Over at Glenn Wolsey’s blog there’s an amazing top-ten list of multi-display Mac setups that take the cake- offices that I could only wish my office looked like. The setup above is only one of the many many photos on the page, most of which are credited and linked to flickr streams that contain many many more photos of the owners’ home offices and computer setups. A lot of them need some serious cable management, but honestly, when you have things like industrial LEDs (one of the setups does) backlighting your desk, you don’t have to worry too much about that.

Between the amount of money some of these folks have spent on their computers alone, much less their desks and offices combined, I’m only partially surprised that some of these offices are as swanky as they are. Now if only I can manage to duplicate the process with some DIY spirit, some hands-on craftswork, and a couple of bucks…

[ Glenn Wolset :: Top 10 Multi-Display Mac Setups ]

When I build my dream house from the ground up, I plan on making it as luxurious as my budget will allow. That includes the master bathroom, which I sincerely hope will have as many cool bathroom gadgets as possible. I want my house to be a smart home, and that means it’ll be loaded with technology. The Grohe Ondus Digital Shower, is a great example of a home gadget that would be perfect in the bathroom. The Ondus thinks for itself, and an LCD display on the shower controls allow you to digitally control the temperature of the water in increments of a degree.

You can also pause the water flow whenever you want, and you can restart the flow of water at the exact same temperature at which you stopped it. It’s pretty cool, and the more customization it has the better. A device like this will likely be incredibly expensive for the new homeowner or bathroom renovator, but hey, we can wish.

[ Crave :: Digital shower for Lazy Bathers ]

Perhaps one of the coolest headphone sets I’ve seen in a while is a perfect match for the iPod Shuffle – to the point where it makes me want to pick up an iPod Shuffle for myself. The Shuffle is a great gift, especially to someone who doesn’t have or need a ton of music with them at any point in time, but combined with Monster Cable’s iFreePlay headphones the two make an excellent pair.

Simply dock the iPod Shuffle into the left ear cup of the headphones, and put the headphones on your head. Simple as that; no wires, no cables, no external controls. To control your music, just touch the appropriate button on the face of the iPod Shuffle. They’ll run you about $50, and they’re available now, and they’re ideal for people on the go or who love to exercise but don’t want cables dangling from their ears, or don’t want to keep their iPod Shuffle clipped to their outfits.

[ SciFi Tech :: Monster Cable iFreePlay Headphones and iPod Shuffle Were Made for Each Other ]

If you’re headed out of town for a couple of days, or if you’re heading out for a night on the town with someone special and don’t plan on coming back until the wee hours or tomorrow afternoon, and you don’t want poor spot or mittens to go without, you might consider the Automatic Pet Feeder. The device is pretty cool: covered compartments keep pet food fresh and out of the open until the timer on the pet feeder goes off. You set the timer before you leave at intervals of 8, 12, or 24 hours, and right on cue, one of the compartments in the feeder will open up and reveal a fresh serving of food for your pet, without you having to lift a finger, or rush home to feed your loved one.

You can also record a 20 second voice message in the feeder, so when the timer goes off and the food is revealed, your pet has your reassuring voice to call them to the meal. The device can hold up to 3 servings at a time and runs off of 4 C batteries. You can pick it up now and use it when you know you won’t be home to feed your pet, or you can prep it in the morning and not have to lift a finger to feed your pet all day long.

[ Wild Electronics :: Automatic Pet Feeder ]

Apple has long taken flak from environmental groups who believe that its pioneering, independent, and intelligent image should extend to the way it handles its social and environmental responsibilities. Apple has a strong commitment to social responsibility, but groups like Greenpeace have long shaken their collective fists at Apple for not instituting a comprehensive recycling program or e-waste return program to properly dispose of the millions of iPods, Macs, MacBooks and PowerBooks, and more that are disposed of every year.

Well, Steve Jobs has had enough, and promised that Apple would make a change and make a real commitment to be a better corporate steward of the environment and the environmental resources that it uses and disposes of in the future. Similarly, Apple’s current environmental programs have been all but hidden from well-meaning environmental protection organizations, and Apple acknowledges that it clearly needs to do better to communicate these and future steps. Taken from Steve Jobs’ blog post at Apple.com:

Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well.

It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy.

…

Today is the first time we have openly discussed our plans to become a greener Apple. It will not be the last. We will be providing updates of our efforts and accomplishments at least annually, most likely around this time of the year. And we plan to bring other environmental issues to the table as well, such as the energy efficiency of the products in our industry. We are also beginning to explore the overall carbon “footprint” of our products, and may have some interesting data and issues to share later this year.

I hope you are as delighted as I was when I first learned how far along Apple actually is in removing toxic chemicals from its products and recycling its older products. We apologize for leaving you in the dark for this long. Apple is already a leader in innovation and engineering, and we are applying these same talents to become an environmental leader. Based on our tangible actions and results over time, hopefully our customers, employees, shareholders and professional colleagues will all feel proud of our ongoing efforts to become a greener Apple.

In between that innocuous “…” is the meat of Steve’s discussion, where he compares Apple’s efforts to properly dispose of its environmentally hazardous waste and to develop systems that are more environmentally friendly, materials conscious, and energy efficient to those of Apple’s competitors, and Steve goes on to trumpet Apple’s future plans to make the world a better place. It’s all pretty fuzzy and warm, and Apple’s actions will speak louder than its words, but there’s no reason to assume that Apple won’t follow through on its promises – Apple, so far, hasn’t made a habit of telling its stakeholders and public that it is planning to do something and then turn around and not do it. Apple recently announced plans to replace the LCDs in its portable computers with LED backlighting, which is more energy efficient and environmentally concious, another point that Steve made in his blog post. Looks like he’s already making a point to follow through on his words.

[ Apple :: A Greener Apple ]

Microsoft rolled out its long-awaited upgrade to Hotmail last week, finally converting all of its hotmail users to Windows Live Hotmail users. With the new digs came more storage space (2GB), and thus began the slow and arduous process of migrating its estimated 280 million users (I wonder how many of those are fake spam accounts) over to the new interface and new features. The new Windows Live Hotmail has an entirely new look and feel, and brings features that Microsoft Outlook users will find familiar to the browser. It functions equally well in Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Microsoft is not forcing its users to migrate to the new interface at this time, although they’re planning to give their users the option to upgrade and move to the new Hotmail for now. Over time, all users will eventually be rolled into the new system, it’ll just take its sweet time. Personally, I’ve been using the new Windows Live Hotmail for a while now, and of all the features that I’m most impressed with are the improved junk mail filters – which have managed to whittle down the masses of mail that I used to get to my Hotmail account down to a handful of messages a day that are easily cleaned out. You used to be able to “report” junk mail to Microsoft to have it added to their global filters, but it seems that feature has gone sadly missing. Now you can only mark items as “unsafe.”

Also, Microsoft has gone a long way to integrate the service into its Windows Live suite of services, with Windows Live Search, Live.com, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live One Care, and more all within one click of Windows Live Hotmail. I have to admit however, that personally, as much of an improvement that Windows Live Mail is, users still have to suffer through hideous banner ads (although far fewer now than before) to get to their mail and still suffer the same old spam and junk mail problems that the old Hotmail had to suffer.

All in all, the interface is a huge improvement and the future of Hotmail is very bright. I certainly miss Hotmail from its pre-Microsoft days when I felt it was at its strongest and most receptive to its customers (my first email account ever was a Hotmail address, back in 1996) but Microsoft is putting a lot of energy and effort into its flagship webmail service. Even so, with all of the improvements and all of the fanfare, all the new storage, I have to worry that the only people who will be around to enjoy all of Microsoft’s hard work will be spammers, scammers, and the millions of people who used to use their Hotmail accounts but have since moved on to greener pastures like Yahoo! Mail and GMail while waiting for Microsoft to get its act together.

[ PC World :: Microsoft Rolls Out Upgrades to Windows Live Hotmail ]

Yowch. The Transportation Security Administration, the fine folks responsible for protecting Americans as they travel on plane, rail, or any other major means of public transit, has made something of a major boo boo. A hard drive, containing the private information on over 100,000 TSA employees, from baggage screeners to administrators and officials, has gone mysteriously missing, with no indication or knowledge of where the drive is, who might have it, or whether the data has been used for any nefarious purposes like identity theft.

The lost hard drive contains a wealth of sensitive information, including banking data, social security information, and home addresses of all of the employees. The TSA claims it has no idea whether the drive and its data is missing inside its headquarters, or within the controlled area from which it went missing, or whether it’s left TSA control and is out and about floating around somewhere. The drive contained archive information for employees that worked at the TSA from 2002 to 2005, and the TSA is working with the Secret Service to find and retrieve the drive and its data.

[ MSNBC News :: TSA Hard Drive Goes Missing, With Data on 100,000 Employees ]

The TSA has set up a website to help current and former employees learn more about what they’re doing to retrieve the drive and protect the people who may have been affected:

[ TSA : TSA Employee Data Security Incident ]