If you have an HP MediaSmart Server and a TiVo, you'll be happy to know the two companies just made it a lot easier for you to view video recorded on your TiVo from any Mac or PC on your network. We installed the free HP MediaSmart Expander for TiVo add-on to our MediaSmart Server EX495, and transferred TiVo recordings to the server for playback all over the network. Let's see how well it works.

Gallery: TiVo everywhere: MediaSmart Expander moves shows to server (5 images)   view full gallery

Good news for fans of Microsoft's in-house browser (but bad news for folks who still use XP): the next iteration of Internet Explorer adds a slew of attractive features, and gets ready for a more attractive web overall.

The good news: Internet Explorer 9 will add support for HTML5, which really is a no-brainer considering it'll be one of the new standards on the net, and allow for the browser to run more complicated video and graphical elements. IE9 is also getting hardware acceleration, meaning more resources to work with for a speedier browser overall. A new JavaScript engine will do the same, making sites such as Gmail more responsive.

The bad news: XP users are going to be left behind, as Microsoft has made it official that IE9 will not support Windows XP.

You can try out an early test build of IE9 for yourself here.

Via Gizmodo

Just what we've been wishing for: a brief respite from the never-ending penis parade that is random video chat site ChatRoulette.com. This guy has real talent, making us laugh out loud at his instant improvisations.

Could this be what ChatRoulette is evolving into? Gigs for starving musicians? A wellspring of creativity and intellectual discourse?

We think not. Thanks to human nature, a random and relatively unpoliced video chat service such as ChatRoulette is doomed to devolve into the lowest common denominator. But then, even that has entertainment possibilities.

Via Neatorama

The Mars Express spacecraft snapped the closest pictures ever taken of Phobos, the irrregularly shaped largest of the two moons orbiting the Red Planet. The European Space Agency probe is taking lots of pictures, helping scientists figure out if Phobos is an asteroid captured from the nearby asteroid belt, or if it's left over from the ancient days when planets were made in the solar system.

Another intriguing possibility is that Phobos is not really a solid object, but a floating pile of rubble that's narcissistically attracted to itself by gravity. Either way, it's more of a rock than a moon, with dimensions of 17 x 14 x 12 miles.

Rock or no, Russia wants to send a robot craft on a trip to this odd boulder, and the Mars Express is helping out, giving the most detailed pictures yet of possible landing sites. Expect even better pictures than this, too: There's another camera onboard the Mars Express that scientists might use on a future flyby, rocking resolution that's a mere meter across.

Via Wired

Gallery: Closest-ever look at Mars's weird moon Phobos (1 images)   view full gallery