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You get a lot for your money.

For a great tabletop radio, let’s take a look at Cambridge SoundWorks i765 iPod/Video Entertainment System ($500). It comes with a nifty integrated iPod dock, plays CDs and DVDs, has a terrific AM/FM radio, and sound pretty good, for a table radio (my CNET review will be posted later this month).

I’ve heard ‘em all and I’m here to tell you there’s a hierarchy of fidelity. The pipsqueak
iPod speakers (pretty much everything under $100) sound tinny, screechy, with zero bass and can’t play at all loud. They’re all different shades of awful. Sure, some $300 iPod speakers are way better, more or less on par with a decent sounding table radio, I’m thinking here of my favorite Boston Acoustics Receptor, Tivoli, and Cambridge SoundWorks models. Then again, the better radios and iPod speakers are priced upwards of $500 or more, and for that kind of dough you could pick up a HTIB.

Or you could buy an Onkyo HT-SR700 HTIB ($500 SRP, but street prices are closer to $350). It comes with a 5.1 channel A/V receiver, five satellite speakers, and a 230 watt, 10-inch subwoofer. Granted, you still have to add a DVD player, maybe a Philips DVP5982 that comes with HDMI/1080p connectivity for around $60. Got an iPod? Toss in a $6 mini-plug to stereo RCA cable so you can play your iPod over the HT-SR700’s speakers and sub. Or treat yourself to Onkyo’s dedicated dock, the DS-AS2 ($109 SRP).

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Onkyo)

Now sure, the Cambridge i765 is far more compact, doesn’t require a mess ‘o’ wires, and is easier to set up, but sonically the Onkyo HTIB is miles ahead for music, and there’s simply no comparison for movies. The Onkyo’s bona-fide surround and powerful subwoofer are so much more satisfying than any table radio could ever be. Hey, the table radio and HTIB are nearly the same price, choose sound quality or a lifestyle solution. Just don’t kid yourself that they sound the same, they don’t.

Well, last year he offered a free handgun. And, in an interview with CNN (embedded here), he said: “It spiked our Web traffic and we sold, we estimate, 35 more
cars during the promotion than we normally would have.”

You might wonder how on earth he came to devise such an outlandish, and perhaps slightly unnerving, promotion.

However, I feel confident that Muller’s strategy will prove to be a good one.

You might think this promotion a little on the eccentric side. However, Muller is no lily-livered Collapsenikov.

Muller explained to CNN: “Look, there’s a bunch of evil in the world and we need to protect ourselves.”

He will offer a voucher that the lucky truck-owner can take down to a gun store and go through the proper vetting procedure before he gets his precious free gift. Which, should you suddenly feel the urge to pack extra protection, will set you back a mere $450.

Next year, when he looks to send his Web traffic soaring in an attempt to sell 200 more vehicles, I feel sure he will offer bazookas, a mortar or two, perhaps even a rocket launcher.

I am sure there will be at the very least a handgun tickling his hip as he nibbles on his rainbow roll.

In case you were wondering whether he will have a pile of AKs in his showroom, from the top of which he’ll take one and present it to every purchaser, well, it’s not quite so glamorous.

Hence the need, according to Muller, for something stronger than a little handgun.

He added: “There’s a tremendous crime problem around here with people doing meth. These people have lost their souls. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about me. They care about getting more dope.”

So the seductive power of the gun seems to work on those who choose the Web to find the best deals.

At least that seems to be the view of Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors in Clay County, Mo. Because, in August, he is offering a free AK-47 with every vehicle sold.

He believes in standing up for one’s right to defend oneself. Indeed, he has a motto for his dealership that expresses his feelings very clearly: “God, Guns, Guts and American Pick-up Trucks.”

However, Muller is keen to point out that just because he lives in a more rural area, this promotion is not indicative of some sort of uncultured nature on his part.

This year, Muller said, he is looking to sell 100 extra vehicles, hence the attempt to locate your inner Rambo.

He was quoted in the Telegraph as explaining: “They think we are all cross-eyed rednecks down here. We are not. Tonight I am going to the theater with my wife to see Anything Goes and we will eat sushi on the way.”

In this tough economy, forearmed is better than forewarned.

The Transcend card also supports UDMA access. (UDMA lets cameras write to a memory card faster, but only newer and higher-end cameras include the feature right now.)

Jumping the Photo Marketing Association trade show gun by a few days, PNY Technologies announced several new 16GB and 32GB flash cards for cameras and video cameras on Thursday.

Another company that’s taking on better-known flash card brands such as SanDisk and Lexar is Transcend. It announced a 133X 32GB flash card earlier this month that includes support for ECC (error-correcting code) that can catch and fix some errors that sometimes occur when reading and writing data.

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Transcend)

Transcend's 32GB CompactFlash card

Both cards will be available in the second quarter. The SDHC card should cost about $250 and the CompactFlash card about $400, though the company cautioned prices could change given volatility in the flash memory chip market. PNY purchases its flash memory chips from Toshiba, Samsung, Intel, and others, the company said.

Correction January 27 7 p.m. PST: I messed up the photo-capacity math. A 32GB card can hold more than 10,000 3MB photos.

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PNY)

The 32GB SDHC card can keep up with high-definition video captured at 9 megabits per second, the company said. And the Optima Pro CompactFlash card, has a 266X transfer speed, or 40 megabits per second, using a UDMA interface.

PNY plans to show the cards at PMA along with new 8-inch and 10.2-inch digital photo frames and a 32GB USB flash drive, the company said.

PNY's 32GB CompactFlash card should cost about $400 when it emerges in the second quarter of 2008.

Capacity of 32GB may sound like overkill for digital photography–that’s enough to hold more than 10,000 3MB images–but there are reasons it’s useful. Raw files, especially newer 14-bit files, have moved well beyond 10MB apiece, shooting in combination with JPEG adds even more, and trigger-happy high-end cameras that shoot 5, 6.5, 9, and even 10.5 frames per second chew through memory in no time. And, of course, flash memory-based video cameras need all the capacity they can get.

“We don’t have any plans to build an operating system,” Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, said on Wednesday during in an call-in show, KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny.

The answer: Nope.

Update: I listened again and got the actual quotation.

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Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

Google has never expressed much enthusiasm for getting into the desktop operating system, but some might wonder if the company has updated its thinking, now that it’s trying to spearhead the Android project to bring an operating system to mobile phones.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience

The comment came in response to a caller who praised Google’s open-source work and asked if it planned anything like Red Hat’s Linux operating system for desktop computers that would compete directly with Microsoft Windows.

Well, I spent some quality time checking out the KSS system and came away from the experience totally dazzled by the ultra-high resolution (4,096 x 2,160) picture from the Sony SRX-R110 Digital Cinema Projector. The uber Sony produces four times the resolution of 1080p image.

This home theater is all about aggressively advancing the state of the art of picture and sound presentation. Yes, it’s comfortable and beautiful, but its prime directive is a quest for the very best. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is overlooked. Kipnis won’t settle for second best.

Kipnis calls his creation the Kipnis Studio Standard, and if all goes according to plan, wealthy movie industry professionals, actors, directors, and producers will be lining up to commission him to custom-design and build a KSS for them.

The 8.8 channel audio system is fed by a well-balanced combination of audiophile solid-state and vacuum-tube amplifiers. The KSS is astonishing in the way it delivers power, but with 11,315 very high-quality watts on tap, that’s hardly surprising. The 8.8 channel system uses 16 (!!!) 18-inch subwoofers and that might be why the KSS is easily the most effortlessly powerful home theater I have ever heard. Unlike all of the other high-end home theaters, the KSS was designed to present picture and sound beyond that found in even the finest screening rooms. Kipnis spared no expense to build the very best.

(Credit:
Robert Wright)

Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference LCR-2800 Center-Channel Speakers

(Credit:
Robert Wright)

The Audiophiliac (left) and Jeremy Kipnis in the KSS.

If your typical high-end home theater with rows of plush seats, velvet wallpaper, and popcorn machines offers Cadillac levels of performance and luxury, then Jeremy Kipnis’ $6 million ultimate home theater is more like a fire-breathing Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the fastest production Ferrari ever built.

My feature article in the Audio Video Interiors section of the February issue of Home Theater magazine is loaded with great pictures and information about the KSS. Oh, and there’s plenty more at Kipnis-Studios.com.

This is the Kipnis Studio Standard.

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Robert Wright)

But enough computer shoppers, here and abroad, will be buying increasing numbers of these and other notebook computers. The second-quarter news Intel reported about notebook sales was not an anomaly. The trend will continue until the popularity of notebooks get eclipsed by even smaller devices. None of this suggests that the curtain is about to close on the era of big desktop PCs imminently. But “Let’s get small” has become more than just a mantra for the future. It’s now the present.

My back-of-the-envelope tally of friends and colleagues turns up the same taste trend. Few say they plan to spend money on desktops any more. Those who do say it’s because they need the bigger computer for serious gaming applications. I hang with a crowd of early adaptors, but it’s not just the predilections of the double soy nonfat latte crowd. Now the statistics are starting to bear out the anecdotal evidence.

One of the big surprises out of Intel’s second quarter numbers is that for the first time, demand for notebook processors outstripped the company’s product sales for desktop machines. Everyone expected this would happen one day, but the future just got here a lot faster than most folks–including Intel–ever assumed.

It’s hard to remember the last time I bought a desktop computer. Sometime back in the stone age, I suppose, when vendors still bundled the machines with CRT screens.

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CNET.News)

And that occurred even without big sales of Atom processors, which Intel debuted in the second quarter. These chips are geared for what Intel describes as Internet-centric “netbook” and “nettop” alternatives to current notebooks and desktops. Truth be told, though, it’s still not clear how much impact Atom will have. Witness CEO Paul Otellini’s seeming putdown of his own product: “(Atom) is less than a third the performance of our Centrino (processor). You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use,” he said.

With the Commission’s decision in place, Google announced on Tuesday that it has formally closed its merger with DoubleClick.

Even if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation services, it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert sufficient competitive pressure after the merger. The Commission therefore concluded that the elimination of DoubleClick as a potential competitor would not have an adverse impact on competition in the online intermediation advertising services market.

Opponents of the merger weigh in
“U.S. and European policymakers must reform the antitrust process to reflect the realities of the digital-market era, where competition, data collection, and content creation are seamlessly intertwined,” the Center for Digital Democracy, which had presented its opposition to the FTC and the Commission, said in a statement Tuesday. “In today’s digital marketplace, the company that controls the most data about consumers, and has the global reach to connect to them, raises both anticompetitive and privacy concerns. An antiquated and piecemeal antitrust approach fails to protect citizens, consumers, and competition.”

The Commission found that the merged entity would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at marginalizing Google’s competitors, mainly because of the presence of credible ad-serving alternatives, to which customers (publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch–in particular, vertically integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL.

The Commission’s in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other’s activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment.

Last December, the Federal Trade Commission gave the online-advertising megamerger its blessing.

Updated on March 11 at 8:52 a.m.

Google’s rivals such as Microsoft, as well as privacy groups, were hoping that the Commission, as well as U.S. antitrust regulators, would kill the Google-DoubleClick deal. But the Commission’s passage clears the acquisition’s last large regulatory hurdle.

These relationships concern DoubleClick’s market position in ad serving, where Google, by controlling DoubleClick’s tools, could allegedly raise the cost of ad serving for rival intermediaries, and Google’s market position in search advertising and/or online ad intermediation services, where Google could allegedly have required purchasers of search ad space or intermediation to also purchase DoubleClick’s tools.

The organization also cited concerns that the merger would aid Microsoft in its goal to acquire Yahoo. That deal is largely being driven by Microsoft’s desire to bolster its online-advertising capabilities.

Approval by the European Commission, which came without conditions, had largely been expected to occur this week. The Commission’s announcement comes three weeks before its April 2 deadline, in which it had to determine whether to nix the deal.

“Instead of ensuring competition, (the Commission) and the FTC have literally paved the way for the emergence of a global digital duopoly over online advertising,” the Center for Digital Democracy stated.

The Commission also analyzed the potential effects of nonhorizontal relationships between Google and DoubleClick, following concerns raised by third parties in the course of the market investigation.

The decision by the FTC had come after the European Commission determined in November that it would take a deeper look into the proposed merger. Some antitrust experts at the time noted that Google could face a difficult time in Europe, given differences in the way federal and European regulators evaluate mergers.

U.S. regulators noted that Google and DoubleClick are not direct competitors and that the markets within online advertising evolve quickly. As a result, the FTC did not find evidence that competitive harm would arise from the merger.

According to the Commission’s announcement, the deal was approved based on several factors:

“We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a statement. “With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability, and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers, and agencies.”

European antitrust regulators on Tuesday approved Google’s $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick, paving the way for a blockbuster deal in Internet search and publisher-based advertising tools.

The market investigation also found that the merged entity would not have the incentive to close off access for competitors in the ad-serving market, mainly because such strategies would be unlikely to be profitable.

We’re excited about Epson’s newest multifunction printer, the Stylus NX400. The all-in-one printer, copier, and scanner is outfitted in a glossy black finish and uses Epson’s DURABrite Ultra ink to produce photos that can reportedly last up to six times longer than the average printer using plain paper.

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Epson)

Under the hood, you’ll find Epson’s MicroPiezo DX3 print nozzle head that uses variable ink droplet sizes from 4 picoliters and up, which translates to finer detail in the quality of your photos. The printer also has a 2.5 inch tilt LCD screen, memory card slots, and a PictBridge port for direct camera connectivity. Priced at $100 square, we’re anxious to see how it stacks up to other entry level multifunction printers. We’re going to give it a full review, including speed and quality tests, in the near future.

Look familiar? If you've ever used Meebo, this is similar to what the service looked like when it first started out. An enterprising open-source developer has created his own project that mimics the look and feel of the popular Web-based IM client. (click to enlarge)

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Meebo must be awful flattered right now, because an open-source clone of what the service offered just a year or so ago has come up in the form of Soashable. Sure, it doesn’t have the platform, group chat rooms, simple support for Google Talk and ICQ, or the some of the software extensions of the popular Web-based IM service, but if Pidgin is any indication of what can be done in the world of open-sourced IM, Soashable is off to a good start.

Going forward, this project would make a great plug-in for people with personal blogs or sites. You could create your own versions of the service with skinning and personalization options to match. Meebo has already ventured down this path with sponsorships and advertising campaigns that take advantage of the skinning functionalities, but giving users that power to tweak every aspect of the design to their liking is one of the things that made Trillian so popular with its SkinXML engine.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

[via Mashable]

Besides the hosted Web app that supports three major IM clients, you can take Soashable and integrate it into your personal site by installing it on your server. The chat windows are currently full of all sorts of debugging gobbledy-goop, but I successfully had conversations with people on AIM and Yahoo without a hitch.

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Team Teamwork produced the mix, which features unique tracks by Spank Rock, Common, Aesop Rock, Clipse, and my personal pick: MF Doom. Most of the songs fit well with the background score; for example, in “Fumbling Over Words,” artist Edan Portnoy’s intensity melds seamlessly into the rumblings of the “Battle” music from OoT, but other tracks, like Common’s classic “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” just sound too silly over the theme from the Hyrule Marketplace.

Team Teamwork presents: The Ocarina of Rhyme

If you enjoyed Eric Franklin’s post on 8-bit NES-style hip-hop, you’ll definitely enjoy Team Teamwork’s “The Ocarina of Rhyme.” It’s a mix tape of mashups that combines hip-hop tracks with the score to the Zelda game Ocarina of Time.

Stream the album above or download it here, and let me know what you think in the comments!