I bought all the pieces of my custom PC that I built in November from NewEgg.  I thought they did a good job on the price of the components, and in getting me stuff in a timely manner.

So, now I am on their weekly mailing list.  I saw something advertised that I thought might be of interest to others.

The Ziga CDRDMP Digital Picture Frame (5.6-in) and MP3 Player for $159.

I always thought that these types of devices would be more popular.  I think this one has a lot going for it, and the price is pretty reasonable.

This is your Tech Tidbits Daily for Wednesday, Feb. 16th 2005. Today’s news is from Brian Baily’s Leave It Behind weblog.  In a post in late January, Brain introduces his readers to a relatively new open-source blog publishing tool called dasBlog that is written in Microsoft ASP.NET. A developer David Hayden is using it for his blog if you’d like to see an example, then check out: www.davidhayden.com.  One of the more interesting technical tidbits about this tool is that it does not require a back-end database.  All the files for the blog are apparently rendered in XML to the host’s file system. Definitely something worth a closer look. For
more information about how to subscribe to this podcast or for links
mentioned in this podcast check out www.technewsradio.com. Have a great
day.

I am trying to connect some dots from Engadget posts … Microsoft’s Xbox "2" is suppose to be running IBM PowerPC 970/970x processor.

Currently Apple’s systems all seem to run on IBM PowerPC processors.

The next version of Playstation "3" from Sony is running the "Cell" processor (co-developed by Sony/Toshiba/IBM).

Now analysts are saying that Apple/Sony could offer "Cell" laptops, because Mac X runs on IBM PowerPC, and IBM is part of "Cell", so the "port should be easy?!?" I’d have to agree to that in general, because to get to Mac OS X, Apple used NeXT’s Mach kernel which was Intel based to go to PowerPC right?

So if Apple has an easy ride to "Cell", then Xbox "2" should be "Cell" savvy also since it is PowerPC based. So, how much Windows is in Xbox OS to get to a "Cell" Longhorn?

That detail I don’t know, but I am guessing a great deal of Xbox relies on Windows technologies because didn’t Bill Gate’s Xbox "2" demo Blue Screen of Death?

Which all begs the question, where is Intel/AMD in all this?

Engadget reports that the 
Microsoft’s Tablet PC Edition of Windows XP bug that causes the Tablet Input Panel (TIP) to misbehave to a point where your system can’t use the TIP as an input option is really a pain. 

Right now Microsoft is reportedly telling people to reboot daily.  Nice … but I still have the problem and reboot at least three times a day (leave home in the morning, leave work in the evening, shutdown over night) … this on a Tablet with 1.5-GBs of RAM.

I’ve had to revert to carrying around 3×5 index cards between meetings as a backup to make sure I can capture something if the TIP stops working.

Robert Scoble is posting: Fortune – Diary
of a Demo; call for links; and bloggingdemo.

Wi-Fi Network News had a post on mobile VoIP, and NWFusion has some coverage from the "networking" perspective.

Also my favorite PR person Renee Blodgett is blogging a lot via her site Down The Avenue.

Network World Fusion Radio’s podcast segment "The SBC/AT&T Ripple" (published  2/7/2005) discussed among other things the potential for a Verizon and MCI merger.  Great analysis!