Slowly but surely, we're seeing retailer after retailer conjure up its own trade-in / exchange program to deal with the finality of the format war. Canada's Future Shop, however, has certainly put an interesting twist on things. First off, it'll accept standalone HD DVD players purchased from anywhere until April 3rd. In exchange, you'll receive $100 off the purchase of an LG or Samsung Blu-ray / HD DVD combo player, but not a standalone Blu-ray player of any kind. Unfortunately, that means your options are pretty limited, but we can certainly understand the retailer's desire to wash its hands of anything with an HD DVD logo on it. Better still, Future Shop will be donating all of the returned HD DVD players to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada "for use in their after-school and evening programs." Now if that's not a reason to trade-up, we don't know what is.

[Thanks, Josh]

Sure, it's fun to carry around three, four, or even five devices at a time -- and now thanks to a new promotion from Palm, you can quickly up the number of gadgets hanging from your utility belt by two. Currently, if you purchase the PDA / smartphone-maker's $299 Palm TX, they'll throw in a $99 Zire Z22 for free. We're guessing those storage crates full of unsold product are probably starting to crowd Ed Colligan's basement.

[Via Palm Infocenter]

Details are still fuzzy at this point, but according to an e-mail received by numerous tipsters, Microsoft is indeed offering up a free copy of Vista in exchange for their privacy. Yeah, even though it claimed otherwise late last year. According to the note, Redmond is viewing these folks as "registered members" of the Windows Feedback Program, and if they keep their guard down for the remainder of a three month period, they will seemingly receive a copy of its latest OS gratis. So, any others out there finding an unexpected message from the Big M regarding said offer? Let us know in comments below, particularly if you get any free wares or previously analyzed keylogging reports.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Sure, it seemed like we'd heard the end of the story on HTC phones and the case of the missing drivers, but the cats over at the xda-developers forum have something else in mind. There is currently a $5199.51 bounty on offer from various members of the group for a hacker (or hackers) who can come up with drivers to get their Kaisers' Direct 3D up to par, thus increasing the video capabilities of the phone. If you've followed the case, you'll know that HTC has essentially stonewalled users looking for an upgrade to their poorly performing handsets, and has intimated that if customers want improved video performance, they should look to future hardware as opposed to upgrades on their current models. Clearly owners are looking to take matters into their own hands -- and they're willing to pay for it. We can't wait to see what they come up with, and if anyone out there has the ability and the time, here's a stack of cash that could be yours.

[Thanks, Jaime]

Yesterday, we told you about an offer wherein you could completely sacrifice your privacy for a free software bundle from Microsoft which included Windows Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate '07, amongst others. Well, apparently the big M has decided to pull the offer of free software -- but still wants to track your digital footsteps and pry into your private dealings. Here's Redmond's official line to those inquiring about the discontinued offer: "Thank you for your interest in the feedback program. Due to high volume, we have reached our 'while supplies last' limit and have closed our free product incentive on 12/11/2007 at 2pm." Needless to say, they'd still love to have a look at your browser history, emails, IM logs, crash reports, and blood type.

[Thanks, Jerry]

Want a free and legal copy of Windows Vista, but don't mind jumping through a few hoops to get it? This just sounds too good to be true: get a free copy of Vista Business or Office 2007 Pro just for watching a couple of Microsoft propaganda videos. Apparently Microsoft is either feeling really generous, or doesn't think that people are going to fork over the few hundred bucks to get a copy of Vista before building a little viral buzz, but either way apparently all you've got to do is register at Power Together, and "participate in at least three (3) qualifying web casts and/or virtual lab sessions within 30 days of registration," and then, 6-8 weeks after that, you'll apparently get a real, licensed DVD in the mail. Yeah, we were skeptical too, but then we saw a post on Microsoft's own Channel 9 blog by Mark Brown, a Microsoft developer and platform marketing employee, who confirms that this odd website is his doing. Still, we'll reserve full-blown belief until we see some sort of real documentation that someone actually received a DVD after having watched these vids. And even then we'll probably hold out until Vista Ultimate goes up on the block.

[Via Robert McLaws]

Read - Power Together
Read - Mark Brown

Update: We've got confirmation from another source inside Microsoft that this is, in fact, the real deal. He also told us that the number of copies of software that Microsoft has available for this offer is in the "five-digit range" (that's somewhere from 10,000 - 100,000).