Those long-time readers might also recall that Ben had published a book back in 2005, titled Off the Top of My Head, which collected the columns he had written while working for the Katahdin Times in Maine. The book is still available in hardcover and paperback, starting at $20.99. But I recently commented to Ben that he should look into Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program as a way to bring the book to the Kindle platform, and he took my suggestion. The book became available tonight to Kindle users for just $4.99. And it is in the Kindle Lending Library so Amazon Prime customers can borrow it for free – though Ben could use the five bucks, so I hope you buy it if you like it.

Sure, he’s been my best friend since we met back in 1991, so I’m admittedly biased, but he’s a clever & witty writer and the columns are full of humor. And I feature in a few of the columns, when he’s relating tales of our misadventures.

I picked up three of the bundles the last time I posted the deal, at $9.99, and I’ve been very happy with them. I picked up a number of additional AA & AAA packs from Amazon and I’ve been phasing out my old NiCD & NiMH cells, replacing them with the iGo cells. Amazon sells a charger and just four cells for $12.99, so $7.99 with eight is a good deal.

There were familial obligations – Mother’s Day, our nephew’s birthday, stuff that needed to get done around our house, etc. And my day job has kept me pretty busy lately, including a trip down to New Jersey this past week. Just a storm of time sucks and catching up from being laid up took up the rest.

So I have a bit of catching up to do here on recent events, such as TiVo’s latest software update, and a bunch of other stuff. But I think I’m healthy again and feeling as well as I can expect given the pollen levels. So I’m going to try to knock out some posts to catch up. Sorry I’ve been absent, it bugs me when that happens too.

The timing is good since The Cable Show hits Boston this week – Monday through Wednesday. Well, actually, there is a press reception Sunday night at Fenway Park that I’ll be attending as well. This is my first time attending The Cable Show, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. I’ve attended may other trade shows and conferences over the years, both as an exhibitor and as an attendee/blogger, so I know the generalities. But each show is different, so it will be interesting to see what this one is like.

I have a meeting scheduled with TiVo on Monday morning, just after the show floor opens. So if there is anything you really want to know about, leave a comment. Oh, but don’t suggest asking about obvious stuff like the forthcoming transcoder box and IP STB, or the new SDK, as those are already on my list to follow up on, along with the rest of the road map info they previously shared. Being that this is The Cable Show I expect a lot of what TiVo will have to say will relate to their progress in the MSO market with less focus on retail products. This is their show blurb:

Only the TiVo® service brings together the best of TV, VOD and web entertainment together in a single user interface, with one remote and one simple search across everything. And in this environment of increasing over-the-top competition and shifting consumer loyalties, TiVo is uniquely suited to combine over a decade of consumer experience with the ability to integrate with existing infrastructures and the know-how to execute with speed. New this year, TiVo is showcasing its whole-home and TV-everywhere solutions, which offer the same award-winning TiVo experience on every screen, big or small. Come see why more and more cable operators are choosing TiVo for their advanced-television solutions.

Still, let me know what you want to learn.

And if there is anyone else on the exhibitor list you think I really must visit, or anything specific I should ask about, feel free to suggest it. I can’t make any promises, there is only so much time in the day, but I’m always interested in checking out interesting stuff. And if you’re an exhibitor and you think I really need to meet with you, feel free to contact me.

Speaking of contacting me, I’m always interested in meeting up with my fellow bloggers, especially since I haven’t made it to CES in a few years. So if you’re going to be there and want to get together contact me directly if you have my info, or just go through the site. And if you’ve done The Cable Show before and have any pointers, I’m open to suggestions.

Hopefully next week I’ll have some interesting info to share.

The MSRP is $359.99 and Amazon sells these new for $217.95, so this more than half off Amazon’s price, and less than a third of MSRP. It is still a little pricey for a table fan – but it is the world’s coolest table fan! And how many table fans can do this?

I love this kind of thing; I’m addicted to shows like Build It Bigger, World’s Toughest Fixes, Big, Bigger, Biggest, etc. I own a few books on Boston’s Big Dig and other such projects. There have already been episodes on the new Bay Bridge, and I’m sure there will be more once it is completed. Anything with extreme engineering. (Yes, I watched all of Extreme Engineering too.)

However, sometimes there are things I find amusing, generally when someone has really put the effort into it. I generally find the stuff ThinkGeek.com comes up with to be funny.

And Google really puts some work into their April Fool’s Day jokes.

What about you? Any other gems out there?

They also released a video touting their offering for the Navy’s next generation radar, the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR). It is a pretty computer animation, showing off the planned capabilities.

If 32GB is more than you need, you can pick up the same card in 16GB for $13.99. But I’d really take the Gold Box deal and snag a 32GB card for cheap.

Well, as we know, AT&T settled with TiVo in January. Yet the spat with Microsoft continued. Microsoft even ratcheted things up after the settlement, filing a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) seeking to block importation of TiVo units for sale within the US. EDIT: This was my bad – as I wrote this I was thinking the ITC complaint was filed in January 2012, when it was January 2011. The late hour probably had something to do with it, but either way I apologize for my mistake.

However, it seems that with the primary impetus for the fight removed both sides thought better of spending resources on the legal battles. In a terse SEC filing Thursday, TiVo announced that both sides had decided to dismiss their legal claims against the other. TiVo also explicitly stated that they’d granted no patent rights to Microsoft as part of the agreement:

On March 21, 2012, TiVo and Microsoft reached an agreement whereby Microsoft has agreed to dismiss all of its pending litigation against TiVo, including its action in the United States International Trade Commission and both of its cases in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In conjunction with these dismissals, TiVo has agreed to dismiss its counterclaim against Microsoft in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. No patent rights were granted to Microsoft by TiVo.

That seems to be all either side has to say on the issue, I couldn’t find any mention of this from Microsoft.

This is good news for TiVo, it removes the distraction of these legal issues. And they were always a sideshow to the AT&T suit anyway. TiVo only filed against Microsoft as a defense to Microsoft filing against them. TiVo’s strategy has always been to go after the service providers, like AT&T and Verizon, and not their technology providers. (EchoStar was an exception since that whole legal saga started before DISH Network and EchoStar split into separate companies.)

The different brands of toys just don’t go together. Unless you can just stack them and let gravity hold things together there really isn’t a good way to combine different sets. Sure, there are some building block brands that are ‘compatible’ with Lego, but really, that’s just more Lego. It isn’t the same. What if you could really connect Lego to K’Nex, or K’Nex to Tinkertoy, and make functioning structures. That could really open up possibilities.

And that’s where 3D Printing comes in. F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab have created the The Free Universal Construction Kit, which provides connector pieces to bridge ten popular construction toys with each other. The toys covered are Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears!Gears!Gears!, K’nex, Krinkles (aka Bristle Blocks), Lego, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoy, ZomeTool, and Zoob. Well, technically it is currently eight. Zoob and ZomeTool are still covered under patents and the adapters for those won’t actually be released until December 2016 and November 2022, respectively.

So you can go out and buy these now, right? Well, no – for two reasons. First, you can’t buy them because they are free. Second, you can’t buy them because they aren’t physical objects – until you make them so. They’ve been released as STL files through Thingiverse.com. You provide the 3D printer, like a Makerbot, download the files and print the part(s) you need. Check out the parts in action in this video:

I think this is exciting because it shows the potential for 3D printing. Today 3D printing is still a fringe thing, far from the mainstream, but at one time so were printers in general. Printing has evolved from fuzzy dot matrix printers to photo quality ink jets that are so cheap they’re basically disposable. The next jump is 3D printing. There are already a couple of commercial 3D printers on the market and they’ll only continue to improve. Just as we can download books, music, movies, and games today, in the near future we’ll be downloading ‘things’ the same way.

Small items to start, certainly, but we’ll have larger printers before too long. Need some extra chairs for the cook out? Print them. Plates & cups too. Then when it is done toss them into the chipper to be converted back into feedstock. Now that’s recycling. Want a truly custom case for your phone? Modify a design and print one. 3D printers continue to evolve and we’ll have multiple materials, colors, etc., to choose from.

You can even ‘print’ metal using powered metals and a temporary binder, then fusing the part in a sintering oven. Or directly building up a part in powdered metal by using a laser to solidify it layer my layer. A lot of complex metal parts are made this way today using presses and dies to shape the part then sintering to make it solid. (I had a factory temp job in college working in such a place. One of the dirtiest jobs I’ve had, but really interesting seeing how it was done.)

Maybe it seems far out, but much of what we have today seemed pretty far out just a decade or two ago. And maybe thinking about the toys has my imagination going. For now – go print out some toys and have fun.

Via The Verge.

Via Ars Technica.

It comes with eight iGo Green AA alkaline rechargeable batteries. Unlike most other rechargeable cells, these alkaline rechargeables provide the standard 1.5V output you get from standard alkaline batteries. And they store 2000mAh, so you have decent life. They’re also designed for ‘charge and store’, and will hold their charger for up to seven years. They ship charged so they’re ready to use out of the box. And because they’re alkaline cells, they’re non-toxic with no heavy metals – unlike NiMH or NiCad cells.

Amazon sells the charger and just four batteries for $13.30, here you’re getting the charger and eight batteries for $14.99. I have some ancient NiMH AA & AAA batteries that I’ve been meaning to replace for months, since they no longer hold a charge well, so I’m jumping on this deal myself – and picking up some more iGo batteries from Amazon.

• Store up to 20,000 songs for free with millions of tracks available to purchase
• Select from more than 450,000 Android Apps and Games
• Rent any of thousands of movies, including HD and new releases
• Choose from the world’s largest selection of ebooks, over four million titles

As part of the launch Android devices running 2.2 or later will see updates: Android Market, Music, Videos, and Books will become Play Store, Play Music, Play Movies, and PlayBooks, respectively. The updates began rolling out today.

This unit seems to be the Mr. Coffee version of the Keurig MINI Plus unit I started out with. It served me well for a year, but I loved it so much my fiancee upgraded me to the Keurig B70 as a gift this past xmas and I passed the MINI on to friends. Anyway, this Mr. Coffee unit looks like it has the same basic features. Fill your mug with water. Open the top and pour it in. Insert a K-Cup. Place your mug on the tray. And hit brew. In a couple of minutes you have a fresh, hot beverage. Just dispose of the K-Cup and you’re done.

I love it because I don’t drink enough coffee or tea to bother making a full pot, but I enjoy it often enough that being able to brew a cup whenever I want makes me happy. Simple pleasures. And my fiancee likes it for a fast cup of hot cocoa on a cold winter’s day. It’s also nice for offering guests a cup any time.

This Mr. Coffee unit has an MSRP of $99.99, and sells new for $88.04, so this is a solid deal – 50% off MSRP. Join the Keurig Kult.

You can get deals on computers, digital storage, printers, digital cameras, software, GPS products, computer accessories, office technology, office supplies, office furniture, assorted gift items, and more. Act now!

And there is still time to donate $5 to the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation and have it matched for a total $10 donation. It’s just $5 and it can make a big difference for some child’s holiday.