The captured pirates' link to the Chandlers is based on a message from "pirate spokesman" Farah Abdi who made claims that his team held the couple captive in the first place, so some skepticism is required. I just hope my favorite sailing livebloggers are safe. [NY Times]

Photo by Suomen Kuvalehti

Perhaps it wasn't the best of ideas for the Chandlers to publicly post their position while going through areas which are known to be frequented by Somali pirates, but at least it gives us their last known whereabouts. Maybe it also gives some hope that it was merely some kind of temporary break in communication that paused their liveblogging instead of a pirate capture, but the cryptic final message of "PLEASE RING SARAH" leaves me fearing for their safety. [Lynn Rival's Voyages via Boing Boing]

• After Warner's announcement, HD DVD won't be attending CES this week, a fact that only looks worse after they put their logo on the press bags. Adding insult to HD DVD's injury, New Line Cinema also joined the Blu-ray exclusive crew.

• WowWee showed us three robots aiming to attack AIBOs, Robosapiens and autonomous helicopters everywhere. The only thing missing was a robot to bring us beer. Luckily, Inter Active Toy covered that with the RC Cooler.

• Other good finds included the Celestron SkyScout Scope, Cobra's OLED radar detectors, and an in-dash CD player for audiophiles. On the GPS front, Magellan's 5340 with built-in Google local search and Garmin's 880 with voice recognition stood out the most. Finally, Logitech unveiled a whole bunch of stuff, including a networked music player, a sleek set of speakers, and an IR remote with capacitive touch.

So far, so good, CES. We'll be looking forward to the press conferences today, and the floor opening on Monday. Until then, keep up with all of our CES 2008 coverage to date.

Wait. It gets even better! Alas, Babe-a-lonia:

Cali Lewis, Geekbrief TV

Veronica Belmont, producer of CNet Buzz out Loud and co-host of CNet TV and Crave

Jessamy Hawley from Gadget Candy

Katie Lee from Shiny Shiny

DC blogger Jessica Cutler

Rocketboom's Joanne Colan

Karina Stenquist of Mobuzz TV

Ana Marie Cox - former Wonkette editor, now Washington editor of Time.com

Singaporian blogger Wendy Cheng, also known as Xiaxue

Who's your fave? – Charlie White

Green Fortune Plantwall [via CNET Crave]

Apple has graciously decided to step away from its campaign to force bloggers to reveal sources of leaked information about secret products. Even though the first trial of this case was decided in favor of Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenged that decision in an appeals court, which ruled that the Cupertino Fruit Company couldn't force the blogging journalists to rat on that Apple employee who squealed about a secret digital music project Apple called "Asteroid."

For some reason, the headstrong and secret-obsessed Apple "thought police" decided to let that appeals court decision stand. So what do you know? Bloggers now have the same rights as traditional reporters when it comes to protecting valuable sources of secret information. Hee haa! Sure, when you get a new hammer, everything starts looking like a nail, but we promise to use these newly-confirmed First Amendment rights wisely. – Charlie White

Apple Won't Pursue Source of Leak [San Francisco Chronicle]