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Thinking of buying your kids (or yourself) a general purpose hand-held gaming system (also good for in-flight entertainment)? While they all play games + music, Nintendo's DSi doesn't play movies. And while the Apple iPod Touch is the most expensive system out the door, you'll save hundreds loading it up with games. (Note: Most of the games on the iPod Touch are not as sophisticated, but many times easier to learn and just as addicting. Plus for just a few dollars, you don't feel such the fool plunking down $30 for something your kids never play).

(*) All Console prices from Amazon, July 19, 2009.
(**) Top 10 Games and Prices listed on Amazon (DSi+PSP) and iTunes (iPod), July 19, 2009.

Breakout of Top 10 Game prices

I've spent most of the last nine months of work coding away on Yahoo!'s BrowserPlus. And this week, we unveiled it.

http://browserplus.yahoo.com/

What is it? A browser plugin that makes it really easy to write and distribute new browser plugins. Why is this important? It makes way for Web 3.0, more fully integrating your desktop with your browser. Allows for things you'd expect from any normal desktop application like drag & drop, notifications and more.

It's been fun watching the blogs all week as other's try to figure out what it is and where it fits in. It's another RIA (rich internet application) platform in the crowded field that includes the likes of Adobe Flash, Google Gears, Microsoft Silverlight.

And some people are really starting to get it. If you're a developer and want to start playing, my teammate Skylar Woodward gives you a boost.

Though I'm still waiting to see if anyone picks up on the significance of the Ruby Interpreter...

Yahoo is well known in the industry as a startup incubator. Scores of people have left Yahoo over the years for smaller, greener pastures. The latest startup, formed by my dearly departed friends this time (lunch just isn't the same), is FlipFrame. Login, choose a frame, then add some pictures. Add your frame to MySpace or your website and you're all set.

My fellow Yahoo Cody has more details.

Sign up now to reserve a short login name...

Tired of the same ole food day after day? With the magic of Yahoo! Local Search and Wheel of Food, take a spin:

After 2 ¹/₂ years of secretive development, Apple has announced their newest product: iPhone. The iPhone is a combination cell phone with camera, iPod (with Nano like capacity, 4GB or 8GB) and internet communicator with email and browser. While some other phones have these capabilities, none come anywhere near in matching the ease of use or wow factor. Almost all input comes from nature's pointing device, your finger.

But this all begs the question, what happens to the iPod? With the iPhone combining everything you need to a device that fits in the palm of your hand, does this end of life the iPod. What comes next for the iPod. Cause after all, some of us still want 80GB of music and video in our hand.

Take the new iPhone and strip off the phone and internet communicator. Add a HDD (hard disc drive). What are you left with? The new multi touch input, widescreen iPod. Now that would be cool. If my prediction is correct, we should see one by September 2007.

My iPod Shuffle arrived Thursday from the Chinese factory, engraved and ready to play. It amazing that a product can be customized and shipped from half way across the world in three days.

As with the previous Shuffle, there is no screen. To me, that's a feature. No glass to scratch. Drop at will. It holds about 200 songs and is perfect for the gym.

The size has to be seen to believed. Not everyone believed it was a real MP3 player. It's sooo small, it's a wonder there's room for a battery and circuit board.

Sound quality is great and the battery purportedly lasts 12 hours.

Highly recommended. It's the perfect stocking stuffer.

When I was your age, we didn't have 20 inch widescreen color LCDs. We had monitors with one color: green. But, there was a great programming language for beginners called LOGO that used (turtle) graphics to teach programming.

Well all that is old is new again. If you're fortunate enough to be equipped with a Mac from this millennium, check out NodeBox. NodeBox is a (free) Mac OS X application that allows you to create graphics with the Python programming language. It's really quite easy to get started and you can see results with just one line of code:

# draw a small rectangle
rect(10,20,50,50)

Now that wasn't hard.

Katherine saw me playing around Saturday morning and asked for a flower. No problem:

# create drawing area and move towards center
size(500,500)
translate(100,200)

# green plant body
fill(0, .9, 0, 1)
star(105, 150,4,100,20)

# flower color
fill(.9, .6, 0, .6)

# draw 1 flower pedal
def draw(r):
    oval(0,0,210,60)
    rotate(r)

# draw flower pedals
for i in range(9):
    draw(20)

# draw red stigma
fill(.9, 0, 0, .9)
oval(80,5,50,50)

The result:

Too much fun. If you want to learn how to program, this is a great way to start.

Yahoo! is opening up Hackday for outsiders, employees not required. Sounds like a lot more fun too, with workshops, campings and live music. Check out open Hackday here, but be sure to move your mouse pointer over the text as the website first appears encrypted.

P.S.

If it rains and we find ourselves listening to music and hacking in the mud, can we call it Hackstock?

P.P.S.

I'm still waiting for my Hack Day trophy from our June win.

With the world so uncertain, it's time to be prudent. With both of us working at two leading internet companies, why put all our eggs in one basket. Let's diversify, just a little. So here's my proposal: 50% of my stock options for 50% of your stock options?

Deal or no deal?

With Friday's going away party behind me, I have two weeks of unemployment/vacation before starting at Yahoo. One of the biggest unknowns in switching jobs is are you going to like who you work with? Although the interview was a full day, that's really not a lot of time when you're meeting 10 people, and they're doing most of the questioning. But with the magic of personal publishing and the internet, it looks like I can keep track of what the new group is up to. There's even a picture of the new boss, case I forgot.

And speaking of unemployment:

Funny thing about weekends
When you're unemployed
They don't quite mean so much,
except you get to hang out with
all your working friends

Spaghetti Western by Primus

Got all my lunches with my working friends out of the way last week. So this week is lunches with the underemployed: housewives, kids and sister-in-laws.

There's a video of the new office in Burbank starring my future coworkers. Fun. Should have started a week ago.

Jawbreaker has finally hit 100,000 games played. The high scores are very hard to beat now, but it does keep track of your personal best, so don't be discouraged.