How do you know the analog television era is truly coming to an end? When retailers announce publicly they are no longer going to carry these products on store shelves. Such is the case with an announcement today from Best Buy.

Best Buy, the largest CE retailer across the land, has “pulled all remaining analog television products from store shelves and will only sell digital video tuners in the future.” It will also take part in a national coupon program to help people purchase digital converter boxes for existing analog televisions.

Hitachi today announced another step forward in packing more data into the same sized hard disks with what is now the world’s smallest read-head technology for hard disks. While others (Hitachi themselves included) are starting to turn to solid state drives or hybrid drives with advantages of moving parts, faster response times and less power consumption, Hitachi continues to make advances on the HDD front stating it continues to provide a better capacity to cost ratio than other technologies.

A massive buyout has taken place within the world of video game development. One of the world’s biggest makers and distributors of video games, Electronic Arts, has agreed to buy out the holding company that owns BioWare and Pandemic Studios, two leaders in the industry for the princely sum of $860 million dollars. EA pays $620 million to the investors of VG Holding Corporation, the company that bought the two software developers two years back for $300 million, as well as $155 million in equity to employees, assume $50 million dollars in stock options and pay $35 million to cover the cost of the deal.

BioWare is the developer of the two “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” and “Neverwinter Nights” games, both of which proved to be bestsellers and the choice of many for game of the year. Since those two licenses are owned by third parties the intellectual properties are not included in the EA deal. What is covered are all the original IPs that BioWare and Pandemic have created such as “Jade Empire”, “Mass Effect”, “Mercenaries” and “Saboteur”. As well BioWare is in development on a top secret massive multiplayer online game set for release sometime in 2009. That also becomes the property of EA.

Mozilla has decided to get down to business about developing a mobile browser and have recently hired two developers experienced in mobile Linux-based applications to start building a mobile version of the Firefox browser. The company didn’t give any dates on when they thought the new browser would be available and it might be a little early to know what types of phones it would be able to run on, but they did let us know it wouldn’t be this year.

We would love to see something in the way of mobile from Firefox soon and hopefully sometime next year. The longer Mozilla takes the stiffer the competition will become and already the company will have challenges getting into mobile devices with Microsoft and Apple. Both of these companies run their own browser on their respective platforms which integrate nicely, but that certainly hasn’t stopped Firefox from swaying a chunk of users already with desktop browsers. Here at the ‘Brick we currently see over 38% of our readers using a Firefox browser and that percentage continues to rise. Opera Software will be another tough competitor having had a mobile browser in the market for a number of years already, but Mozilla feels there is till room for another and possibly better option.

Microsoft appears to have given in a little bit in response to concerns and complaints about their new Windows Vista operating system. The company’s original plan was to have the original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) stop selling the Windows XP operating system with new computers as of January 31, 2008. Custom builders would get another year giving them until January 31, 2009. After that it would be all Vista and no more XP.

Since that original plan was made the sales of PC’s with the new Vista OS haven’t been …

A subsidiary of GE Fanuc has produced a field-ready explosion-proof pc for users in less than optimal computing environments. The Ruffneck’s high tollerance to extreme temperatures is thanks to its thermally managed body capable of withstanding temperatures as low as -40 and as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Attention was paid to rugged detail with its 15 inch LCD screen designed for handling by a gloved user. The PC itself includes Windows XP running a 1.6GHz Pentium M processor with 2GB of RAM and a 40GB disk and a CompactFlash SSD option. The Ruffneck is a heavyweight, weighing it at 45 lbs and is wall mountable. There is currently no word on price.

Intel announced today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Fancisco that the companies next generation of processors, code named “Penryn”, are slated to start hitting the streets November 12. This announcement continues to fuel the race between Intel and rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, who within the last week unveiled new quad-core and triple-core processors.

The new Penryn chips from Intel promise a 20 percent performance boost along with improved energy efficiencies over the current chips available. The new Penryn’s are able to achieve faster processing with less energy due to the companies new 45 nanometer manufacturing process, which creates ridiculously small circuitry that’s only 45 billionth of a meter wide. Thirty million of these circuits could fit on the head of a single pin. Moving ahead to the 45 nanometer production gives Intel an additional edge over AMD in the processor manufacturing race since both companies currently product chips using 65 nanometer construction.

Microsoft has announced that it will extend its free support period for Windows XP. The Redmond Washington software giant had originally planned to discontinue free support in January of 2009. Microsoft said the support period applied specifically to the Home edition of Windows XP.

Windows 98 and ME just ended their supported life in July of 2006. Microsoft has a history of extending the support life of products based on customer demand. Windows 98 support was supposed to end in January of 2004. …

From the CES, Verizon in planning to launch a service that allows mobile phones to receive live Television broadcasts. The service, called V Cast Mobile TV, is expected to launch sometime in the first quarter of 2007.

The service will allow subscribers to get live content from NBC, ABC, Fox, MTV and others. Pre-recorded shows will also be available for viewing.

Two phones, a model from Samsung and the LG VX9400 will be available with more expected by year end.

Verizon will be using a network built by …

This picture is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case you don’t make the connection this is a ring that has an opening on one side of it that works as a bottle opener. A little torque while wearing the Ring Thing on your “social” finger and you have solved the problem of always having to look around for an opener or some particularly strong surface area every time you want to open a bottle.

I have to say that this looks a little more sanitary than the bottle opener sandals we posted about in …