Ben over at EngadgetHD has documented the 2 hour procedure to upgrade a stock TiVo Series3 250GB hard drive to something a bit more roomy. If you’d prefer a little more handholding, Weaknees and PTVUpgrade sell both upgraded Series3 units and larger Series3 replacement drives. (As does the TiVo Community Store via PTVUpgrade, with a 15% discount through Sunday.)

EngadgetHD writes: The new challenge in upgrading the drive on the Series3 is the fact that it uses a SATA drive instead of IDE. The next problem that SATA presents is the lack of support by the MFSTool bootable CD or PVTUpgrade CD, some SATA controllers support IDE emulation mode, but otherwise we will have to use a different boot disc. We ordered a Western Digital 500GB replacement drive because we didn’t want to have to solder the power cable to fit a normal SATA drive, plus 500GB drives can be found for around $200 which is much less than the $400 that Weakness charges.

Disk Data Recovery provides recovery service on a full range of hard disk drives including IDE and SATA for all makes and models of laptops and notebooks.

Well here’s a shocker: Jupiter Research predicts that spending on mobile advertising will more than double between now and 2011. It’s a new medium for advertisers and I can only hope they’ll be a little more creative than they’ve been with TV over the last decade. (Think about it – even most of the Super Bowl commercials aren’t that great anymore…)

The TechWeb article reporting on the Jupiter research is a little confusing, however. It cites mobile advertising stats, but then goes on to talk about mobile marketing, which is a different animal altogether. Many people believe mobile marketing is likely to be more effective, never mind less irritating. For example, Maxim Magazine has extended its brand with a whole Maxim To Go suite of content. Not my thing, but then again, I’m not a guy…

On the telemarketing side of things, FCC regulations prohibit companies from using automated dialers to call cell phone numbers. However, that apparently doesn’t work all the time (abuse and/or portability?) because the Do Not Call Registry now lets you register mobile numbers.

For my part, I’ve started getting text message spam. Not much, but enough to be annoying. If I didn’t have a data plan on my phone, I might even work up the effort to complain to someone…

Recently, I was looking at some of the online data that is available on GameFly and I remarked to Motley Fool contributor Daniel Rubin, that I was surprised to see that internet video game rentals hasn’t turned out to be more popular option for consumers. Online video games have been something investors and customers have been very vocal about wanting, yet Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings has stood steadfast in his commitment to stick with just DVD rentals. Rubin’s response to my comment was a true testament to how much Reed Hastings has shown an uncanny ability to understand the DVD market better then anyone in the industry.

Isn’t this yet another spectacular display of strategic leadership by Reed Hastings? The guy’s like a Starship captain flying this sucker through an asteroid storm and outmaneuvering every one and every thing.The man has thrashed Blockbuster (one of the biggest brands in busines history), beat off Wal-Mart, scared off Amazon, and now may have dodged a huge bullet by having NOT wasted time on a failed venture at this critical juncture when time is of the essence. I’ll take Red Envelope Entertainment and the value that will come from proprietary content over video games any day.

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Over on the TCF a disgruntled Apple owner posted a note he received from TiVo when questioning the status of Mac TiVoToGo. I’m not sure TiVo initially gave this initiative the appropriate amount of attention, but I do appreciate what appears to be a frank response — despite calling Apple out (what’s a closed platform?) and despite not offering a target date for release.

My name is Jim Denney, I am in Vice President of Product Marketing for TiVo’s retail products. Tom Rogers forwarded your message to me. I wanted to thank you for your email and apologize for the delay in TiVoToGo for the Mac. I am sorry that you feel we have not paid attention to the Mac community. That is certainly not our intention. We are aware of our subscriber’s desire to get TiVoToGo on the Mac. Believe it or not, we are actively working on the project and have been for the past year in various forms. Unfortunately, developing on the Mac platform has been a little more difficult because of its closed nature. We are working through the issues we have encountered. They are not simple to solve given the needs that we balance in TiVoToGo. We don’t have a release date for the feature yet.

We have gotten ourselves in trouble in the past when we estimated it would be out by mid year this year, we obviously missed that date. In the interest of setting the right expectations this time we want to wait until the feature is actually ready. We are not ready to make that announcement yet. That is why our customer care representatives have been instructed to give the answer they gave you.

We can let you know when the feature is ready for launch. We are listening to you. Until it is ready, we appreciate your patience.

In other Mac development news, the Sling folks plan to release a public beta of OS X software on 10/31.

Sirius is offering a 2-day promotion (today and tomorrow) of free Internet radio to highlight Stern is now online. I just registered and it was quick and easy, without requiring a credit card number, though I doubt I’d ever go for a paid account at $12.95 a month… I get tons of free online music via Pandora, and AIM 6.0 even streams a decent amount of XM radio (also free). Why $12.95 you ask? Sirius would like to recoup some of their 500+ million dollar investment.

Orbitcast writes: The jury’s still out on whether or not consumers will actually respond to this “Howard Stern Worldwide” event, or that subscribers will actually sign up to an Internet-only service that costs the same as as the regular service. The standard consumer mindset is that anything over the Internet should be provided at a discount (or free).

DVD Jon, the guy who cracked DVD encryption, has set up shop in California as DoubleTwist Ventures. His goal is to pirate license technology enabling iTunes to play on non-iPods and non-iTunes DRM-ed tracks to play on iPods (how’s that working out, Real?). It would be nice if Apple’s copy protection scheme (aka FairPlay) was made available to other devices, however they’ve been reluctant to share… and probably won’t until a court orders them to do so. Until then, I expect they’ll go after Jon and anyone brash enough to integrate his work into players — it’s no accident his blog is titled So Sue Me. I don’t know how the Norwegian legal system compares to America, but I hope he’s got backers with deep pockets…

Fortune writes: Johansen has reverse-engineered FairPlay, the encryption technology Apple uses to make the iPod a closed system. Right now, thanks to FairPlay, the songs Apple sells at its iTunes store cannot easily be played on other devices, and copy-protected songs purchased from other sites will not play on the iPod. Johansen has written programs that get around those restrictions: one that would let other companies sell copy-protected songs that play on the iPod, and another that would let other devices play iTunes songs.

The newly opened TiVo Community Store is running a great promotion: Get the TiVo Series3 for $680 after applying a 15% off coupon. No tax and free shipping! The secret word of the day is TCDEAL. You better hurry, because this offer expires Sunday.