We all know what happens when you put mentos into a 2-liter of Diet Coke. Check out what happens with other candy/beverage combinations.

Along the same topic as a few of my last posts, I ran across a really cool piece of hardware called the Neuros OSD. I guess if you wanted to compare it to something, it’s similar to Apple’s yet-to-be-released iTV box with one major difference… it’s totally open. The machine runs open source Linux-based firmware, so it’s about as hackable as you can get. It looks like it will be able to do just about everything that was announced on the iTV. It can record video from any source and links to your PC, portable, flash cards, external hard drive, etc. The big question on this thing is really how the developer community takes it and extends it. Neuros has given the whole hacking process a kick start with several bounties for certain features. They’re offering the following bounties for developers who can create these features.

• YouTube or Google video Browser
  Bounty: $1000
• Flickr Photo Browser
  Bounty: $600
• Implement a wireless remote using a WiFi PDA (or PSP) as the remote.
  Bounty: $500
• TiVo style functionality for radio. Hook up the OSD to a FM/AM or Satellite receiver and do timed recordings or FF/RW and Pause Live Radio. Bounty:
  $700
• Voip on the OSD. Plug a USB phone into the OSD and make calls without touching any of your PCs.
  Bounty: $500

Given the above cash rewards, hopefully this thing will take off. It’s strength is in the fact that it’s totally open. I’m not limited to what Apple, or Tivo, or Microsoft tell me I can or can’t do do with it. The Neuros OSD looks like a nice little piece of hardware, that (depending on how it matures) I think would probably chose over the iTV.

To get the jump on Apple, Amazon released their movie download offereing (called Unbox) just days before Apple’s announcement last week. To kick off their launch they’re offering a free download ($1.99 instant rebate) for a TV show. I decided to give the new service a try (since the first one is free). I downloaded the software and then purchased (free after rebate) my favorite episode of Firefly to try out the system. So far so good, until I decide to fire up the Unbox downloader/player and actually try to watch the video. My newly purchased show would not download. I kept getting an undescript red-colored “Unable to Download” message no matter what I tried to do. After being frustrated with the system for half a day, I decided to dump the whole thing and uninstall it from my computer. I tried using the uninstaller for the app, but it wouldn’t go away. It would just hang on a pulsing bar telling me it needed to check my account. Well, I couldn’t watch my video, and I couldn’t get rid of the software so I lowered myself to contacting Amazon support. They do have a nice system where you put in your phone neumber and they contact you - I’ll give them that. After being on the phone for 30-45 minutes with a tech suport person, they were still unable to get my video to download or remove the software from my machine. They told me they’d contact me with an update, which they did a day later. They had me remove some application settings files and then the Unbox program would uninstall correctly.

I wanted to give the Unbox service the benefit of the doubt, so I tried it again on a totally different computer on a totally different network. Guess what… the same thing happened. I couldn’t download the video, and I couldn’t remove the software. Luckily I had the secret removal instructions that Amazon gave me from the previous faulty install. I’ve since removed it from computer number 2 and thrown in the towel. I really don’t think I would have used the service (even if it had worked) because of how incredibly inflexible and locked down the whole system is, but unfortunately I didn’t even get to a point where I could evaluate it.

After doing some digging, I ran across a few articles where other folks ran into similar issues.
Amazon Unbox better left off your box - Ars Technica
BoingBoing also has a pretty scathing review that makes me glad I didn’t ever get it working.

Nice try Amazon… better luck next time.

At long last, a Google Earth plug-in has been created to allow viewing of Geotagged Flickr photos in Google Earth again. A group called Metatoad Media has brought back the same functionality that used to be available when geobloggers.com was the only way to do this.

Ever wondered what videos out on the Internets were the most viral? Well, wonder no more, just check out the Viral Video Chart based on the most talked about videos of YouTube, MySpace, and Google Video.

How else would I have found out there is a NEW Numa Numa song?!?

It was bound to happen before the big holiday buying season. Yesterday at a special “It’s Showtime” event, Apple announced a collection of upgrades and new products related to the iPod and iTunes.

iPod Video
The specs were bumped on the standard iPod Video to include a brighter screen (60% brighter), longer battery life (from 2 hours to 3.5 hours) and of course more storage (30GB and 80GB). They’ve also added gapless playback, and games which can be purchased in the iTunes Music Store for $4.99 each. These updates really weren’t unexpected. There isn’t really anything groundbreaking here, and there’s still no sign of the rumored touch widescreen ipod.

iPod Nano
A 2nd generation iPod Nano was also released yesterday. Apple has changed the form factor to look more like a small version the iPod Minis that were discontinued when the Nano came out. They’ve changed the case to aluminum and added multiple color options for the players. And similar to the video updates, they’ve improved battery life (24hrs) and upped storage (2GB, 4GB, 8GB).

iPod Shuffle
The Shuffle is probably the most radically changed iPod announced yesterday. It’s now silver and instead of looking like a pack of gum like the previous version, it now has a built-in clip for portability. It comes in 1GB size and now comes with a dock for charging and syncing.

iTunes 7
iTunes has been upgraded to version 7. The most notable new feature in this version is layout and organization. It’s now got a much cleaner, more intuitive interface. There are a good number of added bells and whistles including a new slick “cover view” which shows album covers more easily. You say you don’t have album covers? iTunes now downloads them automatically if you’ve got an account.

Movie Downloads and iTV
The rumors of Apple finally selling movies happened. Apple now offers movie downloads from all of Disney’s movie companies for $14.99 new releases and $9.99 older releases. They’ve also upped the resolution from 320×240 to 640×480 on all of their video download which includes TV shows that they’ve been selling for a while now and the new movies. It’s still not DVD resolution, but I guess is a step in the right direction. I don’t know if I see any added value outside of the convenience making it worth the price. I can run to the local Wal-Mart and have a higher resolution DVD that I can play on any computer/DVD player that includes a case and DVD extras for just about the same price (or less) and not have to deal with the DRM and lack of real portability. Plus, I’m not a big fan of watching movies in front of my computer screen.

Apple has somewhat addressed the video to TV issue with a sneak peek of a new product they say will be available in Q1 2007 called iTV. iTV is a little box that pulls content from iTunes (movies, TV, video podcasts, photos, music) for display on your TV. It includes HD out (HDMI and Component). The interface is very similar to Front Row that comes standard with most macs. It looks like a promising piece of equipment. I still would like to see Apple get into the DVR business though which this little box doesn’t address. I really think they could clean up in that area if they were to produce a somewhat inexpensive box that does what a Tivo does plus all their other entertainment goodies. If this thing had built-in Tivo capabilities, I’d be all over it. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what features make it into the iTV between now and then.

One other thing I noticed with these new iPods is that Apple doesn’t seem to be offering their standard educational discount on them any more. Normally Apple provides somewhere around 10% off from their educational sites. The discounts still show up for other items, yet the iPods are the same price as in the regular Apple store.

After Dan’s question in my last Mentos post, I thought I’d take the opportunity to explain the low-down behind my Mentos Ambassadors.

The short and sweet answer to, “What is a Mentos ambassador?” is they are people who bring me Mentos from other countries. The thing about Mentos is that they’re an international company and offer different flavors in different countries. At the time of writing, Mentos offers these flavors regularly available in the U.S.

• Mint
• Fruit
• Cinnamon
• Strawberry
• Green Apple
• Sour
• Sugar Free Mint
• Sugar Free Mixed Berries
• (plus other special flavors from time to time)

Any flavors brought to me outside of that list are fair game for becoming a Mentos Ambassador. I also enjoy receiving U.S. flavors in foreign packaging. So to become a Mentos Ambassador, all you need to do is bring me some crazy foreign flavor that I’m not able to find in the U.S. The Mentos Ambassador program has been going on for quite some time. Usually when I know someone is going out of the country, I’ll ask them to keep their eyes open for some new flavor. Just recently (in the past couple of years), I’ve been keeping track of flavors that my Ambassadors bring, and have created an “Official Mentos Ambassador” card, so that it’s now possible to become a card-carrying member of this elite group. I’ve also been toying with some sort of ranking system for the Mentos Ambassadors based on the quantity and rarity of the flavors they’re able to bring. So maybe someday it will be possible (if you bring me a case of some flavor of Mentos that I’ve never heard of) to become a Mentos Ambassador General.

OK, pretend you’re Google now. How do you go about getting unsuspecting users to do your bidding and label images for the Google Image Search? Make an addictive game out of it. This game sucked me in for longer than it should have. The basic idea is you’re paired up with some other unsuspecting Google victim and shown an image, and have to keep typing labels for that image until you and your partner match. You have fun, and Google gets free human labor assigning search terms. It’s really quite brilliant.

It’s always exciting when one of my Mentos ambassadors brings me a new shipment. I just got a big one courtesy of Mentos Ambassador King who just got back from an extended trip in the far East. Included in her big bag of wonderful foreign Mentos were a few fun surprises.

The first few pulled out of the package were grapefruit flavored which I have been able to find locally on a few odd occurrences. There were a few more that came in double-wrappers: lime mint, red orange, strong mint. The last bunch was sour mix, which I’m guessing is very similar to the US sour rolls. They do list different flavors than the US sour though. These rolls have grape, green apple and pineapple, where the US sours have watermelon, apple, and lemon. Since ther are more than one roll of these, I’ll be able to give them a try and see what these different flavors are like. Maybe I’ll post an update later on how these babies taste.

In addition to a nice collection from my Mentos Ambassador, I also was able to add to my collection of Mentos memorabilia with a Mentos branded “Leave-a-Penny, Take-a-Penny” tray. It’s a lovely piece, so now when you come to visit me, and you need to pay me $2.01 and all you have is a twenty. Feel free to take a penny from my Mentos penny tray so you don’t get a pocket full of change back.