Directed Electronics has launched an iPhone application that allows users to start their cars remotely. This is a perfect application to have if you live in a place where it snows during thte winter. The application is free [iTunes link], but having a Viper remote system installed on your vehicle will cost you.

Some of the features built in to the application includes unlocking, locking, a trunk opener, panic button, and alerts. You can also manage multiple cars assuming all of them have Viper is installed on them. It is assumed that the application works through satellite because the company claims the range is “virtually unlimited.” Let’s say that you leave the state and forgot that your car at home was unlocked, this would be a good app for you to have.

However the cost of the SmartStart systems is rough on the wallet. The SmartStart system has a retail price of $499 and the SmartStart module costs $299 for existing Viper customers. The Viper SmartStart can be bought from Best Buy as of right now.

Walmart made about $1.74 billion in sales last year, making it the 13 largest U.S. online retailer. Amazon is ranked #1 with $19.17 billion in 2008 sales. Walmart hopes to increase their online market share by adding cosmetics to their inventory.

“In a few months, whenever someone thinks about buying diapers — in the same way they think about going to a Wal-Mart in the physical world — they will think about going to Walmart.com,” stated Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez. Walmart as a whole has gained market share due to a weak economy.

As part of the online inventory expansion, many personal consumer goods will be added. These goods include diapers, toothpaste, condoms, Tylenol medicine, and lipstick. About a year ago, Walmart.com listed these goods but did not allow people to buy it online. Website visitors could only find out which Walmart retail stores have these goods in stock.

Dyson has invented a new gadget that takes an old technology and gives it a modern twist. This old technology I’m referring to are fans. Fans have always depended on blades for keeping consumers cool. But now these blades are no longer needed as Dyson has discovered. The Dyson Air Multiplier runs for $299 at 10″ or $329 at 12″.

The bottom grill of the fan is used for air intake. The air is transported up to the top of the device and blows it out in big gusts. The gusts are made through the “loop amplifier.” The loop makes the fan look like a big magnifying glass. And the best part of this device is that the chances of collecting dust are less than traditional fans. The Air Multiplier is safer than traditional fans because the blades on a regular fan can hurt the fingers of a baby.

One of the disadvantages of this modern fan is that it won’t provide the same entertainment for kids as traditional fans. For example, kids like to talk close up to a fan and listen to what they say have to say with a flange or wah-wah effect.

The Weinstein Company is an independent film studio that was founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. The company was founded in 2005 after the brothers left Miramax Films. The Weinsteins also started Miramax Films and retained ownership in that company too. Some of The Weinstein Company’s first films include Derailed, Transamerica, Hoodwinked, and The Matador. The Weinstein Company also owned a majority stake in aSmallWorld.Net up until recently.

The buyer is rumored to be Patrick Liotard-Vogt. The Weinsteins will retain a small stake in aSmallWorld.net going forward. Liotard-Vogt is part of the family that started Nestle Corporation. Erik Wachtmeister is the man behind aSmallWorld.net. The concept of the website is to be an invitation-only social network. The financial details are unknown.

The Weinstein Company is shedding assets in order to take care of a massive debt load. Financial consulting firm Miller Buckfire advised the Weinsteins to get back to the basics by focusing on just movies. The company also plans to reduce their workforce to below 100 people.

Dictionary.com has launched a new application on BlackBerry App World. This application resembles the Dictionary.com application that has already been launched on the iTunes App Store. The iPhone/iPod Touch Dictionary.com application is also free and has hit about 3 million downloads.

The BlackBerry version of the app has a list of about 500,000 words, synonyms, definitions, audio pronunciations, and spelling suggestions. The Word of the Day feature in Spanish and English is built-in to the BlackBerry app too. One of the distinguishing features of the BlackBerry version is that synonyms and definitions can be accessed from the Dictionary.com app while reading or writing e-mails.

According to Dictionary.com President Doug Leeds, the company also plans to launch APIs for developers to integrate the application into their own services. The application will be integrated in several e-books too. The Dictionary.com application on BlackBerry App World is free and will be launching in the near future (if not already).

InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com bought out Dictionary.com as part of the Lexico acquisition in July 2008. Dictionary.com is the sister website of Thesaurus.com and Reference.com too.

Western Digital has launched a new product called the WD TV Live HD Media Player. The WD TV allows you to watch digital media on your television set using an Internet connection or storage device. The WD TV has an Ethernet port along with USB WiFi support. The WD TV can play media from Flickr, Pandora, and YouTube on your TV too.

Playback through the device is 1080p. Almost every kind of digital movie file type is supported no matter what the codec is. There is also an HDMI connection available on the device if you want to directly connect your laptop to the device. The device currently retails for $149.99. Below is additional information from the press release.

Features of the WD TV Live HD Media Player include:
- Full-HD 1080p video playback and navigation with the included remote control and crisp, animated navigation menus;
- Play a wide variety of file formats including support for a wide variety of the most popular file formats with no need to spend time transcoding;
- Play videos, music and photos from the Internet on your big screen TV and discover new music with Pandora Internet radio or listen to thousands of radio stations via Live365 Internet radio;
- Ethernet port for wired or WiFi connection1 to access files anywhere on the network to play movies, music, and photos from any PC or drive on a home network;
- Turns a USB drive2 into an HD media player and plays content from most popular USB drives, and digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices;
- Unlimited media collection, just add more USB drives for more space;
- Two USB ports for seamless media playback from multiple USB drives and ability to access them simultaneously while a media library feature collects the content on all the drives into one list sorted by media type;
- Transfer files by copying, moving or deleting files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, camcorder, or a camera to the attached USB drive using the on-screen menus;
- Picture Transfer Protocol support to show photos and movies directly from digital camera or video camera and or any digital imaging device that supports Picture Transfer Protocol;
- Advanced navigation options including thumbnail and list views, media library and search;
- Photo viewing to create custom slide shows, zoom and pan and search;
- Movie viewing with fast-forward, rewind, pause, zoom and pan, view subtitles, and search;
- Music playback with fast-forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat and search;
- File copying between USB devices;
- HDMI® 1.3 port, composite video and component video output3 for the highest quality HDTV or home theater;
- SPDIF digital output that sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience; and,
- Ultra-compact design to fit easily into a home entertainment center.

As anyone that has used FriendFeed knows, the service allows you to aggregate all of your online activity on social networks. However the information is presented in a way that looks similar to the Facebook News Feed Homepage. Everything on the FriendFeed homepage seems to get clustered in that way.

Earlier this week Cliqset went into public beta. The Cliqset application was built using Adobe AIR. Cliqset can aggregate all the same social networks that FriendFeed can, but it allows you to sort the activity in separate modules. Cliqset also has better control of what you the information that you would like to see.

Updates on Cliqset can be shared and commented on. There is also a feature that allows you to “like” certain updates. Would I use it personally? Probably not because I only use Twitter and Facebook the most. For those needs, TweetDeck is good enough for me

However if you have a lot of information to track, I’d highly recommend downloading Cliqset for Adobe AIR. Below is a screenshot of what the service looks like.

Blendtec Total Blenders are some of the most powerful kitchen devices of its kind as seen by millions of Internet viewers. iFixit is a website that receives tons of visitors for the knowledge about the tearing down of different devices. iFixit recently decided to find out what is inside those $400 Blendtec blenders that make them so powerful. Inside the blender is a logic board for managing the operation and safety of the blender. There is also a speed sensor for controlling the spinning shaft. There is also a thermistor that monitors the temperature of the device to avoid any sort of meltdown. If the maximum of 130 degrees Celsius (266 degree Fahrenheit) is reached, then the device turns off. Check out the video above of the blender being taken apart.