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The New York Times' Technology section leads with the story headlined "For Toddlers, Toy of Choice Is Tech Device," declaring:

Cellphones, laptops, digital cameras and MP3 music players are among the hottest gift items this year. For preschoolers.

On the plus side, retailers and toymakers have learned that children are not satisfied with fake gadgets. Hooray for authenticity!

On the minus side...… Read more

Yesterday, as the Republican presidential debate took place via YouTube, the Democratic National Committee quietly launched a rather notable Web 2.0 initiative itself. FlipperTV is a new service from the Democratic Party site that offers a growing library of video clips of the Republican candidates on the campaign trail. Users are encouraged to take the video and "use the footage as they wish." Wink wink.

In an era when home-brewed YouTube videos are more entertaining than 90 percent of network television, the DNC's strategy seems obvious. Why pay high-priced advertising companies to create mudslinging attack ads (that could blow up in its face) when you have millions of supporters with the technology to make their own videos and take responsibility for the content. The site even suggests that we "hold these candidates accountable for their comments and actions."… Read more

While we will always remain faithful to the TV bar as our favorite media furnishing (with the LCD pool table a close second), we must admit that this multimedia bed will turn more than a few heads.

It's not the first TV bed we've seen, but Hollandia's "Platinum-Luxe Elite" is more than a place to lie down and watch Seinfeld reruns--it's an entire "sleep system" with a boatload of built-in electronics, according to BornRich, including a retractable 32-inch Sony Bravia HDTV in its footboard, a five-disc DVD/CD changer, iPod docking station, … Read more

TV broadcasting stations are going portable.

NetTVworld is working on a device that will essentially let people or small organizations more easily broadcast their own TV programs via the Internet, according to the company's CEO, Steve Baker. The black box in the picture digitizes and packetizes video streams and then sends them over the Internet.

The box itself can only broadcast 10 streams at once, but NetTVworld hopes to leverage peer-to-peer networks. With peer-to-peer, a single box can effectively send out 20,000 streams. The company has hit this number of streams in lab tests and it can probably … Read more

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--What is the best way to make money with ads tied to online video? And how can traditional advertising models benefit from new methods pioneered online?

Those were major topics of discussion during the morning keynote today at the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Innovations conference here. And while panelists--representatives from Google, Verizon and Polaris Venture Partners--made some interesting points, they also made it quite clear that there are not yet obvious answers to the questions.

To Michael Hirshland, a general partner at Polaris, one encouraging developing trend is the continued emergence of what he termed "prosumer&… Read more

Once upon a time, just having a wall-mounted flat-panel TV was enough to make a huge impression by itself. Never satisfied, of course, showy consumers have since tried to one-up each other with plasmas and LCDs that lift from cabinets, hide behind mirrors, and pop up from the bed frame or even out from underneath it.

So what's left? The ceiling, of course.

The "Automated Ceiling Lift" from Chief Manufacturing "will make your TV like a drop-down projection screen," according to Electronic House. And it's not one of those small drop-down numbers like those … Read more

At this point in time there are many user interfaces for searching, browsing, and watching videos on YouTube. Apple's got custom interfaces on both the iPhone and iPod touch, along with the Apple TV, while YouTube's got its own mobile frontend that works pretty well, but lacks some of the polish of Apple's efforts. One of the newer companies trying to improve on YouTube's offerings is 3rd Eye Solutions which has an app called iDesktop.tv (formerly known as "YouTube Desktop"), that lets you browse, view, and search YouTube videos in a similar style … Read more

Christmas is coming and that means colored TVs and other electrical goods. We saw this pink Sony Bravia coming from a mile away, and we don't just mean because it's brightly colored--each year parents seem to give their children increasingly extravagant gifts in increasingly ludicrous colors.

When we were nippers, we used to get awesome presents, but they were generally small and cost a little bit less than today's child-pleasers. For example, we'd get an Optimus Prime toy, or if our parents weren't pacifists, maybe a Megatron. We also didn't have TVs in our … Read more

This has been quite a year for Apple, but Steve Jobs' magic wand doesn't always work.

In March, Apple unveiled Apple TV, the company's attempt at tackling a question that has eluded the PC industry for years: how can we get people to watch content delivered over the Internet in their living rooms on their big-screen TVs? When he announced the product last September, Jobs said that Apple TV "completes the story" of Apple's bid to reinvent the way people watch movies and television shows.

Now, as we head into the holiday shopping season, it … Read more