Over the course of the past five years the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued nearly 30,000 alleged copyright violators, with most cases settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. Last month RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth announced "There's no filtering… We are simply passing along a notice of detection and the ISPs will forward a notice to the subscriber."

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Dell, Acer, Asus, HP, and a bunch of other companies most people haven't heard of are now selling their versions of netbooks, the portable low powered computers. Online shopping comparison website PriceGrabber.com’s president Ron LaPierre returns to talk about things to consider before deciding to purchase one and why Microsoft still reigns supereme in the netbook market even though computers bundled with Linux are often cheaper.

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According to Amazon.com , 17 out of the 25 top selling laptops so far this year are netbooks. What can you really get done on a computer with a 9 inch screen? Ron LaPierre, President of online comparison shopping website PriceGrabber.com discusses the current computer trend.

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On February 17th, all broadcast television signals are going DIGITAL. According to the National Association of Broadcasters, this will affect over 20 million households that watch television through the use of antenna. 25% of households mistakenly believe that they MUST subscribe to a satellite or cable service after February and 41% believe that they must purchase a converter box, even if they subscribe to satellite or television.

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Mario goes to CES 2009 so you don't have to and gives his highlights in less than five minutes.

For videos check out the 2009 CES blog.

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Taylor McKnight, partner of music website The Hype Machine returns to discuss SanDisk’s effort to sell digital music without the Internet.

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UK rock group Radiohead made an unprecedented move for a band of their stature last year, releasing their album In-Rainbows as a name your own price digital download from their site first. They sold 3 million copies of their album - 1.25 million copies were bought off their website and 1.75 CDs were sold, the number of copies sold online alone surpassed the physical sales of the band’s previous album – Hail To The Thief. Taylor McKnight, a partner of music website The Hype Machine discusses the results of this digital experiment.

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According to a report by Nielsen Online, social-networking and microblogging service Twitter grew 343% since September of 2007, making it the fastest growing of these sites. Twitter is being used by individuals, myself!, companies, and even NASA’s robotic spacecraft the Mars Phoenix lander to make short instantaneous updates or “tweets” as they’re called via website or mobile phone. Sarah Milstein, former Chief Publishing Evangelist for O'Reilly Media talks about Twitter best practices for businesses.

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Mario shares his list of top techy gift choices with an emphasis on gifts that are portable, useable, and affordable.

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Obama hasn’t appointed a Chief Technology Officer just yet, but has recently announced his team of leaders for a technology, innovation, and government reform policy group. But what specifically will be on the priority list for this CTO? A non-official Obama site, ObamaCTO.org allows users to vote on issues in order of priority. So far the top 3 policies listed on the site include: 1) ensuring net neutrality 2) ensuring the privacy of citizens and revising the patriot act and 3) repealing the digital millennium copyright act (THE DMCA). The problem with this list is that these are issues that the new CTO will not be able to directly address, as altering this policy is up to Congress.

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Buildings in the US are responsible for 37% of all green house gas emotions worldwide and consume 70% of the electricity in the US. Mario discusses hybrid buildings with Jay Bhatt, Senior VP of AutoDesk. Find out more info from the US Green Building Council.

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This year, as many as a third of all voters nationwide will be casting their ballot for the presidential election early, which is up twenty percent from 2000. Mario speaks with Brian Moore, the Creative Director of GoVoteAbsentee.org which is a website that streamlines the process of absentee voting.

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Five minutes, 20 slides. What would you say? Ignite is an event where 16 artists, technologists, thinkers, and personalities take the stage to answer this challenge. Mario speaks with two of the presenters, Brian Liles and Patti Chan from www.600block.com.

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According to a market report from Futuresource Consulting, over 600,000 interactive whiteboards were installed worldwide in 2008, valued in excess of one billion dollars. By 2012, one in six classrooms worldwide are forecast to be using the technology. Mario speaks with Colin Messenger, a Senior Consultant with Futuresource Consulting.

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In September, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo email account was hacked. The hacker posted screenshots and the details of how he did it online. It took less than an hour of online searching to find the answers to Palin's security questions to exploit Yahoo’s “forgot my password” service. Mario discusses what can you do to safeguard your personal online accounts.

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The browser market has long been dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which makes up roughly seventy-five percent of global web users, trailed by Mozilla’s Firefox which has consistently grown in usage to nearly twenty percent. But Google has just entered the market with their Chrome browser, which was released in Beta form at the beginning of September. It’s based on WebKit, the framework that is used in Surfari and the iPhone. Why do we need another browser?

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Is the era of the celebrity Architect over? Mario speaks with Phil Bernstein, Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and Vice President of Autodesk about two decades of architecture and how digital fabrication has redefined how the generation of architects work and think.

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Shoe website Ryz allows users to submit their personal designs for consideration by others to be produced in limited runs. Winners get prize money and Ryz produces a unique product without the delays faced in the standard production cycle of a consumer product.

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According to the Pew Research Center, nearly a quarter of Americans say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the Internet, more than double the amount of people from 2004. Forty-two percent of those aged 18-29 regularly learn about the campaign from the Internet, making it the number one information source for that age demographic.

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The Virtual Assistant industry has been growing, driven in part by professionals who prefer the flexibility and control of their schedule and working environment, a demand from businesses to increase efficiency, and technology that enables this be feasible and affordable. Mario talks with Becky Gregory, of Virtual Administrative Services, about this growing occupation, who might be able to benefit from it, and what it takes to make it into a career.

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