Yesterday, at Google I/O, Google announced the latest extension of its empire, Google TV.

This technology could potentially revolutionize television, as it opens the door to many possibilities by  implementing the web into your TV screen with just a simple “Box.”

For a myriad of information on this new technology, make sure to stop by here.

NBC and Fox joined forces in 2007 to stream the respective networks’ content (and their affiliates’) over the web through Hulu. Originally intended as simply a TV streaming site, Movie content from studios like Universal, 20th Century Fox, MGM and Sony were added to the mix when Hulu launched out of private beta in early 2008. Since then, Hulu has grown as a phenomenon and has even replaced the real TV set for some. So enough with this jibber-jabbering on Hulu. As you most likely know, the Steelers were the victor in todays Super Bowl XLIII (43). However, as always, the Superbowl ads are the true stars of the day. Ads from Pepsi, Coke, and Budweiser graced the stage as always, however we got special treats in the form of 3D, yes that 3D, commercials and a special commercial for Hulu. Hulu’s minute spot featured Alec Baldwin and is quite funny, thus we’ve got it featured for you above. And lucky for Hulu, it (most likely) did not have to shell out loads of money ot pay for the spot considering it’s parent company NBC hosted the Super Bowl festivities. Hulu really is a great resource to catch up on television, considering some of the most popular shows on TV (Heroes, House, and 24) are all streamed on the site for free. And just incase you want to check out all the ads featured during the big game, Hulu’s posted them for viewing. (The revolving list below contains all of Hulu’s streaming Super Bowl ads.)

(Thanks for the tip, Mark!)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the Windows 7 beta will be available for download starting this Friday (January 9), for everyone. Ballmer delivered the opening CES keynote; Bill Gates has delivered the keynote for practically the past 15 years and last year was his last keynote. So the first announcement Ballmer made of his keynote was this Windows 7 beta availability. Windows 7 has been pictured and seen a lot over the past couple of months and this announcement was already expected (along with almost all the “announcements” from today’s keynote). Download the beta and learn more at the Windows 7 site.

This year marks my third for attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.  As a few of you might already know, my father is the almighty Yahya Ahdout, the owner and CEO of dreamGEAR, a video game/iPod accessory and speaker producer and distributor, and he is my ticket into this amazing show.  You can find his wonderful products at many places including your local Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Blockbuster.  One of his latest items is the Warbeast Guitar Controller for all Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Rock Revolution games on PS2/PS3. But, enough of that, lets get to the good stuff.  I will be at the show for its entirety, and I will constantly be blogging and posting every interesting thing that I find.  Like Engadget and Gizmodo, we will be posting about the biggest announcements by all the different companies, but I will also use my time to go around the smaller booths and post about the pretty cool things that everyone forgets about.  As I roam from hall to hall and booth to booth, I will be accompanied by a very good friend of mine, Michael York, who is getting his new blog off the floor, and will be working in compliance with us at blargKABOOM.

Finally, the things I will be bringing with myself on my journey:
Canon EOS 30D – To snap pictures of everything for all you guys to see!
Asus eee 901 – For blogging on the go while on the show floor.
Apple iPhone 3G – For constant tethering, and music on the go. As it is also of course my telephone.
MacBook Pro – Yes, mine is in fact the first generation model, but it will be my home-base for posting in the hotel room. 

And also, a little background for those of you who do not know what CES is; ah god im too lazy, just read about it on Wikipedia here!

Besides Microsoft’s Windows 7 news, the company also announced that they will release a web version of its popular Office suite. Lightweight versions, as they call it, of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available on the web so users can create and edit Office documents anywhere.

With this, Microsoft joins the ranks of other web services like Google Docs and Zoho, which offer similar online Office suites.

The Office web applications look similar to current Office applications and retain features like the Ribbon menu browser. Microsoft will get these applications to users via Office Live and will be available in both ad-funded and subscription versions. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari will all be supported. A javascript and HTML based version, similar to Google Docs, will be used unless the computer running the applications have Silverlight, similar to Adobe Flash, which would be used instead. More information on beta versions is expected soon.

For most users, these web applications will easily fit their needs since most users don’t use most of the features in the desktop Office. So saving the $100-or-so and switching to Office Web sounds like a pretty good deal.

During a developer conference held this week, Microsoft showed off Windows 7, they’re attempt to help the Windows name after the failure that is Vista. From the screenshots, it looks nice, and that’s coming from one of the biggest Apple fanboys you could find. Besides showing the new operating system off, the company gave developers a beta version of the operating system, which doesn’t have an official launch date, but is expected early 2010 or even late 2009. Developers will apparently get a feature complete beta version in early 2009.

But back to the important stuff, the OS. Here’s what’s new:

• the taskbar – just includes icons, we’ll see whether that lack of text stays to the final version.
• “peek” feature – going over an app in the taskbar makes all other applications go transparent, very similar to Expose on Mac OS X.
• gadgets roam free – gadgets, very similar to Apple’s widgets without their own Dashboard, are now free to roam the desktop instead of being trapped in the Sidebar, which took up valuable screen space on small screens.
• resizing windows – by dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it, bringing it down again restores previous size. by dragging the window to the edge of the screen, it makes the window 50% of the screen.
• one click WiFi choosing – users can select WiFi networks with one click of a WiFi button in the system tray.
• system tray auto-hiding – instead of hiding and only showing a certain number of icons, now users set which icons to show in the main system tray and everything else is auto-hidden.
• runs on less – Microsoft demoed Windows 7 running on a netbook with only 1GB of RAM and a 1Ghz processor, showing it’s already better than Vista since Vista doesn’t do too well on netbooks.

TiVo is easily the most popular DVR around the country and for those TiVo users with the TiVo HD, HD XL, and Series3 models, you are about to get a welcome addition to your TiVo: Netflix streaming. Similar to the current streaming offered by the Roku box and other services, the service offers Netflix subscribers “all you can eat” access to over 12,000 movies and TV shows streamed over the internet. The rollout of Netflix has already begun through a beta program, but the official rollout is planned for mid-December.

via the Crave blog

Apple pumped out an updated version of its Mac OS X Leopard tonight, bringing it to 10.5.5. The software update is available via Software Update now and includes a bunch of small bug fixes and other features. Open up Software Update now to grab the download.

via Engadget

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

Google is a pretty busy company. Not only does it run the largest search engine in the world, but it also has Gmail, YouTube, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Maps, and even its own 411 service. But that accounts for a tiny percentage of the services Google offers. Well, you can add a web browser to that list. Google Chrome is the latest innovation from Google, and it aims to give you the best browsing experience yet. Chrome is a web browser based on WebKit, the same basis for Apple’s Safari web browser. Offering users a newer, easier tabbed interface that saves memory and makes the browser faster, Google Chrome looks like it could be a great browser. The beta version will be released for Windows tomorrow with Mac OS X and Linux following soon. To give a simple explanation of the browser, Google has released a comic book to explain it all.

via MacRumors

After releasing iPhone firmware 2.0.1 just two weeks ago, Apple has released another firmware update: 2.0.2. Keeping the simple description of “bug fixes” from Apple, hopefully at least some bugs will be fixed on the phone. The update weighs in at a hefty 248.7 MB, so get to downloading at let us know how it goes and if it helps.

The iPhone Dev Team has released the PwnageTool for iPhone firmware 2.0, which allows users to install a custom firmware that is jailbroken and can be unlocked. Unlike previous jailbreaks, this version uses Cydia, an alternative to the Installer.app that most users would be used to. The PwnageTool has a great graphical interface and is very easy to use. Original iPhone users can unlock the phone, but iPhone 3G users can’t yet. The Dev Team is hard at work to provide a 3G unlock, so let’s keep our fingers crossed. Download it from the Dev Team itself or from this mirror.

The iPhone Dev Team announced last week that it had officially unlocked and jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch firmware 2.0, and now they have done the same with iPhone 3G. The team posted a video of the jailbreak in action, but it works and users wanting to unlock their new iPhone 3G can finally do it. Or if you’ve upgraded to a new iPhone 3G and have an old iPhone, go wild and crazy with the old one while keeping your new one in pristine ‘Apple-approved’ condition. iPhone Atlas hears that the updated PwnageTool will be available this week.

After a delay that bumped up the transition from 6 pm to 8 pm and countless hours of waiting, MobileMe is finally up and running. Apple gained some time by launching the App Store, but they still were late in MobileMe delivery. The service which is replacing .Mac, which went offline (except for getting and sending Mail) at around 9:14 pm, offers push email, contacts, and calendar, as well as giving users most of the same .Mac features with a storage upgrade to 20GB of space. Me.com email addresses have been working for a few days and now the service is officially working. www.me.com is the web portal which offers desktop like contact, email, and calendar applications and you can read the MobileMe setup guide for how to get it up and running on your computer. The service is $99 per year for a single account and $149 for a family account, however current .Mac users will be automatically converted over to MobileMe. One fact of note, current .Mac customers will keep their @mac.com email address as well, so don’t worry about sending mass emails to everyone in your contacts to let them know you’ve changed your email.

UPDATE – MobileMe is currently back offline.

UPDATE 2 – MobileMe is back online, but it’s been going on and off frequently pretty recently, so we’ll see if this stays.

UPDATE 3 – Back down again.

UPDATE 4 – MobileMe is online for good now, so prepare for the all the push goodness you can get.

After releasing iTunes 7.7 earlier this morning, the iTunes App Store is now live. You can download, purchase, and browse the catalogues. Now all we need is a device to load the apps onto. iPhone 2.0, you are all we need.

Just in time for the (supposed) launch of MobileMe, Apple has released iTunes 7.7. This latest version of iTunes is required for not only MobileMe, but iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 firmware, and the App Store as well. Apple’s description of this update is:

Use iTunes 7.7 to sync music, video, and more with iPhone 3G, and download applications from the iTunes Store exclusively designed for iPhone and iPod touch with software version 2.0 or later. Also use the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home — a free download from the App Store.

So that yet again confirms the free Remote application for iPhone and iPod touch users from the App Store, at least when firmware 2.0 is released.

The ‘Applications’ tab was also added in this version of iTunes, making us even more desperate for the App Store and it’s precious apps.

Well, it may be an hour after Apple’s quoted time for .Mac’s final moments, but the image above is what users see when they try to go to www.mac.com. The death of .Mac, now let’s wait for the birth of MobileMe, which is supposed to be coming out “as soon as possible during the maintenance window.”

GameStop and Amazon added Rock Band track Pack Vol 1 to their product lists recently, giving a release date of July 15. The disc contains 20 of the most “popular tracks in Rock Band history.” You would think that it just is extra tracks for the game, but the expanded information reads: “A fully functional game with all the great features of Rock Band, including Tour Mode, Quickplay, Tug of War, Score Dual, and song unlock progression.” It also reads: “Rock Band Track Pack Volume 1 is a standalone software product.” Amazon reads “A musical expansion to Rock Band…” The game/expansion pack will be available for PS2 and Wii for $29.99.

[Thanks for the tip again, Eric!]

Apple released an update to Mac OS X Leopard today, bringing the version up to 10.5.4. For the details on the update, check out specs here. So open up Software Update on your Mac and hit the install button.

As of now, it’s not working for me. Is it working for you? Tell everyone in the comments.

UPDATE – My @me.com email is finally working.