As luck would have it though, they’re supposed to release a new version of the thing soon-we-dont-know-how-soon-but-soon-we-think so the rumor sites say.

Aaaaaahhh!

Can’t wait though.

Portable DVD players are worth their weight in gold, as are Nintendo DSes and for that matter my IPhone amazes me almost every day and I’m still on my 8GB 1st generation-er without the GPS and the latest gizmos. They provide just enough distraction for the kids to make the long journey not only survivable, but enjoyable. They’re so cheap the kids don’t even have to share, so there’s another set of battles never fought.

There are those that would say it’s keeping the kids from “interacting” or “looking out the window at the beauty of nature”. Anyone with more than one kid will tell you all that “interacting” usually digress into “fighting” within 30 minutes, and there’s only so much “scenery” to be taken in on 420 miles of interstate.

The kids love it, the adults can actually have conversations that last more than 10 seconds, and we hear laughing from the backseat instead of yelling. I see no downside here.

Thanks to my wife, her Mom, and holiday consumer demand, I was privy to an early surprise Christmas present in the form of a Nintendo Wii. I can once again connect with my inner-adolescent and consume hours trying to help Mario and Luigi live to see another day, or my virtual Cowboys put the smackdown on the Steelers, even when they can’t pull it off in real life.

I was swayed by a presentation a co-worker gave a few years ago about the upside to gaming as a family activity. Until then, I had never thought to look past the pop culture perception that gaming was simply a breeding ground for obese, diabetic couch potatoes or morally-challenged children.

For a time, I was welded to my Atari 2600 far beyond anything we’d allow for our kids, and I turned out OK. Plus, unlike when I was a kid, today games have ratings so parents can be at least marginally aware of the content of the games. Plus the Wii Fit will help keep us in shape! The list of benefits just goes on and on…!

Thanks family for the cool gift. Next up … a DOG!

Paraphrasing:
[...]
“ShellEnhancer is an application designed to enhance the default shell of Windows and to make your life easier. ShellEnhancer allows you to make your own tasks. Tasks consist of a number of commands which get executed one after the other. Available commands include: insert text, send keystroke, manipulate windows, run program, start screensaver, lock workstation and many others. Tasks can be executed with hotkeys, mouse gestures or screen corners. This can also be automated with the Auto Managed Windows feature.”
[...]

It also lets you make windows transparent, a nice feature and the one of the things I miss most about my Mac.

While I haven’t spent much time researching this space, on first glance I’d have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After you go through the quick registration process, you can search for a concept and return a gigantic list of domains based on the concept and a broad list of synonyms, rendered in a format that makes it easy to quickly identify and buy the ones that most appeal to you. You can also choose to show or hide TLD’s as well as whether the domain is registered or for sale or expiring. If the domain is for sale, you can quickly make an offer.

Though I don’t see it, hopefully they’ll soon add the ability to save searches and create alerts as new domains expire.

For all of you aspiring to make your first million by wedding your livelihood to Google’s P&L’s … they have a new product for you.

Google has released the Google Mashup Editor to beta.

Simply put, it does this:

The Google Mashup Editor provides simple tools and features that allow you to create mashups in minutes.

• A set of tags that compiles into AJAX UI components
• Syntax highlighting
• Autocomplete of gm tags by pressing the tab button
• Quick access to documentation for any tag by pressing F2
• File upload and management
• Error checking and notification

So, Google once again has made it stupid-simple to begin monetizing SaaS PIG’s and launch a Micro-ISV empire! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

As an aside, I’ve also heard good things from friends who have used the open-source PHP accelerator eAccelerator.

FoxMarks is a Firefox extension that will automagically sync your Firefox bookmarks with all the browsers you use. If you’re at someone else’s computer, no problem, just login to your account at my.foxmarks.com and see all your bookmarks there.

They’ve compiled the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail into one Firefox extension which adds a lot to your GMail experience.

I really like the other GMail skins and colored labeling, but I’m just now digging under the hood.

Check it out!

Interestingly, book sales in those areas fell overall YoY for the last year, with the exceptions being Actionscript (Javascript for Flash), JavaScript, Ruby, and SQL. JavaScript was up sharply, driven (as he says) by the interest in Ajax programming.

Even my beloved PHP was off, but then why would anyone buy a book when the online docs are some of the best in the industry?