Got gadgets 'coz we got storage!

" I recently switched cell phone carriers and bought a new Palm (PALM) Treo 700p to replace my old Treo 600. One of the nice things about the 700p is the improved camera and video recording features, so I decided to run over to Best Buy (BBY) and grab a memory card. I knew prices had dropped, but even I wasn't prepared for how much:

A 2-gigabyte SanDisk (SNDK) SD card was $30."

Read the whole story here

Apple TV is here!

"You have to read -- or listen -- between the lines of the WJS review, but the thing doesn't quite seem ready for prime time. The main limitations are neatly summed up today by Charles Jade at Ars Technica, riffing on an analyst's report that suggested that Apple TV would be the death of TiVo, NetFlix, DVD players and all the rest. Jade points out that ... "

Read the whole story and watch a 'positive' review video ... the reviewers are really funny! ;-)

LOL! Abhishek v/s SRK in NY

Can't believe their "rivalry" is being taken to such heights ... look here

Interesting Yahoo mail beta bug

"Namesake" is brilliant

"When a book is made into a film, especially one that is penned by a Pulitzer-Prize winning author, there's more scope for potential disaster. Will the characters, locations, plots and sub-plots pan out as effectively on celluloid as they do in the reader's imagination? Mira Nair's The Namesake, adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri's book by the same name (she won the Pullitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies), does not disappoint. In fact, it surpasses one's expectations."

Read more at Namesake is brilliant

Apple TV Due This Week

"Apple's (AAPL) long awaited TV set-top box, originally scheduled to ship in February and delayed in a rare Apple PR snafoo to the ides of March, will be showing up in those FedEx trucks any day now. I know a lot of people who can't wait. But a piece in CNET.com this morning has done a pretty good job of assessing what kind of market impact Apple TV will and won't have. "Don't expect Apple TV to be an overnight success," warns CNET staff writer Tom Krazit. "It's unlikely that Apple TV will disrupt the entrenched players in the living room."

Read more at Apple TV due this week

Teenager investing advise ... useful for adults too?

"

In our 2002 book The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of, we announced a contest to award a five-year, $1,000 annual grant for the "most eloquent and effective advice on personal finance, investing, or business offered by a teen." Now that the fifth year has ended, it's time to announce the contest results for 2006. Congratulations to our winner, Kenny Lee!

The winning entry
We were impressed by many of the entries, but the judges deemed Kenny's the best. Kenny hails from Monrovia, Calif. Below you can read much of his winning entry, which condenses many important financial lessons into a small package. I've added a few notes in brackets. Share it with any teens you know. Many of us ex-teens could learn a few things from Kenny, too."

Read more at :News Flash: Fool Pays Teen $1,000!

Mac Laptops: Grabbing Market Share

From http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/03/mac_laptops_gra.html

March 09, 2007

Mac Laptops: Grabbing Market Share

Lots of interesting detail buried in W.R. Hambrecht analyst Matther Kather's report initiating coverage of Apple (AAPL) with a widely reported "buy" and a target price of $110. But what caught my eye was how well Apple laptops are doing, not just relative to Mac desktop sales (which are sort of anemic), but relative to the rest of the laptop market as well.

Drawing on Apple's filings, Kather reports that its notebook sales in the U.S. grew 49.3% over the past year and that the company now has a 7.1% share of the notebook market in the U.S., up 2% from last year. (Worldwide notebook market share is a less impressive 3.9% and growth there is essentially flat.)

This is important as laptops increasingly replace desktops as the machine of choice, especially among higher-income mobile workers. iPods are still Apple's biggest source of revenue, representing nearly half of its 1st quarter revenue. But laptops are No. 2, with more than 20% of revenue in that quarter.

Hambrecht anticipates Apple notebooks sales growing another 29% in 2007. (link to pdf of full report here)

Is google building its own wireless device?

From http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/03/is_google_makin.html

Is Google Making Its Own Mobile Device?

That's the speculation at Macworld UK this morning based on a Google (GOOG) job posting for an analog engineer/designer whose qualifications include programming, circuit modeling, power supply design and "ham radio license a plus."

"To improve accessibility," the posting says, "Google is experimenting with a few wireless communications systems including some completely novel concepts. We are building a small team of top-notch Logic Designers and Analog Designers aimed at nothing less than making the entire world's information accessible from anywhere for free. Are you in?" (link)

Macworld quotes Phil Taylor, senior analyst with Strategy Analytics. "In the wake of Apple and some other big-name brands moving into the handset business, why not Google?" said Taylor. (full text here)

The trick for Google and its new analog engineer would be to make something that stands out in a crowded market where the bar has just been raised dauntingly high by Apple's (AAPL) iPhone.

Palm (PALM), meanwhile, has hired Paul Mercer, a top Silicon Valley designer, to work on its own answer to the iPhone, according to John Markoff in today's NY Times (link, sub required). Mercer was the lead designer of Version 7 of the Macintosh finder and helped Samsung design the Z5, one of South Korea's best selling MP3 players.