To perform a hard reset on the HTC Droid Incredible do the following:

• From the Home screen tap Menu > Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset.
• Follow the on-screen prompts to complete.
• This process will take 5-10 minutes.

• Power off the nüvi
• Press and hold the bottom-right corner of the touchscreen
• Power it on
• A prompt will ask you “are you sure you want to delete all user data?”

Choose wisely young jedi, there’s no undo

Another neat trick: You can access about a dozen pages of nüvi diagnostics by pressing and holding on the battery icon for three seconds.

I’ve got a TiVo HD XL with Comcast CableCard hooked to a plasma screen. I got my TiVo upgrade from WeaKnees.com, incidentally.

A friend (who’s a professional audio engineer) told me a few things about speakers and my quest:

• Speakers are localized. U.S. speakers sound different than German, UK and Japanese speakers. Each sounds different and U.S. OEMs tend to emphasize bass.

• Surround sound systems (5.1, 7.1, 9.1) are over-rated and generally are a waste of money. A pair of really good speakers is much better than lots of cheap speakers.

• It’s better to “go old school” and hook up a component amplifier with two quality speakers.

• Most of the big speaker brands (Bose, Infinity, Harmon Kardon, JBL, and their ilk) are contract manufactured abroad. Probably in a factory like this. Not that that’s bad or anything, it’s just that the speakers sound good and not great.

• He recommended that I find a small speaker company that doesn’t contract manufacture abroad, because they try harder and are hungrier. JL Audio appears to make some of their speakers in Miramar Florida.

Based on his advice I’m looking for a really good pair of speakers (ideally less than $500) that are made in the U.S. that I can connect to my amp (a Kenwood KR-V8540).

Any advice?

Update: Here’s a good list of loudspeaker manufacturers from Wikipedia.

Telegraph UK reports:

Barack Obama will ride in an all-new Cadillac Presidential Limousine after his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States today.

He will use the vehicle, nicknamed the Beast, on the 1.7-mile journey from the Capitol along the parade route to the White House. It reportedly has armour eight inches thick, tear-gas cannons and Kevlar-reinforced tyres that resist attack. For security reasons, most of the details remain confidential.

Leftlane News adds some technical details about the president’s new ride noting that its “curb weight certainly exceeds 10,000 pounds thanks to all the armoring.”

The second Prius hack (below) to disable the seatbelt beeping is meant to serve as a convenience feature only. I often put something heavy (non-human) on the passenger seat and the Prius will beep annoyingly to remind (my computer bag mostly) that it needs to wear its seatbelt. Obviously, you should always wear you seatbelt for safety reasons. As the sticker I recently saw on a UHaul said “Don’t get caught dead sitting on your seatbelt.”

To disable the reverse beeping on your Prius (tested on the 2008 model):

1. Without your foot on the brake, turn on your Prius and make sure you are in ODO mode (not Trip A or B). Power off the Prius
2. With your foot on the brake, turn on the Prius. As soon as the ‘Ready’ light is lit, press and hold the ODO button for at least 10 seconds.
3. Keeping the ODO button pressed, move the shifter to Reverse and release, then press the Park button again. At this point, ‘b- on’ should appear on your dashboard display.
4. You can now let go of the ODO button, and each press of the ODO button toggles between ‘b-on’ and ‘b-off’. To disable the reverse beep, simply set it to ‘b-off’, the power off the Prius.

And to disable each of the front seatbelt warning beeps, follow these instructions:

1. Be sure someone is sitting in the seat which seatbelt beep you wish to disable.
2. Without your foot on the brake, turn on your Prius and make sure you are in ODO mode (not Trip A or B). Power off the Prius
3. With your foot on the brake, turn on the Prius. As soon as the ‘Ready’ light is lit, press and hold the ODO button for at least 10 seconds.
4. Keeping the ODO button pressed, insert the seatbelt that you wish to disable the beep for. At this point, ‘b- on’ should appear on your dashboard display.
5. You can now let go of the ODO button, and each press of the ODO button toggles between ‘b- on’ and ‘b-off’. To disable the reverse beep, simply set it to ‘b-off’, the power off the Prius.

These instructions may work for earlier model years as well, although 2006 and earlier models may require no one be in the seat which seatbelt is being disabled.

(Tip: Cotton)

More solar products at iqua.com.

(Tip: Ryan Kaplan)

• I have two Soshine Hi-Tech LCD NiMH / NiCD Super Quick Chargers (US$13.98). Probably the best deal for a smart charger.
• The Maha C9000 (US$59.97) is very well thought of.
• Also La Crosse BC-900 (US$38.97, pictured)

Smart chargers indicate the state of charge, monitor temperature and voltage curves and adjust the rate of charge.  They charge a fully discharged battery fast and then throttle down to put a small trickle charge on the battery once fully charged.  This is not needed for low discharge batteries. Just take them out and store them for a year a more once fully charged.

Sanyo Eneloop is the most well known low discharge NiMh batteries.  Rayovac makes some called “hybrid”  and Duracell just calls theirs “pre-charged”  because they are sold with a full charge in the package and are ready to use.  You can really treat these like Alkaline batteries once they are charged, just put them away until you need them.   A trickle charge will just reduce their life and waste electricity. These chargers use independent channels for each battery so you can charge just one and when you charge several, each battery is monitored separately.

Although I wish could have bought it alone, I ended up buying the La Crosse BC-900 bundle. I got it from Thomas, because they ship it with 2400 mAh AAs (vs. 2000 mAh on Amazon) and they stock the latest version (33) which is important to me. I like that it has four individual circuits and with separate displays for each one (doubles as an excellent battery tester too).

I’ll continue to rotate out my older AA recyclables and buy low-discharge cells the next time I need more cells.

The YouTube embed code isn’t working in WP 2.0.4 so you’ll have to check it out using the link above.

Have you seen the Ambient Orb?

It’s kind of expensive at US$150 just to monitor the stock market but I read a cool story in Wired magazine about how they’re using Orbs to monitor the power grid “to signal changes in electrical rates, programming them to glow green when the grid was underused — and, thus, electricity cheaper — and red during peak hours when customers were paying more for power.”

I kind of reminded me of a cool gauge that my friend Shaun Redmond showed me that monitors your energy usage in your house.

Ideally, I could keep tabs on my home power consumption from my computer or iPhone from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Even wilder it the EnergyJoule (pictured) which is currently only available to Consumer Powerline customers in New York City.