As oil prices rise it seems that airlines are actually doing something to help the consumer rather than harm him or her. So far, there are two schools of thought. The first is to save money while the second is to add value. It's pretty obvious which is the one less popular with any corporation. That aside, it's interesting to know that those of us who enjoy consuming media on planes are the ones who will suffer/benefit.

US Airways is taking the more traditional route of trying to save money in the face of rising oil prices. They've announced that they will be removing the in-flight movie capabilities of about ten percent of their passenger aircraft. How does removing a single DVD player from an airplane going to help save money? Well, for some odd reason they don't use some fifty-dollar DVD player they picked up from Buy.com. The systems they actually use weigh five hundred pounds. So, you can see how cutting them out might save them a few bucks on fuel.

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Not too long ago, Amazon.com began offering movies and TV shows on their website. Some were available via a streaming video player while others required the customer to download a video he or she would then play locally, on their own computers. The service was called "Amazon Unbox" and the theory was that the videos didn't come in a box.

Clever, right?

Aaaanyway, so here comes Amazon, again, with a new online video offering--this one entirely streaming. What this new service offers over "Unbox" isn't entirely clear--sure, streaming is better than downloading, in theory, but what happens if your broadband goes down in the middle of a movie? And what's so bad about waiting for a movie to download? Certainly, it's faster than waiting for the Post Office to deliver a Netflix DVD, right?

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One of the issues that comes with being an interconnected society is that we tend to become dependent on those little gadgets and gizmos that keep us in touch. A lot of us technophiles find ourselves tethered to our cell phones, reliant upon that facet of connectivity to keep us appraised of the world as it happens around us. Then there are those of us that that use cell phones strictly for security; they’re a great way to keep others informed of your situation and in an emergency they can be the difference between life and death. So when it comes right down to it, the only question you have to ask is: is your cell phone charged? With Juicebar, their hoping to make this question obsolete.

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In the not so distant past here on Gadget Addiction, there was blurb that in the not so distant future a hand held version of Guitar Hero was on its way to the Nintendo DS. Well, that time has come; the distant future is the present present! (Okay, I’ll stop that now). So, how did Activison and Vicarious Visions manage to create a portable guitar?

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So today’s article came down to writing, once again, on the Canadian ISP issue in which consumers are fiercely backlashing against the nation’s largest ISPs for throttling download speeds and the iPhone. While one has import on the precedent on the role in protecting the freedom of the internet, the other is just plain more popular. So here we are. In less than a week Apple is set to unveil a second iteration of its veritable touch-screen phone/music player. And while we are on the eve of its announcement, speculation has been running rampant as to what exactly the new model will feature. One of the few solid facts is that the iPhone redux will support 3G networks, meaning faster, better service. But what will the overall cost be (and I’m not just talking dollars)?

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Have you ever wished your BlackBerry could do more? I mean, sure it does calls, organizes your life, keeps you online and in touch. Handles your emails…Right. Well, if there’s one thing your BlackBerry can’t do its' replace all those damn remotes in your living room. At least not yet. Markham, Ontario based Unify4Life has developed hardware and software for the BlackBerry that allows the user to control all sorts of electronics. A product they're calling the AV Solution, which is set for launch sometime in October of this year. So, how does it work?

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For some of us, remotes are like juggling balls, meant to be tossed and circulated until everything is powered up, at the right volume, and on the right channel. In some cases the very wise contain this plethora of controllers in a nearby container, so they’re easily found. For the rest of us who chose to hone our scavenger-hunting skills, managing home entertainment is a daily exercise. But what about one remote to rule them all and in the darkness bind them?! ESPN is claiming to have done just that with their Ultimate Remote (yes, they actually chose to call their product the Ultimate...sigh…). So what makes a remote so awesomely Ultimate (perhaps only surpassable by some sort of Ultimate Extreme)?

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Joining the ever-crowded world of Ultra-Mobile PCs is Hewlett-Packard's diminutive little laptop, the Mini-Note. The base price is $500--a full $100 more than the Asus eeepc's base price, but that doesn't mean the HP isn't worth at least a look-see. In case you don't know, the idea of a UMPC is to deliver what you'd expect from a regular laptop after it's been hit by a shrink ray.

In the Mini-Note's case, it's base model comes with a lot of low-end, but perfectly reasonable features. The display on all of the models is 8.9 inches. The base comes with a 1 Ghz processor, 512MB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive and all of your basic ports, in and out (in: USBx2, microphone, power; out: headphones, VGA monitor; both: RJ-45/Ethernet). It comes with Wifi and Bluetooth, both nice, but typical features, too. It's dimensions are perfectly reasonable, coming in at 10x6.5 with a thickness of 1 inch. Not bad. The display can do WXGA (1366x768) and brings the VIA Chrome 9 for graphics.

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Tesla Motors and it's flagship car, the Tesla Roadster, both bear the name of Nikola Tesla. As a Gadget Addict, you may know who Tesla was, but it's possible you don't. He's the guy who invented Alternating Current (that stuff that comes from those wall-outlets to power all your stuff). Nikola Tesla also held a couple hundred patents, invented the first remotely controlled devices, hung with Mark Twain and was pretty sure he could broadcast electricity to everyone around the world for free. Sadly, while that last bit never came to pass, the type of electricity he invented would allow the twentieth century to unfold the way it did.

Thanks to Telsa's main competitor for AC being Thomas Edison (who believed DC was the way to go) most folks tend to never hear about Tesla in the first place. People point to the rock band from the 1980s with the same name and now they have Tesla Motors to be confused about. So, why name a car company after a guy who's barely known for the invention of the most commonly used form of electricity?

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The Vye S37, on the surface, seems like one of the more ideal UMPCs available. It's size is fairly comparable to other UMPCs, it has a 7-inch touchscreen, a tablet mode, and all of the other bells and whistles you expect and need on an Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer. The one thing it's got that no other UMPCs have, however, is one of the first things that was sacrificed when the first UMPCs were developed--an optical drive.

The omission makes sense, really. If you're all about portability and compactness (but don't want the tiny screen of a smart phone) you probably aren't carrying around a stack of data DVDs, so who needs an optical drive to access them? However, if your UMPC does everything else you need it to do, it does seem a little weird to have it be unable to play that discount DVD you found in a bargain bin during some down time on a business trip. The thing is, there's another reason to not have an optical drive.

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