A few months ago Google began a pilot program that put 100 advertisers in 66 daily newspapers and their unsold ad space. Much like brokers who buy and resell ad space to last-minute advertisers, Google is allowing businesses to bid online for a paper’s excess ad inventory.

“The volume [of ads sold] is tripling where we thought it would be,” said Tom Phillips, director of print ads at Google. “I think we’ll have real impact next year” on newspapers’ bottom lines, he said. “We open the medium to a whole new class of advertisers.”

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Being used to wireless equipment for some has become a godsend, yet we still need wires for other devices and appear to accumulate wires of some sort or another ending up having to place several USB adapters into to ports/ hubs.

No worries, Belkin has developed a new product named the Cable Free USB Hub, where you will only require one USB port for your wireless needs, such a printers, scanners and other devices. With a range of around 30 feet and a cool price of around $200, the wireless hub is great for the home office.

Product Page [Belkin]

The Koreans at uplusnote.com have come up with something magical, the uPlusPen. A tablet pen for your PC that doesn’t require the tablet. Just a USB connection and any surface to write on.

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In August manufacturer, The Ant Commandos, sued Activision and RedOctane for the controller on the PS2 game, Guitar Hero, which bears close resemblance to Konami’s arcade game, Guitar Freaks.

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With the buzz around CES already starting to build, Toshiba thought it was a good idea to throw a hornet in the nest with an announcement about a pre-CES news conference on January 7th. Toshiba will be joined by other members of the group supporting the HD-DVD format to update everyone on their plans for 2007.

Toshiba introduced the first generation of its HD-DVD players at CES 2006 and recently released second-generation players, drawing speculation that price drops are coming soon. Which is a good thing.

Sales for both HD-DVD and the competing Blu-Ray format have been sluggish at best, due to the low availability of titles for either format and the price of the players themselves. For Toshiba, the first generation HD-A1 and HD-XA1 entered the world at $500 and $800 respectively. The new HD-A2 and HD-XA2 show no signs of relenting on your wallet with their $500 and $1,000 price points.

Have hope and don’t fear, Toshiba president and CEO Yoshihide Fujii provided some light on the topic of discussion for the aforementioned news conference.

At first I thought the price threshold is $499. Maybe coming next is $399 and after that is $299.

That’s about as vague as you can get, so form your own opinion. I already have. I’m just hoping that somebody is offering no-interest financing on a big honkin’ Plasma TV. Like a 60 inch. Yeah, 60 inch. Or maybe I’ll get real bold and go for the 100 inch. But that would require a new living room…

Read [CEPro] Via [PC World]