PlayStation fans will be happy with the news that Sony have announced PlayTV - a PVR for PS3. There's no release date for Australia or the US yet though.

Our friends over at Gizmodo have the story.

CNET also had a report up, saying that PlayTV will allow users to transfer programs onto their PSP for viewing on the go, or stream content from the PS3 to watch on the PSP. The report also said that Sony's announcement "studiously avoided any mention of cost, raising the possibility that, like the PlayStation Network, PlayTV could be totally free of charge."

PlayTV is meant to have a 7 day EPG, but as we noted the other day, we're still not sure when Australian EPGs will become available.

The CNET story also notes that Sony's also announced a new messaging service for the PSP. Called Go!Messenger, it will launch in 2008.

So, does this justify the pricetag of a PS3? You tell me!

If you don't know what RSS is, but you do like the idea of having your own personal space on the internet which delivers all the news you *want* rather than having to go look for it, then this guide is for you!

If you're just a casual reader of the internet, you may not have acquainted yourself with RSS and how RSS feed readers work. So I'm going to do a series of posts looking at how to get started, and what some of the more popular feed readers are. Follow the link to get started!

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Oldie but goodie terminal command, find, can be used to locate literally any file on your system. Tech weblog dmiessler.com introduces find and runs through its functionality starting with simple searches and covering very complicated criteria. Find can be used to locate files based on a plethora of criteria that includes name, directory, date and/or time modified, file size, file type, file owner and permissions. What separates find from other searching applications is that any number of arguments can be combined to create very refined search parameters. Find is installed on practically all *nix systems by default.

"Using life hacking tips, you can compress the activities of your daily life into less time, freeing up untold hours to spend reading life-hacking blogs."

Microsoft just launched a new search engine tool called Tafiti built on their Flash competitor, Silverlight. Tafiti provides a dynamic and attractive interface for searching the web, photos, news, RSS feeds and books. The search tool is big on style, but doesn't provide much new in substance. However, some features—like the tray for saving and grouping results of any kind to the left of results—are potentially really useful. Tafiti works with any browser, requires that you install the Windows/Mac-only Silverlight.

Comcast has started throttling BitTorrent traffic. Customers will start to see (if they haven't already) dramatically slower download speeds and they will be completely unable to seed their downloads.

AU -There are always mutterings on community forums like Whirlpool about whether ISPs are "shaping" P2P traffic or not. Often it's smaller players who do it - in June, Telstra, Optus and iinet all denied doing it.

Windows only: Freeware application LocalDeli provides lightning fast access to your del.icio.us bookmarks through a simple search interface. After you log in and update your bookmarks, you can search your bookmarks by tags, description or all content through the dynamic, as-you-type search box. The dynamic "all" search provides an excellent way to get to narrow down your bookmarks to find exactly what you're looking for, and you can even navigate the application using handy Gmail-like keyboard shortcuts. LocalDeli is freeware, Windows only. Mac users can check out Delibar, and for a Windows alternative, there's Deliwin.

Ever wish there were a Netflix for Books? Well there is, and BookSwim is its name. You build a queue of books you want to read on their web site, they ship books from your queue, you keep the books for as long as you want, and you return books with pre-paid postage. Their base plan lets you keep 3 books at a time for $20/month, while their biggest and baddest premium plan costs $36/month for 11 books at a time. With over 150,000 titles, BookSwim looks like a promising service for the bookish sort.

AU - sorry chaps, this is a US-only service. But hey, your local library is free anyway!

The Web Worker Daily weblog suggests that the secret to accomplishing every task on your to-do list is—intuitively enough—making it tiny.

Many of us have created to-do lists (or the multiple context lists of GTD) that have gone on way too long—a list that we couldn't possibly finish in the foreseeable future.... Instead, I suggest you adopt a Tiny To-do List: one with only three important tasks for today, and perhaps a few smaller and unimportant tasks that you can group together.

We've all fallen under the stress of a never-ending to-do list, but the days when you whittle your to-dos down to a manageable and achievable point are always the most satisfying. Let us know how many items your to-do list holds on any given day in the comments.

Two major Hollywood studios have jumped in the HD DVD boat. Paramount and DreamWorks have agreed to exclusively back the HD DVD format. Sorry, Blu-Ray.

Windows only: Freeware application Adobe Reader SpeedUp selectively removes Reader plug-ins to speed up load times of the notoriously slow PDF application. Granted, most of us left Adobe Reader long ago in favor of Foxit Reader, or even the keyboard-navigator Sumatra, but for those of you who need Adobe Reader for whatever reason, Adobe Reader SpeedUp should go a long way toward a faster Reader. You can either choose one of SpeedUp's suggested tweaks (like Fast or Turbo) or do some experimentation on your part as to what you can and can't disable. Adobe Reader SpeedUp is freeware, Windows only.

Google News is embedding YouTube videos from CBS, Reuters and others, while YouTube is officially launching overlay ads.

While online news junkies have pretty sophisticated newsreading tools at their disposal, if you're interested in broadcast video news, you're usually stuck with tiny video clips tacked onto the websites of the major broadcasters. But one new online news project has piqued my interest, both because of their "no advertising" credo, and because of the effort they're putting into building an intelligent, interactive online news site.
The Real News is a global online TV news network which is funded by viewers, taking no money from government or advertisers. They have a $US10/month subscriber model.
They're in beta mode now, looking to crank up to full steam with their coverage of the US election.
Initially they're broadcasting a one hour show each weekday at 10am American EST, which works out to midnight Australian EST. But if you're not a midnight news junkie, all their news is available to view or download from the site.
While the project is based in North America, it already has a very global flavour. I'll be keen to see how much Australian news they're able to provide. Phillip Adams (from the ABC and The Australian newspaper) has a brief soundbite in their introductory "This is our promise" video.
They've built in loads of interactivity to the site - registered users can comment on stories, save favourite video items to a personalised "MyRealNews" page, and can skip the video donation messages which appear before videos play.
They've also set up a user community at Ning called The Real News Junkies.
While The Real News is using professional reporters, its refreshing to see that they're also approaching citizen journalism with intelligence. Check out their page on "Be a citizen journalist"... They have a storyboard online, and it looks like people can volunteer translation, research or footage, as well as putting in story ideas.

If you're already a fan of in-car GPS*, then you may be interested in a live update service for GPS - SUNA Traffic Channel. It will offer real-time traffic information for GPS navigation systems to help drivers avoid traffic snarls.
Suna identifies traffic congestion levels using data from traffic light control systems, as well as probe vehicles in known congested areas, as well as good old human observation. It broadcasts in an encoded digital format via the FM frequency directly to compatible navigation devices.
I have yet to see Suna in action, but the service was demo'd in Melbourne last week on Siemens VDO, Garmin and Mio devices. They're aiming to tie up relationships with SatNav device companies so that around November time frame you can buy SatNat devices with the Suna service built in.
Pricing will be set by the device retailers - at the demo last week the expected price being bandied around was the $200-$300 mark for a lifetime sub. But retailers may choose to offer it as a free addon to their device, or as a monthly subscription.
SUNA is now being broadcast over 101.1FM in Melbourne. Test broadcasts have begun across 97.3FM in Brisbane and on 106.5FM in Sydney with a view to launching in mid-2008. Adelaide and Perth can expect the service in late 2008.
They'll also make an online, XML-based feed of the SUNA Traffic Channel available to developers and providers of internet-based traffic portals, smart phones and the logistics sector.
SUNA is made by Intelematics Australia, but the silly duffers don't seem to have sent their Suna Traffic Channel website live yet.

*If you're not a fan of GPS, I'd love to know why. I've had the chance to see the Tom Tom in action a couple of times, and its ability to plan a route for you, show it onscreen, as well as talking you through the directions as you go (take the next left, etc) has won me over. Especially it's ability to rejig your route if you get lost. (Not that I get lost that often. Really.)

MakeUseOf.com have done another roundup of tips for Gmail, including Firefox extensions, Greasemonkey scripts, desktop programs, web applications and all-purpose ‘HowTo’ guides.

Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips [via
Geek-o-pedia]

Now you can stargaze using Google's popular desktop mapping application Google Earth. In the latest version of Google Earth, hit the "Switch between Sky and Earth" button on the toolbar to get a map of the night sky from your current location. Several Sky layers are listed on the left-hand side, including Constellations, Backyard Astronomy, Hubble Showcase, The Moon, The Planets, User's Guide to Galaxies and Life of a Star. The Sky layers are composed of over 1 million photographs from various scientific and academic sources. Looks like an incredible educational resource for anyone who wanted to be an astronaut when they grew up. Google Earth is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Need to type the symbol for copyright, trademark or Euro on your Mac? How about e acute or an em dash? Design blog liquidicity offers a complete Mac character key cheat sheet in jpg and PDF form for quick reference or printing out and tacking to your bulletin board. Oh, and the infinity sign? Get it using Alt+5.

Want to include a YouTube clip into your PowerPoint presentation that you'll be giving offline? Hit this nine-minute video to see how. Use the Video Downloader to save the clip to your hard drive and the free SUPER to convert it for use in PowerPoint.

Rather than syncing Google Calendar with Outlook, reader Seth uses the "homepage" feature of Outlook 2003 to access Google Calender. Here's how:

1) Right-click on your calendar in Outlook and select Properties
2) On the homepage tab, enter http://www.google.com/calendar/render
3) Check "Show Home Page by Default"
4) In the Offline Web Page Settings, de-select downloading web page option.

Pressing CTRL + 2 (the keyboard shortcut to access the calendar in Outlook 2003) will bring you to Google Calendar. Thanks, Seth!

MIT researchers release software that detects visual clutter on a screen image like a web page. The software is free to download but written in MATLAB which we are too dim-witted to figure out.

Windows only: Freeware utility DropMyRights allows users with administrator privileges to run applications with reduced ("normal user") credentials. The major problem with the existing security scheme in Windows XP is that most users run with administrator privileges all the time. This is comparable to running as the blasphemous "root" in *nix and Mac distros. Running as an administrator allows spyware and viruses to install with little (if any) interaction from the user. DropMyRights can create non-administrator shortcuts to your most commonly used applications.

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Windows XP users: "My Recent Documents," the portion of your Start menu that probably goes completely unused and exposes your porn collection recent documents to anyone with access to your computer, can easily be removed. Tech site Ask Leo! takes you through the process of keeping this folder empty and completely hiding it.
Does anyone out there actually use the "My Recent Documents" portion of the Start menu? Share in the comments.

Increasingly parents are buying their newborns their own domain names.

Macworld serves up 10 Quicken tips, including this gem:

While you're in any field that you can enter an amount in, press an arithmetic-operator key (+, -, *, /, or =) to open the QuickMath paper tape. Enter the numbers you want to calculate, pressing an operator key between each number. When you've entered all your numbers, click on the Total button at the bottom of the paper tape (or press enter). Quicken does the calculation and places the result into the field.

Other tips include using the Quicken entry Dashboard widget and customizing your transaction categories.