Everyone knows that certain technology products are endangered species. Film cameras, for instance. Turntables. Payphones. Odds are pretty good that you haven’t used any of them recently. If you’re young enough, you might never have used them.

I never thought of pocket-sized AM/FM radios–the sort with built-in radios and telescoping antennae–as falling into this category of obviously-doomed products. I assumed that any store that sold electronic gadgets of any sort still stocked them.

But last week, my mother, who I’ve been visiting in Boston, asked for one. And boy, was I surprised by how tough it was to find one for sale locally.

Please don’t reflexively mock mom as a Luddite: She owns an iPhone, a BlackBerry, and a Kindle, and was the first person I knew who owned a laptop computer–way back in 1983 or thereabouts. But she wanted to press one button on an affordable, portable device to hear WBUR, her favorite station. For that, a pocket radio still sounded like the best option.

Now, mom already had a fancy portable radio–an Eton that can run on batteries, solar energy, or hand-cranked power, and which doubles as a flashlight and phone recharger. She asked me to help her with it. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to make it play WBUR, which seemed like a bad sign. That’s why I figured she’d be happier with a simple pocket AM/FM model.

And I thought, not unreasonably, that I’d buy it at RadioShack.

Then my father pointed out that my sister, who’d visited earlier, had bought the Eton at Best Buy–because she couldn’t find a garden-variety radio at RadioShack or Best Buy.

I decided to try again. I went to two nearby RadioShacks.

Once upon a time, RadioShack sold gazillions of radio models.

It feels really silly to go into something called “RadioShack” and ask if it carries radios–especially when the answer is no. (One of the locations, in a mall otherwise dominated by stores such as Aeropostale and Victoria’s Secret, had shelf after shelf of diodes and transistors for sale–I wonder when was the last time anyone bought any of those?–but no radios.)

I also tried two Best Buys, and a Target. None of them had a straightforward pocket radio with a built-in speaker.

All of these stores did have related products of several sorts I wasn’t looking for, such as tabletop iPod docks with built-in radios, clock radios, and weather radios. I also saw more hand-cranked Etons in a variety of sizes–radio apparently being something that people think of as an emergency supply rather than an everyday necessity.

At one Best Buy, I even saw a Walkman with a tape player as well as a built-in radio–a classic gadget I didn’t know was still extant.

But I didn’t want a radio that also did other things, or something else that was also a radio. I wanted a radio.

Over on Twitter, folks had lots of advice, all of it interesting:

@harrymccracken Did you try Frys? Also, if your Mom doesn't mind a used version, Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale might have it.—
Kevin Krewell (@Krewell) February 04, 2012

(I’m sure Fry’s has them, and I love the Weird Stuff Warehouse–but they’re both thousands of miles from Boston.)

@harrymccracken try a drug store. Cvs, Walgreens etc—
victor marks (@vmarks) February 04, 2012

(I checked two CVS locations; no joy.)

@harrymccracken Target sells radios.—
lauralou (@bubbaloucious) February 04, 2012

(No they don’t. Or at least the one I visited didn’t have any plain ol’ AM/FM radios–although it did have Sonos music systems and other surprisingly sophisticated stuff.)

@harrymccracken eBay.—
Cynthia Schames (@CynthiaSchames) February 03, 2012

(Thousands of them, I’m sure, but I wanted one right away.)

@harrymccracken Does get much simpler then the PAL from Tivoli Audio. Mother approved. bit.ly/Ao2ZBA—
Adam Belzycki (@Belzycki) February 03, 2012

(Neat! Also $219.99.)

@harrymccracken Perhaps there's something here at C. Crane? ccrane.com—
Scott (@scottgfx) February 03, 2012

(Looks like it would be a good option if I could wait for it to arrive.)

@harrymccracken something like this? amzn.to/yUKXDp—
chuq von rospach (@chuq) February 03, 2012

(Ditto.)

Eventually, when I was flirting with giving up and ordering online, I decided to make one last stop–at the oldest surviving RadioShack, on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. As RadioShacks go, it’s spacious and fairly well-stocked. If the oldest RadioShack of them all no longer sold radios, it would just be sad.

“Good evening,” a staffer jauntily greeted me when I walked in. “What brings you to the Shack tonight?”

When I told him what I was looking for, he said that yes, yes the store did stock radios. In fact, someone else had been in earlier that day looking for one.

He led me to the very back of the store, where two radios were hanging in blister packs: a $14.99 one with a traditional station indicator, and a $29.99 one with digital tuning. I opted for the former–that’s it up at the top of this post–and bought AA batteries for it. (The clerk somehow convinced me to buy a 36-pack of them.)

Mission finally accomplished.

So why was it so hard to find? It’s tempting to assume that the iPod or the iPhone or the iPad killed the classic pocket radio. But as I think about it, I believe that radios of the sort my mom wanted were archaic long before the age of digital music.

Starting in the 1970s, they were done in by two newer, trendier types of radio: the Walkman (and its imitators) and boom boxes. Both provided high-quality sound than a pocket radio. If you wanted to listen privately, you wanted a Walkman; if you wanted everyone else to hear, you wanted a boom box. But you probably didn’t want a dinky monophonic radio with a tinny built-in speaker.

The excellent site Radio Shack Catalogs chronicles the decline of the pocket radio: In 1960s and 1970s catalogs, there was a major section teeming with ‘em. By 2000, the year before the iPod debuted, the selection had already dwindled down to a few perfunctory options. I just didn’t notice until now.

Radio, obviously, isn’t dead; it remains one of the most mass-market forms of mass media. But outside of cars, I wonder how many people listen to it on a device that’s a radio, and nothing else?

Apple TV, Apple keeps saying, is just a hobby. Google TV, to date, is a disappointment. But for tiny Roku, Internet TV is a success story. The company has moved more than 2.5 million of its little streaming boxes since 2008, founder/CEO Anthony Wood tells me, and sales were up by 300% in 2011. It now offers more than 400 channels, including biggies such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and HBO GO, as well as many more offbeat options.

And now Roku is getting ready to release a version of its service that doesn’t require a box. If you think that means it’ll be built right into TVs–well, you’re on the right track, but that’s not quite it.

Building Internet services into a TV, Wood says, has some issues. For one thing, most TV makers don’t have as many major content deals as Roku does, and their user interfaces aren’t as simple. And even if they did have great content and great software, streaming technology is moving a lot more quickly than TV technology in general is: Unless you plan to upgrade your TV every couple of years, any embedded Internet technology it sports will start looking long in the tooth long long before the rest of the set feels obsolete.

So Wood’s company is creating a Roku that’s almost built into TVs. It’s a thumb-drive sized gizmo called the Roku Streaming Stick, and it incorporates the Roku software, service, and Wi-Fi connectivity, just like the boxes do.

The stick also has a connector that uses a new standard called Mobile High-Definition Link. MHL connectors, which are compatible with standard HDMI ones, are mostly meant to let you hook up a smart phone to a TV and watch video. But Roku is using the standard to put its streaming channels onto MHL-equipped TVs. (MHL provides power to the stick, so there’s no need to plug a brick into the wall.)

Roku wants to work with TV makers to offer the Streaming Stick as their Internet TV solution–either included with sets in the first place, as a “soft bundle” available at retail, or as an option. It’s signed up one big partner already: Best Buy, which will offer the Streaming Stick for its house-brand Insignia TVs. These sets will come with remotes that can control Roku as well as the TVs’ other functions.

Once you’ve popped the stick into a slot on the back of a TV, Wood told me, it’ll offer all the advantages of embedded Internet capability. But because it’s actually a self-contained add-on, you can replace it with improved models as they become available. (Over time, Roku plans to offer several versions, at prices from $50 to $100.)

The Streaming Stick won’t go on sale until the second half of 2012; Roku hopes to have other hardware partnerships lined up by then, and will also offer it in standalone form for use with any MHL-capable TV. It sounds like a clever way to bring the best single way to watch Internet TV on a TV to even more people.

For more than a decade, TiVo has been one thing: a DVR. And while it’s been a really good one, an awful lot has changed about the way we find and watch TV since the first TiVo box debuted in 1999. And now the company is involved in its first non-DVR project. It’s designed the on-screen interface for two new Internet-connected LCD TVs from Insignia, one of Best Buy’s four “exclusive brands” (along with Dynex, Init, and Rocketfish).

Insignia’s TVs don’t have any DVR features, and doesn’t offer an on-screen programming guide for over-the-air or cable programming. So they’re missing the aspects of the TiVo interface most closely identified with, will, TiVo. But when Best Buy demoed one of the sets for me last week, the interface did look like it has some of TiVo’s approachable DNA. That’s a major plus: TV companies don’t tend to be very good at at coming up with user interfaces when left to their own devices.

The sets come with CinemaNow and Napster–two services owned by Best Buy–as well as Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. They use Chumby widgets to provide access to more than 1500 applets with information on subjects such as weather. And they’re the first TVs with built-in support for Rocketboost, a Best Buy technology for sending audio to speaker systems wirelessly.

They don’t, however, include DLNA compatibility, which would let you stream content off PCs and hard drives on your network: Best Buy says that its goal with these TVs was to keep things simple, and DLNA still isn’t straightforward enough.

The 32″ TV is $499; the 42″ one is $699. Best Buy says they’re available now, and that it plans both to upgrade their software with new features over time and to introduce new connected TVs and other devices based on the software in these TVs.

The Best Buy-TiVo partnership was announced more than two years ago; I was excited at the time, then so much time passed that I’d forgotten about it. Now I’m curious what other Internet-centric products TiVo might be working on. A Roku-style TiVo box could be nifty. And TiVo might be able to do a better job than Google TV has done so far at imposing a decent interface on over-the-air and cable TV. I hope that the company is furiously working on some of this stuff, and just hasn’t announced it yet…

Different retailers will be stocking different models. Best Buy and Radio Shack will carry the XD, the company’s standard 1080p HD capable unit that retails for $79.99. BJ’s on the other hand will carry the XD|S, which adds dual-band wireless and retails for $99.99. Fry’s plans to carry both models. (The cheapest Roku, the $59.99 HD, remains an online-only item.)

Roku had kind-sorta been available through retail before, through a Netgear-branded box, which was available from Best Buy. The way Engadget words it seems to suggest that these devices would be phased out as the Roku branded units themselves are brought in and would become the defacto unit sold at retail.

I have to say I’ve had my eyes on one of these units for quite a while now, and with it easier than ever to get one, I just may end up breaking down and picking one up. After all, it would be nice to watch Al Jazeera on my HDTV versus my laptop.

Don’t get me wrong–$800 isn’t an absurd price for a device with the Xoom’s specs. It’s got a dual-core CPU, a 10.1″ display at 1280-by-800 resolution, 1GB of RAM, two cameras, and an SD slot, and will get 4G wireless soon after release. All those features make it an upgrade from the current iPad, at least on a purely technical level. If you were contemplating buying the priciest version of the iPad–the $829 model that has 3G wireless and 64GB of RAM, but a slower CPU, a smaller and lower-resolution display, 256MB of RAM, no cameras, and no SD slot–an $800 Xoom is a plausible alternative.

But you don’t need to spend $829 to get an iPad; you can plunk down as little as $499. If the Xoom really will start at $800, it’s tough to see it becoming a breakout hit. Sounds more like it would be the higher-end, pricier alternative to a less technically-advanced Apple product–a reversal of the supposed normal state of affairs.

I’m curious how much Toshiba will charge for its upcoming, unnamed Android tablet: Other than lacking built-in 3G wireless, it looks like it’ll be a lot like the Xoom. Here’s hoping the starting price is a lot closer to $500 than $800. (Then there’s RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, which apparently will match the iPad’s starting pricetag.)

The Xoom’s pricetag isn’t yet official, but the tablet did get its first TV during the Super Bowl yesterday. If you care about the Xoom you’ve already seen it…

In case you weren’t sure who the white-coated zombies were supposed to represent, the e-mail I got from Motorola helps to clarify:

Created by Anomaly New York, the ad entitled “Empower the People” is set in an Orwellian, 1984-esque world where technology – and people – are limited by restrictive platforms.   Enter Motorola XOOM - the tablet to create a better world – and a new day with optimism, openness, freedom and empowerment.

Okay, I get it–it’s a knowing reference to the most famous Super Bowl commercial of them all. iPad users are sheep, hypnotized by a device that restricts their freedom rather than increasing it.

I’ve written endlessly and critically about the Apple-imposed limits on the iPhone and iPad, so I don’t think I’m an Apple sheepzombie. Seems to me, though, that “users of our competitor’s products are idiots” isn’t a compelling argument in favor of a company’s own wares. And makers of Android-based products will have a far better case once the quality and quantity of third-party apps in the Android Market improves. (For all of Apple’s restrictions, the richness of the App Store means that its products do more, and do it better, than Android-powered alternatives.)

Come to think of it, how many TV watchers will even be able to deconstruct the Xoom ad? Does it communicate anything meaningful to an audience other than people who already have an emotional problem with Apple products? How many of those people are there, and what percentage are likely to spend $800 on a tablet?

So what do you think of the Xoom’s apparent price? Does the ad make you want to buy one?

My instinctive reaction to this possibility is conflicted:

1) It sounds like one more add-on that Best Buy clerks will try to foist on me whenever I buy anything of consequence there (although to be fair, they seem to be pretty good at taking my first “no thank you” as the final word).

2) It could be a reasonable deal, at least in some cases.

I hope that the program isn’t too popular when it comes to TV sets: They’re both pricey and relatively mature products, and the best buying strategy in most cases is to purchase a good one and then hold onto it for several years, at least. (Me, I’ve never bought a new TV until my old TV has croaked.) But Buy Back might be helpful if you’re a phone fanatic who likes to carry the latest handset. Sounds like it would let you surf from smartphone to smartphone without completely bankrupting yourself or extending your contract indefinitely.

Of course, it’s possible to recoup your investment in tech gear through other means: Whenever I’ve sold gently-used gadgets on eBay, I’ve been astounded at how much people happily paid for them. eBay takes a proceed of your profits, but you don’t need to guess ahead of time about whether you’ll want to sell a gizmo. Then again, selling items on eBay requires effort that hauling them back to Best Buy does not; I have a goldmine of old tech products lying around here which I keep telling myself I’m going to auction off when I have a spare moment.

If you pay Best Buy for Buy Back protection, it sounds like it ends up a winner no matter what happens. If don’t sell back an item, it pockets the dough as pure profit. If you do sell back the item, you get paid with a Best Buy gift card, ensuring that you’ll spend more money at the retailer–and hey, it gets the opportunity to try and get you to pay $59.99 for the Buy Back option on whatever you buy with your gift card. And anyone who pays the fee is more likely to come back to Best Buy than to do business with a competitor.

Does it sound even a little appealing to you?

Gingerbread doesn’t sound like a massive update, but Google says it’s the fastest version of Android to date. It features tweaks to the on-screen keyboard, status updates, text selection, and cut-and-paste. And as Eric Schmidt recently teased, it supports Near-Field Communications, an emerging technology that will enable activities like easily using your phone to make payments at retail stores.

Google says that the S offers a “pure Google” experience, with the latest edition of Android and a software experience it controls completely.  It’s the company’s first pass at a truly Google-centric phone since the Nexus One. But Google isn’t jumping back into the game of selling phones directly: The S will be available at Best Buy.

If the Nexus S is “pure Google,” it’s logical to infer that other Android phones must feature “adulterated Google.” That seems about right. Wireless carriers and handset manufacturers still put old versions of Android on new devices (most of Samsung’s Galaxy S models are stuck on Android 2.1). They bump Google search for competitors. In general, they just don’t serve Google’s OS very well. Dare I say that it’s become fragmented?

If I were a phone manufacturer or wireless carrier, I’m not sure how I’d feel about Google competing with my Android handsets with another model that’s clearly meant to be the flagship of the whole Android world, just as the Nexus One (briefly) was. As a consumer, I’m glad it’s doing it–but I’d be happier still if Google and its partners figured out a way to ensure that every Android phone could run the newest, least mucked-up version of the OS.

I hope to get my hands on a Nexus S soon; stay tuned for a review.

For years, I’ve pined for a TiVo-fied television. In fact, Humax was set to deliver a TiVo solution way back in 2005. Unfortunately, the 26″ LCD TV with TiVo DVR capabilities and integrated DVD recorder never made it to market. Last summer, when TiVo and Best Buy hooked up with a pretty expansive dealio, it looked might we might see another attempt at an integrated TiVo+television solution:

As part of the deal, the companies also said that Best Buy would finance an effort to bring TiVo’s software and search tools to Best Buy’s own brand of consumer electronics, like its Insignia high-definition TVs.

And now we have confirmation that development is underway. However, somewhat surprisingly, the Best Buy TiVo product will not include DVR functionality. Which may not be an entirely bad thing. For example, my favorite DVD player of all time was actually a TiVo (the Toshiba SD-H400). This is obviously Best Buy’s method of competing within the connected television space while is provides TiVo a platform to expand their brand and market. But I’m hopeful the companies choose to support streaming multi-room viewing (MRV) from TiVo DVRs and enable basic trick play functionality, in addition to the other connected features and UI. If so, I could see this easily being a killer kitchen or den television and DVR extender. Otherwise, meh?

From the press release:

TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO) and Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) today announced that development is underway to integrate TiVo’s software and advanced television services into broadband-connected Insignia televisions. The new Insignia televisions will provide Best Buy customers with an exceptional, intuitive user experience for accessing online content by utilizing the latest TiVo non-DVR software and advanced television service. TiVo’s easy-to-use platform will give the viewer a one-stop-shop for delivering and searching content right on the television.

(This post is republished from Zatz Not Funny.)