It appears the Web can solve all problems, great or small. Shortly after I had noted three local Best Buys and Wal-Mart were fresh out of their Nintendo Wii stock, I took to the Net to bail me out. By 7 p.m. this evening, my wife and I were proud owners of a brand-new Wii, and we've already logged three hours of family fun.

Before leaving the office, I thought I'd give the search one last go, searching for "Nintendo Wii Availability" on Google. That led me to a Wiichat forum, which offered an array of Web links to inventory data for all the major retailers, including Target, Gamestop, Circuit City, and CompUSA.

A few clicks later, I found that Gamestop on Stevens Creek in San Jose had 1-3 units available. I called, expecting the data to be wrong, but after the store clerk first denied having any Wii in stock, he relented, saying I could get it if I showed up right away. Less than 20 minutes later, I found myself purchasing one of the few Wiis around, complete with two new controllers, the included sports pack, and two additional games: Paper Mario, and "The Bigs", a major league baseball game.

It was a little bit of an investment, but after a quick day trading of Apple earlier, I'd already more than made up the cost. (More on that later)

Long story short, the Wii looks right at home next to our plasma TV, aside our TiVo and Apple TV. It's a venerable array of technology entertainment nerddom. In minutes, Kristine and I had our two controllers out and were dueling one another in bowling, tennis, baseball and golf. The fun was enough to make us consider moving our furniture around to dedicate more real estate to gaming. After all, playing on a Wii is quite active, not just mindless staring at a screen.

There's no question this new toy has the potential to consume a great deal of our free time now, eating into "home work", blogging and all things social. But it's given us another dimension of fun competition, as we stretch for every backhand and groan at the sight of a digital 7-10 split.

And we wouldn't have gotten our Wii if not for the combination of Google, and resourceful fandom, which led us the right way.

After openly contemplating the acquisition of Nintendo's incredibly popular Wii game console on this blog a month or so ago, I was surprised last week when my wife said she too had come to the conclusion our home needed one. Typically, I quickly recognize the need to upgrade, whether that be to a new wireless network, a new plasma TV or a new laptop, and she is more conservative, but she's catching up. Unfortunately, thanks to the much-discussed Wii shortages, even if I were ready to spring and buy one today, I'd be completely out of luck, as yesterday's journeys showed.

Yesterday, during lunch, I drove to the nearby Best Buy in Milpitas, and was told they had sold out their shipment of 25 consoles between the previous afternoon and the previous evening. They had no guess as to when the next shipment would arrive, but said they were being distributed on a first come, first serve basis. Microsoft's XBox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3 sat idly by, but I wasn't interested.

Not to be stopped, I drove a block or so further, to Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart. They too had a similar story. No Wiis were in stock. They get shipments every two weeks or so, but didn't have a clue when the next one would be.

After work, I continued my search, going to the Best Buy in Sunnyvale, near home. Again, no Wii for sale, and no knowledge of the next shipment. While I could buy replacement controllers, video game consoles, and even carrying cases for my non-existent WIi, I couldn't buy the machine itself.

So, I headed down to the Valley Fair mall in San Jose, which just so happened to be next to a Best Buy - my third on the day. I ducked in to the store at 8:57 p.m. (Store hours closed at 9 p.m.), knowing I had three minutes to ask the same questions and get the same results. Sure enough, plenty of advertising, but no Nintendo Wii. This time, I was told they expected shipment this upcoming Sunday, which led to some bickering with the sales staff, who disagreed on whether they get new consoles each week, or each month.

At this point, I'd worked myself into a consumer demand froth, ready to buy one if it were available. It wasn't a situation of trying it out, or watching someone else play. If it were there, my next move would be to grab the Visa card. But none of the stores got my money, and I didn't get my Wii. The question is - will I keep looking and showing up to random Best Buys to chat with annoyed teenagers, or should I let it go? I'm not sure yet. I also don't think I'm desperate enough to go the eBay route. It's a fun idea, but not critical. Yet.

Using iTunes to download movies, music or TV shows is incredibly easy. While logged in, all I have to do is click "Buy Song" and the tunes will be downloaded rapidly from Apple. So this got me thinking, why is it so difficult to find access to good software, and wouldn't it make sense if Apple used that kind of platform to showcase shareware? I have to imagine that small software developers would be ecstatic at the opportunity to use a platform like iTunes to introduce their wares to new customers.

The question is - does Apple, or anybody, want to seek after this type of business? It's one thing to offer links, like many do, and quite another to host and deliver the software and simplify the transaction...

That's the background behind my most recent contribution to The Apple Blog, titled Solving Software Purchases the iTunes Way. Per agreement with them, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided a link. Enjoy.

It looks like the Web minions at Tivo.com are ahead of the company's official rollout schedule. While it's not too uncommon for Web site administrators to upload pages and images the night before a press release launch, it's unusual to catch a public company, or a company as closely watched as TiVo, slipping up. Tonight, thanks to the new product's being added to the online store, you can purchase a lower cost high definition DVR before much of the world knows about it.

While Engadget got the story early this afternoon that the Tivo HD was ready, it wasn't clear when the box would debut, as the site said, "Supposedly it's launching this week, possibly as early as tomorrow." But if you're keen to pick up a TiVo that's HD-capable, and won't cost you more than half a grand, even before subscription fees, you can do that tonight.

As for our living room, while we were initially tempted to upgrade our aging Series 1 machine to a Series 2 and retain our lifetime membership, we're sticking with our first model, for now. We don't yet have HD, and aren't going there immediately. But when we do, it's good to know TiVo won't ask us to mortgage our home.