A guy I know owns a 35-inch Sony television that weighs just slightly more than a Cadillac Escalade, takes up about a quarter of his bedroom and consumes enough energy to make Al Gore lose weight with worry.

He bought the set about 15 years ago, just as flat panel TVs were coming onto the market, because a television set manufacturer’s rep said that HDTV would take about six years to really get rolling. Six years after buying the Sony, he bought a full-featured digital HDTV and put it in his family entertainment center. He gave the delivery guys an extra 50 bucks to move the Sony to his bedroom where it’s been making dents in the carpet ever since.

When I pointed out to him that new HDTV sets don’t cost that much and do so much more, he looked at me blankly and said: “Why would I want to get a new set? This one is a Sony, no baloney. It’s got a great picture and pretty good sound. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Except that it can’t show off that picture without some form of analog-to-digital device to pick the signals off the air or over the cable, satellite or telco network. Neat features like picture-in-picture are obsolete and have been for years, although they were extras when the set was bought. And, as mentioned previously, it weighs a ton and spins the energy meter.

“So?” he answered. “It gets a good picture and it’s great for watching Leno on the Tonight Show before I go to sleep.”

End of story. At least end of his story. The story of hardware versus software; device versus cloud has been ramping in volume about as long as that guy’s owned that set. It was a big topic of debate at the TV of Tomorrow Show where there was sharp division between those who would put the smarts into the device—can anyone say TiVo—and those who would make the cloud the final repository.

Put me among those who think the cloud is the best place to put the most information. As my buddy’s TV demonstrates, consumer electronics devices are built for obsolescence but not overnight obsolescence. Applications and content are immediate and changes in how they are delivered and especially how they’re received and displayed can happen overnight. Somewhere along the line a featured device that depends on its software and mechanics to deliver the latest in home entertainment will outlive its ability to do so—unless, of course, it’s attached to another device that can receive that information. Of course a device that’s built with the scalability and upgradability to switch with the times will never become obsolete; it may break and it may die from old age but it won’t stop serving its purpose.

Fifteen years ago my buddy had six years to worry that his set would be replaced by an onslaught of HDTVs. Today’s device, like a car that leaves the lot and depreciates to junk, is likely to be obsolete before the consumer even understands all its features. Isn’t it a better idea just to put those features in the cloud and give the consumer access to them via an open-ended device?

By the way, my buddy figures to move in the next year or so. When he does he won’t be taking his Sony along—not because it doesn’t work, but because it weighs so damned much he knows he’ll never move it.

Whenever I have doubts about the ingenuity of mankind, I rummage around the house for the latest edition of the Brookstone catalogue. There, under one roof, I can find gadgets—each one “better” than the next—that can solve all of my problems. Even the ones I didn’t know I had.

Trouble pulling into the garage? There’s a gadget for perfect parking. Lose your car keys too often? Press a button and Brookstone will help you find them. Can’t stand the beeping made by the gadget on page 36? They’ve probably got headphones on page 38 that will mask the noise. It’s like an app store for, well…stuff!

I was reminded of this recently when I saw some news about how a group of U.S. trade bodies has developed a graphic for the Web that indicates behavioral targeting has taken place via the use of cookies to track Web users from site to site. The purpose of the icon is to assure the Web browser that the advertiser is a good guy who’s sticking to a set of industry-set regulatory rules.

Excuse me if I’m over thinking this, but it seems to me the creators of this concept—a group of leading advertising and marketing trade organizations—are addressing the symptom, rather than the problem. Just as the buyers of Brookstone products could practice parking skills or could put the car keys back in the right spot every time, there are ways to deal with privacy issues that don’t involve adding a meaningless icon to the clutter already on the screen.

Ask anybody who browses the Web and looks at advertising if they know the advertisers are gathering information on them and their eyes will no doubt narrow, their lips will compress and they’ll say, “Yeah. It’s a fact of life.” Those who developed the idea for the icon, however, said people actually are “rarely aware” they are being tracked, whatever that means, and 84 percent of them object to the activity. I believe half of that.

Generally, people understand that advertisers wouldn’t put information out there if they didn’t figure there was some way to make a buck off of it. If that includes tracking you, so be it. On the plus side, maybe that information will be used to give you a good deal on the camera of your dreams or a great holiday break. On the negative side it could be used to pitch a set of Ginsu knives. Or an Edgar bobble-head doll just for reading this blog.

But rather than simply alerting us to the prying eyes peeking over our shoulders, wouldn’t it be better for these agencies to hold the advertising and direct marketing communities to a higher standard? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone if those organizations would use their clout to ensure that users could feel that their privacy is being protected?

It seems to me that people can live with sharing their behavior with brand marketers, when they regard those brands as friends. So instead of giving us the illusion of safety—like taking off our shoes at airport security—by putting icons on the screen, I would suggest that the industry work vigorously to make sure that its own house is in order.

By the way, I think there’s a Brookstone gadget for that.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. If I could have done something about it I wouldn’t have had to deal with a blizzard of weather-cancelled New York appointments recently, and if someone as powerful as a big-time blogger cannot not control his destiny then no one can.

Lately there’s been more talk about the weather than about whether Brangelina is actually splitting wider than the San Andreas fault. That El Nino dude is heating the surface of the Pacific Ocean off Peru and Ecuador and triggering “Day After” weather from sea to shining sea. On the Left Coast, El Nino has made things wetter than Chicago during Prohibition. In the East, folks who gloated that hurricanes were scarcer than honest stock brokers last year, are eating their words while they await the arrival of the plows — again.

Anyhoo, all this weather talk got me to thinking about what we can do about this. We can be prepared. We can know when the storms are forming in the Pacific, where they’re going, when we should pack up the bags and get out of our houses on mud cliffs and when we should buy bread and milk and eggs and wait to be snowed in. And, of course, when we should make certain there are no loaded weapons in houses where adults and kids are jammed together over two and three-day spans.

Now I know there’s plenty of weather coverage already available. I’ve watched them interview stranded travelers and overworked road crews on the local news. I know there’s The Weather Channel, that admirable 24×7 laymen’s explanation of what the National Weather Service wants to say. I know that the digital transition put local weather on a single channel in almost every market. I know you can find weather on your computer or your phone or your PDA. And I know you can personalize the information.

But for those of us who are tired of the standard weather coverage, there is something else we can do in this interactive age. Stick with me: Yes, everybody DOES talk about the weather, but Edgar’s doing something about it.

First, a tip of my rain hat to the folks at AccuWeather, who’ve created an interactive television channel that puts the viewer in control of weather news. Weather information from around the globe, video reports from around the country and — most important — local forecasts are available when you need them. You can see where the next storm is forming, where its track will take it and when you should expect to be ravaged by rain or slicked by sleet or walloped by wind or smashed by snow.

But with all due respect to the folks at AccuWeather, why stop there? The EdgarWeather app would be a one-stop shop for all of your weather-related services. At the push of a button, you would connect with A) the local grocery, for bread and milk and eggs (or beer, wine and sangria if it’s going to be a long storm); B) the snow removal company; and C) the pharmacy and the chiropractor, if you didn’t push (B).

But the real “secret sauce” to EdgarWeather would be an app within the app that leads you directly to a travel agent or, better yet, an airlines booking site. Press a button and buy a ticket to Cancun. Press another button and schedule Super Shuttle. Press a third button and inform the family you’re outta there.

Now that’s interactivity!

There’s plenty of blame to throw around for why the modern Super Bowl is what it is: an overhyped orgy of athletics and advertising that starts too late, lasts too long and sometimes even provides a rollicking good evening of entertainment.

Blame Bart Starr, if you must, or Joe Namath. Better yet, blame Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan and those 1985 Bears who humiliated the New England Patriots in a game so boring that even Boston fans stopped crying in their Sam Adams and just conceded their team just wasn’t good enough.

They’re all responsible in a way for teasing us with the idea that what’s billed as the biggest football spectacle of the year might actually be as good as Joe Namath predicted and others have shown over the years or — as the Bears and Starr’s Green Bay Packers showed — the game can be so dull that billions of viewers are more interested in watching the slew of advertisements that pay for the bloated spectacle.

It’s been said too many times that the ads are the best part of the Super Bowl. Advertisers themselves have fed that myth by holding their best stuff for the big game.

Interactivity kicks that part of the game up another level by making the ads something that can hold attention even beyond the 30 or 60 second slots into which they’ve been placed.

The most obvious spot for interactivity is via a storyline that continues beyond the ad’s allotted time. Imagine those Budweiser Clydesdales kicking a field goal — it’s been done, I know — and using the interactivity button to learn whether it’s good or bad. Chances are you won’t miss anything of the game and if you’re really into seeing every nanosecond of every play, you can use your manual dexterity to push both the interactive and pause buttons.

For those who don’t like distractions, there are interactive platforms that can provide you with the best of both worlds: the millisecond-by-millisecond grind of the on-field thrills and the opportunity to learn — or maybe even vote on — whether the field goal was good. Talk about multi-tasking. What more could you ask for? Drama on both ends of the scale.

Interactivity can even take the drama off the field and put it right in your living room in the midst of your Super Bowl party. There might be multiple views of the field; there might be multiple interactive possibilities to explore; but there is only one remote. In a crowd of Super Bowl partiers, with beverages flowing more freely than the New Orleans offense, imagine the impact of being the only person in control. You’ll either be more popular than Peyton Manning or more harried than Drew Brees — or, depending on your fan preferences, the reverse.

Imagine this situation. The Bud Clydes line up for the winning field goal against the washed up Coors Light coaches. The snap is good; the ball is sailing towards an end zone projected on an Apple iPad. The Sony cameras are clicking, the Panasonic videocams are rolling, fingers are poised over BlackBerries to tweet the results, and the program returns to the game. As the owner of the remote you control the party’s destiny. You determine whether you click to the interactive site for the field goal or return in time to see Manning change the play at the line.

What do you do?

And if that’s not more exciting than either the game or the ads that support the game then my name isn’t Archie Manning. Oh, wait a minute, my name isn’t Archie Manning. Nevermind.

So Steve Jobs has come down from the mountain and presented the world with the Apple tablet and the world literally is a-twitter. The iPad, it’s said, is going to change the world the way iPods changed mobile entertainment, iPhones changed mobile phones and iTunes changed music.

Anyway, the earliest glowing reports state that the iPad is the most amazing tablet since Moses carried a pair down from a mountain with a few societal rules. The thing I thought was most interesting — not compelling, you understand, interesting — was early talk that the iPad would save newspapers.

Apparently people who don’t like to pick up that bulky old collection of newsprint won’t mind sitting on the morning train with an iPad warming their lap and breezing through the sports section. Apparently.

When you think about it, newspapers, so obviously a low-tech information conveyance, are logically a top application for high-tech gear. Newspapers, after all, were the original interactive devices. A reporter would write a story; a reader would call the editor and demand the reporter be fired; an editor, depending on the kind of day he was having and whether his liquor supply was in order, would comply with the demand or, more likely, tell the caller to write a letter to the editor. The letter would appear in a later edition. It doesn’t get more interactive than that.

Newspapers, though, have been supplanted by television because people apparently don’t want to make the effort to sit down and read through all the pages. I’m not sure that any kind of handheld device, even one as marvelous as the iPad, will solve that. People are just more willing to have their news read to them.

Newspapers have dabbled in video on the web, but the best way for them to fight television is to create a video experience of their own. Make the Daily Bugle interactive with its own listing or video-rich iPad app. Push a button, and learn who’s died, who’s been born, who’s getting married and which one of your neighbors is in jail because those tomatoes he was growing weren’t really tomatoes. That’s the kind of information that will never make the evening TV news.

Today’s newspapers have all the tools to be truly interactive with any connected device. Their staffs shoot video as often as still photos; stories are continually updated throughout the day; they all have Web sites; and some of the more advanced ones will actually read the stories to you so you feel like you’re watching the evening news — only with more depth and accuracy.

I’m thinking that maybe newspapers aren’t as dead as we’ve been led to believe. While the iPad focus has been on reviving “print,” I’m thinking that a rich, interactive video experience can bring new life to the medium.

Television news started with anchors unapologetically reading their on-air stories from the newspaper. Interactivity can revive that trend in a positive way for newspapers. Get the headlines from the traditional TV news sources, but when you want the real story only community journalism can provide, tap into the Bugle News site on television — or your iPad.