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Filed under: Audio/Video, Columns, Reviews, Editor’s Picks, Interviews, Slideshows, Traveler, $100 and Under, $250 and Under, Holiday Gift Guide, Features

It’s the holiday season and we’re all eating a bit more. Unfortunately, going to the gym is such a drag that the only way to make time pass (and exercise more bearable) is to blast some tunes while we work out. Unfortunately, many of the headphones we like to wear on the street (because they’re stylish), at home (because they’re audiophile-quality), or while we travel (because they block out airplane cabin noise) just don’t cut it on the treadmill. Headphones have a tendency to fall off our heads while we jog, for example, or just hurt out ears. But have no fear: We put five highly-touted, gym-friendly headphones to the test by taking them with us on some recent workouts. Here’s what we found.

H2O Sport Headphones

The only over-the-ear pair of headphones we tested, the H2O Sport is a pretty good option for budget-conscious athletes: For 30 bucks, these things actually provide decent bass response and get plenty loud. The neckwrap helps keep the headphones in place while you get your sweat on, and the coiled cord conveniently retracts to three feet (six feet when extended). That said, the plastic construction is a bit chintzy, and the cord feels like it might rip if you tug it too hard. The phones are a bit bulky and feel like they may give out after a year or so, but until then, they’ll definitely get the job done whle you work out.

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Filed under: Dinner, Vegetables, Recipes, How To, Lovely Leftovers Day, Real Kitchens, Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving tradition from which I come dictates that we do not alter or reimagine the leftovers until several days have elapsed. This is because we all really enjoy just eating plate after plate of reheated stuffing, turkey, potatoes and squash. We are simple like that. However, once Saturday evening arrives and multiple plates of microwaved Thanksgiving food have been consumed, it is time to re-invent a little.

My dad is a fan of chopping everything up into small pieces, throwing it all in a large pan with several spoonfuls of gravy and stirring until it is uniformly brown and chunky. He declares it delicious, the rest of stay far away. My mother eats open-faced turkey sandwiches on squares of whole wheat bread that have been lightly touched with mayo. My sister tends to pick and choose from the leftovers, eating roasted brussels sprouts cold and straight from the peanut butter jars in which they have been stored. Me, I like to match up the turkey and leftover stuffing with freshly cooked veggies. It refreshes the eye appeal and makes the leftover turkey seem new and delicious once again. Some of my favorite quick-cooking veggies after the jump…

Continue reading Leftovers: Refresh your leftovers with new veggies

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Fujitsu will be launching its 2.5″ portable hard drive known as HandyDrive in Japan on November 23rd, and I must say it is looking rather handsome. The curve at the bottom part reminds me somewhat of the SanDisk Cruzer Contour. The HandyDrive will come with 300GB of storage space, although no pricing details have been released as at press time.

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Filed under: Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Initial public offerings, Technology

No doubt, internet advertising is red hot. Unfortunately, in the case of last week’s IPO of Internet Brands (NASDAQ: INET), things were mostly cold. The price range on the offering was $10-$12, but the company was only able to price its deal at $8.

Internet Brands develops and acquires consumer websites, such as in the categories of automotive, travel and home improvement. It has about 45 principal websites, which include properties like CarsDirect.com, FlyerTalk.com, and DoItYourself.com. The network attracted about 26.7 million unique visitors in September.

So, what’s the problem? First of all, there is not much synergy among its different categories. After all, can you really cross-sell among automotive and home improvement sites?

Interestingly enough, Internet Brands also recently purchased Jelsoft Enterprises Limited, which develops the vBulletin board platform. Why? I’m really not sure.

What’s more, I think it can be tough to manage a large number of diverse sites. Basically, this is something that is better for larger organizations, such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Finally, revenues for the first nine months of 2007 actually fell from $65.2 million to $64.9 million. There was also a net loss of $2.4 million.

The lead underwriters on the deal included Thomas Weisel Partners and Jefferies.

You can find the prospectus at the SEC website. Also, if you want to find other recent information on IPOs, then visit DealProfiles.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

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Filed under: New Releases, News

Despite being one of Sony’s big hitters this fall, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction didn’t hit the 100,000 sales milestone like the series’ first three games, having only sold 74,500 in its first two weeks of release in October. However, that hasn’t deterred Sony from being pleased with it so far.

“SCEA is very happy with the initial sales numbers of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction,” a Sony Computer Entertainment America representative told 1UP. “In a crowded market of mature content, Ratchet is a fun, sophisticated alternative that truly showcases the power of the PS3. Ratchet is the perfect gift for PlayStation fans of all ages and we expect sales to continue to remain strong.”

However, as 1UP pointed out, Tools of Destruction did sell better than Ratchet: Deadlocked, the series’ latest entry that only managed to sell 55,300 copies when it released in October 2005.

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In case you have been under a rock, shacking up or in jail or otherwise indisposed, Visual Studio 2008 RTM is here! For full details, see Scott Guthrie’s official announcement. Personally, I think the most compelling new features are:

• Javascript intellisense & debugging. Quite frankly, I suck at javascript–even after reading the very awesome Simply Javascript cover to cover–mainly because it requires remembering more details about things than I am currently prepared to remember. Moreover, lack of good debuggers really hurts the cause. Alerting values out just does not cut it, especially with the level of complexity involved in modern javascript.
• HashSets. Finally. The only thing that would have made me more happy is if they made native collections with event notification on adds, updates and deletes.

Note I did not really mention LINQ, and that is quite intentional. LINQ itself is really, really awesome. But LINQ2SQL has the potential to become the DataSet of the 2008 generation. Just like it’s predecessor, it is designed to be a RAD tool to let just about anyone drag-n-drop database objects on forms and make neat, functional apps. And it will work for simple things. But once one starts kicking in complex, real-world data scenarios and starts to think about long-term maintainability, it begins to fall flat. The other massive flaw is the very stateful DataContext object. If you use LINQ2SQL as your object layer, you end up being tied to the database as there is no way to handle things in a truly disconnected mode. More on this later once I get a chance to kick the tires a bit more.

Final note: something is a bit wonky in the download, at least for me. I had two utter failures last night, hopefully the third time is the charm.

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’re pretty sure this isn’t the first time someone outside of Danger conjured up images of a Sidekick wannabe, and while we’ve certainly seen a real fake version before, Nokia is apparently toying with the idea of kicking out a legitimate contender. In a recent patent application, Nokia details its vision for “compact devices with turn and slide concept,” which looks an awful lot like a Sidekick save for the twistable apparatus on the side. To move the display and reveal the QWERTY keypad, users must turn the side-mounted knob, which subsequently shifts the LCD upwards and back while giving your thumbs access to the keys beneath. We’re still on the fence with the whole winding approach, but it’s an interesting deviation to the norm, regardless.

[Via UnwiredView]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Audio/Video, Computers

Renee Holly spent the beginning of her life walking the streets, selling her body, and becoming addicted to drugs. But as she approaches 50, her tale has taken a surprising, technologically fueled and somewhat happy turn.

After going sober about a year ago, Holly stumbled across Craigslist and listed an advertisement under its Erotic Services section. The response her ad received was immense. Renee stopped walking the streets and now uses the Internet to find “johns” (customers), which makes her feel safer. Now, she is trying to go legit. She blogs, has a Web site, and gives private webcam shows for $6 a minute.

Renee hasn’t stopped selling herself just yet. But she has started amassing a small stock of cash in a business account from her webcam income. She only makes about $1.50 out of every $6 that customers pay for her webcam shows, but it’s the start on the road to the safer life Renee so craves.

From St. Petersburg Times

Related links:

• Police Crack Down on Craigslist Sex Industry
• One Third of Women Who Meet People Online Have Sex on the First Date
• Singapore Bans Video Game With Interplanetary Lesbian Sex Scene

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops

While it’s apparently still quite a ways beyond the realm of possibility, Custom PC is reporting that AMD has at least tossed around the idea of acquiring Ageia, which makes the PhysX physics processing unit and corresponding PhysX software. That doesn’t seem to be an entirely new development, however, with AMD’s Richard Huddy saying, ‘we’ve had that discussion, yes. It’s a discussion that goes round every three months - someone turns to me and says ‘why don’t we buy Ageia?’ and I go through the arguments about why we should and why we shouldn’t.’ The biggest stumbling block, not surprisingly, is price, with Intel’s recent acquisition of Havok weighing heavily into the equation. That, Huddy says, gave Ageia a roughly equivalent value of $100 million, a value Huddy says is about $90 million too much. He still doesn’t rule out an acquisition altogether, however, although it seems that there’ll have to be a pretty big shift in valuations before AMD’s interest is really piqued.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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