This may seem like a pretty obvious How To article, but admittedly, I discovered this by accident and sheer boredom. Over the weekend, I was driving around some friends. We were listening to my Zune that I had connected to my car’s sound system with a casette adapter. After a while, my Zune’s battery died and we were left to listen to the radio or stare at each other blankly. To avoid both of these disastrous scenarios I reached inside my dash console and pulled out my Nintendo DS. Eventhough the audio out jack on the DS is proprietary I crossed my fingers and risked both life and limb to see if what I was envisioning would actually work. We plugged the cassette adapter into the DS jack, turned it on and voila - instant DS surround sound. Great for those long road trips, or when you just gotta hear that soundtrack from Contra 4.

The Breakdown:

Step 1: Insert cassette adapter in car stereo.

Step 2: Plug adapter into audio-out of DS.

Step 3: Nintendo DS audio coming from all speakers!

I wonder how this would sound with Elite Beat Agents…

In the latest of bad news for the HD-DVD format, Wal-Mart has announced that they are going to stop selling all HD-DVD titles as early as June. Add that to the Blu-Ray support from Netflix, Paramount and Warner Brothers and HD-DVD isn’t just hurting, it’s down for the count. But how did this happen? Wasn’t HD-DVD supposed to win? Wasn’t Blu-Ray supposed to be just another flash in the pan? Wasn’t I making a smart move by betting my friend that if Blu-Ray actually won this war I’d buy him a Blu-Ray player? Apparently, ‘No’.

But wasn’t HD-DVD…

- built on existing DVD technology?

Yes. In fact, the whole concept of HD-DVD came from the DVD Forum, which handled all the “official DVD format specification.” HD-DVD was simply the next progressive step of an already existing technology. It even has DVD in its name! How did this not catch on?

- first to market?

Yep. The first HD-DVD player was released in March 2006, beating Blu-Ray to market by about three months. Those three months should have been a big deal. Early adopters should have eaten HD-DVD up in that amount of time. In fact in the first year and a half of being on the market close to 1 million units have been sold. That’s a pretty large contingent of buyer’s remorse.

- cheaper?

Right again. Not only were the players available at more affordable prices, but the discs themselves were cheaper. In a format war where the technical specifications were so close to being identical (I’m aware there is SOME difference) wouldn’t money be the primary consideration in choosing a format for the average consumer?

- not made by Sony?

Absolutely! Does everyone remember the crap Sony has put consumers through for the past few years? Remember the rootkits? The delayed and botched PS3 development and release? Generations and generations of failed proprietary formats? What made Blu-Ray so different in the minds of consumers that they were willing to overlook years and years of abuse. What makes Blu-Ray any different from Betamax, Minidisc or UMD? Honestly, I have no idea. Perhaps some Blu-Ray supporters can enlighten me.

All I know is that now, I have to pony up a fortune just so my friend can bask in his “lucky guess”. Common Sense, you owe me a Blu-Ray player!

I’ve stumbled upon popurls.com in the past for some reason I never really appreciated it. Today however, after somehow finding my way there again, I’m hooked. For those that don’t know, the site is quite simple. They list the rss feeds of dozens of popular news and media sites all on one page so you don’t have to go to several different sites or even use a feedreader. Now I know most avid blog readers probably live and die by their feedreader of choice, but for me, popurls.com has drastically improved my online experience. My bloglines account is so bloated I hardly ever log in for fear of waisting the entire day. I tried to limit my self to the few feeds that I NEED to follow by using Google.com/ig but I could never get it to feel the way I wanted (plus lots of the widgets are simply too buggy). Today though, after finding popurls I realized it automatically had all the feeds I need and more. After I spent some time cleaning up and organizing the feeds to my own tastes I immediately set it as my home page.

I honestly don’t know how I have lived without it for so long. What are your favorite ways to navigate the internets? Feedreaders? Aggregate sites? Text based browsers? Comments are open.

Ok, so I’m far from being the first to discover the awesomeness of Twitter, (my profile here) but hopefully I won’t be the last. Last week I finally bit the bullet and signed up on one of the most talked about sites in a long time. At first I was admittedly clueless. Twitter boasts itself at giving real time updates as to what you are currently doing. OK, I guess, but who would want to read the real time updates of my life? Why would everyone want to know when I go to the bathroom or visit my mom? The truth is no one would want to hear about that kind of crap. However, if you are able to find a Twitter voice and realize how best to use the medium it can be quite addicting.

1) MicroBlogging On Twitter you are allowed to only post in 140 character increments. This means no long rambling posts, no lists, no in depth tech articles. Just short and poignant thoughts, comments and updates that are surprisingly rewarding to post. In the months that I let Zerosign.net languish in the sea of the blogoshpere (ugh, did I just use that word?) I was often tempted to come on and post some neat thought I had or an interesting quote I just heard. However, by the time I worked the will to sign in to my blog and get to writing I had either forgotten what I was going to say or realized that a two line post wouldn’t really fit the content of this site (see previous post). However, on Twitter I am free to be as random, as fruitless, as sophomoric as I want. Plus with the low prep time needed to write a post I am much more likely to keep Twitter updated than a blog in the traditional sense.

2) Followers With Twitter it is easy to follow a number of microblogs at a time. You find a friend and click “follow” beneath their name. Once you are a follower of a user, you are basically subscribed to their posts - similar to using RSS feeds to subscribe to a traditional blog. Furthermore, all of the updates of the people you are following will be displayed in your home page. Basically, Twitter gives you a super convenient way to subscribe to a number of microblogs and shows you the updates in real time on your personal dashboard.

3) Connected Lastly, because of the quick paced nature of Twitter, and the rhythm that most users update, it sometimes feels like a chat room. Thoughts are quickly posted and replied to in real time. In my mind, this moves the site into multi function abilities. Many people I know use the site much more for communication than they do for microblogging. Plus there are several third party apps that allow you to use Twitter as an IM client for just such a reason.

If you are like me and were decidedly slow to come around to Twitter, don’t feel bad. Just be sure to follow my Twitter profile and all will be well.