Laurie A. Duncan posts in TUAW about getting something interesting in the mailbox from a colleague today. The message read: "(name removed) bought 200 (shuffles) at 5th ave store today, they had to scan the UPCs individually. Longest register receipt I've ever seen."

Laurie immediately said "Scan the receipt!" Well, Laurie got something better... pics. Wondering what a whole box-load of iPod Shuffles looks like? Wonder no more.

  
 

Wow. A whole s**t load of shuffles. We bet you your hands will itch if you were there. Given that they unpacked the thing some time ago, it's nice to see a whole lot of it boxed.

Today, we reported that the 2nd generation iPod Shuffle is now shipping for a retail of US$ 79. If that wasn't tempting enough, we've got a gallery of pictures of the 2G iPod from pretty much every single angle and in it's beautiful packaging. Heaven on earth? Almost. The 2nd generation Shuffle comes with a storage capacity of at least 1GB and has a sleek almost clam-shell look. Coming in stunning silver, the 2G iPod could easily sneak itself onto a Star Trek set and not look out of the ordinary.

As we reporter earlier, retailers have adjusted their shipping estimates from November 25 to December 9, so expect yourself to be looking at the same love-filled silver package within this period if you want one. Oh, as the eagle-eyed amongst you would have probably noticed, the packaging that the second generation Shuffle comes in is the same as the nano, with the flaps lifting up to reveal the accessories, which include the dock, ear buds, and manuals. All you have to do now is look at the images and wait for yours to arrive.

Computer and electronics companies including LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba are planning to come up with a set of standards for WiHD or WirelessHD. WiHD is a high-definition digital interface - it will let devices communicate with each other to share high-definition audio/video streaming and also to allow high-speed data transmission.

Basically, it's like a WiFi standard, only more robust and manly. WiHD aims for 5 gigabits of data per second - and up to a distance of 30 feet. Transmission will take place at the 60GHz frequency. To compare, WiFi operates at around 2.4GHz to 5-point-something-GHz.

60GHz! That's a high frequency usually only used by the military or in ship-to-ship communications!

The companies plan to have a standard drafted and ready by early 2007. Then they'll put WiHD into all their HDTVs and all their audio video gadgets. So...

• Will the PS3 take advantage of WiHD in the future? Did somebody mention HDTV? Yeah, Sony is one of the companies (that's their old Bravia ad in the YouTube vid; we chose it for this article because we love the music).
• Where's Microsoft and Apple? Will they follow suit, team up, or make their own standards? Like WiFi, will we end up with several standards - will there be a WiHD.a and WiHD.b and other standards?
• The Nintendo Wii shunned HD, right? Will this new development make Perrin Kaplan eat her words?

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak may not be as visible as Steve Jobs, but when the "other Steve" talks, he sure gets our attention.

The Times Online got Wozniak talking about money, taxes, and why he carries US$ 20,000 cash in his pocket (no typo there, the zeroes are in the right places). While that's one brow-raising statement, we can't blame him for carrying so much moolah because he needs to get his gadget fix. Yes, folks, the 56-year old multi-millionaire is still gadget-crazy, with a certain fixation to Segway scooters, environment-friendly hybrid cars, and plasma televisions. With such high-end toy addiction, it becomes understandable why Woz carries around that much money. That's on top of the credit cards that he use "quite a lot now". It's not hard to tell that Woz is a huge spender, eh?

The Times tried to dig up some financial info from Woz, but unfortunately, he's not quite certain about the status of his investments or how much he earns. He leaves it up to his accountant and broker. But he did say, "IÂ?m an engineer, not a money person, but I do remember using some of the proceeds from selling my Apple stock to buy a house in Scots Valley, California."

It's quite interesting to know that a person of his stature really doesn't keep track of his investments. Perhaps that makes his proposed change in US tax system seem a little bit strange and would make economists cringe: "I would like to see all assets taxed instead, although I think it would save everyone a lot of time and energy if the government just deflated the economy by 1 per cent a year by printing more money. That will never happen, though."

But it's easy to lose track of investments and all "unimportant" tax and government issues when you're just happy with your life, right? That seems to be the case for Woz.

Tag this under general WTF-ery. During slow news days, and you need to get stuff, you start looking for the weird. This bit of "news" basically ties in with anything relating to copyright, intellectual property rights, and piracy. That means this touches upon anything you download online, from game demos to and homebrew goodies... well sort of.

Get this: Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn a patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies, music, and other material on the internet. What does the patch look like? Look at the image on the right.

The scouts will be instructed on the basics of copyright law and learn how to identify five types of copyright works and three ways copyrighted stuff can be stolen. Activities for the scouts include visiting a movie studio (to see how much money employees lose due to piracy) and creating public service announcements urging others to be good copyright observing people.

So will kids carrying PSPs that have questionable media in it or gamers with mod-chips in their consoles start saying "Run! Here comes the boy scouts!" ...or something like that?

We know, we know, there are arguments as to whether or not things like mod-chips, hacks, emulations, homebrews, and even plain YouTube videos infringe on intellectual property rights. It just came to mind that given recent news - the ones about console companies filing lawsuits left and right on grounds of infringed intellectual property rights - perhaps instead of them spending money filing law suits, they could just send creepy Boy Scouts to the offending party to "weird them into submission."

Ergh. We should stop eating bad pizza before. I'm ending this before anyone thinks I'm drunk.

Way, way back, we reported a rumor about supermodel Gisele Bundchen's plans on appearing on an Apple ad. Well, now the leggy Brazilian supermodel is not walking around with Leo DiCaprio in her arms and is now rumored to be playing sweet music with Fantastic Four's Chris Evans. So much with her personal life, let's get right to that Mac ad.

In another hilarious take on the 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' ad, Bundchen appears as a home movie. No, not the Paris Hilton kind, but yup, that's what she is in the ad, plus you get to hear the same ad music. In case you haven't seen it, here's a video for you to find out just what in the world we're talking about.

MacAddict is known to the magazine world as having witty Mac articles that are well-loved by their enthusiastic and large market. These two enviable qualities could already spell success right, well in the dog-eat-dog world of publication, that seem to not be the case. After 11 years of being known as MacAddict- that magazine with the CD full of freebies, it will now be called Mac|Life.

The magazine is in for a complete revamp as they are also on a hunt for a new Editor-in-Chief. From the new name alone, we could say that the magazine will be focus on how Apple thingamajigs work in our daily lives. Lately, computer magazines have been struggling in terms of sales and circulation as they face a tough competition- the Internet. Well, we wish them the best of luck and whether the name change works or not, we think most would agree that MacAddict has already etched its mark in the industry. Let's hope Mac|Life suffers the same fate.

According to a study conducted a few months back, the iconic Apple thingamajig - the iPod - has edged beer guzzling as the most "in" thing among college students. Maybe this next thing we're going to write about is a ploy to make the malt product more popular than the iPod again.

This beer can from Estonian brewer Saku is sporting an unusual albeit familiar-looking logo at the bottom of its label. Yup, that thing you see there is unmistakably the Apple logo. Trademark infringement? Well we really don't know, our Estonian is no good.

But we know that one of the purpose of the U.S. trademark law is to prevent confusing the consumers; basically, we don't think anyone would buy it thinking that they would get a new Apple iSight or something. So they may not be breaking any trademark laws, or we could be wrong you know.

It seems that Saku is just promoting a contest wherein they are giving away a free MacBook plus 500,000 Estonian Kroon (around US$40, 520). Are they violating any trademark laws here? Well, your guesses are as good, maybe even better, than ours.

This advice is not just for gadgets, laptops, and phones that are white (iPods and MacBooks, for example). Gadgets of all colors eventually lose their luster and "new gadget look" with age, and there are three things that drastically speed up the aging process. Here are three things you should keep your gadgets away from:

Smoke. Smoke has a cocktail of chemicals in it. Smoke of all kinds will discolor or damage your electronic devices. Moral lesson: if you want your gadgets to be white for the rest of their lives, then you shouldn't smoke. If you smoke in the same room as your gadgets, your gadgets will eventually become as yellow as your teeth.

Sunlight. People from the computer and video game industries are pale. There's a reason for that. They work away from sunlight because heat from sunlight causes extra strain on electronics and the UV rays from sunlight will age and discolor the housings or casings of many electronic devices (in extreme cases, the housing or casing will crack or become brittle). So take it from the vampire Count: keep out of the sun!

Grime. I remember seeing this article in a magazine where there are more bacteria on the average person's hand than on the rim of an average toilet bowl. That's just gross. And that icky mix of dirt, dust, microscopic filth, oils, moisture, and stubborn little living critters... well, it can damage white surfaces, too. So even though you're old enough to have gadgets, you still need to do what your elementary teachers said: wash your hands before and after playing!

Wacky Stephen Colbert announced yet a new challenge for digital video enthusiasts: integrate Stephen and his lightsaber skills into a digital environment. No relation to Lucasfilm's Star Wars though. Since Colbert issued his green screen challenge, there has been a explosion of videos in different media sharing websites like Youtube.

Here's one of them from brassrocket, an interesting 24-second video of a man with an iPod for a lightsaber. Oh yeah, we dig the cool music background and nice editing of the sequences.