Webware

TiVo announced Wednesday that it has added hundreds of free Web videos to TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs. Also, subscribers who are interested in watching video podcasts that they can't find through TiVo's listing can enter RSS feeds manually to watch the show on their TiVo box.

Starting Wednesday, subscribers will be able to watch free video podcasts from several providers, including CBS, Fox, Oprah, and more. (CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.) They can watch a single episode or subscribe to all the podcast's shows by opting for a season pass.

TiVo also announced that it will allow users to input video podcast RSS feeds to watch those shows that they can't find on their TiVo Web Video listing.

To do so, subscribers will need to use the "Custom RSS Feeds" option in the "Browse Web Videos" menu. That option will allow them to input a show's RSS feed with their remote. If it's a valid link, they can decide to watch a single episode or subscribe to the feed through Season Pass. They can also watch past episodes.

To maximize the amount of content available to its subscribers, TiVo has provided show producers with guidelines for getting their Web videos ready for the DVR. The shows must be made available through RSS (RSS 2.0 is preferred). The video must also be in H.264 format.

TiVo's inclusion of more video podcasts follows a long line of upgrades the company has made to its platform over the past year. In October, TiVo announced that Netflix streaming was coming to its DVRs. HD content from Amazon's Video on Demand service was added earlier this year. The company even announced plans to bring Blockbuster Video on Demand to subscribers. Now, TiVo subscribers can supplement all that professional content with thousands of Web shows that they might already be enjoying on competing products, like the Apple TV.

TiVo's new Web videos and the option to add custom RSS feeds are available now to TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL owners.

There are lots of Internet filtering products on the market that enable parents to block certain types of websites such as pornography, hate sites, or sites that promote alcohol or drug use. Most of these products run on PCs or Macs by sitting between the operating system and the browser and checking any requested sites to make sure they're not blocked. The products generally do a good job blocking requests from protected PCs, but most don't work with game consoles, Wi-Fi-equipped iPhones or iPod Touches, or any other device that isn't running the software.

Netgear is about to ship routers designed to simplify the process by allowing parents to block content on any device using the home's wired or wireless network.

Netgear routers to offer in-cloud filtering

(Credit: Netgear)

The new routers, which will be available in early September, will be equipped with firmware that configures them to use OpenDNS' domain name server to look up the actual IP address of any site someone tries to visit. If that site isn't on the blocked list, it will be displayed. But if a parent has blocked that site, the user will instead be sent to a page that informs them that the site they tried to access is blocked.

Some existing Netgear routers can be upgraded with the new OpenDNS-compatible firmware starting August 10th.

Because the filtering takes place at the router level, it works with any device in the household that uses that router including Web-enabled game consoles and Wi-Fi mobile devices. It won't, however, work with devices that don't use the home network such as an iPhone set up to use the 3G cellular network.

Like other filtering products, parents have control over the type of content blocked and have the ability to turn it off so that it doesn't prevent mom or dad from visiting any sites. There is also a "white list" feature that allows parents to exclude any site from the blocked list. Because the blocking lists are "in the cloud," parents can configure the filter from anywhere.

Before employing any parental control system, I urge parents to think about how they will or won't fit in with your family. Consider the age of the child, the child's Web surfing habits, the types of risk your child takes, and what you plan to say to your children about the filtering product. Parents should tell their kids that they're using filters and explain why they think they're necessary. Also, parents should never rely on filters as the only way to protect children--parental involvement is still important. If you decide to use a filter, consider weaning kids from them as they enter their teenage years. Eventually, your kids will be on their own and part of a parent's job is to help a child make their own good decisions. You can't rely on filters forever.

For details about the service, I spoke with OpenDNS founder & CTO David Ulevitch.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Phoenix Technologies and Adobe bring instant-on Photoshop editing to Netbooks.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

Back in January, Phoenix Technologies launched a lightweight instant-on platform named HyperSpace. Designed primarily for Netbooks, the little low-power mobile computers that they are, it allows users to immediately access the Web, e-mail, and IM, among other benefits. And thanks to Adobe, it now includes photo editing.

HyperSpace customers will have instant access to Photoshop.com for organizing, editing, storing, and sharing photos. There is also support for Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader on the platform.

The Adobe additions follow the March announcement of the Phoenix partnership with ThinkFree for its Office apps, which let users of the OS manage and edit Microsoft Office file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, online.

I'm totally down with these instant-on OSes (though Ackerman maintains that no one uses them). My big issue with HyperSpace is the annual subscription fee attached to it. If you want to boot into either it or Windows it'll cost you $39.95 a year. To boot into HyperSpace and Windows: $59.95 a year. Three-year reduced pricing is available for both, but at these prices you really have to want it.

Netflix's streaming service will appear on Windows Media Center within the next couple of days.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has struck a deal to bring Netflix's streaming movie service to Windows Media Center, the companies said Tuesday.

Netflix's more than 12,000 "Watch it now" movies and TV episodes are only available to users of Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. XP users won't be able to access the service.

Owners of Windows Media Center will also be able to search the entire Netflix library, manage their DVD queues, and "filter searches by titles that are available to watch instantly," Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft continues to try to boost the amount of content available on Windows Media. In March, the company launched a new sports channel, including replays of the past NCAA basketball tournament.

"We're building on our broader vision to alleviate the need to jump from Web site to Web site to find TV shows, movies, sports and news," Microsoft said in a statement. " "With Windows Media Center, (users) can now find it in one place."

For Netflix, the partnership offers the Web's No.1 video rental service the chance to reach scores of of Vista users. Netflix's deal with Microsoft's Xbox videogame console proved to be a boon for the company.

Netflix has steadily been crossing the once wide chasm between the PC and the television by striking partnership deals with a wide assortment of set-top box makers, including Roku, and LG.

To access Netflix's service, Windows Media Center owners must first subscribe to the rental service. Then, to stream movies, they can start Windows Media Center on their computers by selecting the new Netflix tile under TV+Movies heading.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shows off the Kindle DX

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET News)

NEW YORK--Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the much-anticipated large-screen Kindle e-reader in a lecture hall Wednesday at the downtown Pace University. Called the Kindle DX, the new device is geared toward readers of personal and professional documents, newspapers, and magazines--and textbooks, a potentially huge target market.

The debut of the bigger Kindle wasn't exactly a secret: rumors of a larger-screen Kindle had been around for quite some time, and concrete reports began to surface earlier this week.

Amazon's Kindle DX

(Credit: Amazon)

According to Amazon's Kindle DX page, the device has the following:

• A 9.7-inch display with 16 shades of gray. (The standard Kindle has a 6-inch display.)

• Capacity to hold up to 3,500 books, periodicals, and documents.

• An auto-rotating screen to show either portrait or landscape views.

• A built-in PDF reader.

• 3G wireless network support with no monthly fees or annual contracts.

• Battery capacity to "read for days without charging."

• Text-to-speech abilities to read publications aloud.

Several of those features are shared with the current Kindle 2, but several are unique to the Kindle DX: the native PDF reader that doesn't require the files to be converted, the rotating display, the 3,500-publication capacity compared to 1,500 for the Kindle 2, and of course the larger screen.

(Credit: Livio)

The new Livio Radio certainly isn't the first Wi-Fi radio to feature Pandora access--the Squeezebox Boom and the Grace GDI-IR2000 both offer the functionality--but it's certainly the first model seemingly designed around the streaming Internet music service.

With a standard tabletop radio design, the Livio gives you full access to Pandora, and also makes it easy to interact with the service by putting "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons on the front panel and the remote. The Livio can connect to your home network using either the integrated Wi-Fi or the Ethernet port around back. In addition to Pandora, the Livio Radio also features the ability to tune into more than 11,000 standard Internet radio stations. We're also happy to spot an auxiliary input on the back, making it easy to plug in an iPod in a pinch. We also can't complain about the price, a reasonable $150, but we're reserve our final judgment until we actually get to listen to it.

Livio Radio photos

The Pogoplug connects a USB hard drive the the Web.

(Credit: Pogoplug)

The Pogoplug, which I first covered from the Consumer Electronics Show, connects any USB hard drive to your local network and also puts it on the Internet so you can share files.

As I said before, this is not a new idea, but Pogoplug is supposed to be uncommonly easy to set up and use. It's shipping today, and I've had a few days to preview the device to check out the claims.

It's a good product. It actually does combine the speed of a local drive with the convenience of Web-accessible storage, and it requires barely any geek skills to get running.

The $99 product (no monthly fees) has two connections besides power: USB and Ethernet. It should be pretty clear what you plug into each. Once connected, you go online to the Pogoplug site to register your particular unit based on its serial number. This gives you password-controlled access over the Web to the storage device you have plugged into it. If you attach a USB hub, you can use it to access multiple hard drives or memory sticks.

The real benefit of using the Pogoplug over the Web is that it's easy to share files stored on it. You can share directories on your drive just by clicking a Share button and optionally entering an e-mail address to send out invitations, and you can also get an RSS feed for any shared directory.

The Pogoplug Web service displays pictures and videos (first frames only) in nice slide shows, and it streams audio files. You can easily download files from it.

You can upload files to your Pogoplug drives via a standard-issue clunky Web form, or--much better--use the software driver that makes the Pogoplug emulate a local hard drive on a Mac or Windows system. With the driver installed, adding or managing files to the Pogoplug drive is as simple as dragging them with your computer's file manager. Files quickly pop onto the drive over your local network.

Pogoplug can be used for sharing files or just for personal use. For example, you could back up files to a Pogoplug-connected drive so you have access to your files when you're away from your home computer. However, no backup software for this is included (for PC users, I recommend SyncBackSE).

Finally, there's a nice iPhone application for the Pogoplug that makes it easy to view files stored on it, as well as to upload iPhone photos back to the drive. The iPhone app also streams music files from the Pogoplug.

Each Pogoplug gets its own Web site for sharing the files on it.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

This is a very cool and usable product, though there are version 1.0 snags. Photos uploaded from the iPhone to the Pogoplug can be made immediately available to your friends, but only if you give them access to the root directory of the drive, where the iPhone uploads. That's a rather big security risk.

The software driver works great on a Mac (I tried it on OS X 10.5.6), but there's no driver for 64-bit Vista; that should come out in about two weeks. I'd like to see more options for sharing, too, such as embeddable widgets to insert in blog posts or profiles page, or perhaps tools to synchronize Pogoplug files with sharing sites like Flickr. Or at the very least, the capability to easily find the static URL for each shared file (they're there, but buried). My test unit also ran a bit hot.

Compared to some newer network-attached drives, like Western Digital's My Book World Edition, or a Windows Home Server product like the HP MediaSmart line, the Pogoplug is light on the features. But it is a very good solution for quickly putting videos and photos online, especially if you already have them on an external drive.

Even if you don't, this product strikes a compelling balance between speed, ease of use, and low cost. The Pogoplug fits into a narrow niche in network storage, but it does its job well. It's the quickest solution I've seen for putting a hard disk on the Web.

Spark Nano: A tiny GPS device

You've seen them in movies: tracking devices so small they can be put inside a tooth or embedded under the skin. In reality, tracking devices--for the general public at least--are not that tiny, but they can be pretty diminutive.

Lightning GPS introduced a small tracking device on Wednesday called the Spark Nano. Of course, you'll need to take the "Nano" notion with a big grain of salt. The device is actually about the size of a 9-Volt battery--you know, the big one that's used in a smoke detector. The Spark Nano is, however, rugged and waterproof.

The new Spark Nano GPS tracking device.

(Credit: sfs)

Its size means you can easily install the Spark Nano on the object that needs tracking; you can clip it on a person's belt or put it inside your kids' backpack to keep tab of their whereabouts. The Spark Nano also features a panic button that the wearer can use to alert people if he or she is in danger. The alert would show exactly where the person wearing the tracking device was located.

For people at home, the Spark Nano can be tracked in real time via a Web site, either with a computer or via a smartphone. It can also be set to periodically send e-mails and text messages indicating the location of the tracked object.

The Spark Nano has a built-in rechargeable battery that can power the device for five continuous days with a full charge. It sports "Safety Zone" Technology that alerts you when the tracked object arrives at a target or exits a predefined area.

The new GPS tracking device is available now and costs $299.95. It also requires a service plan that starts at another $45 a month.

Tendril shows off its iPhone app for monitoring home power use.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)

PALM DESERT, Calif.--At Demo 09, new conference honcho Matt Marshall led a panel where three companies showcased their new technologies to save power, and with it, they hope, the planet.

Google's Thomas Sly started by comparing buying power to what it would be like if you bought groceries without an itemized receipt--just one bill when you left the store. Google's goal is to collect and help distribute the data on power use, which, Sly says, will encourage people to consume less.

Google is currently in a test with about 100 devices that track power use, and that should grow to about 200 soon, Sly said.

The goal is to get 50 percent of households to cut 10 percent of their power. Sly said that would be as much as all the solar and wind power now produced in the U.S., or the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road.

Tendril's CEO, Adrian Tuck, showed off hardware devices that monitor and control AC power. Small devices plug in between an outlet and an appliance or lamp, and transmit power use to a home device that then puts the data on a Web service where consumers can see what they're using. The devices also control power (turning off lights, for example). Tuck showed an iPhone interface that told the user not just how much power they were using but that also let him turn on and off outlets, or change his whole house to a different power-using profile.

AMEE, "the world's energy meter," sent Vice President Robin Baker to pitch his company's goal to create the global platform for tracking energy used (and thus carbon consumed or emitted) "for everything on the planet."

The overarching theme of this panel is that these companies are all working on the same thing: collecting information about power consumption. It appears that they are also moving to shared data, so that, for example, data from Tendril devices can feed both Google and AMEE databases.

However, the picture from Washington, D.C., is not so rosy. As we reported earlier today, our power grid isn't currently set up to collect and distribute this information.