In response to Microsoft announcing the newest release, Xbox 360, the internet has been a buzz. I have been lost in the buzz with numerous blog posts, articles, ficticious rumors, and hopeful feelings towards the new console. It’s all been said, the problem is that it’s being said everywhere as well. I have consolidated 36 of the most relevant posts I’ve come across regarding the 360 (get it, 36 links for the 360?)

Your one stop for the latest Xbox news:
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Phones got it all these days. Playing music, emailing pictures, and controlling your TV with your mobile phone is old news. Can we pack more punch into this small do-it-all device? Navicore says yes. GPS on your phone is their game, and today they released it to the UK public.

This exciting technology is of course only available in Europe and I have seen no plans for them to move to the U.S. anytime soon. That doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t already working on a U.S. version of something similar, I hope.

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May 11-13 was the Connections Conference held in the beautiful city of San Francisco. This time around I was fortunate enough to make an appearance. Hotel lobby, paper pamphlets, and tacky carpeting greeted me upon arrival. There’s something really cool lurking very close to me, I can feel it… or maybe that’s the electromagnetic field I’m feeling due to all the new home networking devices hidden behind these now closed doors.

After three days of seeing just how many different home networking solutions are coming to market in the near future, I’m overwhelmed and extremely excited. I Overwhelmed: I want each technology for my lily pad, but can’t afford every single one. Extremely excited: I will end up splurging on a few of them, and that already puts a smile on my geeky face.
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Good movie compression is every movie/video pirate’s best friend. Divx is a huge player in the game of compressing videos. In my personal historical experience, they did for video what the mp3 did for audio. Video files were huge, and transferring them across the internet required days of uploading and then downloading. Making the files smaller while losing little to no quality was desired. Divx didn’t just dream it, they did it. Now there’s no question that the power of this codec (short for compression/decompression) can be used for forces of good as well as evil. Pornography for example was the most searched entity on the internet until the mp3 came along, if you consider that good use of video compression.*

I ran into the Divx booth at the Connections Conference and had to hit these guys up. They had nifty pens, sleek silver booklets, and some portable media players for our fondling pleasures. I was excited to talk to someone who works for Divx, as a geek stuff like this is equivalent to a high school basketball player chatting with someone who designs Nike shoes. It’s just cool, and she told me about Divx 6.0 coming out real soon.
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As my fellow geeks know, please don’t be offended with the geek reference, we all are in some capacity, that E3 is currently being held in sunny southern California. And with that gaming extraveganza of games, games, more games, hot models, and games, they show the latest and greatest of the upcoming.

The big 3, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have officially announced their next generation consoles. Sony’s Playstation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and Nintendo’s Revolution promise to make this upcomming generation truly digital.

All three are reported to have backwards compatibility and online access. Nintendo went a bit further to announce that “the evolution’s built-in wireless Internet will provide downloadable access to the thousands of games in company’s 20-year-old library, going back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System” WOWZERS..dorks drooling.

I haven’t been a big Nintendo fan in recent years, although I am guilty of owning all three of the current generation systems, its always exciting to see whats coming next for console gaming.

More indepth coverage to come when it’s announced, I don’t want to bore you with exact specs when the prices haven’t been announced yet. 😉

Connections Conference attendee NetCentrex Inc was nice enough to set me down and show me exactly what’s going on behind their curtains. There weren’t actual curtains there but they did have squishy chairs for a for a full demonstration run through.

What is Triple Play was my first question, I’ve played my TV, radio, and computer all at the same time, does that count? No, was her answer. Then she asked me for my phone number! That’s right kiddo, right in the middle of us ordering The Lord of the Rings movie as a VoD (Video on Demand) she asked me for my phone number. My striking resemblance to Aragorn Mortensen was more apparent than I thought. Then she started to dial my number on the TV remote control. A phone sitting next to the TV started to ring a funny ring, she picked it up and didn’t say anything. As soon as she put the receiver to her ear, my phone started to ring. It was her calling me!

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Thanks to the Connections Conference I now must have minimum $10,000.00 in new up to date home networking equipment. I have no idea how I lived without these great new inventions, and once I get them will never want to be without them. SmartVue agrees, and provides a solution to keeping your new home networking things in your home.

Camera surveillance is nothing new, even wireless cameras aren’t a new technology. SmartVue has introduced a new spin on old technology. Wireless cameras for the home surveillance, connected to the net, and available anywhere (even your mobile phone).

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I’m not old, but I sure do remember back in the good ol’ days when candy bars were a nickel, movies cost $0.50, email accounts had 2MB limits, and attachments were measured in Kilobytes. My friends and I dreamed of the days when cars flew, videophones lined the streets, and we could email 2GB attachments to each other with the easy of simply pushing ‘send’.

Thank you Streamload, and no they don’t make flying cars. My latter fantasy however has been fulfilled thanks to this San Diego based company. I ran across these guys at the Connections Conference, they have more storage than you can imagine and allow you free unlimited uploads. Movies, music, videos, files, photos, and anything else you can imagine.

(note: this is a “contest post” so leave a comment!! )
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On April 1st Mobile PC Magazine had me pretty good with an elaborate post about nuclear powered batteries. It was an April Fools joke. Picking up my ego from the ground when I realized I had been fooled, I got ta thinking “Man, a nuclear powered battery — that would be cool as long as it didn’t make me grow a third testical.”

Well here it is. A tritium based battery will last for 12-20 years. This means two things.

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If you’re like me (then I feel sympathy for you) you probably have more than one computer in your household. Each computer holds its own library of media: music, movies, and photos. Setting up a network then sharing files is a huge chore thanks to our buddies at Microsoft. Let’s face it: I want more than just a normal, boring, computer network these days.

My digital appetite may be satisfied with something I came across during the Connections Conference, the Dedicated Devices Inc. (DDI) Digital Home System. Mediabolic has teamed up with DDI to bring a new type of home network. Considering you paid $12,000.00 for that 62” plasma screen, and $5,000.00 for your 5.1 Dolby surround sound stereo, why the heck are you still listening to mp3’s and viewing photos on your 15” computer monitor!?

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Wires aren’t feeling so well these days. Wireless this, wireless that, everyone wants to get rid of their wires. You’d think this to not be good news for our friends at Belden, global wire manufacturers. But as much as we’d like to free ourselves from wires, the need for quality wires will not go away just that easy. I visited the Belden booth at the Connections Conference unsure what I would find from a company that makes such a simple product.

Was I wrong. I approached the booth and said “So you guys just make wires eh? Which one is your favorite?” The Belden woman pointed directly to a bundle and called it the banana bundle. She grabbed a 12” section which had two Cat5, two Coax, and one fiber wire all bundled together.
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The Connections Conference was full of new ways, and ideas for connecting existing components of your digital lifestyle. New ways to network your TV, computers, phones, stereos and anything else you may have lying around the house. Intellon, a company I had never heard of, held a boot at the conference. I figured that I’ll pass them up and go onto a company which I was more familiar with until pretty flashing LEDs drew me in. Intellon was giving out flashing LED pendants that I could not live without. So I moseyed on over to see if I could score one.

After making myself a walking flashing “HomePlug Powerline Alliance” advertisement I noticed some Netgear products that I had not seen before. Further inquiry and I found Linksys, BellSouth, Belkin and others just to name a few.
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