It’s easy to give back.  You can donate online, by mail or by phone.  Details on the American Idol website.

You can also just open iTunes, click on the Idol Gives Back banner and purchase some music.  Songs from Snoop Dogg, Fergie, Carrie Underwood, Miley Cyrus, Heart and more are available.  That’s a pretty simple way to donate.

You don’t have to give a lot either.  If you just donate a $1, that’d definitely help.  Even a little goes a long way.

Give a little love, give a little hope.  :)

• I’m now running Firefox 3 betas thanks to MultiFireFox.
• MidnightFox was updated the other day with incorrect buttons.  Oops.  That has been re-uploaded and should be made public soon.
• yExplore and GA? have been updated for Firefox 3. Actually, for the beats not the official release.  That’ll happen when the final release comes out.
• Now that I am running Firefox 3, I can start theming it.
• Just started to watch Entourage.  It seems like a pretty cool show.
• Watching the second season of Monk too which is an awesome TV show.
• I’m totally lost on Lost but I love it.
• I’m going to be speaking on SEO and web design next week at the Art Institutes MN.  That’ll be fun since I use to go to school there and I’m not big on public speaking.
• I just bought Delicious Library.  It’s such a great program to keep track of music, movies and games.
• I’m now using MoodBlast to update my Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku status’.  I’d love to see this as a web based app much like TwitterFeed so it can automatically post my blog posts too.

That’s what I got at the moment.

Hulu has a clean interface and is user friendly. It’s not over done with ads or extra stuff. It’s been streamlined and the only thing that could make it better is if the site was created with a black background and not white. That’d make the shows look so much nicer.

Hulu has a great selection of current & old TV shows, show clips, plus movies. Here are just a few of the shows available:

• The Office
• Simpsons
• Family Guy
• A-Team
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Arrested Development
• Doogie Howser, M.D.
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• WKRP in Cincinnati
• Monk
• Dr. Steve-O
• Keeping Up with The Kardashians
• Weekend at Bernie’s
• Bulworth
• Andy Barker P.I.
• So You Think You Can Dance
• ‘Til Death
• Scrubs
• Bones
• My Name is Earl
• And many more.

The playback seems to work well on the older Windows 2000 machine we use to stream the shows to our TV. The quality is good also. That is, compared to other streaming TV channels like ABC or the CW. It’s even getting HD quality content which will be even better.

Some Hulu features include:

• Share - Send an email to your friends about a certain show or clip.
• Embed - Put the show on your site.
• Details - What am I watching and when did it air?
• Feedback - Video issues? Report them.
• Fullscreen Playback
• Pop Out Window Playback
• Lower Lights - Makes the site background light gray instead of white.
• Rate - Rate the episode.
• Playlists - Keep track of what you watched. Even comes with RSS feeds and privacy settings.

The commercials are done right too. There are a few 30 second commercials every so often. Just like regular TV, only one, not 5 commercials at a time. Some advertisers are creating interactive and entertaining ads, others are just playing the same boring commercial over and over again.

Hulu is going to be a big hit. It has variety in shows, good playback quality, a user friendly interface and it’s free; well once you get invited.

We’ve been enjoying Hulu for a while now at our house and thank the networks for getting together and creating a great online TV solution!

In this example, I searched for Carrie Underwood and got a bit of spam instead.

Since YouTube is owned by Google, you’d think they could detect this. Tons of keywords strung together should be pretty easy to detect. Or what about noticing that a video is tagged with nude or porn but it’s not marked as adult? How hard would it be to detect that? Or what about videos that have the same title, same description, same running time and that were uploaded at the same time? Can we say duplicate content? It seems Google’s SEO rules are not in play at YouTube.

Come on YouTube, you’re starting to show weakness and if you don’t watch out, some other video site will take all your users.

Sure, it’s a German theme, but it contains doughnuts and The Simpsons Movie logo.

I had thought of creating a Simpsons theme once, but it would have been much more character orientated. Still, it’s kind of fun and looks decent. Not enough Simpsons for me, but the doughnuts look tasty.

Download the theme from the official Mozilla Addon site.

Brad Paisley has written some interesting songs in the past including Ticks, Alcohol & Celebrity and continues his string with one called Online. It’s all about how we mask who we really are on sites like MySpace and become much cooler online.

‘Cause online I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
I drive a Maserati
I’m a black-belt in karate
And I love a good glass of wine
It turns girls on that I’m mysterious
I tell them I don’t want nothing serious
‘Cause even on a slow day
I could have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
So much cooler online

The video includes many many guest stars and is a fun one. Check it out.

The full song can be downloaded online at

Check out the online only Get Mac ads below.

There is also one created specifically for PCworld.com. I wasn’t able to find the YouTube version so here is the direct link. Since this is the actual ad, you’ll have to hit the ‘Click to play with sound’ button as they won’t automatically play with sound (thank God). It’ll also show at 100% of your screen size.

I have to say, I really like the Get Mac ads and think they are very enjoyable. To bad I’m not the target audience as I’ve always been a Mac guy.

Look at Prison Break. Those guys have been trying to get free for many seasons and now most of them that did get out of jail are back in it. And don’t get me started on Lost. Love the show but annoyed that I may never get to see the ending as it drags on forever!

TV has some great, addicting shows but some seem like they should be a one season deal. I want to watch the Drive road race, but I want to see someone win this season. I want to watch a season of a show and feel good about the finale and not feel like I wasted the last few months just to get a big question mark at the end.

Shows like House, ER, The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Las Vegas and many more can do the whole cliffhanger finales and it works well. Other shows like Drive, Prison Break and Lost just make me feel as they lied that I have to wait another season, or five, before I can find out what’s really going on and how it really ends.

Well see what happens though, I just may get into Drive and be addicted to yet another new show that drags on.

It talks about a new Apple product, the iRack, and how some feel it’s unstable and that we shouldn’t be working with the iRack. See for yourself…

I didn’t realize that you could get HDTV over the normal airwaves too. I was delighted when I got one HD channel with the antenna on our house that was probably installed in the 1950s. With a little playing around, I ended up with 8 HD TV channels! One of which is a 24hour local weather channel. Sweet.

What I can’t figure out is that if all the HD channels come from the same area in the Twin Cities, which I hear they do, then why do I only get ABC, NBC, CBS and the CW but I don’t get FOX in HD? I’d re-run my channel detector thing, but I’m afraid of loosing one of my 8 that it already found. Anyone know why this might be or what the trick is to getting more HD channels?

I also have to figure out how to run the antenna cable though the VCR/DVD player and still get the HD channels on TV. That way I can record shows. I fear that my VCR technology is just a bit out of date.

As the episodes wind down, I realize that I still really like the show and the characters. We’ve been addicted since season one, however it’s time.

Carrying on the show after high school was hard enough. Some kind of went to college, but yet not really. Kaitlin and Taylor took over and actually became likable. The final season surpassed my expiations and if they had this good of writing during season three, I think season five would still be a reality.

However, with the characters growing up, it’s time for the show to end and for us to say goodbye. We can’t all stay in Newport forever, or can we?

Movies are $12.99 for new releases, preorders and first week. After that up to $14.99, however older movies go for only $9.99. It’ll take about 30 minutes at a 5mb/s broadband connection. Movies come with Dolby surround sound and are near DVD quality. Heck, you gotta risk something for getting them on demand and cheap.

They also introduced new iPods. Nano is now aluminum and in green, silver, black, blue, and pink. Regular sized iPods are now bigger in size too. $249 and $349 will get you 60GB and 80GB capacity.

iTV (working title) is kind of like the MacMini only 1/2 the size and targeted more at the media (movies, music and TV) than a complete computer system. It’ll be wireless and arrives in 2007. I for one, can’t wait!

Checkout Apple for all the latest details!

Good job Geico, keep up the good ads!

I’m so disappointed. We better get a Chris Daughtry CD at least.

The iPod Hi-Fi is not a new iPod but rather a home stereo system. Basically it’s a big set of speakers. No radio or CD player (that’s so 2000) just great sound (surround sound) in a simplistic design with a built in iPod dock and remote. However for $350 I think I’ll pass for now. Maybe there is a iPod Hi-Fi mini coming out. Ha ha.

The real cool introduction was the updated Mac Mini. Same form factor and size but with an Intel chip inside (2-3 times faster), a few more ports and great software. The Mac Mini comes with all the software you need to create and play movies, music, pictures and much more. BYOKDM though (bring your own keyboard and mouse) as the Mac Mini cuts costs by not including what you probably have lying around. Or, just hook it up to the TV and use the remote!

Personally I’d take a Mac Mini over an iPod Hi-Fi but they are both pretty cool. Just more Apple toys!!

I didn’t catch to many, so I’ll be watching them online too.

Keep in mind, iFilm will be extremely busy for a few days so be patient.

Oh and congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers!

The iTunes Music Store has added new shows for us to download. Most notably, NBC current and vintage shows. You can now download the latest Surface or go back in time and get Knight Rider or Dragnet.

There is also a couple from Sci Fi and one from USA in the mix.

Hopefully this is just a hint of what’s to come as we regularly download Lost and there are many others we’d like to see added to iTunes!

New Shows in iTunes:

NBC: Law and Order, The Office, Surface, The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Dragnet, Adam-12, Knight Rider
Sci Fi: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica Miniseries
USA: Monk

Now, I don’t have an iPod that does video so we didn’t watch it on that. However my Powerbook has an S-Video out port. So I went S-Video to A/V cable to TV. I then went from audio out to A/V cable to TV. So we watched the episode on TV while it was playing in iTunes. Full screen of course.

All in all, if you are a video geek, you’ll think the quality is bad. However, it’s just fine for most normal people. Plus, if you don’t watch it full screen, it won’t get as pixeley. On the little iPod screen, you probably won’t even notice.

TV shows in iTunes is an excellent idea and I can see us buying lots when more shows come available. This is better than the VCR for us!!

Good Luck Robert Iger

Tags: disney, pixar, michael eisner, robert iger