A Student at the Technical University of Hamburg is doing a survey Neuros Community Members

I'm a masters student at TUHH, Technical University of Hamburg. As
part of my master’s thesis, I am carrying out a survey to better
understand your experience and expectations with regards to the
organization of Open design projects.
Your opinion as Neuros OSD user and community member is very important
to me!
That's why I'm inviting you to fill out my survey. Answering the
questions may take about 8-10 minutes.

Mashable recently posted an article With Google TV Looming, Can the Boxee Box Prevail? It was almost rhetorical because Mashable clearly can't see how it will. I tend to agree with them, but I'll take it one step further. Why would we want dedicated hardware of any kind at this stage? Lets assume that Google TV will run on a PC as we've speculated. Let's further guess that the Google TV hardware will cost $200.

@browndamon : And the Nobel Prize in Futility Goes to... Makers of New Web-TV Boxes http://bit.ly/99NBra #bnet #webtv #litl #vudu #boxee #appletv #neuros

It's only natural that the above would be said, and there's no doubt that Google's entry into this space could, and hopefully will, change everything. This space, as we have often discussed, is in desperate need of a shakeup. Of course, Google's entry is no surprise and we posted on it first over two years ago. The question now is how well did we anticipate and position ourselves, and what should we change? Lets start with our current assessment:

Steven Johnson wrote an interesting provocative article in the NY Times about whether or not Apple's success should make us re-think the "gospel that an open web will win." My gut tells me that openness will win in the end (I guess no one would be surprised by this view).

We've just released a practically silent Neuros LINK (codenamed "Phantom") and figured some of you would be interested in the process.

Of course, there are easier ways to create a silent computer, the easiest being a net-top solution, with an Atom processor or the like. We've decided not to go that route with the LINK simply because we didn't want to make the sacrifice on CPU horsepower. Sadly, as we all know, there are still plenty of web apps and inefficient video streams that require CPU cycles. Instead, we architected a full power PC to be silent (or silent to an excellent approximation anyway) Click more to see what it took, or if you just want to buy, go here: we're good with that too. BTW, geardiary posted a review and some pictures

If you haven't seen the new Boxee bookmarking feature, check it out. Its a very simple, elegant feature. You see a video at work, it gets forwarded to you, whatever, you bookmark it and it appears on your queue at home (on your TV if you use the LINK with Boxee). I'm really struggling with how to add text to this blog post since the thing is so damn simple, but it just looks funny to have a two sentence blog post. Maybe I should have just tweeted this, but I'm curious about the trackback feature so I wanted to post it here.

Fernando sent the below message to the Neuros list, and its just another reason why an x86 (with a powerful CPU) continues to make sense for the LINK.  Until the world becomes more standards based, as a manufacturer, we'll continue to need to be flexible to keep our customers from having to deal with these headaches.  That means x86 and having enough space CPU cycles to be able to deal with some inefficiencies in the system.

I wrote previously about Innovation following Infrastructure and this is basically the other side of that coin. I recently was introduced to the pedal-a-watt device its a device that turns your bike into a stationary bike with resistance provided by a generator that actually puts power into your home electric lines, offsetting some of what you use. Its a neat little thing and as someone that uses a stationary bike with a very noisy fan, I was excited to get one.

"Chicago was the place where all the classic games were made, because you could acquire all the parts that were necessary from local manufacturers" said Steve Kordek (who gave the world two-flipper pinball). It's a quote from the Feb '10 issue of Chicago Magazine. I'm sure it's something that went unnoticed by most readers, but I winced the second I read it. Why? Because 50 years later, Neuros moved its manufacturing (and a lot of the engineering) to China for largely the same reason.

The concept of an open home gateway is one of the least noticed and most important of the components of a national broadband plan, and I believe the US is at a critical crossroads. Please join Neuros in supporting a proposal for an open home gateway by voting or commenting on the FCC Post we submitted. The open home gateway is a standard that would mandate the cable companies deliver a box that other devices can integrate with in a seamless way.

On one path is an incredible opportunity:
to help close the digital divide,
to create an entire ecosystem of connected TV that allow a freedom of communication that can quickly reach virtually all citizens,
to create entire new industries for the US to pioneer