Hasta La Gadget!

Peel is a very clever universal remote for your iPhone, combining hardware and software to both clear the mess off your coffee-table and recommend shows.

It works like this. The app, free from the App Store, provides a customized TV guide based on your favorite shows (you need to tell the app which shows you like). Pull up the main screen and you can flip through the night’s time slots and see only shows that you’ll like and that are available to you. And if you really like something, you can tweet it or share on Facebook direct from the app.

But that’s not all. Touch the show you want to watch and the hardware part takes over. A small puck sits on the table, beaming instructions to your cable-box. And a second dongle plugs right into an Ethernet port on your Wi-Fi router. These two talk to each other using the wireless Zigbee protocol and allow you to control the TV via Wi-Fi.

The app will also learn from your habits to fine-tune its suggestions. Support right now is limited to cable-boxes, TVs, DVD and Blu-ray boxes, but soon updates will let you use it with the Apple TV, Roku, Tivo and home theater receivers. The Peel will be on sale in a few weeks, and the price will be determined by the offers that prospective customers make.

Peel product page [Peel]

See Also:

• Case Turns iPhone Into Universal Remote While Charging It
• IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Universal Remote
• IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Ugly Universal Remote
• 5 Nifty Apps That Turn Your Android Into A Universal Remote …

The entertainment service that offers Web-based content adds several new sources–the most notable being Funny or Die.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Google’s Chrome OS, announced Tuesday, comes along with a little something that makes us gadget-freaks pretty excited: the monolithic, plain-black Cr-48, an Atom netbook that will be shipped to selected developers and others as part of Google’s Chrome Pilot Program.

Just look at it. Normally Google’s wares are utilitarian but plain, if not plain ugly. THe Cr-48, though, is gorgeous, coming on more like a stealth-fighter than a low-powered laptop.

The matte-black box contains a 12-inch screen, weighs 3.8 pounds and sports a full-sized keyboard. It will give 8 hours of use on a single charge and Google says it will boot in ten seconds, or resume from sleep instantly. There’s a webcam, the trackpad looks like one of the giant pads found on Apple’s MacBooks, and the netbook ditches the hard drive for flash memory. After all, who needs a lot of storage in a cloud-based OS, especially when the machine packs a global 3G radio along with its Wi-Fi?

But best of all, Google has killed the Caps Lock key, the weapon of comment-trolls the world over. No longer will these idiots be able to SHOUT THEIR DUMB OPINIONS without holding down an extra key. And the rest of us will no longer have to retype a sentence after accidentally engaging this vestigial annoyance. The key that usually functions as Caps Lock is still there, but has been reassigned: Pressing it will bring up the netbook’s search function.

Google has also ditched the traditional row of function keys, replacing them with the media keys that most notebooks mix up with the function keys these days.

The unit itself is gorgeous. Over at our sister blog, Epicenter, you can find out about the new Chrome OS that it will run, as well as the Chrome Store, from my esteemed colleague Michael Calore. And if you want one of these hot machines? Bad luck, unless you get very, very lucky and are accepted for the pilot program.

With Chrome OS, Google Doubles Down on the Cloud [Epicenter]

Cr-48 Chrome Notebook [Google]

See Also:

• Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web
• Chrome Store Possibly Launching Dec. 7

The SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has launched successfully, carrying the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Dragon is the first private spaceship in history. It would be able to carry seven astronauts to orbit. Watch the launch and the separation videos here. Updated More »

Start-up company Peel introduces a new spin on the universal remote, combining an iPhone app and network-connected IR repeater to deliver a personalized home theater experience.