I love to play with nifty gadgets. Personally, I like the ones with lots of nifty features. Of course, it doesn’t help if half those features don’t work as advertised. I could say more, but this good article explains why more isn’t always better and why certain types of gadgets are doomed to fail.

Hooray for boat-airplane-cars!

Well, according to TechCrunch, there is at least one ISP (RedMoon) that is inserting ads into sites that paying customers are viewing.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with a completely free ISP showing ads - I used to use NetZero (free) and Juno (free) way back when. But this is something else entirely.

Not only are you, the customer, paying good money to access the internet through them, they’ve decided to place ads on websites that you view.

And if you have a website, they could be inserting ads onto your page. Annoying your customers. If you do happen to have ads, the ISP could possibly be taking your ad revenue away by doing something like this. Your ads will be competing with the ISP’s ads and you’ve got even less of a chance of the user clicking on your particular ad, if they do decide to click on ads.

I can only hope that this sort of thing doesn’t spread any further than that company.

The problem with virtual reality has always been that you’re confined to a relatively limited space… if you go too far, you’re going to end up at the end of your cord. If the virtual reality setup has something like a treadmill, then you’re still restricted to going in mostly one direction.

Sure, the environment will move around, depending on how it’s programmed, but that’s not very realistic, is it? Fortunately, someone has come up with a rather good idea: a virtual reality sphere. I’m not sure how you get in or out of these things, but at least you’re able to wander in ‘unlimited’ space as you explore your virtual world.

I’d love to try one of these things, unfortunately I’d wager that they’re prohibitively expensive for the moment. If not, I’d love to buy one some day.

Apple has announced that they will be releasing a new product later this year: The iPot. The iPot will be available by November, just in time for Thanksgiving.

The iPot is a combination Crockpot and microwave type device, with the addition of internet connectivity features. Like a Crockpot, the iPot must be plugged into the wall (as opposed to being used on the stove). Like a microwave, you can program the iPot for various foods.

You will be able to put food into the iPot in the morning and it will keep the food cool (using reverse thermal induction technology) until the afternoon, when it will start cooking. By the time you get home from work or school, your food will be hot and ready for you to eat.

Sensors in the iPot will tell the attached mini-computer the exact temperature and moisture content of the food, letting the mini-computer know when your food is cooked to perfection. Once your food has finished cooking, the iPot changes to ‘warming’ mode, letting you retrieve it at your convenience.

The iPot also comes with an Ethernet port, allowing you to hook the mini-computer up to your network to download recipes from the official iPot site. The recipes will be free and allow you to cook a variety of thousands of different dishes without having to program the iPot yourself.

The iPot also has a slot for flash memory, allowing you to take the recipes you’ve programmed with you wherever you go (for example, to give to a friend).

For those worried that the mini-computer will be damaged by the heat, it will be connected to the iPot itself by a long cord which will allow the sensitive components of the mini-computer to be separate from the heat generated by cooking.

The iPot will come in sizes from 1-quart sauce pan all the way up to 8-quart stew pot. Plans are also in the works for a ‘bacon & eggs’ breakfast model, which will be a frying pan.

Prices for the iPot have not yet been announced.