This week's article will be just a little different. Today, I'd like to give you a little taste of technology with a few tech tidbits -- news, goings-on and opinions.

- High-Definition DVD War: A few weeks ago I wrote about the format wars for high def DVDs with Blu-ray and HD-DVD battling it out. At that time, it looked like the war might go on and on, but now it is over.

Blu-ray has won. In early January, Warner Bros., which had previously supported both formats, announced that they would back only Blu-ray. That left the HD-DVD camp with only two studios producing DVDs in their format.

Then Netflix, the online DVD rental service, said it would stock only Blu-ray discs and Best Buy announced that Blu-ray was its preferred format. The death knell rang even louder when Wal-Mart announced that they would stock only Blu-ray DVDs.

This week Toshiba and the HD-DVD camp succumbed. They will no longer produce HD-DVD players.

You may see some really great prices on HD-DVD players and discs now, but don't buy one unless you have room in your attic next to your old Betamax video recorder.

If you were waiting to buy that high-definition DVD player, your time has come, and Blu-ray is the one to buy.

- Google Doodles: Have you ever noticed that every now and then Google dresses up their Google logo with designs to celebrate a holiday?

For Veterans Day this year, the double-o and the e in Google wore World War I battle helmets. For Thanksgiving, the two "o's" were two turkeys. They call these Google Doodles, and they have been appearing almost since the inception of Google.

Dennis Hwang, who has been creating the doodles since 2000, does a bang-up job. His designs just keep getting better and better. You can check them out at the Google Holiday Logo Web site at www.google.com/holiday logos.html, where every one since 1999 is featured.

On Valentine's Day, the logo is usually dressed up in hearts or roses, but this year the double-o's became two lovers. The surprise was that the balding man carried a cane and the woman had white hair pulled back in a bun. This is the first time that I have seen Google focus on anyone over the age of 30. And, they did it with class!

Perhaps they are realizing that those of us over 50 are not only worthwhile, but are also a part of the Internet generation. Kudos to Google!

If you missed the Google Valentine logo, you can see it on the front page of the Compu-KISS Web site at www.compu kiss.com.

- Why I Hate Internet Videos

Keeping up with technology is hard work. Every day I scour the Web for the latest tech news and the best products. I've been happily doing this for years, but now I am faced with videos everywhere.

I really wanted to learn about a product that one of my tech journalist colleagues had posted on a Web site. When I clicked on the link, I saw that instead of an article, the review was a video. So I just kept on surfing.

You see, I can read an entire article, or scan one for the important information, much faster than I can watch a video.

In most cases, the videos bore me because they are so slow moving. I guess all this shows my age. Even though I grew up in a television era, books and reading were always a mainstay for me. While growing up, I read much more than I watched television.

Today's youngsters have grown up with television, plus videotapes, DVDs, and portable video players. I don't think they read as much as previous generations. They are much more used to videos. I like video on the Internet. I just don't want everything to be in video format.

I just started doing more videos on my Compu-KISS Web site. Many of my videos will have a text article to go along with them. That way my Web visitors will have a choice. They can watch the video, read the article, or both. Sure wish more Web sites, especially news and informational sites, would do the same.

Sandy Berger welcomes all of your questions and comments on today's column. Please post them on the Compu-Kiss Message Board at www.compu kiss.com/happycomputing.