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One of the key concerns for any fledgling start-up is overload. Too many users trying to get at your data is one thing, but dealing with the onslaught of notifications and data pings from connecting services can be quite another.

A new start-up called Gnip is trying to solve this problem by acting as the middleman. Got a service like Twitter that's getting attacked in a thousand different directions by services trying to get at that data? Sending any new bits of information to Gnip will keep that attack coming on their end instead of yours, which will hopefully keep your service running a lot smoother, no matter how many folks are using it. ReadWriteWeb is calling it a "Grand Central Station for the social Web."

In a perfect world, services that used this system could open up their APIs a little to encompass more activity, leading to faster third-party tools that take advantage of that data. Users would also be getting faster notifications and conceivably less downtime due to overload.

Sounds great for everyone, right?

Unfortunately, all of this will not be available from the get-go. Gnip is starting out by offering a notification service only, with polling, transformation, and identification coming later. Notifications are one of the main overloaders though, especially for services like Twitter that have had to throttle the amount of times any external service can ping it for data. There are also concerns about what happens if everyone starts relying on Gnip to pipe data to third-party tools, and the tool goes down--leading to something similar to when Amazon's S3 has had blips, taking out entire businesses for hours at a time.

Gnip was founded by Eric Marcoullier, one of the co-founders of the now Yahoo-owned MyBlogLog.

Gnip bridges the data divide by offloading all the pings off your servers and onto theirs.

(Credit: Gnip)

Worldwide PC shipments are on pace to grow 15.2 percent in 2008, according to IDC. That's above the analyst firm's March prediction of 12.8 percent growth. But laptop shipments, which have become an increasing force in the PC market, will peak.

Shipments of portable PCs should grow 34.5 percent this year, according to a PC shipment tracker that IDC released this week. That's up from 33.9 percent in 2007 and way above the projected 13.4 percent for next year. By 2012, according to the firm, portables will increase by only 9 percent.

PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard are betting big on notebooks. The company this week released 17 new models, mostly for consumers.

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

By the end of the year, PC makers will have shipped 310 million units, close to half (145.1 million) of which are notebooks. The rest are desktop PCs and servers, which together on a global basis still comprise the largest slice of the market, but the difference is disappearing fast.

Portables are especially expected to take off internationally this year, growing from 78 million in 2007 to 109.4 million units this year. That's good news for the industry because notebooks and laptops tend to be pricier than desktop PCs, and they should keep average selling prices higher for a bit longer.

But inexpensive notebooks are stirring up the market too. A reason for the dramatic 40 percent bump in international portable shipments has a lot to do with how the numbers have been counted, according to IDC.

The firm said it had previously not included the rapidly growing low-cost mininotebook segment because of the "use of nontraditional PC designs, including the use of embedded or custom operating systems, (as well as) reduced processing power and storage," IDC said. But now, due to the popularity and computing robustness of the Asus Eee PC, the Classmate PC platform from Intel, and OLPC's XO, mininotebooks are included. Plus, the firm notes, the volume of units shipped are actually rising.

Those three manufacturers have some company in the consumer space. Acer, Hewlett-Packard, and perhaps Dell already have, or plan to release, their own tiny laptops.

The Logitech Pure-Fi Mobile: Bluetooth speaker with rechargeable battery

(Credit: Logitech)

As it's moved beyond PC speaker systems, Logitech has produced some of the better "cheap but good" iPod speakers we've seen in recent years. And now the company is adding a portable Bluetooth speaker to its lineup. The Logitech Pure-Fi Mobile boasts four 2-inch speaker drivers--two active, two passive--and a rechargeable battery that (according to Logitech) will deliver 12 hours of AC-free playback time. In addition to supporting wireless streaming from A2DP-enabled audio players, the Pure-Fi Mobile can double as a standard Bluetooth speakerphone. If wireless isn't your thing, the speaker can also accept any stereo audio source via its auxiliary line-in jack. And to round things out, it can double as a PC speaker via the USB port, which can also be used to recharge it. To complete its travel-ready pedigree, Logitech also throws in a soft carrying case.

Importing Digg stories on Facebook

(Credit: Facebook)

Adding to Tuesday's release, Facebook has added an additional service for Mini-Feed importing, Digg.

This is a big win for Digg. Over the last six months, I have seen a significant increase in the usage of Digg by college students, and this inclusion in the Facebook Mini-Feed will only improve its reach in that demographic.

Of course, Facebook has expanded greatly beyond its initial college market, and the inclusion of Digg may alert a lot of users to the service for the first time.

A concern that I have with the integration is that your Mini-Feed will probably become really cluttered with Digg stories, if you are a heavy digger. Digg does, however, have a Facebook application that keeps your "dugg" stories neatly in a module on your profile page.

At this point, I haven't decided whether I like the application or the Mini-Feed approach more, but I do think that it is great that Facebook is integrating these third-party sites and turning users on to more Web 2.0 services.

Some programs are more trouble than they're worth.

I'm a big fan of the PDF file format. It lets you share files with people using almost any type of computer without worrying about whether they have the right program installed to view it, or whether it will look to them the way it looks to you.

The problem is Adobe Systems' Acrobat, which is simply more software than I need to meet my meager PDF requirements. (It's also more annoying than any two Office apps combined.)

The fact is, you can create, convert, and edit PDF files without adding any software to your system. And if the files you work with are small in size and number, you can do so without paying a dime by using the Zamzar e-mail-based conversion service.

Files converted, delivered to your in-box
Have you ever wished you could open a PDF file in Word? There are plenty of programs that let you convert a PDF to Word's .doc format (or some other file format that Word supports), but you can manage the same trick for free at Zamzar.

Just select the file on your PC, choose the format you want to convert it to from the service's drop-down list (it supports many different image, text, audio, and video formats), enter your e-mail address, and click the Convert button. In just a few seconds, an e-mail arrives with a link to a page on the Zamzar site from which you can download the converted file.

Convert PDFs to other formats for free at Zamzar.com.

(Credit: Zamzar)

Zamzar is free for files smaller than 100MB and up to five concurrent conversions. The service gives you one week to retrieve the converted file. For $7 a month you can convert files as large as 200MB, have up to seven conversions at one time, and store up to 5GB of files on the service. If you pay $16 a month, the file-size limit expands to 400MB, concurrent conversions to 10, and online storage to 20GB. The top-tiered service costs $49 a month for converting files as large as 1GB, up to 15 simultaneous conversions, and 100GB of storage.

The fee-based services also give you higher-priority delivery of your converted files, a personal in-box, ad-less pages (with the top two tiers), and the ability to delete and rename your files. The most expensive plan also lets you encrypt your converted files.

Use Gmail's built-in 'conversion'
An even quicker way to get a different view of your PDF files is to attach them to an e-mail you send to your Gmail account, and then click View as HTML to open the file in your browser, though this shows you only the text of the file. Then you can save it as an HTML or text file and reopen it for editing in Word or some other application.

Tomorrow: confessions of a Linux newbie.

Sorry little guy, but your days are numbered.

(Credit: Wal-Mart Stores)

Editors' note: Since the publication of this story, a battery-powered DTV converter box has been released, the Winegard RCDT09A. While we'd still hold off on buying a new portable TV this year--it's better to wait for portable TVs with new digital tuners--older analog portable TVs can be used with the RCDT09A if they have a composite or RF input. For more information, read our full review of the Winegard RCDT09A.

Portable TVs can be great for camping or in case of emergency, but you're probably going to be getting ripped off if you buy one in 2008. That's because almost all portable TVs use standard analog TV signals, and those signals are going to get turned off on February 17, 2009. And even though these TVs are just about obsolete, you can still buy them at places like Target, Wal-mart Stores, and Amazon. Some of the pages have warnings about the impending DTV transition, but some of them don't.

While it is possible that someone will come out with a battery-powered DTV converter--which could work with a portable TV that has inputs--we wouldn't hold our breath. The FCC's DTV FAQ page already explicitly says, "it is not anticipated that battery powered digital-to-analog converter boxes will be produced," ... Read more

Dash Express

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

It's been almost two years since Dash Navigation first announced its Dash Express portable navigation system, and we're happy to say that you can now finally get your hands on this device. The Dash Express is unlike any other portable navigation system on the market today because it offers two-way connectivity (cellular and Wi-Fi), giving drivers access to a whole new world of information via the Internet and the network of other Dash-connected users. You can conduct live (and more relevant) Web searches via Yahoo Local search; get real-time traffic data; wirelessly send addresses to the system; and much more. It really adds value to portable navigation devices, and it's the type of innovation that we think will take GPS to the next level--so much so that we even gave it a Best of CES 2007 award. So did it deliver? Was it worth the wait? Well now, you'll just have to read our full review to find out, won't ya?

Music players are losing out in popularity to phones that pull double-duty, according to a market research report released Monday.

More than 500 million music phones were shipped worldwide in 2007, which puts that category of device 300 million units ahead of regular old portable music players, according to the report released Monday by MultiMedia Intelligence. The company is forecasting that by 2011, of the 941 million handsets that will ship worldwide, more than half will be music phones. (The report defines a music phone as a handset that plays music files, and has a memory card slot.)

The Walkman-branded W980 phone from Sony Ericsson is a phone but looks like a music player. Phones that play music are quickly outpacing standalone portable music players.

(Credit: Sony Ericsson)

As the developed world begins to be saturated with cell phones, handset manufacturers and wireless operators are forced to look elsewhere to keep their profits up. For leading handset maker Nokia, its secret to staying on top of the competition is its growing business in emerging markets, like China, India, the Middle East, and Africa, according to my CNET News.com colleague Maggie Reardon.

The operators of wireless networks also need ways to increase revenue. So, though not everyone has a need for a data plan if they don't want e-mail on their phone, music is something almost everyone can relate to. Right now the most promising driver of profits on cell phones is music-playing capability.

"Music has been the first 'killer app' for the operators to drive the consumption of premium content on the handset," said Frank Dickson, chief research officer for MultiMedia Intelligence. To that end, MMI predicts the mobile music market will be worth $6 billion by the end of this year. "With such significant revenue and customer demand at stake, the operators' and handset providers' concerted efforts (will) use music as a central part of their handset strategies," the report says.

Update 1:55 p.m. PDT: As several commenters have pointed out below, buying a music phone doesn't necessarily mean it's used for playing music. (Case in point: my own Verizon enV has a 2GB microSD slot, and I've never transferred MP3 files to it. But that's mostly because my iPod earbuds don't work with the enV and I refuse to buy a separate set.) Music-playing ability was formerly a feature reserved for high-end phones, but as the technology gets cheaper, that means that those features will start to filter down to more inexpensive phones, which have always been the majority of the market.

Recently an associate whose PC lacked Adobe Acrobat sent me a Word file via e-mail, asking if I could convert it to PDF and e-mail it back to her. Since the process took all of about 30 seconds, I was delighted to help. Then the next day she sent two more files in need of conversion to PDF, and a couple of days after than another. After her fourth request of the week I felt compelled to tell her about two ways she could have converted the files herself for free: Adobe's own Create Adobe PDF Online free trial, and Arco Software's great CutePDF Writer freebie.

If you use Office 2007 you can download Microsoft's free Save as PDF or XPS utility, which adds the ability to convert files to PDF or Microsoft's competing XML Paper Specification to all eight applications in the suite. The great thing about CutePDF Writer is that it works with programs other than Office 2007. See below for more.

Slow and limited, but readily available: Create Adobe PDF Online
I've used Adobe's free PDF-conversion service for years, and while the $10-a-month service ($100 for one year) used to allow you to create 10 PDF files for free, that number has been reduced to five free conversions, which is sufficient for people who rarely have the need to make a PDF. (If you need more than five files converted, sign up for a new free e-mail account and re-register with that address.)

The downside to Adobe's free trial is that you have to register, and you have to wait for your PDF to be delivered. Otherwise using the service is straightforward. After you sign up, click Convert a file (you can also choose Convert a Web page), enter the path to the file/page you want to convert, or click Browse and navigate to the file.

Enter the path to the file you want to convert to PDF, and click Continue.

Click Continue to open the Conversion Settings window. Here you select the type of output you want to optimize the file for (Web, Print, etc.), password-protect and otherwise limit use of the file, and select a delivery method.

Optimize your PDF for print or viewing on the Web via these options.

The default delivery method is to have a link to the PDF e-mailed to you, but you can also choose to have the file sent to you as an e-mail attachment, wait for the file to open in your browser, or download the file from your account's Conversion History page.

Choose the delivery method for your PDF file: e-mail link, e-mail attachment, open in browser, or download from server.

After you click the Create PDF button, you receive a confirmation of the conversion that tells you how long you'll have to wait for the file to be available. When I tested the service, I had to wait a little less than 25 minutes for the file to be delivered, which seems like a long time to me. You're also informed that you have 72 hours to retrieve the file.

The confirmation screen lets you know how long you'll have to wait for your PDF file.

Fast and full-featured: CutePDF Writer
If you have more than the occasional need to convert a file to PDF, downloading and installing CutePDF Writer is a faster and simpler approach. The program installs in just a few seconds, though it requires a second program, which it downloads automatically--after you grant it permission--as part of the installation process. Once it's in place, simply open the file you need to convert in the application of your choice, choose File > Print, and select CutePDF Writer in the drop-down list of available printers. The utility opens a Save As dialog box, where you can rename the file and choose where to store it. What could be simpler?

Which makes me wonder why anybody would choose Adobe's clunky and limited online PDF-conversion service over a free utility such as CutePDF Writer. Perhaps they have an aversion to downloads, though this one lacks ads, spyware, or other unwanted companions. Or they may be using a PC other than their own and need a one-time conversion that doesn't entail a download. Still, downloading, installing, and using CutePDF Writer is faster and simpler than using Adobe's service even after you've completed the initial sign-up. I guess this is one of those computing areas where the online version can't match the desktop approach.

Monday: disk management and optimization made simple.