Ever seen a toy robot low on batteries? It's sad, sadder than the shredded flesh and bone caked between its servos. Unfortunately, modern gear chews through disposable batteries faster than the time it takes to make a hippie cry. Enter Sanyo, which today finally announces its new rechargeable C and D-sized Eneloop batteries. This ain't the same, sad Ni-MH rechargeable tech found in yo mama's pager battery -- you know, the one that beeps and makes people think she's backing up... Oh! Eneloops come pre-charged, maintain that charge in the drawer, and can be recharged a thousand times without any of that lame memory effect. Available initially on September 12th in Japan before breaking out for global distribution.

[Via I4U]

During his sit-down at D6, TiVo's head honcho Tom Rogers was grilled with a flurry of questions. Aside from a lengthy back-and-forth over the DVR's ability to skip through ads, we finally got to some real meat. First off, Mr. Rogers noted that he was "hopeful" that TiVo would be launched in the UK "soon." Secondly -- and probably most interestingly -- was the notion that TiVo was working up a "whole home model" in order to solve the problem of needing multiple boxes to service an entire house. Sadly, that snippet is all Tom uttered, so we're left to ponder what's really going on behind the tightly sealed doors at TiVo. Here's to hoping we know more by the time CEDIA rolls around -- you listening, Mr. Rogers?

[Via Electronista]

The D conference is in full swing, and the next heavy hitter on deck is Sony CEO Howard Stringer, who's rumored to have a new Sony OLED display for Unkie Walt to play with. We're assuming it'll be a little bit bigger than the XEL-1, but Silicon Alley Insider says it'll come in at just .3mm thick, which is only slightly beefier than a playing card. We're guessing it'll be more like the XEL-1's 3mm, but we'll see what Howie has in store for us -- we wouldn't be opposed to hearing some more about those "slim PS3" rumors, ourselves.

Wednesday night's Jobs and Gates intimate sit-down wasn't just civil, it was downright reverent -- at times even tearful. But we all imagined alternate realities and an overflow of events that might have transpired in another universe... now vote.

P.S. -Feel free to leave your own in comments.

For most of us, having Steve Jobs' direct attention is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (well, actually, it's a never-in-a-lifetime event for the overwhelming majority of the populace, but stay with us here). Stephen Colbert got his this week, introducing Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman via video clip at D5. Jobs was, of course, a big player at D, and Colbert did his best to take advantage by suggesting that a gratis iPhone in his pocket -- followed by a mention on his show -- might be just the trick to spurring sales (notice that he's ogling an imaginary iPhone in this screen grab). We suspect the effort was for naught; iPhones are as scarce now as they've ever been, never mind the fact that the media has generated pretty much all the buzz Apple can handle free of charge. Might we suggest working a company that's a little less stingy with prerelease units, Stephen?

We kind of never thought we'd see the day where Mac and PC voluntarily shared the stage on neutral ground, but that day is today. Very soon Bill Gates and Steve Jobs -- both pioneering execs that need absolutely no introduction -- will sit up in front of the audience here at D and discuss god knows what. Don't miss this, people, who knows if this will happen again in any of our lifetimes. You'll know when we get started. Who's got odds that they don't walk out and say "Hi, I'm a PC." "Hi, I'm a Mac."?

We're in! They're playing the Beatles, just like they did when Jobs came out the first time.

Update: Video recap online! Right after the break, but before the rest of our coverage.

Steve Jobs is up here in just a few, everybody. It looks like we can probably prepare ourselves for an update on the iTunes shift to no-DRM, the status of the iPhone, and whatever else is on El Jobso's mind. It's all on Mossberg, so hopefully he'll drill down deep to the topics we hold near and dear. Stay close, you'll know when it gets underway! (Note: Walt's questions are in bold.)

UPDATE: D has posted video highlights of Steve's and Walt's talk, our original liveblog follows after the jump.

Steve "Developers!" Ballmer is set to take the stage this morning at D, but since we don't know exactly what time that's going to happen you all are gonna have to hang tight until he does. We expect he'll be discussing last night's Surface announcement, but we'll see what else he's got planned for us. Stick close!

UPDATE: D has posted video highlights of Ballmer's chat, our original liveblog after the jump.

Woops! Looks like someone was trigger-happy at Palm and shot out the press release for tomorrow's announcement a little too soon! Apparently what Jeff Hawkins is going to announce in the morning at D is called the Palm Foleo (a name we've heard rumored before), and is being positioned as a "smartphone companion". We didn't know our smartphones weren't quite smart enough to need a guide to the interwebs, but the Foleo syncs to your mobile device, providing a full size keyboard and larger display for editing documents and triaging email (among other things). So yeah, basically it's a dumb device piggybacking all your Treo's most useful feature -- its connectivity. Apparently users can expect instant-on access, five hours battery life, Palm's new Linux OS, and a $500 pricetag to round off that Treo kit to about a grand this summer. Assuming all this is indeed the case, we can only come to one conclusion: damned if we need yet another friggin device. Seriously, please Palm, what we need is for you to improve the Treo -- or whatever phone device you expect us to carry and use -- not design the Treo its very own Lenny Small to hack around sluggish handset design. The yet-another-device philosophy doesn't carry, so to speak, and it's sure as hell not the future of mobile computing.

P.S. -No, that's a jokey Sony UX UMPC to the right, not the still-unseen Foleo.

[Thanks to Brian and everyone who sent this in]

Read - Screencap of the supposed release
Read - Treocentral thread

If ZDnet staple Mary Jo Foley (or more specifically, her source) is right, we may be seeing Microsoft take the next big step in device interaction at tomorrow's D: All Things Digital Conference, with the perennial Redmond watcher predicting an official unveiling of the company's PlayTable / Project Milan multi-touch, gesture-based input technology. PlayTable, which combines elements we've seen in the iPhone, from NYU's Jeff Han, in various prototype devices, and from Microsoft's own, recently-demo'ed DigiDesk, is envisioned as a multi-purpose interface that can be employed in anything from a DAP (Zune) to a cellphone (WinMo handsets) to a gaming console (Xbox) -- so it's no coincidence that the project is being developed by the same Mobile and Entertainment division that's also in charge of these categories. All in all, tomorrow promises to be a big day: not only is Palm making a potentially breakthrough announcement, and the faces of Apple and Microsoft scheduled to appear together on the same stage, but we may also get to witness computing history to boot; man, if we had real jobs, we'd be calling in sick in a heartbeat.

[Via Scobleizer]

Just a happy reminder for Apple nerds and Treo fans, this week is the D conference down in San Diego, meaning you'll be able to look forward to some fun n' interesting new bits including:

• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appearing together in a joint interview Wednesday evening (no, far as we can tell they aren't expected to joint-announce anything)
  
• A second Jobs-only appearance earlier on Wednesday
• Jeff Hawkins, who will appear and introduce "a new category of mobile device" tomorrow morning [thanks, Jimmy]
  

Other executives expected to appear on stage: Ballmer, Schmidt, George Lucas, Les Moonves, Hurley & Chen, and even John McCain. Should make for an interesting couple of days, stay tuned!

Update: Our bad, it looks like it's Jobs who's appearing twice, not Gates. There's no official schedule, so we're kind of just going on passing comments made on Kara Swisher's blog right now.