Every time I rip a CD and wait for the painstaking process to be done (listening to the horrific grinding spinning noise the whole time), I think about how many CDs I’ve collected over the years and conclude that I’ll probably be listening to CDs even when everyone else has all their music stored on holographic jewels around their necks (-_-;). Digital storage offers so many advantages, but unless you’re a real young’un, you likely have much of your music collection stored in boxes, not a hard drive. There are actually services available for people who want to have someone else transfer their entire music collections in one go (and who don’t want to spend a weekend in a ripping frenzy) but they’re expensive. RipDigital, probably the best known of these companies, charges $199 for 200 CDs, enough to buy you 199 brand-new iTunes tracks.

Of course, those guys at RipDigital don’t have employees sitting there ripping each CD one by one; they’ve got the big honking machines that you throw a whole box of CDs into which spit out mp3s. The large capacity rippers tended to be prohibitively expensive for home use, not to mention being bigger than my washing machine, but a new one, the Pico MP3 ripper, weighs just 6.5 lbs. and costs $699. Yes, you could get about 700 CDs converted by RipDigital for you for that much, but the Pico will let you start your own neighborhood or family racket, letting you rip 25 CDs in a go, totally hands-free. The Pico will rip into mp3, wav, aiff, or flac files, and will retrieve all your CD track information from CDDB just like an application like iTunes will do.

The Pico is also a disc duplicator, so you can make up to 12 CDs or 6 DVDs an hour, a big advantage if you’re the type who likes to share the “wealth” when you’ve compiled all your home movies onto DVD.

The Pico super-duper drive connects through USB 2.0, and rips right into any home computer. The $699 price includes 50 blank recordable DVDs and a lifetime discount on Disk Makers other compatible blank media.

Shame on you if you caught that double entendre. I wrote it and I don’t even get it. Anyway, this is an interesting concept for a computer mouse. It’s got a built-in sensor that can tell how long your hand has been idly resting on it without scrolling, clicking, or any of that good stuff.

If you keep your hand on the mouse for more than 10 seconds, it will begin to vibrate to let you know that you need to give your hand a rest. I don’t quite understand the reasoning behind this (are there that many deaths from idle mouse-clutching hand accidents?) but it’s interesting, for sure.

It’s available online for $69.

Sony released a new firmware update for the Sony PSP in Japan and the United States.

The new Sony PSP Firmware 2.80 improves over the Firmware 2.71 with Video RSS Feeds, AAC music format (3gp) support, Music, Video and Picture folders, and wireless feature improvement for the Location Free Video streaming support, and of course new fixes against homebrew hacks (-_-;)…Sony just wont give up.

Sony also released another demo Game download for the Sony PSP. This time it is a World Tour Soccer 06 demo.

More details and download for firmware 2.80 can be found on the Sony Playstation site.

The Venzero LifeSaver is a USB stick with a 8GB microdrive bundled with the Ceedo backup software.

The LifeSaver measures 60×36x10mm and features a swivel style USB plug. The Ceedo mobile desktop software is pre-installed on the new Venzero device.
The Venzero LifeSaver will sell for $149.
More details about the Venzero LifeSaver on the Venzero site.

Luis Reyes is working on the first sanctioned Star Trek manga, “Shinsei Shinsei,” and says he’s worried that TOS purists won’t approve of highly stylized interpretations of the famous characters.

“I’m a fan,” Reyes said at Comic-Con, but the manga-ka was warned by Star Trek executives, “Those fans will kill you.”

CBS Consumer Products Executive Paula Block is said to have helped keep the fresh manga in line with fan expectations, insisting that Reyes eliminate beads of sweat drawn on Captain Kirk.

“It’s okay with Scotty, but Kirk wouldn’t have freaked out like that.”