Although it won’t beat OnLive out the gate — assuming that company sticks to its winter 2009 target date — Israeli cable TV provider Hot has unveiled its plans to provide streaming games on demand, with all the processing power done server-side so you can keep that weak cable box as is, thanks to technology from local company PlayCast. A trial program is in the cards for 1,000 customers, with access for everyone coming in early 2010.

Reader Milad sends in this picture of a Lebanese grocery store suffering from a little branding envy. Nilay: “This is not what we expected by “‘innovative windowing system.’” Chris: “Oh, so this is what Orkut is.” read more

If you’re considering a luxury cellphone, you’ve probably given some thought to the Aura — either as an object of unattainable techno-lust, or as a way to lighten your wallet by a grand or two (don’t even get us started in Vertu). According to Mobile Review , Motorola wasn’t planning on stopping there: The Ivory E18 (a name which either evokes elegance or animal cruelty, depending on your POV) featured a slider with two movements (a short slide for function keys, and a longer for the T9 keypad), a small footprint, and and a 3 megapixel camera.

If you own an iPhone/iPod Touch and love the Fast & Furious movie, Universal is giving you a whole new reason to look forward to the upcoming Blu-ray special edition of their movie. Their planning to come out with a Fast & Furious app that will let viewers control 360-degree models of cars in a Virtual Car Garage using their iPhone , but that’s not the end of it. They’ve also got movie control, ancillary video content download, and even playback of annotations on your iPhone lined up for later release to complement new Blu-ray releases to provide a truly drool-worthy digital movie experience.

Lexar Media issues 64GB, 128GB and 256GB Crucial M225 SSDs It’s been a long, long while since we’ve seen a new Crucial-branded SSD , but we’d argue that Lexar Media couldn’t have picked a better time to end the hiatus. The M225 solid state drive family is the fastest, most capacious Crucial SSD line to date, and while they still lag behind OCZ’s new Vertex Turbo SSD drives, they don’t lag by much.

Reader Milad sends in this picture of a Lebanese grocery store suffering from a little branding envy. Nilay: “This is not what we expected by “‘innovative windowing system.’” Chris: “Oh, so this is what Orkut is.” Ross: “Interestingly, the produce section has a sale on blackberries .” Darren: “And you thought Google Groceries was a belated April Fool’s prank.” Paul: “Our VeggieRank was suspiciously low.” Thomas H.: “I’m Feeling Lucky doesn’t work so well with produce.” Josh F.: “No, really.

Looking to be in the envy of all your friends Xbox 360 online friends? As they did once before with NXE , Microsoft is launching an update preview program for its upcoming Xbox Live dashboard enhancements , which for this round includes Games on Demand, Netflix movie parties, and user ratings — better luck next time, Facebook aficionados . A Microsoft Connect account is required for registration, and lucky participants will be notified by July 31st.

The Tailwind is Schwinn’s new electric bike. It has been available for a few months. The Tailwnd has been described as “retro” and “hulking”. It weights 58 pounds, and has a Toshiba SCiB Quick Charge Plug n’ Drive battery in panniers on the back, which last for about 30 minutes. The Tailwind costs $3,200. This bike has a Schwinn City-Tuned 6000 series aluminum alloy frame. This puts the rider in an upright riding position.

Reader Milad sends in this picture of a Lebanese grocery store suffering from a little branding envy. Nilay: “This is not what we expected by “‘innovative windowing system.’” Chris: “Oh, so this is what Orkut is.” Ross: “Interestingly, the produce section has a sale on blackberries .” Darren: “And you thought Google Groceries was a belated April Fool’s prank.” Paul: “Our VeggieRank was suspiciously low.” Thomas H.: “I’m Feeling Lucky doesn’t work so well with produce.” Josh F.: “No, really.

We’ve seen cables , controllers , drivers and years of promises, and it looks like we now finally have some pictures of the first official USB 3.0 motherboard out in the wild. That milestone comes courtesy of ASUS, which looks to have gone all out (or as far out as motherboards can go) with its new P6X58 Premium model. As you can see above, it packs a pair of easily identifiable USB 3.0 ports and three standard USB 2.0 ports, along with accommodations for a Core i7 processor, six DDR3 memory slots, three PCI-Express 2.0 slots, and plenty of other standard fare.