It's another year of new gadgets and toys for the modern man, and PC World's Top 100 Best Products of 2007 listed stuff you don't wanna miss. Among all the techy stuff, Nintendo Wii climbed its way up to third place and manifested its domination.

Apple's jack-of-all-trades when it comes to media streaming hardware, Apple TV, took 11th spot. Playable formats may be limited, but this convenient and easy to use entertainment package is worth the money you'll put on it.

Wii is not the only console on the list, Xbox 360 Elite also got its share of fame. Its HDMI 1.2 connector and massive 120GB hard drive gave it a boost to the 18th spot. When talking about gadgets, it's pretty hard not to include iPod in the conversation. The hefty 80GB Apple iPod took 26th place, followed by the smaller 8GB iPod Nano on the 45th.

To see the entire list, click on the Read link below.

Sure the Apple TV has nearly everything you can ever want - save for the video games. There is speculation that the Apple TV may be able to support games in the future, though they will likely be bought from the iTunes store or would have to be in a certain format.

Well, some people found a way to hack into Apple's entertainment system and got emulators working on it. Reportedly, there are five available emulators for the Apple TV: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Nintendo64, Nintendo Gameboy Advance (GBA), and Sega Genesis. Instructions and the emulators themselves (we suppose the ROMs as well) now litter the interwebs but we shall insert a disclaimer here:

Tampering with the Apple TV might void your warranty, not to mention render the unit useless.

According to the report, hackers are also trying to find a way to work the Xbox360 with the Apple TV and are making progress. The "service only" USB port has been hacked into and so enabling the use of joysticks. Rumors say that in/famous Jon Lech Johansen has gotten hold of an Apple TV. We'll see what comes of that in the future. For now, be careful with those emulators.

 

Apple has recently announced that it will gradually add new software features and applications to its hyped iPhone and Apple TV products free of charge, according to a report by Apple Insider.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, notes that this is a bold step to leverage what Apple does best. Oppenheimer adds that some of the upcoming iPhone applications will be "entirely new applications." The new features and applications will be made through automatic software updates to both iPhone and Apple TV.

Apple has yet to accept iPhone orders through retail or its online store. As for the initial supply of the iPhone, chief operating officer Tim Cook notes that "It's very difficult to tell what demand is until you're shipping the product."

Will Apple's attempt at changing the perception of the cell phone as a "throw away" product work? We'd like to know what you have to say.

A report from AppleInsider indicates that Target, another major retail chain aside from Wal-Mart and Circuit City, is expected to pick up their own stock of the Apple's new entertainment showcase product, the Apple TV.

Best Buy finalized a deal with Apple to shelf the Apple TV in their stores last month, and Target will now become the next retail to have Apple TV on sale and on display.

Of course, the new stock is not yet expected to fill Target retail warehouses. Reports have come in stating that Target should be allowed one month in order to carry a full stock quota of the product in selected retail outlets nationwide. They are also planning on setting up eye-catching demonstration booths in some select outlets in order to introduce the new product to the public.

A representative from Target declined to comment on this report, after conferring with Target's "internal partners." The TiVo contender is a current top seller at all Apple chains nationwide, but is still up against a lot of competition from Microsoft and TiVo. It's ability to be modded for gaming and mobile use is an added edge for the product, however.

Reports of Sling Media working on making their Slingbox placeshifting device compatible with Apple's new Apple TV have been confirmed according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog. The confirmation was reportedly made by Dave Zatz, an employee at Sling Media.

For those who have yet to encounter it, the Slingbox is a TV streaming device that lets users stream and view video from their AV sources (DVD player, TiVo, etc.) remotely on their Internet-capable PCs. It also has an IR blaster that lets users control their AV source as if they were in their living rooms and using a standard remote control.

The report from The Unofficial Apple Weblog says that the Slingbox Pro will apparently connect to the Apple TV via the component outputs. It will give users access not only to their videos but also to their entire iTunes library. Users can also reduce bandwidth by choosing audio only mode on the SlingPlayer software.

High-definition podcasts from Washingtonpost.com are now available on iTunes. These 720p HD podcasts featuring Washingtonpost.com documentaries are designed for viewing on HDTVs and, of course, the Apple TV.

According to tech blog Electronista, Washingtonpost.com is the first news organization to offer HD video content for the Apple TV.

"The washingtonpost.com's multimedia team has worked hard to hone not only their technical skills, but also their storytelling skills," said Tom Kennedy, managing editor of multimedia at Washingtonpost.com. "This team has invested in providing outstanding content and quality journalism, and in turn we've invested in the technology they need to keep growing without limitations."

The documentaries available for download include the "Being a black man" series by videojournalist Ben De La Cruz, a series on Darfur refugees in Chad by videojournalist Travis Fox, and "Justin's Got Game" by Pierre Kattar. For the more politically-minded, ongoing coverage of the presidential campaign trail by John Poole is also available.

Touting the ability to play downloaded videos and streamable shows on your living room set, Apple TV is now boosting its rep to  techie households everywhere with Apple TV commercials. This one particular commercial shows iTunes movies on Macs and iPods that end up eventually on your own entertainment showcase in the living room - the primal ability to Apple TV.

Despite the current flak Apple TV is getting from TiVo and Windows Media Center fans, a plethora of modders, hackers and Internet TV enthusiasts have boasted everything that can be possible on the device, including game emulation and games, plus HD playback on TVMini HD.

The slim, silver device from the Cupertino-based company was already released back in March, and should still be available at your nearest Mac or home theater retailer. Oh, and you could probably grab a different flavor of Apple TV for room preferences.

We mentioned in an earlier post on our Apple blog that videogame console emulation is apparently possible on Apple's new Apple TV. If you're still a bit skeptical about that, here's proof. Gizmodo has posted a video of an enterprising Apple TV owner - Rusty - playing Super Mario Bros. on an Apple TV.

Rusty says that this was made possible through the use of a standard Apple TV OS plus a few hacks. "Pretty simple hack to accomplish," he said. "Just enabled shh. Then VNC, AFP and USB. Then installed Nestopia and Emulator Enhancer." Nestopia is one of the emulators confirmed to be compatible with the Apple TV OS.

Anyway, check out the video below. Now who's to say that Apple gaming's nonexistent?

Engadget reports a couple of new abilities that you Apple TV owners can choose to bestow upon your two-week old Apple gadget.

The first one is an RSS plugin from Twenty08. This plugin features a basic RSS Feed reader and can read RSS1.x/2.x feeds. The plugin can't read ATOM feeds as of this posting, but we're looking forward to an update that will hopefully include this feature. Video RSS feeds are also on the way according to Twenty08.

The second is for videogame console emulation. It's not actually a hack per se, but according to Engadget, a Wiki over at AwkwardTV says that several popular emulators by Richard Bannister "work on the Apple TV OS with the addition of SSH." Right now, the following emulators have been confirmed working:

• Nestopia 1.3.6 (NES)
• Generator 0.4.2 (Sega Genesis)
• BSNES 0.17 (SNES)
• Sixtyforce 0.9.0 (N64)

Finally, there's a challenge put forth by AppleTVHacks.net and FatWallet.com where they'll be giving US$ 1,000 to the first person or team who can get an Apple TV to use an external USB drive for storage. The patch must also be applied without opening the Apple TV's case, much like in the USB boot video we posted about a few days ago.

For more on all of these new hacks and the challenge, click on the "via" link below.

It looks like the Apple TV is going to feature Tux on its hood beside the pervasive Apple logo. Some ingenious hackers claim that they have wrought a custom Linux kernel on Apple TV's boot loader. The info is still incomplete but as it is, the kernel and the set-top box seem to have WiFi, SpeedStep and EFI. Other kernel status statistics:

• EFI is not working fully
• USB works with the "irqpoll" kernel commadnline option
• nv Xorg driver works
• nvidia's propritiary driver also works with full 3D accel
• Speedstep seems to work. The CPU Clock gets down to 600 MHz
• Wlan is working with ndiswrapper
• Sound works fine

Just for fun, we'd like to quote to you the spoof Apple marketing campaign that appeared on the Linux users' site when Linux was hacked into a Mac Book.

The Intel chip... For months, it's been trapped inside a Mac, inside a pretty little box, dutifully performing pretty little tasks when it could have been doing so much more. Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free, and get to live life in a Mac... running Linux. Imagine the possibilities.