If you got excited reading about the Pet Acoustics app for pets, but were dismayed by the whopping $2 price tag, here’s some holiday cheer that might help your heart grow three sizes larger: we have ten codes for the Pet Jingles holiday app from Pet Acoustics! And just like Santa, we’re going to make a list, and check it twice. How do you get on that list? Click on through to find out.

My general opinion is that laptops were made for laps. But sometimes your lap just isn’t convenient for comfortable for a laptop. There is no shortage of laptop stands, shelves, and supports available for purchase, but few strike the sweet spot that the AViiQ portable laptop stand does. It’s super thin, super light, and folds up to consume a negligible amount of space, making it a no-brainer to include in your already-full laptop bag.

It stands to reason that a general purpose mobile computing platform, like the iPhone or iPod Touch, will engender a host of special purpose niche applications. Pet Acoustics is one such application: “Pet Acoustics music has been specifically designed for the hearing sensitivities of your pet, both in frequency, volume and rhythm to calm and soothe your pet anytime, anywhere.” This $1.99 app includes music for dogs, cats, and horses, and includes a timer feature for scheduled playback.

I think we can all agree that protecting our own personal privacy is a generally good idea. There are an enormous number of ways that our privacy can be encroached in a given day. Some of them are “for our own good”, or “just the cost of doing business” in the modern age. Some of the ways our privacy may be violated are extremely esoteric and not very likely (hard drive activity LEDs, for example! PDF: Information Leakage from Optical Emanations). Generally speaking, what I do in my own home is largely my own business, and not the business of anyone else. But the technology behind so-called “smart grids” for delivering electricity to appliances in a way that maximizes efficiency may leak a lot of personal information about you and your domestic habits.

Just in time for the holiday, Fluid Forms has announced the availability of custom clocks made from street maps. Using their website, you can plug in a zip code or city name and then drag the map around until the portion you want is visible in the clock face. The map will then be fabricated in the color of your choice, to create a truly memorable timepiece. This would make a pretty unique gift to commemorate a special event, or romantic get-away. It’s not exactly cheap, at 120 Euros, but it’s sure to turn heads.

Okay, so I intentionally used a salacious headline to get your attention. It’s Thursday. The NSA didn’t really help make Windows 7. Rather, using their “unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities” the National Security Agency helped shape “Microsoft’s operating system security guide”, according to Richard Sharffer, Information Assurance Director at the NSA. The NSA works with other companies, like Red Hat, Apple, and Sun, too. The NSA started the Security Enhanced Linux initiative in 2003, so it should come as no surprise that they’ve been working to help secure Windows, too.

The Archerfish “Mobile Video Intelligence System” has been renamed to Archerfish Quattro, presumably because “Mobile Video Intelligence” doesn’t roll off the tongue. The unit is on sale now at Amazon.com, making it easy to add one of these to your holiday shopping. For purchases made on Black Friday through Cyber Monday you can get a free camera added to your system!

There have, historically, been two competing models of operating systems development. There’s the UNIX mentality, of small pieces loosely joined. That is, you have a whole bunch of little, stand-alone applications that all work together to accomplish more complex tasks running atop a svelte kernel that doesn’t know — or need to know — about the pieces its running. Then you have the “everything and the kitchen sink” mentality, used by Microsoft. All versions of Microsoft Windows have huge dependency chains, and what is rightly called “Windows” is a dizzying amalgamation of interdependent pieces of software, none of which can do much on their own. If you’ve ever wondered why your Windows-powered web server included Windows Media Player, or Solitaire, that’s the reason: the “stuff” that makes up Windows is highly interdependent. Read on for some interesting changes underway.

The Entourage eDGe, the world’s first “dualbook” is a dual-screen laptop / e-book reader hybrid thingie. The laptop portion is pretty straightforward, but what about the e-book? In the already crowded e-book space, how can the eDGe compete? Well, today they’ve announced they’re very own e-book store. That’s right, a device that is not yet in anyone’s hands now has its own bookstore. All sarcasm aside, this is a pretty good move to demonstrate the long-term commitment from Entourage to the eDGe, even if it is yet another e-book store (okay, so maybe it wasn’t all sarcasm aside). Read on for the whole press release.

If you weren’t at the Surly Girl Saloon last night for the Columbus CrunchGear meetup, then you were somewhere else! You missed John sporting a new pair of Onion Goggles. You missed a nerd-a-thon comparing the Droid, HD2, iPhone, Dream, and whatever other handhelds folks could dig out of their pockets. And you missed an opportunity to put your grubby paws on not only the TwitterPeek but also the Nokia Booklet!

The Amazon Kindle costs $260. The Barnes and Noble Nook costs $260. The Sony reader is $300. Clearly there’s an established price point for what we call an e-book reader. Jumping into the e-book fray comes the Intel Reader, for fifteen hundred U.S. dollars. No WiFi, no associated book store, but it does include a 5 megapixel camera, and a host of features designed to make it the best choice for vision impaired people.

Taptu, the mobile search engine, is announcing today that they’re using the OneRiot search API to provide realtime search results to mobile devices at their touch-friendly mobile web page. The realtime search results will eventually make their way into the Taptu iPhone app. Full press release inside!

Don’t forget: John and I will be at the Surly Girl Saloon tonight around 6:30 PM. Look at the happy smiles on those faces! That could be you, this time! Feel free to tell us about the cool world-changing projects on which you’re working. We love to meet people working on amazing stuff.

Yesterday’s trip down memory lane with the Gopher protocol got me thinking about all the other protocols I used to use, and those that I continue to use on a regular basis. There’s little doubt that hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) is one of the most widely used protocols on the Internet today. But there are a host of other protocols used every day! Let’s look at a few of my current favorites, and some that have gone the way of the Dodo bird.

If you spend any amount of time using the Internet as we know it today, chances are you have suffered some inconvenience from the variety of interpretations of the various “standards” used to create the web. Every web browser renders web pages slightly differently; some Flash content isn’t compatible with older versions of Flash (and some versions of Flash aren’t supported on some operating systems at all!), etc. If you make your living creating web content, all of those problems may be amplified several times. Doesn’t it make you long for a real standard, where content is king, and presentation of said content is the same, regardless of whether you’re shopping for shoes or looking for an academic journal? The Gopher protocol, created in the early 1990s, had all that, and it ain’t dead yet!

Remember, remember, the 9th of November!
Gadgets, technology, and beer.
I see no reason why gadgets and tech
should ever bring little cheer.

Last year’s Columbus meetup was a huge success, and folks have been asking me when we’ll do it again. Well mark your calendars for Monday, November 9, and join us for a friendly evening of networking and libations at the Surly Girl Saloon, my favorite cowgirl/pirate themed bar!

Conventional wisdom regarding computer memory has for some time been that all RAM is created equal. Stated another way, it’s not really worth it to buy expensive ECC RAM because errors just don’t occur frequently enough to worry about. Even in server-grade products, designed to be running 24/7 in mission-critical environments, ECC RAM is often optional. Mainboards and RAM sold for consumer home use almost never even have the option of supporting ECC memory. A new study from Google indicates that this may be a problem.

So the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t like guys like you and me shining lasers into the sky at airplanes. But what about real scientists looking to use lasers for real scientific research? The current rules require, essentially, a spotter to look for aircraft within twenty five degrees of the laser. Obviously, this is extremely prone to human error. This sounds like a job for science!

To paraphrase my favorite Jack Handy quote, “If the Vikings were around today, they would probably be amazed at the number of wireless audio solutions we have.” Hopefully said Vikings would read reviews of said wireless audio solutions here at CrunchGear, since we’ve covered a fair number of these things. Today we’re taking a look at the Eos wireless audio solution. “Named for the Greek goddess of dawn, Eos lets you put great music all over your house — without the hassle of wires.” Read on for the whole review!

Meet AIDA, the Affective Intelligent Driving Assistant. This is a prototype robot that utilizes sensors inside and outside the car to create “a platform comprising of a personal robot and an intelligent navigation system that aims to bring an innovative driving experience.” I don’t own an automobile, so practically every driving experience is innovative to me right now! Rather than traditional destination-oriented GPS navigation, AIDA posits “a navigation system that mimics the friendly expertise of a driving companion who is familiar with both the driver and the city.” Hopefully AIDA won’t complain about my driving the way all my friends do. Video and more inside!

Reading e-books on a netbook is a nuisance, right? But e-readers are a pain because they’re a single-function device, which means your man-bag gets filled with yet-another-specialty-gadget. Behold the enTourage eDGe: “the world’s first dualbook, combining the functions of an e-reader, netbook, notepad, and audio/video recorder and player in one.”

Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory, with help from researchers at Pennsylvania State University, University of Chicago and Cornell University have confirmed the multiferroic properties of iron titanium oxide (FeTiO3). What’s a multiferroic, you ask? Why, it’s a material that is both ferromagnetic and ferroelectric! “Multiferroic materials show both magnetism and polar order, which are seemingly contradictory properties.”

It wasn’t too long ago that hackers were successful loading custom firmware onto Texas Instruments calculators. This hasn’t been sitting well with TI, who have been sending legal threats to the plucky hackers. I’m not surprised, are you?