inter­est­ing things hap­pen­ing in this kitchen! Just follow the cold turkey…

My trusty Log­itech MX1000 died on me today, so I had to replace it. I fired up Safari and vis­ited the Log­itech web­site. After drop­ping my eye-​ball on the MX Air Recharge­able Cord­less Air Mouse, I chose the MX Rev­o­lu­tion, I don’t see myself Wii-​ing-​up those Pho­to­shop doc­u­ments.

So we’re now cruis­ing at dig­i­tal full-​speed 2.4GHz, flaw­lessly fight­ing those pixels with the Advanced Laser Engine. This mouse made me think of the Apple Pro Mouse com­mer­cial: “Born To Be Wild“, the only dif­fer­ence is the Apple Pro Mouse is (a still)born, this mouse is wild.