Letters From Santa: Happier Holidays

Is this the last year that your child will believe in Santa? LettersFromSanta.com offers personalized letters that you can order and will be sent directly to your child. Your child will be so excited that they got a letter from the North Pole, they will remember it for years to come. Customize your letter with your child’s name and favorite hobbies, and also get an offer for a FREE follow up postcard and door hanger.

Rejoice for the holiday season and give your child a Merry Christmas with Letters From Santa

January 2009: Say GoodBye DVD

Movie and TV downloads will go through a paradigm shift next year. You are already seeing NetFlix offer Movielink and many other movie production houses and TV networks opening up the Internet's streaming video.

Mark my words. January 2009 you will begin to see the first discontinuation of the standard DVD sold in stores. It will be on a science fiction movie or teen thriller. Over the early part of 2009 you will continue to see movie and TV show releases sold only on the Internet. The DVD will go the way of the CD and video cassette tape.

Your neighborhood video store will go the way of the dinosaurs, replaced by a Yoga chain store. If you can get a DVD player for $30, then the market is saturated.

Hamilton Beach® Mixer: A New Family Tradition

Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer for holiday cookies, cakes, and pies. You can even make the famous fruit cake.

Every year my family makes tree shaped cookies for Santa. My kids always make them with my wife on Christmas Eve, then my kids go up to sleep and wait for Santa to come down the chimney with presents. Most years I enjoy them with a glass of milk but last year I fell asleep early and when I woke up the cookies were gone. My wife said she didn't eat them, then in the corner of my eye I see Bo, our dog. I think he smiled at me, with cookie breathe.

Maybe you can make these cookies with your new Eclectrics® Mixer, take 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of nutmeg and salt, and a few orange peels. Bake on 325 degrees until they rise and are crispy, then use white icing on the outside of the tree shaped cookies and green sprinkles.

We used our new Hamilton Beach® Mixer to make the cookie dough and used our families tree cookie cutter passed down from generations. The Hamilton Beach® Mixer was much better than our old mixer, with a stainless steel locking bowl, flat beaters, and splatter shield. The best option is it is much quieter than the old mixer we used to use, I can even use it while Bo, our dog, is asleep and he doesn't even wake up.

Hamilton Beach® Mixer is our new family mixer tradition for making holiday cookies.

Virtual Reality: Virtually Non-Existent

When are video games going to be in virtual reality. Virtual reality has kind of taken a back seat with Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft dominating the in-home video game industry. I am not say that we don't have some great technology in our video games, Nintendo Wii is the closest we have come to virtual reality.

When you think of virtual reality, you think of the Lawnmower Man or another Science Fiction movie from the 90s. Wouldn't it be nice to play a video game with a headset like you are in battle and bombs going off all around you, you here your platoon leader yell your name from off in the distance. All of a sudden bullets are whizzing over your head, you are smack dab in battle.

The best way to take video games to this level would be to make a system using Nintendo Wii and Second Life technology. I guess we have to wait for another Internet start-up to put these two technologies together.

Digital Cameras: Puttin' On the Ritz

With the holidays a foot, Christmas parties and family get-togethers, you want a digital camera you can trust to take pictures that will last for years to come. At Ritz Camera you can purchase from a wide variety of digital cameras, film cameras, camcorders, photo printers and scanners, scrapbooks and digital photo frames.

I use my digital camera to post products on eBay. It is the best way to get quality pictures, the better the pictures on eBay the easier it is to sell products. Offering a photo of the original product also gets you out of many returns because you can offer the actual photo of the product that they are purchasing.

MicrosoftGadgets.com: Developers Paradise

MicrosoftGadgets.com is changing to better meet the needs of the growing gadget community. Included will be gadget uploads/downloads and forum comments on MicrosoftGadgets at a new location. Upload and download of gadgets at the Windows Live Gallery, forums can be found at the Windows Live forums on MSDN. In early 2007, MicrosoftGadgets will only link to other gadget resources, news, and sites.

Gadget Developer
The Build page will be updated with links to resources for designing and developing gadgets. If you are a Microsoft developer and want to build gadgets and widgets to be compatible with Microsoft forums and software, this is the play for you.

New MSDN Gadget Forums
The gadget forums will include a discussion around sidebar gadget development, web gadgets development, and slideshow development.

Keep an eye on updates to MicrosoftGadgets.com and new developer forum discussions.

Google Mobile App for iPhone, now with Voice Search

Mike LeBeau of the Google mobile team gives an overview of the new Google Mobile App for iPhone. The App let's you speak your queries without pushing any buttons, and also let's you do local searches without specifying your location.

Samsung t919 Behold (T-Mobile) - Part 1

Behold early hands-on look at the Samsung Behold for T-Mobile. Touchscreen, TouchWiz, 5MP camera, 3G, GPS ... it's a full on multimedia monster. And it comes in pink!

Real Estate Technology: Podcasts & MP3s

In the real estate industry technology is coming into its own. Blogs, videos, forums, and virtual tours are more prevalent then ever before. With technology will come more sophisticated buyers, especially the new Internet millionaires looking to find up-scale housing around the world.

Podcasts & MP3s
One idea that is slow to enter the real estate industry are podcasts and MP3s from local real estate agents designed to give a real-time tour as the prospective buyer walks through a house on the market. The realtor can give a play-by-play of the house, giving the buyer a good visual idea of how the house will look with their family sitting around the dinner table or watching TV in the family room.

Entice the buyer using all their senses, they will feel at home.