They did ground tests last week, but yesterday morning WhiteKnightTwo, the strange looking double-wide plane that will carry SpaceShipTwo and its cargo on suborbital spaceflights, finally took off on its maiden voyage. Four Pratt & Whitney Canada PW308A engines carried the craft into the air.

The flight didn’t last long, just under an hour, and apparently all went perfectly according to plan. The design is pretty amazing and makes we realize that we may just be living in the beginning of Star Trek times, at long last. Soon they’ll be building the Enterprise in orbit.

Digital music is available in many forms. You can buy digital albums and tracks form music stores like iTunes or you can subscribe to services that allow you to download all the music you want and keep it as long as you pay the monthly fee.

Slacker is yet another alternative where you choose the tracks you want to listen to and create your own streaming radio station customized to your tastes. Slacker announced a new service called Radio Plus. Radio Plus costs $3.99 per month and offers features not previously available on Slacker.

The Roku Netflix player was the first device to support streaming movie rentals from Netflix and ushered in an array of devices supporting the Netflix streaming service. One of the best features of the original Roku Player was the cheap $99 price tag.

Roku announced today that its Digital Video Player now supports HD streams of films from Netflix. Other HD streaming partners will reportedly be added to the Roku player as well. The additional providers are expected to debut in q1 2009.

Windows Vista isn’t well liked by many computer users. The operating system has a reputation for consuming more resources than Windows XP did. The need for more resources to run Vista than many netbook computers offer led Microsoft to continue offering Windows XP alongside Vista.

Microsoft has announced today that it is extending the previous deadline for computer makers to move away from Windows XP that was set to retire on January 31, 2009. Microsoft has previously extended this deadline as well.

We’ve all had our encounters with clamshell packaging, so it’s nice to hear about manufacturers that abandon the practice. Sony did just that this week, even though this video is pretty lame. Sony is just one of several big name companies that have pledged an end to this wasteful, destructive packaging.

As we reported last month, Amazon took a stand of their own. Other companies are getting on board too, like Microsoft and Best Buy. Once they start saving money on packaging, maybe Sony can make a better video, or give their workers a raise, but in reality it will likely go straight into the hands of the guys at the top. Then they can feel all good about themselves when they too ask for a bailout. To help the little guy of course.

We told you about this dual-screened ThinkPad a few days ago, but now more details have come to light. The W700ds comes with your choice of Intel Core 2 Quad processors and is combined with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M GPU. RAM maxes out at 8GB and SSD / HDD storage maxes out at 960GB.

The primary 17-inch screen is supposed to be the brightest on the market, and if that’s not drool-worthy enough, it sports an integrated WACOM digitizer. The 11 pound laptop starts at $3,600, so you’d better start saving your money for January it ships.

Lexicon has a new line of I-ONIX Desktop Recording Interfaces. Interestingly, the USB-enabled I∙ONIX U22, U42S, and U82S were designed to fill that empty space between your keyboard and monitor. Each unit features dbx microphone preamps on all analog inputs.

The U22 will record two channels at once and even includes a pair of analog combi-jack mic / line inputs, two TRS balanced line outputs, a Hi-Z instrument input, a 0.25-inch headphone output and MIDI I/O; the U42S and U82S include four and eight analog combi-jack mic / line inputs, S/PDIF I/O, two instrument inputs, and two 0.25-inch headphone outputs.

There aren’t many arcade-style joysticks available for the PS3, probably because there aren’t many fighting games on the console. That are worth playing anyway. Despite this, the XCM Dominator is headed our way. No price or availability just yet.

Another addition is this strange XCM Cross Battle Adapter hub. It lets PS3 owners synch up their wired Xbox 360 controllers and play games using them. It will cost you $40. This might be a little more useful since it’s a better controller, but won’t you be plagued by mapping issues? Hell if I know.

Wazabee will be introducing several ‘autostereoscopic’ products at Macworld that add no-glasses 3D technology to regular LCDs, including the iPhone. The 3DeeShell hugs the iPhone like a protective case, and features a clear “3D” lens that you can remove when you’re not using it.

Of course the case can’t magically convert 2D to 3D, but the company is offering a trio of apps to create and view media for the display, named 3DeeVUsion, 3Dee!oadr and 3DeeCamera. The Wazabee 3DeeShell is scheduled to ship in early Q2 2009.

I have seen soundbars for home theater sets ups that provide good sound and a clean install look. They place speakers inside a long, slender box that is designed to sit under the TV in your living room rather than boxy speakers that are designed to stand beside the TV.

iLuv has introduced a new 2.1 speaker set for PC that looks like a soundbar. The long and slender device has a pair of speakers inside with a subwoofer. The system uses SRS-XT technology to simulate surround sound for movies and games.

The geeky world of smartphone fans was giddy with anticipation when BlackBerry announced its first touchscreen device called the BlackBerry Storm. So excited were the hoards of BlackBerry fanatics that Verizon stores quickly sold out in many areas on launch day.

If you were one of the folks who wanted a Storm, despite the rather bad reviews of the device, and were unable to get one before stocks ran out Verizon has announced that some of its stores in the Southern California area will have stock today.

Sometimes it’s really hard to make a decision. Sometimes you need a scapegoat, so you can blame someone else for something that you know is a bad idea. Traditionally, that’s where the magic 8-ball has always come in handy. It has now been combined with this cool little USB flash drive from The USB Group.

This way, you’ll always have storage and an easy answer at your fingertips. It’s a fully logo brandable drive with a cute magic 8 ball suspended in liquid. Should I delete my porn? “Ask again later” Will my co-workers find my High School Musical tracks? “My sources say no”.

This Dalek Christmas tree is scary. Scary because it’s a Dalek and scary because it’s so silly and bizarre that my brain has no idea how to process it. It was created by Minnesotan Lindsey Testolin and features a lot of flashing lights, no sense of style or attitude, some bulb ornaments on the base, and I hope they have a spare laundry basket or he’s gonna lose his neck.

If Doctor Who was a DIY production, this would be an actual screen cap of the Christmas special. Regardless of it’s ragtag DIY look, it warms our cold geek hearts. Video below.

We didn’t see this one coming. Although we had hoped for something like it, after seeing the Apple Tribook. The new IBM ThinkPad W700 may only have one integrated secondary display, but it’s a foldable, 10.6 inch secondary display, with 768 x 1,280 pixels and LED backlight.

This may not be an Apple Tribook, but hell that was just a fancy dream. This one is real and the IBM ThinkPad W700 feature list has us impressed.

Oh yes. We like shiny. This is one shiny tree. It’s the kind of project that you take on when you find yourself with 70 defunct SCSI hard drives and a whole lotta free time on your hands. If that sounds like you this Christmas season, you can make one too, just like the builder of this tower of joy. It was built by a man with a horse name(trigger).

He took the drives from RAID arrays that were destined for the scrap heap. Instead of performing the DoD wipe that would have otherwise been needed, he built this geek tree from the shiny discs within. The tree is made entirely from the drive pieces, with one exception. A single nut.