This just might explain why them damn Nintendo Wiis are so difficult to find…or not.  A Canadian health club, Studio 55, has opened the first Wii Workout Station.  Its 400 square feet of pure Wii exercise boasting a big screen projection.  The gym’s owner estimates that users can burn up to 125 calories in a Wii workout session.  Just another reason to leave the US and move to Toronto - JUST KIDDING!

Canadian gym puts Wii workout on its schedule [Reuters]

I don’t think this needs too much explanation.  The folks in Japan (Kameo) have already sold over 1000 of these since launch in December ‘06.  The pillow is only available in Japan and costs about $80 and is available in pink or green (pink is the gay boyfriend).

More info here (in Japanese).

Original article here.

Thanks Chintan

So you might have heard that Netflix didn’t meet their customer acquisition goals this past quarter.  Furthermore, their site went down this past Tuesday (7/24) for a few hours.  Then I had my personal Netflix experience. A few days ago a movie wouldn’t play.  I called, they said they’d ship out a replacement copy.  The replacement copy that arrived was pristine (wonder if they checked first?) - no matter.  I got on the phone, asked the CSR if I could keep this disc longer and still have 3 out.  She confirmed.  I sent the two other discs back a few days later.  Unfortunately, they still haven’t shipped out the 2nd (3 total) disc in my queue probably because I still have the replacement disc.  This doesn’t make sense from a customer service standpoint.  I should be allowed to keep the 3rd (or replacement disc as long as I’d like since my watching it was inconvenienced by the poor disc quality - not my fault.  Here comes my frustration:  I just called and got a 26 minute wait time for a CSR.  Are you freakin’ kidding me?!?!

Oh ya, and I paraphrase (almost quoted), Netflix depends on their CUSTOMERS to find problematic discs.  Makes sense, but they didn’t even sugar coat.

Netflix better act quick cause I smell smoke and when there’s smoke there’s….

Sure, we knew that they filed for Bankruptcy, but based on the filing (Chapter 11) we all thought they’d “restructure their business” and get back on their feet. Doens’t look that way any more. Their site says they’ve discontinued customer service as of yesterday (7/23) and will *probably* suspend - more like permanently kill - service as of July 31st.

This seems to contradict their Press Release on June 1st:

“On June 1st, 2007, Amp’d Mobile Inc. filed for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure the business. As a result of our rapid growth, our back-end infrastructure was unable to keep up with customer demand. We are taking this step as a necessary and responsible action to sustain and strengthen our momentum in the market place.

We expect to continue normal business operations throughout the reorganization process.
We are confident that we will emerge from this stronger than ever for the following reasons:

• The strength of Amp’d Mobile’s brand and high customer demand for the product.
• During the reorganization process, we are working with one of Amp’d Mobile’s largest investors to obtain debtor-in-possession financing. Our investor supports our vision, strategic direction and business plan.
• Amp’d Mobile’s senior management team remains largely intact as we continue to focus on improving and scaling our backend infrastructure.

We are committed to assuring Amp’d Mobile services remain uninterrupted and will continue to provide our customers with the best service possible.”

Just go here and upload a pic of yourself.

Yes, its a Simpsons/Burger King promo.

Taking forever to load…

I am afraid so.  I had a prebuy ticket but like an apprehensive idiot held out thinking I might jump on the iPhone bandwagon.  You can still purchase the green guy at select retailers, thought.

Amazon seems to have them for Preorder ($349 w/ Free Shipping) and might be a better bet since their 30 day return policy ’seems’ to apply - Ugobe only offered a 14 day return policy and it had to be defective (my major apprehension).

Facebook announced its first acquisition today – a low-profile and unlaunched Web OS startup by Firefox founders’ Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt called Parakey – for an undisclosed sum (tens of millions?).

This doesn’t sound that big until you note that Blake Ross launched Firefox, the open-source browser that seriously threatens Internet Explorer. Parakey is focused on the space between desktop and browser, and aims to move much of the action on one’s hard drive (e-mail databasing, file storage, software apps) directly in to a browser.

The obvious impact of this acquisition is the Facebook Platform. Ross and Hewitt are reportedly going to be immediately joining Facebook, and if it is anything like it sounds, we can start expecting some really cool stuff from Facebook soon.

So all of this just goes to say that Facebook will head for an IPO soon and when it does, it might be the first big signal that the tech boom is back.

This is just plain funny. The last line is the best - “Coming up next, One man’s heroic struggle to pick up the pieces, and rebuild his flickr album.”

OMG! All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash!!!

Youtube link

Ben Horowitz, CEO of Opsware second from right and associates

Today Marc Anderson announced that Opsware is being acquired by Hewlett-Packard for more than $1.6 billion in cash, or $14.25 per share. Co-founder of “build your own” social networking service Ning and one of the internets oldest names, Netscape.

Read his detailed blog entry here

In September 1999, at the height of the dot com boom, a small group of colleagues and I started a new company, Loudcloud, based on the idea that the huge Internet infrastructure buildout then underway — by startups and big companies alike — required a new approach to running modern datacenters and computer systems at high scale: automation.

The eight years that have followed have been an unbelievable journey.

Loudcloud took off like a rocketship, raised $350 million in equity and debt financing, went public in March 2001, and was rapidly nearing $100 million in annual recurring managed services revenue when the entire market blew up and virtually all of our competitors and peers went bankrupt.

[Via: Mashable]

I gotta be honest…I didn’t take a single puff out of this thing, but its ‘wow’ factor is more then enough to show it off to friends and family. Very easy to use. Just draw back the metal slide, insert the brown or green stuff, pull the trigger and you’re in business. What makes the Solopipe truly unique is the ‘all in one’ build - refillable butane lighter and pipe. The sliding door keeps the ‘tobacco’ safely in place during travel and its solid metal build means you can toss it between friends. I’m not a smoke but I am truly impressed with this device.

Official site here. No price mentioned on the site and you’ll have to email (info@solopipe.com) to get ordering info. Sorry, no shopping cart.

Video below.