With a year to go until analog TV broadcasts give way to digital, the federal government on Tuesday started mailing $40 discount coupons for digital converter boxes to consumers who requested them.

Do you need one? And if so, do you really need one now?

Only consumers with older analog TVs who get their programming solely over the air — not through cable or satellite service — will need to plug their rooftop antenna or pair of rabbit ears into a converter box.

If you use an antenna to watch television, your older set won't work after Feb. 17, 2009. One year from now all over-the-air TV broadcasts will be strictly digital.

Analog TV is going away and your old television can't receive the new digital TV signal. So, if you use an antenna to watch TV, you'll need to buy a digital converter box for your older TV.
As a side note if you use satellite or cable, you aren't affected.

Converter boxes will sell for $50 to $70 and the government will even help you buy one.

They will send households two coupons to buy converter boxes good for $40.

It's not too often the government offers you $80 to watch TV! To request a coupon, consumers can apply online at www.dtv2009.gov. The government also has set up a 24-hour hotline to take requests, 1-888-DTV-2009 (1-888-388-2009).

The coupons will start arriving in mailboxes late this month. You'll have your choice of at least 15 different brands.

You could decide to just buy cable or an HD capable TV but, don't forget about those extra TV sets you have in your bedrooms and kitchen. If they're not digital or hooked up to cable or satellite you're going to have to get boxes for them.

Here is a list of eligible boxes.

Coupon Eligible Converter Boxes (CECB)

The NTIA will maintain a list of approved CECBs to distribute to consumers and participating retailers.

The following is the list of approved CECBs.

*The manufacturer has indicated that these models are capable of passing analog signals through to the TV set.

NEC, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, recently unveiled a new concept phone that uses fuel cell as power.

The handset is apparently named NEC Flask Phone and, at a first glance, it looks like a giant lighter that Bigfoot might really love (if he exists and if he smokes). At a second glance, things seem a bit more serious, as this device is said to pack some sort of a touchscreen that also has the role of a keypad. The phone has a transparent case that allows users to see how much fuel is consumed, thus knowing when to recharge, and it's intended to be a device that perfectly integrates advanced technology and simple but elegant design.

There are no technical details regarding the Flask Phone concept, so we don't know much about the nature of the fuel powering it or about the features the phone has to offer.

Although it seems a concept meant to be only a concept, the NEC Flask Phone might be ready to hit the market before the end of 2008, as the Japanese company is confident that such a phone can be created. Of course, there is no info on how much it would cost, nor about the countries that can get it, but if we are good fellas, this year's Christmas Santa might come with a mobile liquid surprise for us. And, why not, for Bigfoot too.

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

As usual I was hopping around the internet and came to a site I had never seen before. They have quite a few videos that you won't see on YouTube or other places.

No, I am not talking about Porn or adult videos, just videos that I thought were funny and that I would like to share with my friends.

The place I found was funnyjunk.com they have quite a few funny and interesting videos.

I came across this video and thought that it would be nice to send it and share it with my friends and also to save to my computer and my Sansa. Unfortunately they don't have anything to allow me to download the video into some kind of Windows type format.

After a little research, I found a way to do just what I want and with very little effort.

The first thing I needed to do was download the video to my computer. I did this using a site called ClipNabber. This site allows you to paste the URL of the site that has a video you want and then you can download it into your computer.

It's very simple to make this happen. All you have to do is, once you see a video you want, go to ClipNabber and paste into the site the webpage of the video you want.

In my case it was http://www.funnyjunk.com/movies/1152/Floating+Cigarette+Trick/ Once you have pasted the address in, you just click on "Nab Video" and the site will give you the download link to the video. Simply "Right Click" and "Save As" and you now have the video on your computer.

The only problem with this is that most videos you download from sites are what's called an FLV file or a Flash Video. Most computers and Windows Media Player, will not play a FLV file. To do this you need to convert it to something Windows likes more, like an AVI or WMV file.

But no biggie, all we need is a FLV Converter. A program to convert the FLV file into an AVI. As a bonus it would be nice if it was free. Welp, we came across this one, the Free FLV Converter

The Free FLV Converter, not only does this but you can search youTube, dailyMotion, google, metacafe videos without opening your browser and you can even watch the videos using the built-in video player.

The software can convert the videos to Avi (xvid, DivX), Ipod, Iphone, 3GP and Psp format (MPEG4 and H.264).

Also as a bonus, this software can also convert all your videos (divx, xvid, mpeg, dvd, avi) to FLV video (Flash video) with an automatic HTML page creation. You will only have to place the files on your website to share your videos with the entire world.

So, once installed I simply ran the Free FLV Converter and converted my Cigarette video into a new AVI file. Now I can send this video to anyone I wish and they can watch it without having to go to a specific website and I can put this on my Sansa if I wish.

You can also convert your new AVI file to just about any other video format, just grab the audio and other things using MediaCoder. But we will save that info for next time. :)