King of all Ryans Blog

Launch Your iPhone's Camera in Record Time [jailbreak]

2011-01-25T22:10:00.003-05:00

Ever have an awesome photo opportunity pop up and you miss out on it while fumbling to get your camera app open? Yeah, pretty sure everyone has. Here's how to fix it: QuickDo [$7.99 + 3-day trial]!

Now, i'm not going to get into every great function QuickDo has to offer. It does offer a lot; but, where it truly shines, is its app shortcut abilities. QuickDo is able to have app shortcuts ON THE LOCK SCREEN!! New-born baby doing something cute? Home button click, camera icon tap, and your phone is magically unlocked and the camera app is launched and you're now taking a pic! Take a look at the picture below to see the camera shortcut on the lock screen.

These are the shortcuts i have for my most used apps and the apps that, when i need to get to, can get to in a hurry: camera, sms, email, settings and foursquare. I usually switch foursquare out depending on what app i launch the most. And i like to get into settings a lot to turn off vibrate while in silent. It isn't limited to just five shortcuts, too. You can load up more, you just have to scroll to the right in order to access the ones after the first five. And if you set QuickDo up with a shortcut to the camera app, you will be able to take pictures faster than anyone else!

Here's a video of how to set up the other features, as well as the shortcuts.

Free App Alert: Liberty Wings

2011-01-24T12:24:00.003-05:00

Found out about this one and it will soon be on my phone. Game-play footage looks sharp and even changes up the game controls throughout the game to, i'm assuming, keep it fresh. Check out Liberty Wings and download it if you dig it.

FourSquare Infographic of the Day

2011-01-24T11:06:00.005-05:00

I've pretty much stopped checking in on foursquare, but this is pretty cool. Enjoy.

APP BATTLE!! HeyTell vs TalkBox

2011-01-23T11:01:00.005-05:00

We all know about heytell now, but i recently found out about talkbox; very similar to heytell but with an IM interface. I really liked the different interface on talkbox and gave it run with The Queen of all Ryans; THE ULTIMATE TEST!

The Queen also enjoyed the IM interface and it was right quick to add buddies. In heytell, you have to email or text message your friends to get the app. Talkbox lets you add friends by simply inputting a user-name. The only other way, in talkbox, is to shoot them an email or post to your facebook wall or tweet that you use the app. I do prefer the extra option of sending the text message in heytell.

I was fine with it all and was ready to jump over to talkbox and ditch heytell all together. The final test, however, is if The Queen was going to use it or not. Final judgment!! Heytell WINS!! Flawless victory!! The Queen prefers heytell's HUGE 'Hold and Speak' button over talkbox's very small one that is at the bottom of the screen.

So, at the end of the day, nothing changes for little old me. I also don't have to pester my friends to get a different talk messaging app after they just accepted one so very recently. But i figured that, since both are free, you might like the choice. What will you be using?

Fun App: HeyTell

2011-01-23T10:25:00.003-05:00

The Queen of all Ryans (aka my wife) got an iPhone from Santa this past Christmas (16Gb black 3GS ios v 4.1 jailbroken and unlocked on t-mobile family plan). She really doesn't use her iPhone as a fun social game playing device as much as i do. On a good day she really just text messages people, does some lite facebooking and gets violently angry at some birds.

So, with little hope of her getting interested in it, i decided to give her a little heads up on a new app i came across called HeyTell. I was also in need of a larger friend list in the app. I love the ease of use and the interface of the app. The Queen, however, flipped head over heals for this app! She LOVED that she could just send a message to someone QUICK! She pings me the most, too, so this app is perfect for her! Other pro's include, but are not limited to, listen to a message at your convenience; replay that message, either one that you received or sent, over and over; send invites via text message or email to other android/ios friends; play the message from 1 iphone into another iphone that has Talking Carl installed and post that recorded Carl post to facebook. That last one is just pure bonus tho. The day i got this app i got my buddy to get it and he fell in love with it as well because he was trying to play a game on his PC and i was annoyingly texting him, to just install this app on his iphone of course. Then he just had to talk his message and took a fraction of the time to do so.

Get it. Its free and works on ios and android devices as of this post. sure it doesn't work on blackberry, but the only people that own a blackberry are the people that work in big corporations and get it from verizon. So even they will be getting iPhones soon! Might as well just jump on the bandwagon early. :)

New on my iPhone: Squeezy

2011-01-22T16:13:00.002-05:00

The controls are a little tricky, but its fun for me and my kids! The graphics are beautiful as well.

[$0.99]

New #1 IOS Game: Bubble Ball

2011-01-17T20:12:00.009-05:00

Had to pull myself away from Bubble Ball [iTunes] long enough to post about it. Great stuff so far! This game is so great, in fact, that it managed to bump Angry Birds [iTunes] off its "perch" as the number 1 game in the app store. Oh, and it was also designed by a 14-year-old. Check out the trailer below then get it for yourself! This is a free AND universal app. Enjoy!

via Distructoid

*update* I guess I should have waited to keep playing it before I posted such a rave review. While it is fun, the objects were some what frustrating to get control of sometimes. Also, it is a SHORT game. Compared to Angry Birds, it only has one world and only 21 levels to it. So this is probably just a fad for right now with the internet boosting it popularity, but a nice break from Angry Birds.

Bump shares contacts between iPhone, Android

2010-05-23T22:07:00.002-04:00

Pretty epic if you think about it. Two totally different phones, working together for one common goal: bumping.

via TiPb

How to Vectorize any Image

2010-05-18T21:44:00.003-04:00

Tested.com did up a story on how to take any regular image and transform it into vector art. Here is a quote describing what that is and why you want it:

Most of the images you see lying around your computer are bitmapped. In other words, these are images of fixed size, made up of a specific number of pixels. Each pixel is assigned a color value, which is what gives your pictures and photographs such a great level of detail — to an extent. There's only so much you can zoom in on a bitmapped image before pixelation occurs. Vector images, however, are not fixed in size. They're simply geometric shapes, or math equations, that define how a given image should look, and thus, can be scaled to dimensions of infinite size. This is great for making wallpapers, because it means we can adapt our images to any resolution we wish, even for multi-monitor setups.

Full setup and instructions here.

Your iPhone, You're Doing it Wrong: Part 2

2010-05-16T11:29:00.012-04:00

It’s true. You depend on one program to manage and sync all of your photos, apps, movies and contacts and then don't know what the hell to do when you want to do it all over again on another computer. Shame on you!

This will be the final part 2 in the series on how to stop doing that. In first part, we covered the set up. In this second part, we will be covering the programs that can replace iTunes, the ones that I use on a regular basis. It isn't just one program, and that's a good thing. When we have one piece of technology that is so intricately involved with probably too many aspects of our lives, we want options. You want the ability to switch programs for one that has more or less features to another without losing any data as painlessly as possible. Options people; get some.

I use four programs on a regular basis with my jail broken iPhone 3gs. One for managing my music, one for migrating files between my iPhone and pc, one for books (yes, I read) one for contacts and calendars. I'll be going over some photo stuff last since its still in the experimental stages.

The easiest is first, and that’s Sharepod. I’ve tried other applications for managing my music and play lists and this one is, by far, the bestest and easiest! However, I am open to suggestions if there is something better out there. Sharepod is free and a stand-alone application, meaning that you don't have to install anything and possibly worry about admin rights to get this up and running. It has drag and drop capability for adding music to your device AND the play lists that are on it! You can also use this as a media player. There is a bit of light photo integration, but it’s just to view them and back them up and not to drag and drop them somewhere or add more photos to the iPhone. Still, Sharepod is an extremely powerful music manager and gets two thumbs up from me!

Like Sharepod, iPhone USB explorer is also awesome! And, also like Sharepod, iPhone USB explorer is free and stand-alone. It’s just like using windows explorer to navigate around your iPhone, only you don't need to worry about SSH or any IP address issues. It is, however, barebones software. I would like the ability to bookmark directories within the program, like I am able to do with current SSH programs out there. But the ease of use outweighs the extras that are missing. Use this if you want to transfer or backup any data quick and painlessly! I use it to back up all my applications I have installed on my iPhone. With using SSH in the past, I ran into some IP address issues at some free Wi-Fi spots. But iPhone USB explorer doesn’t need SSH permissions or IP address information! Its plug and play, and simple.

For books I use the powerful combination of Stanza the iPhone app and Stanza the desktop program. Stanza is an awesome iPhone eBook app and is free; I highly recommend it. With it, you will have the ability to carry around tons of books in one small convenient package; your iPhone. over time functionality has been added as well as removed from this app. back in the day you were able to dump any eBook into a specific folder on your iPhone, via USB transfer, and the app would be able to read that folder when you launched the app from your iPhone and it would add that book to the app's library. They removed this functionality at apple's request, but then they released the desktop program that can transfer the books from your pc right to the iPhone app's library. Very quick and convenient. You can also add other repositories and your own discretion.

Changing phones can be a pain in the butt. The biggest pain is the migration of all contact information from your old phone to your new one. In preparation for losing my phone (knock on wood), getting a new one or just having to restore the thing to its original virgin state, I began using Google sync for contacts and calendar only. I don’t use it for mail, because we’re going to be setting it up for push and I believe that this way will save some battery life. First things first; back up your contacts and calendar. This might be the first time you’re doing this and you might lose some data. What I did was actually make a backup of all my contact info and then wipe all of it off my iPhone, but you might not be comfortable doing that. Anywho, swing by here to follow the directions for setting up Google as an exchange server and turn it on for contacts and calendar and set 'fetch new data,’ in the mail/calendar settings, for push and your half way there! The other half being the setup and addition of contacts and schedules to your Google contacts and calendar. The first sync you do with your new exchange server will push some of the contacts and calendar information to you Google contacts and calendar, it will push over more info if you never messed with the contact groups on your iPhone. This sync method will only grab your contacts from the iPhone’s ‘my contact’ group. Google contacts does have extremely good search functionality! It will blow away any search functionality that is currently on your iPhone, however. Personally I have all contacts and calendar schedules managed with Google and it works great! I also export the contacts on a somewhat regular basis, from Google, for extra backup security.

***experimental!! Warning!! I am not a pro on what you are about to read yet!! I will update when the process is finalized!! Proceed at your own risk!!***

Right, last bit of business: photos/videos. This is the newer territory for me so I probably shouldn't even be posting about it, but I’ll just post what I have done so far. my end goal with photos is to regularly take the photos off of my iPhone, dump them to my computer and upload them to Picasa (yes, I know, more Google stuff. I just wanted to take the free route instead of using Flickr). I will then use Picasa’s newly updated mobile interface to search through the painfully organized pictures using tags and names in order to get to the picture I want. So far, I have used only 1 of 2 programs to get the photos off the phone: Kodak easy share. The other program, which I haven't tested for moving the pics yet, is Picasa 3. The Kodak software did a great job with transferring all my photos and videos from my camera roll as well as the other photo libraries I had. It even kept the rotation info in the image's exif data, which is the biggest pain in the rear thus the most important part of the transfer. Every other program out there, for pc at least, just brings them over and then you are stuck having to rotate all the photos yourself. I am now in the process of using only Picasa 3 to painfully tag all the photos and then will sync it to the cloud. The final step, of what has turned into a photo debacle, is the iPhone app that will essentially be replacing the photo viewing app on my iPhone. I have searched the web in its entirety 3 times over and have come to the conclusion that Google’s own newly designed Picasa web app... it pains me to say... is the only app worthy of stepping up to the plate for this one. It’s the only "app" that is able to search the tags. A native app would, of course, be better, because it would have caching abilities and a quick slick interface designed specifically for the iPhone, but beggars can't be choosers in this world.

And that's it. I hope you found this a little bit helpful, especially since all the programs I described above are free. Please feel free to ask question, voice concern's or provide alternate suggestions for the programs I have chosen above within the comments below. Good luck! :P

ps: here is the lifehacker post that inspired me to do the photo reorganization.

Your iPhone, You're Doing it Wrong: Part 1

2010-05-16T10:21:00.011-04:00

It’s true. You depend on one program to manage and sync all of your photos, apps, movies and contacts and then don't know what the hell to do when you want to do it all over again on another computer. Shame on you!

This will be a 2 part post on how to stop doing that. The first part will be the set up. You don't need the bloated install of iTunes to do what you want to with your iDevice. The programs that I will be going over work with iPhone and/or iPods. And I will be letting you know what I use on my iPhone 3gs to get around the whole iTunes thing and its library issues. My phone is jailbroken, however. So some things may not be possible to do for you if you do not have a jailbroken device. And I will not be talking about how to do something similar with your device if it is not jailbroken.

A bit of back-story on why I had to get an iTunes replacement; this all started when work, the place that employees me and pays me money, said that I can't have iTunes installed on the laptop that they gave me and that it is now against company policy if I install it on there again. So, since I enjoy getting money and supporting my lovely wife and children, I complied. It was rough, but I did manage to fill the hole in my technology heart that iTunes left.

First things first; UNINSTALL ITUNES!!! The end goal of this is to be able to connect my iPhone to any computer and still have my iPhone be able to communicate back and forth without having to use a program that wasn't even designed for a pc; iTunes. For this to happen, you still do need some things that iTunes puts onto your computer. But that’s the easy part.

To do this, just download the latest and greatest version of iTunes. It actually doesn't matter what version since we aren't going to do a full install of it. It’s just easier to get the latest version since it’s available on apple's site.
Once downloaded, change the name of the file from iTunesSetup.exe to iTunesSetup.zip. You can actually use any compression program; I just use zip because that's what I have. Once you have the name changed, unzip it to a directory of your choice and open that directory. I used to create a new folder and put the zip into that folder and did 'extract to here'. But you can do that in two clicks. Just right-click on the .zip and select 'extract to blah/' where blah is the name of what you want to unzip. This will make a folder on your desktop called blah and everything that is in the .zip will be in the blah folder.

What you want to do now is install only what is needed in order for your iPhone to talk to the programs that we will be covering in the part 2 of this post. Out of all the programs you unzipped, you want to install just Bonjour.msi and AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi. And that’s it! Those TWO programs are all that’s needed!! That pretty amazing since iTunes will tax any pc to its limits when syncing and all you need now are TWO programs to help replace it!

Anywho, the major thing that I don't like are auto updates. So be sure to read the check boxes carefully and be sure to turn off any auto update feature and anything else you may not be comfy with.

And that’s it! You are now half way to being iTunes free!! Take a break now and get some coffee, because that's what I’m going to do right now! :P

Dutch Ovens, Your Days are NUMBERED!!

2010-04-30T21:24:00.002-04:00

Is your marriage/relationship in danger due to your toots in bed? In my opinion, if your significant other can't take your gas, then they can't take you! Leave them!! Or just buy this. :P

via Dvice

Monsters, Inc. 2 Coming....SOON!

2010-04-27T20:49:00.002-04:00

Of course when I say soon, I mean in about 2.5 years. :P

via Netflix

Ackbar Toilet

2010-04-25T11:19:00.004-04:00

I might actually consider purchasing this. :P

source via FoolishGadgets

Day of the Week

2007-11-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

I was mulling about at work today and mentioned something about Dickens and got to looking up Charles Dickens and the fact that he died from a stroke. Just being curious, I was wondering what day of the week his death was on, June 9, 1870.

It was a Tuesday for those of you that were wondering. However, me not being super good with numbers and also extremely lazy when it comes to thinking, it took me a while to find a website that could tell me the day of the week it was when supplied with a date. Most of the ones I found right away only worked with the 1900's.

The one I finally did find that works with any date is a great one. I found out that my two daughters and I were all born on a Wednesday. Is that crazy or what?! Anywho, the coincidences stopped there, but the site is a great site; with morse code translators and fantastic unit conversions.

Feel free to check it out and give a shout out in the comments below to let everyone know what day of the seek you were born on.

HowTo: Make a Glass Beer Bottle into a Cup

2007-11-16T09:30:00.000-05:00

What you need: Your favorite beer bottle, nail polish remover, string, scissors, water and a lighter.

Now you can make your favorite beer bottle, whether it be one of the major brands or some kooky looking microbrew, into a great pen cup for your desk at work. This would also make a great inexpensive present for one of your drinking buddies.

Feel free to submit pictures of your bottles in the comment section below!

[via geeksaresexy] video source

Deal Days: Get upto 50% off of Indi DVD's at Amazon

2007-11-14T22:15:00.001-05:00

Amazon.com is having a great sale on some fairly recent indi titles on DVD. Titles include Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, 28 Days Later and One Hour Photo. Those last two don't really seem to fit into with what is available, but it is nice to see there is a wide selection.

[via TheBargainist] Amazon

Monoface: Time Waster and Freaky Screen Saver

2007-11-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

This time waster is a twofer: you get to waste time and get a great screen saver that will be sure to freak out your cube mate as well as any passer-bys.

The people down at monoface took pictures of 15 people and made different parts of their face interchangeable; eyes, nose, mouth, head/shoulders. You can go over to their site and mix them all around and see what crazy faces you can come up with. You can also download the monoface screen saver. With the screen saver version, it will do the mixing up for you during screen saver mode.

I had fun on the site for a few minutes and am still having fun with the screen saver. Troy's tongue (pictured) is my favorite to put onto any of the faces. What's your favorite?

[via DownloadSquad] monoface

Pancakes in a Can... Need I say more?

2007-11-14T21:20:00.000-05:00

Ladies and gentleman, the wait is finally over! From the people that brought you cheese in a can, whipped cream in a can and any other freaky thing you can think of in a can, comes pancakes in a can.

It doesn't actually sound all that repulsive does it? And it saves you the time and effort of pouring the water and powdered instant batter mix into a bowl and mixing it together for about 2 whole minutes. Now, with Original Batter Blaster you can just shoot that junk into a pan and wait till syrup and butter covered bliss is obtained.

Please, for the love of God, let me know if you have tried this and how it tasted in the comments below!

[via OhGizmo!] Product Page

Firefox Quick Tip: The Mouse Wheel

2007-05-23T21:28:00.001-04:00

No matter how popular Firefox gets and no matter how many people use it on a regular basis, there are still people out there making slow use of something that is literally right at their finger tips; the mouse wheel.

Pop quiz hot shot; how do you open and close tabs in Firefox, and do you even make use of multiple tabs? I still catch people around the office right-clicking on links to open them up in a new tab, or clicking the red "X" button to close a tab (they might even have to select that tab then hit the close button), waisting precious internet time when they could be doing something more useful like testing the work's firewall to see if you can take a look at naked pictures of Caprica Six from Battlestar Galactica.

The correct answer to my pop quiz is by using the mouse wheel and yes. Stop with the right-clicking and just click the mouse wheel on that link and it will magically opne it up in a new tab. This even works in Internet Explorer 7.0! Then, to close down any tab, just do the same thing; mouse wheel click on it. The tab you wish to close doesn't need to be your active tab, you can just wheel click on any tab that is open and it will disappear.

Another nifty mouse wheel trick is nice to have when you have too many tabs open and auto tab scroll comes into play. Just place your courser on the tabs bar and scroll the mouse wheel. You will then be side scrolling from right to left over all of your open tabs. This bypasses the left/right arrows that pop up when you have too many tabs open.

Flashback: Oz + Dark Side of the Moon

2007-05-22T19:48:00.000-04:00

After taking a look at the list of movies that came out this week, I have decided that there is nothing work buying or even taking the time to get it by "other means." If you don't believe me, here is the list of movies released to DVD this week:

I'll admit that I didn't see the Rotten Tomato ratings till I just did this post for the above movies, but I did see the trailers for some of them (Apocalypto is one that sticks out the most) and they are just not my kind of movie.

more after the jump

So, if some of you readers our there are like me, I say just grab something off of the DVD rack in your family room, Vincent's picks at the video store or get inspired to rent something at the video store that is from my up-to-date list of movies I own. Or you can sit back and watch the classic sync up of The Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz:

Either way, you will have something better to do until next week when something good, hopefully, gets released.

Last Chance to Get Bejeweled Deluxe for FREE

2007-05-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

As a Mother's Day special draws to an end, Bejeweled Deluxe is free until tomorrow (May 23). It is a bit tricky to get it for free, but just follow these easy instructions and you will be good to go:

Go to the Popcap website and click BUY NOW
Fill out the required information
Scroll down and click "Click here" and add “FREE4MOMS” in the coupon code field.
Click on “Click here to Redeem” before you continue
The “Item total” should show a price of $0.00
Click continue until you get to the download link
Install and play

It is a good game and a great one to add to the usual Windows game lineup of solitaire and minesweeper. Once downloaded, installed and registered you can enjoy unlimited regular play as well as time trial.

[via ghacks]

Upgrade

2007-05-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

Just upgraded the blogger template and am giving it a test run. Please ignore.

Organize Status Bar: Firefox Add-On Of The Day

2007-03-15T21:21:00.000-04:00

Today's add-on could be a great one for all you Obsessive Compulsive people out there, or for people that just don't like how your status bar icons are arranged. Organize Status Bar is an add-on for Firefox for all platforms that lets you adjust how things are displayed in your status bar. You can move, hide or show the add-on icons in the status bar for what fits your personality. You can now take control over what is going on in that magical little bar down there. And, if you want to start all over again, just hit Reset to Default to put everything back to the way it was before you started.

Unlocker: Download Of The Day

2007-03-14T08:27:00.000-04:00

It never fails. When ever you are attempting to clean out some space on your hard drive, you always run into that one file buried in a sea of files that just doesn't want to be deleted. Sure you can reboot and then delete it. But who has time for that kind of time consuming thing these days?! Well, say good by to that file, the Unlocker way.

With Unlocker, you are able to find out what process is actually using the file that you are trying to dump into the 'ol recycling bin. Now the only hard thing to do is find out where the file is, if it is in a folder that has a ton of files that is. Unlocker is easy to use and completely free to download. And that price is just right for me.

[via TechNibble]

More Pissiors

2007-03-12T22:43:00.000-04:00

A while back I did a story on some crazy urinals from around the world. Wouldn't ya know it that more and more are popping up all over the place:

more crazy pics after the jump

Those last few aren't urinals, but are some kind of crazy. Anyone know of any others that should make the list?

[via JoBlog]

Weather Watcher: Download Of The Day

2007-03-12T22:24:00.000-04:00

Today's download has been around for a while. But, like anything that has been around for a long time, you need fill in the people that missed it the first time around.

Weather Watcher is a light java application that is basically a full-blown weather station for your desktop. This thing has a ton of options as well. You can customize how often it updates, what cities to watch, and you can even set the program as your wallpaper.

What Weather Watcher basically does is tell you the present and extended forecast for your selected city. It will also let you know the current temperature, wind direction and speed, and barometric pressure and weather it is rising or falling. Simply hover your mouse over the day of the week in which you want to know more details about that day's weather.

It doesn't get more easy than that, for arguments sake that is. Weather Watcher will also minimize to the task tray if you hit the red "X" in the top right-hand corner, it will not close the program. Minimized in the tray, Weather Watcher will let you know what the current temperature is, also. Hover over that temp to see what the current conditions are.

This is a great program that will meet your weather needs throughout the day. It is also much more speedy than that slow poke of a weather man that makes you watch the entire news program to see what the extended forecast is. Something to help that curious wife out late at night.

Download Of The Day: AllSnap

2007-02-02T23:02:00.000-05:00

I use Winamp, different versions of Linux and have come across multiple kinds of AIM clones that are a heck of a lot better then AIM itself. And the way the windows work in all of those programs, they usually have a "snapping" effect when you bring one of the windows close to the edge of your desktop. I have come to like this for some reason and now want it on all of the windows I use in XP. And this is now possible with AllSnap.

With AllSnap, you can adjust the setting of your desktop so that windows can snap to the edges of your desktop, windows can snap to each other and so that windows can snap to the vertical and/or horizontal center of your desktop. You can also make it so that you can lock down your desktop's boundaries so that you can not move any window outside of the viewable area of your desktop. I'm not too keen on some of the settings, but having them set allows you to use the alt key to toggle the settings on and off while moving any windows around. I definitely recommend this one for a test run. It is a very light program that is easy to use and allows for you to have your desktop a bit more tidy.

Update Time

2007-01-30T20:22:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of posts these past couple of weeks. I am now a member of the blog team over at The Download Squad (DLS). They are going to pay me money to blog about software, Firefox add-ons and whatever else that I see fit that needs more attention, so I wanted to save the posts for DLS.

I will keep posting to this site, however. I have started posting over there, but there are some rules that I'm going to have to adjust to get used to. The one rule that I'm have some trouble with is if I have a topic to post about I can't post about it if it has already be posted to DLS in the past. Well, there has to be some dramatic changes to the subject in order to justify the "new" post on the same topic (for example, a new version release of a program). So, long story short, I will be posting about things on this site that are "reruns" on DLS from 2 years ago. But they will be in my own words and based on my own experiences.

The site I'll be moving to, by the way, is, like I said, Download Squad. I took it upon myself to comment frequently on tech blogs that I subscribe to in my reader. Turns out that one of them payed attention a bit more than the others, which lead to them recruiting me. So take that as a lesson: Comment and comment frequently! I made a sort of New Years resolution to make some money off of blogging. I guess it doesn't matter where I am doing the blogging so long as I'm making some extra money doing it. The extra stream of readers as of late has helped, but there is more money to be earned and more software to write about. So...I'm off, but be sure to hold onto this site in your reader, because I will definitely be making more posts here. Just add this one to your reader as well.

Kitchen Tech

2007-01-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

This is for all of those guys out there, and perhaps some women, that have just too many power tools. It is now time to start converting them into something more useful and multi-purpose. I am, of course, talking about the pepper mill drill attachment.

Sure you could buy one of those battery powered pepper mills where you would also have to buy a large package of AA or AAA batteries to keep them working for a long time. Or, you could just use one of the 3 to 5 electric or battery powered drills you have lying around the house! Ahh yes, memories of Tim, the tool man, Taylor are popping into my head as we speak: This pepper mill needs MORE POWER!

All this little modification needs is two things. Number one: A pepper mill, one with a flat top that needs to be twisted would be more proffered (not the type that has an arm sticking out of it that you crank); Number two: A power drill, one with a keyless chuck would be more proffered. Insert the top of the pepper mill into the drill and adjust the chuck as needed until the pepper mill is sitting nice and snug in the drill. Then all you have to do is aim and shoot next time you are throwing a fancy-smancy dinner party. This modification, however, is not just for fancy dinner parties. This pepper mill drill would be the perfect accessory to anyone's grilling tool belt.

[Video after jump]

Firefox Add-Ons Of The Day

2007-01-16T20:23:00.000-05:00

No, that is not a typo. My next suggested FF add-on goes great with another one. First on the list is Firefox Extension Backup Extension (FEBE). With FEBE, you are able to export all of your add-ons into one folder. For ease of use, you would put this one folder on your jump drive so that you can take your add-ons with you where ever you go.

FEBE also allows you to preform other backups. You can backup bookmarks, preferences, cookies, entire profiles, user names, passwords, security certificates, search plugins, history, permissions and even themes in addition to the add-ons. You can backup all of them at the same time or pick and choose which you would like to backup, then you can choose what you would like to restore. You can also dump the backups to a specified folder anywhere on your computer. And the final great feature in FEBE is the scheduler. You can choose to backup your items of choice automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule for any time of the day/week/month.

The only problem with FEBE is that each add-on you have backed up is backed up individually. However, if you use FEBE's fantastic companion Compact Library Extension Organizer (CLEO), all of that nonsense will come to an end. Once you have all of your add-ons backed up to a folder, you use CLEO to smush them all into one file that FF can read. This one file will now contain every single one of your add-ons and you just need to double click it in order to install them all onto you PC at work or a friends home, for example. With CLEO, you are also able to select which add-ons that you want to cram into the one file, as well as name that one file whatever you want.

Two thumbs up for both! And, as always, if you have something better please let us all know in the comments below. I am also taking recommendations that way, as well.

Linux On A Stick: Part II

2007-01-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

Two weeks back I did part 1 of Linux on a stick. In part 1, we spoke of how to get a Live CD onto your USB jump drive and the problems with it. Using the Live CD version on the jump drive alone allows you to boot to your jump drive into the distro of Linux that you have chosen. However, anything you change while in this live CD session will not be saved. Therefor, if you changed anything, such as download NEdit because you are sick of GEdit, you will have to do it all over again next time you decide to boot from your USB jump drive. With the Part 2 technique, that I am about to describe, you will be able to have such changes saved.

Ready to get to it now? Ok, first off, you need to know if your your computer can boot from the USB drive. Just do a restart and go into the bios set up (I have a completely separate menu on my computer that is called the boot menu that I can get to if I hold down F8, then I just select from the list of available items that I wish to boot from. You may just have to deal with the bios, however). From the bios, go into the boot area. Go down to where is says something along the lines of "1st boot item" and change it from your master hard drive to your USB jump drive. Your drive may have to be plugged in for you to be able to select it from the bios screen. If you do not have the option to boot to the USB jump drive than you can just stop reading here and keep using your live CD version or you can update your bios.

[More after the jump]

For those of your that are able to boot to your USB jump drive, hit up THIS site to take the Linux test to see which distribution of Linux is best for you. Like it says on the site, this is not an exact science, but rather just some basic questions to see what you like most about the different versions of Linux that are out there. I dig Ubuntu and knew that I was going to use Ubuntu for the install that I will soon describe. But my results also suggested that I would like Fedora as well. I haven't heard much about Fedora, and what I have heard wasn't good, but I am more willing to give it a try now. I will also give this tutorial a test using Fedora to see if the same procedures will work on multiple distro's of Linux. But that will be another post in the future, lets kick this pig into gear.

First up, I'm using Ubuntu and will be installing this on a 2 Gig PNY Attache USB 2.0 jump drive. So head on over to their site and get yourself a disc image. And I will also be installing Ubuntu on the drive, but there are different versions of Ubuntu. The ones I recommend getting is either the latest version of Ubuntu, which is code named Edgy, or the latest version of XUbuntu, code name Edgy Eft. Ubuntu is the full blown version of Ubuntu, while XUbuntu is much more scaled down. XUbuntu would be more ideal for you if you want a lighter version of an OS running on your computer or if you have an older computer that really can't handle the full version. The first step that needs to be done is to partition your USB jump drive. So go ahead and burn the image of your choice to a CD and boot to it.

Once your live CD is up and running, open up a terminal window and type in "sudo su", with out the quotes of course. You are now in root mode and will save yourself some extra typing during the upcoming commands that you will need. Now we need to delete the partition(s) that reside on your USB jump drive, but first we need to find out where it is and what it is called. If you didn't already, plug in your jump drive, it will automatically be mounted for you. Now type "fdisk -l". You should now see a list of drives that reside in your computer. One of them is your jump drive and is usually mounted to the folder /dev/sda. Now, thinking ahead a bit, I made 2 partitions: one for the files the OS needs and one for the OS itself. The first partition will be the bulk of the jump drive and will be accessible when you are in Windows, while the second partition is just for Ubuntu and you will not be able to see in Windows. I read one tutorial online that used a 1 Gig jump drive and made the first partition 700 Mb and then the rest of the drive for the second partition. So I just made that into a percentage and turned 70% of my 2 Gig jump drive into the first partition and used the rest for the OS partition. Now that you have the sizes in mind for your partitions, type in "umount /dev/sda1" then "fdisk /dev/sda". Now I will put the next commands in a tabular form for easy reading. Its just for creating the 2 partitions and then writing them to the jump dirve.

WARNING: This will erase everything that is on the jump drive. Do a back up if you want to keep something!

Code	Results
p	Shows partitions on the jump drive, they all need to be deleted
d	Ready to delete partition
1	Delete partition 1 on /dev/sda
d, 2	Delete partition 2 on /dev/sda, if there is one present
n	Create a new partition (partition number 1)
p	Make that partition primary
1	Call it partition number 1
ENTER	Accept the starting cylinder number
+1700M	Ending cylinder number (size of the first partition in Mb)
a	Make this partition active
t, 1, 6	Make this partition FAT format
n	Create a new partition (partition number 2)
p	Make this partition primary
2	Call this partition number 2
ENTER	Accept the starting cylinder (this is the end cylinder from the first partition)
+300M	Use up the last of the jump drive for this partition
w	Write the partitions to the drive

Now that we have created the partitions, we need to format them:

mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n (SOME NAME) /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sda2

You can name the first partition whatever you want to, but the second partition MUST be named casper-rw. Now remount the partitions by unplugging the jump drive and plugging it back in, they should mount automatically. And then we are now ready to install Ubuntu to your jump drive. Shutdown your computer and reboot to your normal operating system. Once there, open up your file explorer and navigate to your Ubuntu CD that you burned and just booted to and copy the following files to your (SOME NAME) partition. You should actually see the name that you named it in the file explorer window. Also, make sure that you have the ability to see hidden files if you do not already (in the file explorer in Windows, Tools menu -> Folder Option then the View tab and check "Show hidden files and folders"). Now start copying:

From the CD to the root of your (SOME NAME) partition, copy the following:
Folders : 'casper', 'disctree', 'dists', 'install', 'pics', 'pool', 'preseed', '.disk'
Files : all files from the folder 'isolinux', 'md5sum.txt', 'README.diskdefines', 'ubuntu.ico', 'casper/vmlinuz', 'casper/initrd.gz', 'install/mt86plus'
If you decided to use XUbuntu, you will not see some of these files or filders. Don't worry about that and just copy over what you do have that is on that list, it will still work. In the root of your jump drive, rename the file 'isolinux.cfg' to 'syslinux.cfg' then open it with notepad and erase everything in it. Now copy the following into the file:

DEFAULT custom
GFXBOOT bootlogo
APPEND preseed/file=preseed/ltsp.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash --
LABEL custom
menu label ^Start Ubuntu in persistent mode
kernel vmlinuz
append preseed/file=preseed/ltsp.seed boot=casper persistent initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash --
LABEL live
menu label ^Start or install Ubuntu
kernel vmlinuz
append preseed/file=preseed/ltsp.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash --
LABEL xforcevesa
menu label Start Ubuntu in safe ^graphics mode
kernel vmlinuz
append preseed/file=preseed/ltsp.seed boot=casper xforcevesa initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash --
LABEL check
menu label ^Check CD for defects
kernel vmlinuz
append boot=casper integrity-check initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1048576 root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash --
LABEL memtest
menu label ^Memory test
kernel mt86plus
append -
LABEL hd
menu label ^Boot from first hard disk
localboot 0x80
append -
DISPLAY isolinux.txt
TIMEOUT 300
PROMPT 1
F1 f1.txt
F2 f2.txt
F3 f3.txt
F4 f4.txt
F5 f5.txt
F6 f6.txt
F7 f7.txt
F8 f8.txt
F9 f9.txt
F0 f10.txt

Now, save and close the file and you are all set to boot to your "new" jump drive that is now a full blown operating system.

Some side notes:
The tutorial that I borrowed some info from also installed the grub boot loader. I, however, could not get grub to install to my jump drive using that part of the tutorial from the other site. If anyone out there knows a way to install grub, please let me know and I would be happy to update this post with that info as well as credit you for it.

Other than that, everything works great. I just go into my boot menu and boot to my jump drive and then take it from there. Some things you might want to do is mount your hard drive(s) that are in your computer:
From a terminal window,

sudo su
fdisk -l
cd /media
mkdir windows
mount /dev/hdd2 /media/windows

That hdd2 might be different for you. Just look at the results from the fdisk command to see which is the ntfs partition of your windows hard drive and then enjoy! Any feedback, positive or negative, or any additions on something I missed would be well appreciated in the comments below.

Update:
If anyone out there has some storage space that has a ton of bandwidth, I would be more than happy to make a couple of zip files that contain the files and folders that are copied from the Live CD to your jump drive. Just give me a heads up in the comments below if you can supply a spot on the net for the zip file.

Image source: Linux Forum
Original Tutorial: Ubuntu Site
[Read part 1]

Firefox Add-On Of The Day...TWOFER!

2007-01-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

I figure that since its been about a week since my last Firefox "daily" add-on post that I would lay 2 on you at one time! Hey, I did say it would be somewhat daily.

Ok, #1! Love it and hate it at the same time, its Auto Copy! Yes, with this add-on you will be able to highlight text to effortlessly copy that text to your clipboard. Then click on the mouse wheel button to paste it into another field that your mouse is hovering over. This is really close to the feature that all Linux distributions have, so Linux users rejoice. Thats the love part. Now.. bring on the hate! Say you want to copy something into a field that already has text. How would you normally paste something to replace that text? I'll let you know how in order to help the flow of this post carry on in and orderly fashion. You would highlight the text and then paste over it, essentially replacing what was there with what is on your clipboard. You cannot do this with Auto Copy. If you highlight anything... Let me rephrase that. If you highlight ANYTHING, it copies it to the clipboard. So, needles to say you will have to do a little thinking, as well as trial and error, to get used to this add-on. But I definitely suggest a try of it.

NUMBER 2! Who is this person? No, I'm not asking you a question and that is not a link to some goofy picture of some gay porno dude. Who is this person(?) (witp) is the name of the Firefox add-on that is add-on NUMBER TWO in this crazy twofer! Situation: You putzing around the internet and come across a good article and start reading it. All of a suddon you come accross this name that you have never seen before and the article does a crap job of letting you know about him/her. With witp you will be able to highlight that name and right-click it and go into a new menu for the add-on. In this new menu you will be able to select from a vast array of websites to find out who this person is. Everything from IMDb to good old Google. From the name, it looks like the author may have just wanted to use this for people, but you can actually just search for anything. Just highlight it and choose which search engine you want to use.

Also, accepting suggestions. I can't find all the good ones myself. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comment section below.

Download Of The Day: Launchy

2007-01-12T15:38:00.000-05:00

With just the click of Alt+Space (or whatever you choose the hot key to be), you can launch any program on your computer by just typing in the name of that program. It is just that simple! And its all possible with Launchy. I've had this little application for a few months now and use it all the time. Have you ever had a game install in the most bizzarr folder structure ever? Most games install in the Programs directory on your C drive, and then get placed into a folder that is titled after the manufacturer of that game. Do you know who makes all of your games? You might, but then, every once in a while, you get an off beat game and are lost to be able to find the program on your C drive. Especially if you opted to not have a quick launch or desktop icon made, either by accident or on purpose.

It is also a very light program that you could never tell is running until you hit the hot key to activate it. Just make sure to check the box for making a shortcut to Launchy on your desktop. Then you can drag and drop the shortcut into your Starup folder in the start menu. This way Launchy will start when Windows starts. You can also change the position of where the Launchy window will pop up as well as change the skin of it to make it a closer match to your desktop theme. The most useful part of this program is its ability to keep index of multiple directories to open different types of files. It is customizable, so you can add or remove directories or file extension types that it can open up.

HowTo: RSS Feed + µTorrent

2007-01-11T21:17:00.000-05:00

New Smallville on tonight (which kicked ass!), new Heroes next week, & God knows when Lost is going to kick back up again at the new 10 o'clock time. Time to boot up µTorrent and start hunting and pecking around for a good high def copies of the latest episodes as they air. Not me, however, I do it all automatically. With RSS feeds. And, now, so can you.

First off, get µTorrent. Either get the standalone version or the full installer package. It really doesn't matter, but you don't need to install anything when you get the standalone version. Start it up and run through the configuration of what port to use. If you use a router you will need to set up port forwarding on the port you set up µTorrent with. Then, to test out your settings, hit the "Test if port is forwarded properly" button. If you see green you're good to go. If its red, read up on how to do port forwarding. Feel free to hit me up in the comments area if you have some trouble with that.

[More after the jump]

Next step is to get the RSS feed url for your favorite show. Head on over to tvRSS and fill in the "Show Name" field with your favorite show. To make this HowTo a full blown example, I'll do a search with you. We will use Smallville for this example, so go ahead and put in Smallville into the field and hit enter or the Search button. Don't worry about the results, you just want the url to the search results. Go ahead and right click on the "Search-based RSS Feed" text that is just above the posted search results (where the red arrow is pointing to) and click "Copy Link Location" ("Copy Shortcut" if you're using IE).

Now comes the µTorrent part. Head on over to your µTorrent window and press Cntrl+R on your keyboard. This will open up the RSS Downloader window in µTorrent. Go to the "Feeds" tab, if you are not on it already, and click on the "add" button on the bottom of the window. Right-click and paste what you copied from the previous step from the tvRSS feed's search. Now, before you hit ok, do your self a favor and put "Smallville|" at the begining of the feed so that it looks like the following:

Smallville|http://tvrss.net/search/[Ton more of a url here that I took out because it was too long]

No spaces around the bar between the name of the show and the feed url. Now hit ok.

Now go into the "Favorites" tab, the next one over from the "Feeds" tab. Click on the "Add" button on the bottom left-hand corner of the RSS Downloader window. The fields that I filled in are shown in the picture. For the name, use the * for wild cards. I just wrap the show name in them. I also capitalize the first letter of each word of the show name and replace spaces with *'s. This will ensure that your results will catch any version of the shows name whether there are dashes or not in the title of the torrent file that you will be automatically downloading. For example, you will download all of the following files:

poopies-best-damn-torrent-creation-Smallville-poopy-episode-5
Smallville-09-04
blah-blah-blah-Smallville-yackaty-shamckaty

Wild cards are awesome! Then go ahead and hit the "..." button at the end of the "Save In:" field and pick a spot where you want all of your episodes to be saved. Hit the down arrow all the way to the right of the window for the "Feed" field. This is where that "Smallville|" trick I talked about will come in handy. You should be seeing "Smallville". If you didn't put that "Smallville|" in front of the feed url then you would see the big huge long RSS url that you copied into the feed field in the "Feeds" tab. Select "Smallville" and continue reading. Click on the button next to "Quality" and pick HDTV. You gotta get the best, right? Check the box for "Episode Number:". Here you do not use wild cards but ranges. I only messed with the episode numbers in the range format and leave the season number alone, but assume that the same results would be achieved. But I'm in µTorrent so much that it isn't much trouble for me to change one number in each of my fav's once a year. So go ahead and put in 06x01-99 into the field for the episode number filter. This will ensure episodes 1 through 99 of season 6 will be downloaded. And then I have "Give download highest priority" just in case if I have something else downloading at the same time.

The history tab is for what you downloaded already. If the show is in the history tab then it will not be downloaded again. The releases tab is for what is available from the RSS feed. If something was not downloaded for some reason, then double check this tab and see if it is available. You might have to tweak your favorite settings for the show a bit. The show names are in a drop-down menu in this tab. So, to make it a bit easier for you, hit that drop-down and select your show to see what is available.

And thats it. All you have to do now is to repeat the above steps for other shows that you like and leave µTorrent on for the night when you favorite show is on. It will automatically start the download when the torrent file is updated in the feed. It downloads the torrent file locally and then starts up the torrent with µTorrent and saves it to the location you specified. The episodes to shows are usually available about an hour or two after the show airs. And if the show is popular enough, like Smallville or Lost is, it will only take about an hour or two to download the entire show. Every once in a while there might be more than one of the same format uploaded. So you might see that there were 2 of the same HDTV versions of Smallville were downloaded. No worries, just delete one of them. If I missed anything please let me know and I would be more than happy to adjust the post.

Download Of The Day Review: CrossLoop

2007-01-10T21:54:00.000-05:00

I found out about CrossLoop yesterday from one of LifeHacker's "Download of the Day" posts. I gave it a quick test and then made a comment on LifeHacker's site about the program. CrossLoop personnel then saw my comment on LifeHacker and then questioned why I had a bad encounter with the program. As said in my rebuttal from Mrinal's comment, I really think it says something about the program when they come this far (2 sites) to get down to just why an individual user, such as myself, had this bad encounter and what they can do to make this a bit better. Thus the reason for this post.

Just a bit of background, I have just recently started a small business where I help out people (just friends so far) with their home PC's, laptops and home networks. As an incentive to call me up instead of someone else, I though that it would be a great idea to throw in some remote access assistance from time to time. Which lead me on a quest to find a good, if not great, remote access program. One that I was most familiar with was LogMeIn, but I am always open for testing out something new. And when I saw LifeHacker's post about CrossLoop, I couldn't wait to give it a test run when I got home that day. The results, however, as you can see from my comment on LifeHacker, were not that good.

[Results of full review after the jump]

Now, cutting to the chase, I'll give a short list of things that turned me away from CrossLoop. Quick heads up, I will be comparing this to LogMeIn. So you can just assume that if the feature is not in CrossLoop it is in LogMeIn, but I'll just stick to the CrossLoop side of the discussion as to not possibly confuse anyone.

So, first on my list of things that didn't float my boat about CrossLoop is that the connection was very slow. There was an extremely noticeable delay when doing anything. You also are not able to use any windows shortcut keys, such as the windows logo key, alt+tab or ctrl+alt+delete. If you do any of these things while in your CrossLoop session you will just be doing them to the computer that you are on and not to the computer that you are connected to. I did implement a download on the computer that i was connected to and then the connection crashed. The person that i was connected to had AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) running and i was downloading the LogMeIn setup executable at the same time. I was also connected to a laptop that had a weak connection to a wireless network. I am pretty sure that it was a combination of all of these things that created the crash, mostly the weak connection to the internet, but the laptop never lost the internet connection. After asking the person that I was connected to if she lost her internet connection, she said no. You are also not able to adjust the session window size. It stays the same size depending on what the resolution is of the computer you are connected to. The window does not go off of your desktop, it just has the adjustable bars on the right side and bottom so you can scroll all over the place to get to where you need to go on the desktop. An adjustable zoom feature would be extremely helpful in this situation. Another small pet peave is that it removes the background image of the person you are connecting to and does not put it back when the session is done. And my last issue that i noticed was that the whole "host" "join" thing seemed a bit backwards. If you are the host, then people connect to your computer and see what your doing, not the other way around. I think that it should be changed to say something else, like "Professional" and "User", or something a bit better, it would make it a bit more understandable.

This is just one users point of view, please do not take this post as an excuse to not give this program a test. My experience may be completely different than someone else's. I also encourage your feedback from both this post and your experience with CrossLoop or any other remote access program for that matter.

[Update]
It was pointed out to me that CrossLooop is also a sort of open source application. I say sort of, because it uses TightVNC and then CrossLoop has their application wrapped around that. Yeah, sounds confusing doesn't it? I'll let Techknight's blog post explain it better for you. I'm not sure what the benefits to us as a consumer that this level of open source would be. Since they are using TighVNC open source code wrapped up with propriatary software, it definitely would be cheaper once all of the bugs have been worked out and there is a pro version. I'll let readers point out the other benefits.

Something Else To Do Before You Die

2007-01-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

A roller coaster with a 4th dimension! This is Eejanaika, and it is not just your average, run of the mill coaster here folks. You are sitting in a seat, and you take off onto the track. Only this time, on this ride, there is an extra set of tracks that controls what your seat is doing throughout the ride. I spins you 360 degrees while you are flying around the track. It would probably be better if you were in the superman position, but this is still nothing that USA has that I am aware of.

[Video after the jump]

Eejanaika is at Fuji-Q Highland in Japan. It holds the Guinness world record for number of inversions at 14. Other specs are as follows:

Maximum Speed 126 km/h
Lift Height 76 m
Angle of Descent 89 degrees
Track Length 1,153 m

There are also a bunch more great pics HERE.

via TechEBlog [Knuttz]

Where To Get Free Music

2007-01-09T20:41:00.001-05:00

Want quick download time without the long wait with bit torrent or some other type of peer-to-peer software? Well look no further. With this small list of music tools, you will have your music in no time from any pc at work or at home.

The first on the list is my favorite and is actually integrated in a blog post from Digital Wire. The post is one about Google's search tools and how to use Google to get some music or use it as a proxy server (a way to get around the fire wall at work). The proxy may, or may not, work for you. I am not one that recommends using proxy services at work, but, if the music is available, go for it.

[More after the jump]

This is just a post on a blog that has a type of Google search in the post. It utilizes a bounce file saved in the inner workings of the site and allows you to enter your desired search into a text field. Hit enter after you put in your artist and/or song title and you are whisked away to a Google search that looks into parent directories all over the net for the song/artist combination that you entered. After clicking on one of the Google search results, you are brought to a directory of sorts that lists what is available to you. If you see something you might like, click on it and you will be brought to a page where it should automatically play the song for you. If you like the song, go back a page to right-click and save the file to your local hard drive. I've been using this service for a while and hope that the files, as well as the blog, does not go anywhere. This is the first on the list because I use it the most and have had the most success with.

Next on the list, Sideload. Sideload is very different from the Digital Wire post's search field, because it is a website that is continually building it song base from it's users. Users create an account and are able to upload songs to their "File Locker". You then do a search on the main page or browse through the library manually flipping through the alphabet. If you think you found something you like, you then click on the song title and are brought to another page where you can preview the song. If you like it, there is a download link to download the song to your hard drive.

This one is not as good as the first on the list due to the need for subscribers and free users. Yes, there is a free service for you to get your file locker, but of the 3 packages it only makes sense to get the premium package at $40/year for the unlimited size limit of your locker. I just use it as a search to see if they have anything I like. But, again, due to the need for paying subscribers, this selection is pretty dated as well as weak.

Next up on the list, iTunes. Every once in a while I, a PC user, might be a little desperate for a song that either I or my wife needs. And at just $0.99/song, how can you say no to just 1 or 2 songs? I really just use to use iTunes for their podcasts, but have since either stopped listening to podcasts or am using digg as my podcast player/search engine.

Honorable Mentions:
This is the part of the post where you can listen to the songs, but might not necessaraly be able to get your hands on a copy of it.
1) Pandora: Great site and great selection! This is a place where you can go to listen to a ton of music and rate it as it comes to you. If you don't like 6 songs in the same hour, you are stuck listening to everything that comes. Or you can create another station and swap back and forth between your 2 stations when you limit is maxed and it will automatically skip the song you hate. Just be sure to rate it, or you might hear it again. It use to be that the songs were downloaded locally to your hard drive and then streamed to the Pandora web player. I believe they changed something since I started using this service a year ago, because the songs no longer appear where they used to appear in a temp folder. I also tried using the Pandora Jar hack with no successful results. Perhaps a reader can enlighten me on if the songs are still downloaded locally or not? Or if Pandora Jar still works?

2) Last.fm: A site where you can either search for you favorite band or song in order to listen to a song. Or where you can browse users and see what they rate as a good song. This is another site that has a great music library.

3) Pandora.fm: A fantastic site that combines both musical libraries and functionality from both Pandora and Last.fm and plays it through the Pandora player in your browser. Again, this site used to download the songs locally to a temp folder and then stream it to my browser player, but no longer functions like that.

4) Music.Yahoo: Another great site that encourages you to rate as many things as possible. I say "things" because you can literally rate just about anything that has to do with the song your listening to. Everything from the album, to the song to the artist. Similar to Pandora, there is a web based player that streams songs that you have rated, and then suggests other songs based on your ratings, allowing the player to more "smartly" predict something that you would like to hear. They have 3 different qualities, low/med/high, where you have to get the pay service for high quality. But consider saving a buck and sticking with the med or low quality and save yourself a headache when your boss starts complaining about you sucking up all of your companies bandwidth. And, again, similar to Pandora, there is a limit on the amount of songs you can skip over if you do not like it. Only this time you are stuck listening to it, or you can just reload the page.

5) Radio.Blog.Club: No rating system or ads. Just do a search and then you are given results that display user's names that have the song in their player. Click on the results to be transported to the user's main page where you are able to look through their player that has songs loaded up in it. Great if you want to listen to the full song of one of your favorites.

I'm sure that this list is just a short one and encourage any reader to let us know about any other service that they frequent. Myspace is an okay site as well. Do a search for a band and you they have a player on their myspace page. Sometimes you can download the song instead of playing it. 9 times out of 10, however, the download option is not available. And that is why myspace is here instead of the honorable mentions list. I don't think it is that good, but felt that others would mention it.

The Digg Review

2007-01-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

Digg is new now, version 3.0, and has been for a while now. I feel it is time for a review in order to point out a few things that need some changes, other than the pretty new 2.0'ish interface.

First off, you can now customize the "Front Page" stories to conform to what you want to see. Don't like a Front Page full of nothing but Wii stories? Then get rid of them! Click on the customize button, located under your "Profile" image, and uncheck the Main Gaming category. Like to read about "Time Wasters" web based games though? Then just uncheck the "Gaming News" sub-category under the Gaming catagory.

I have fallen in love with this new feature because I only have and play PC games. And ever since the ps3 and Wii came out, there have been nothing but stories about them and hacking them. It gets a bit monotonous after a while.

[More after the jump]

The top "doggs" over at digg also separated video stories from news stories. If you go into your profile, or anyone's profile, to view stories dugg, submitted or commented on, you now need to hit the "Videos" tab on the top right of the window in order to check out the funny videos that are being passed around.

This is somewhat useful if you are on the lookout for videos or news, but I do not feel that it is completely necessary. But it does save me a search where i have to check videos, so it is a useful addition.

And then there is the beta feature of Podcasts. This is just in beta so I can go on for quite a while about what needs to be adjusted and fixed. I'll save you from reading that, and just encourage that you go and check out some podcasts through it. One thing that I will comment on is that it seems that the whole podcast system is a bit Digg/TechTV/Tech biased. Taking a look at the podcast's main page now: diggnation, twit, dl.tv, tiki bar, ctrl+alt+chicken... All hosted by and starring digg peeps and/or past techTV hosts, or endorsed by digg. But, this is still in baby beta mode, so i'll leave it alone for now.

One feature that I really thing should have been changed with the new update to digg is the rss feed. The way the front page works is that the popular stories make it to the front page. And if you have an rss feed aggregator like I do, Google Reader, then you would like to subscribe to the content that make it to the front page. You don't want to be left out alone in the dark do you? No, so you subscribe to the front page. But now you can customize the content that makes it to "your" front page. Are you able to subscribe to "your" front page? Yes, you can. But, you will be subscribing to the old front page where you will see every single Wii/ps3/360 story. I don't know, maybe there is a way to get an rss feed to "your" front page, but its not with the rss button that is on the front page, thats for sure.

Linux On A Stick- Part 1

2007-01-03T14:59:00.000-05:00

I have a bit of a dream. My dream is to have no operating system on my computer at all. I would have my pc the way it is setup now, and then I would have a usb jump drive with an os of my choice. I would then boot off of the usb stick and everything I download/create would be saved on the hard drives of the pc that I am on. Right now, I am attempting to accomplish this dream in small steps.

The first step is just finding out which os I want and which one will work with all of the things that reside my pc right now. This step is complete. I am going to be using the latest version of knoppix, a version of Linux. I found this one tutorial on how to do this on PenDriveLinux.com. They recently did an update to their older tutorial, making it more streamline with just 2 simple downloads and 1 executable.

However, this is just the first step. With any search of "Linux on a stick" on google you will only end up with results that show you how to make your usb jump drive a live cd of sorts. The way the PenDrive tutorial works, the usb drive that has the "live cd" on it and it is mounted as a cd drive that is read only. So all hopes of having your sessions saved is lost. But this is a good first step. I have mulled through different versions of Linux and pinpointed one that will work for me. The next step is making it with partitions that are static and will have my sessions saved every time i boot from it.

Another part of my dream is to also have my (2 gig) usb jump drive usable on other computers as an ordinary jump drive. Where i will be able to click and drag to my heart's content on an ordinary windows operating system.

I believe my dreams have come true and the final tutorial will be an a near future part 2. There is a bit more testing that must be done. But, until that is done, please try the PenDriveLinux way to see what is right for you. Stay tuned!

[Read part 2]

Kid Friendly DVD's Suggestions

2006-12-30T17:10:00.000-05:00

I know Christmas is over, but there are still all of those annoying birthdays around the same time. I just wanted to give some of you a heads up on some DVD's that my kids love and got from Santa and/or gift certificates.

First up, the obvious. Dora The Explorer and Diego. There are a few movies out that star both of these crazy adventurous kids. And they both have DVD's out with just a few of their TV shows from their series. The Dora/Diego movies and shows feature singing, questions for the kids to help out on and plenty of Spanish. I often find my 3 year old screaming for help in Spanish, something that is frequently done in the Dora/Diego flicks.

[Plenty more after the jump]

My kids are pretty young and we quickly began both receiving and buying DVD's for their small collection. One series of videos that was frequently on was the Baby Einstein's collection. We would often just put this in and just let it play. Most of them feature classical music, fun noises, art and crazy toys that go back and forth across the screen. And as our children got a bit older, they would start repeating the songs and what little talking there was. There are a few that have mostly talking, like some language ones or the Wordsworth one, where they go around the house and talk about 6 things in each room.

The next step up from Baby Einstein's for our family was Little Einstein's. This is a show about 4 adventurous kids that travel around the world on their rocket, who's name just happens to be Rocket, while solving musical and pictorial puzzles of all sorts. Every episode features one main song and one main piece of art work. All of the songs are classical and most of the pieces of art are classical as well. This is another fun one that the kids can help out the Little Einstien's when they are in a pinch, and the music collection is great.

The latest new-found addition to our kid's video collection is Kidsongs. Something that my mother-in-law found at the dollar store, believe it or not. This is actually a tv series that, I think, has been canceled for a long time. I remember it from when I was young, but I'm 25 though, so that is probably not too long ago. This show features a pack of kids that takes over a tv studio that was shut down. The kids operate the entire studio and do their own shows as well. They do it in a similar format to a news show, only they only do songs. The songs are pretty good. The do some pretty well known ones. And now that my 3 year old is doing songs at school, she has more than enough songs to sing to me with the great addition of the Kidsongs series. My 1 year old doesn't sing that much, but she does spit out random words all the time and it is very cute.

We watch the above quite a bit. My 3 year old asks to watch them all the time. If my wife and I think that we have had too much of one or all of the shows, we just say that the stars of the show were working too hard, due to the fact that we play the DVD's so often, so they are taking a nap. Which happens to be a perfect time to either hit up the park or for the kids to take a nap along with the stars of the show. We also tried some Sesame Street videos as well as some Pooh ones. But they were not as successful as the aforementioned ones. And the Disney ones have too much of a story line for either of my kids to sit still and watch the entire movie. But we are still slowly buying the older Disney flicks when they come out so that they can appreciate them when they are older. My 3 year old loves princesses but still can't sit through the entire movie of The Little Mermaid.

These are just my suggestions, however. I know that there are quite a few other great series out there for kids. And we would have never have found out about Kidsongs if it wasn't for my mother-in-laws neighbor suggesting it to her. So, please, feel free to suggest some more in the comments below. My family would love any great additions to our ever growing collection. Plus we often get tired of the same stuff over and over and over and over... You get the idea. We'll be grateful and hope that you go out and enjoy my suggestions.

More Anonymity

2006-12-29T20:49:00.000-05:00

In addition to my previous post on staying anonymous on the net, I would now like to add a way to anonymously send text messages, with AnnonTxt. With AnnonTxt, you are able to send a text message to any number without the recipient knowing who you are. Have fun texting!

Via Gizmodo [ AnnonTxt.com ]

Firefox Add-On Of The Day

2006-12-28T17:24:00.000-05:00

Today's suggested add-on is the one and only Image Zoom. With this Firefox extension you can use the right-click shortcut menu or mouse gestures to magnify an image a little or a lot or to restore the image to its normal size.

The mouse gestures are what make this add-on particularly interesting. Right-click + left-click to instantly increase the image to a full screen size. Right-click + wheek-click to instantly return the image to its original size. Right-click + wheel-scroll to gradually increase or decrease the size of the image. This add-on is available for all versions of all Mozilla products, so there is no excuse to give this a test run.

Do you have any favorite Mozilla product add-ons? Feel free to leave a comment and tell us what is your favorite add-on. If your add-on is featured in the "Firefox add-on of the day" lineup you will get free links on my sidebar to your blog or site of choice.

Movies To Keep A Look-Out For

2006-12-28T15:48:00.000-05:00

The sequal to Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, teaser trailer is officially here. I was very disappointed with the first one, and am not going to hold my breath for this one. But Silver Surfer looks totally bad ass in this preview, and I can only assume that Galactus will be even more kick ass.

Here is the plot outline from IMDb:

The Fantastic Four learn that they aren't the only super-powered beings in the universe when they square off against the power Silver Surfer and the planet-eating Galactus.

Not much to it, which leads me to believe that it might not be that good of a movie. Although, if I had to decide now, I would like to see it in the theater around the time it comes out. Silver Surfer is totally bad ass!

The movie that actually looks pretty dam good, IMHO, is the upcoming fourth flick in the Die Hard series Live Free or Die Hard. I had my doubts going into this trailer preview, but it actually looks like a very good movie. Link to youtube trailer. Bruce Willis has actually evolved since his rolls in The Whole Nine Yards and The Whole Ten Yards. This is proven in his 16 Blocks and, the family fav, Over The Hedge. Both are worth buying.

How Is Your Home Network Setup?

2006-12-28T11:19:00.000-05:00

I was thinking of adding some new hard drive space to the 'ol home network for the purpose that people and read and write from/to it. Then I got to thinkin... What does your home network look like?

My entire home network consists of a Comcast high speed internet modem, linksys router, modded with the "$60 to $600 router" hack, Vonage modem, my pc, a shared printer, my pocket pc, my wife's laptop and a D-Link Media Adapter.

[More after the jump]

My pride and joy of the whole system is the media adapter. My wife and I negotiated a bit and decided to get rid of the bloated cable service package of Comcast's digital cable. However we did decide to get the antenna service from comcast that offers us channels 2-23. It is not an antenna sitting on top of your house, it is actually just another package that comcast offers that just happens to be called antenna. So, with our new media adapter and new $10/month cable tv package, we figured that the media adapter would pay for itself within a year. And thats dam good news to me! Anything outside of our antenna package that we wanted to watch, we would just download off of Mr. Internet.

The media adapter came with the D-Link Media Server. This was all good and well, until we started getting Divx videos. After trying other media server programs, I finally setteled with TVersity and haven't looked back since then. It's still in beta, but it handles everything I have. I haven't tested it with DVD back up files yet, however (the vob files). This media adapter is connected wirelessly across my family room and plugged into the TV through component audio/video cables. I used to have a 20' S-Video cable going from the pc to the tv and the quality was horrible. Now the quality is crystal clear!

I did tinker with the router a bit and it's Quality Of Service (QOS) settings. My vonage calls break up a lot while downloading with bit torrent program uTorrent, and I wanted to try and fix that. After some time passed I quickly gave up on QOS and just let the router to what it wanted to do. There was too much testing and tinkering that needs to be done with it, and I don't feel like spending my time on that. Otherwise, it works great and is now worth $600!

I then have my slave hard drive shared on the network as read only. It is on this drive that I have the usual "My Documents" folder. This way, whenever the master hdd decides to crash and i need to reformat, my pictures, music and movies will not be harmed at all. They will be safely tucked away on a completely separate hard drive. This drive is what the media server streams off of and what my wife looks to when she is trying to find some pictures of the kids that she wants to save to a flash drive and take to target and get some prints made.

The next planned addition is my 80 Gig hd sitting in my tower that is not plugged in and is just collecting dust. I do not have any more ide ports to plug this one into, so i have to pick up either an ide card or a 3-device ide cable. I would like for this to be a read/write area for everyone on the network and for friends that stop by that might need something off of my computer real quick. I'm lazy and never want to burn anything to a cd. I might stick it on my jumpdrive and give it to them that way, but I'm very lazy.

And thats my home network in a nutshell. Give me a shout and let me know how yours is set up. Did I do a good job? Let me know what recommendations you have for any improvements that i should do.

4 Ways To Save A Stolen Cell Phone... If You Don't Live In The USA

2006-12-28T08:47:00.000-05:00

As the title says, these methods are not available in the US as of yet. But, if you are planning on moving to the UK or Japan, you are in luck.

The most interesting way to attempt to protect your cell phone is Wired's first on it's list: The Screamer.

The Remote XT harasses UK cell-swipers with a loud, high-pitched human scream (the service puts a recording of a woman shrieking on your phone). The system activates when the owner calls a hotline. The nerve-jarring wails accompany a complete data wipe and button lockdown, creating one useless piece of plastic.

So just picture a guy walking around in some library or department store. All of a sudden you hear a loud high-pitched scream coming from the man standing next to you and it appears to be coming from his pants pocket. I would hate to be him as you read the headline of that story in the newspaper of his arrest.

Other methods include GPS tracking, holster recognition and "voice & strut" recognition.

[Read full article at Wired]

Getting Rid Of Horizontal Tab Scrolling In Firefox 2.0

2006-12-27T08:23:00.000-05:00

A new addition to Firefox 2.0 is horizontal tab scrolling. If you are not sure what it is, just open more than 15 or so tabs in Firefox. You will start seeing new arrow heads all the way to the left of the tab area. You can either use those arrows or your mouse wheel while hovering over the tabs.

I, on the other hand, do not particularly like the need to scroll to go from one tab to another. I usually have a bunch of tabs open at the same time and bounce all over the place from one to another. So, when I upgraded to Firefox 2.0, horizontal tab scrolling was the first thing that I wanted to get rid of.

[Full story after the jump]

There are a couple of ways to help get rid of the horizontal scrolling. One way is to go into about:config and change some values. But that wont work if you have the Tab Mix Plus add-on. So I will assume that most of you have that add-on and give you directions on how to stop horizontal tab scrolling. If you do not have Tab Mix Plus you should get it, its an awesome add-on.

Ok, so hit the Tools dropdown menu and click on Tab Mix Plus Options. In that options window click on Display at the top of the window then the "Tab" tab. Towards the bottom of this screen, you will see a field labeled "Tab Width". Go ahead and change that value to 22. This is the minimum width that the tabs will go to. And the resulting effects will be similar to earlier versions of Firefox where you couldn't see any of the tab info when you had a ton of tabs open. This will not completely get rid of the horizontal tab scrolling, but it will drastically increase the amount of tabs you can have open before the scrolling kicks in. And if you know of any other ways to hinder or get rid of the scrolling effect, please let us all know about it in the comments below.

Firefox Hack: How To Modify Old Add-Ons

2006-12-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

During the last Firefox update, from 1.5 to 2.0, some of your favorite ~~extensions~~ add-ons may not have been update. If thats happened to you, you are in the right place. Just follow the simple instructions below and you will be able to run your Firefox extension no matter what version the extension's home page says it is compatible with.

First step; get yourself an extension. I found that a great extension called Copy URL has not been updated for Firefox 2.0 as of yet. So go to that page, right-click on the "Install Now" button and do a "save as" to your desk top. Go to your desktop and rename the copy_url-1.0-fx.xpi to copy_url-1.0-fx.zip. If you cannot see the .xpi in the file name, open up My Computer -> Tools pull-down menu -> Folder Option. Go into the View tab and un-check "Hide extensions for known file types", then do the rename on your desktop.

[The rest of the instructions after the jump]

Once you have the file renamed, open the zip file with your choice of zip programs. Just open it, don't extract anything. Click and drag the "install.rdf" file to your desktop and open it with Note Pad or something similar. Once you have that open, you will notice, about half way down the page, something that says 1.5.0.4. This part of the extension tells Firefox what version of Firefox the extension is compatible with. Just go ahead and make that 1.5.0.4 into a 2.0.*, like this: 2.0.*. Save and close then drag that file back into the zip window you have open. Go ahead and close down the zip program that you have open and rename the .zip part of the file name back to .xpi. Then just double click the extension and Firefox will take it from there.

And you have now successfully modified an add-on that was only compatible for up to Firefox version 1.5.0.4 and made it work for the latest and greatest version of Firefox. Congratulations! Feel free to now look into any other Firefox add-on. If Firefox says that the version of the add-om is not compatible with your version of Firefox, just do the above and you're all set. This also works the opposite way, as well. Feel free to replace the max or min version number with what ever version of Firefox you have. Just be warned, some add-ons may not be meant for the version you have. A lot has changed between version 1.5 and 2.0 and the buttons may not match up any more. These instructions can also be applied to any other Mozilla product that accepts add-ons.

Firefox Hack: Multiple Profiles Open At Once

2006-12-26T14:51:00.000-05:00

I just recently decided to start tinkering with/creating some firefox add-ons. After reading the very first paragraph of many "Getting Started" sites on the subject, it was suggested to have a secondary profile to use for the development/testing of Firefox add-ons. They also mentioned how to have multiple profiles open at the same time so you don't destroy your default profile. However, with Firefox 2.0 out and some extreamly vague instruction, it was a bit difficult to get 2 profiles (my default and a dev profile) up and running.

So, just to make thing easier for all your people out there, I decided to let you know how I got 2 different profiles of Firefox 2.0 up and running. Its actually quite simple. First off, open Text Pad or note pad or any of your favorite text editors and type in the following:


@echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p "dev"
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

Change dev to whatever your profile's name is. Do a "save as" and save it as a *.bat file on your desktop. And thats it, your done. Feel free to make another one with your default profile name in it and put both in your start up folder and you'll be rockin like a Firefox pro! With this set up, you will be able to open other firefox shortcuts or internet links in the profile that was open last. There are other ways to get 2 profiles open at the same time, but those ways would want any external programs accessing firefox to open firefox in a new profile. Feel free to try out other versions or fill me in on a better way, but I am currently using the above way and have 2 different profiles of Firefox 2.0 up and running.

via hiveminds

Firefox Extension Add-On Of The Day

2006-12-26T08:42:00.000-05:00

A new addition to the blog, I wish to present to you my [somewhat] daily Firefox add-on suggestions. With this new addition I will be scouring the archives as well as the brand-spankin new add-ons for Firefox and Thunderbird on Windows platforms (sorry mac users, but I don't have a mac). I will also let you know if the add-on is compatible with Thunderbird. I recently switched to Thunderbird from Outlook 2002, so I would like to have the same add-ons between both programs and think that you would like the same.

And to start this off, I would like to suggest to you MinimizeToTray. It is with this add-on that you will be able to click on the minimize button, located in the upper right-hand corner of your Firefox browser, and have it go to the task tray, located at the bottom right-hand corner of your desktop where the clock is. It will minimize to a small, task-tray sized icon of the Firefox symbol where you can double click it to restore it to its former sized window, or you can right-click it for a shortcut menu with other options.

The only bug that is in this MinimizeToTray add-on that I found is that shortcut menu while Firefox is minimized. When you do the right-click that shortcut menu pops up as well as the shortcut menu for tinkering with the task tray. However, Minimize To Tray Enhancer, another add-on, fixes this as well as adds more customization to the new minimize functionality.

There are not that many options for this simple add-on, but feel free to go to tools -> add-ons and select the Minimize To Tray add-on, in the extensions tab, and click on the options to see how you can customize this add-on to your needs. This add-on does also work with Mozilla's Thunderbird, as well. Just right-click the big green "Install Now" button and save the file to your desktop. Then, in Thunderbird, go to the extension manager (tools -> extension manager) and click the Install button. Navigate to your desktop and select the file you downloaded and click "OK".

Video Howto Site

2006-12-22T09:36:00.000-05:00

I just found this great Howto site that does it all with videos. The site is Video Jug. They have videos that are done by the Jug staff or submitted by and/or filmed by a user of the site. I have just spent a bit of time there and already want to post about 10 videos on this blog. But, through the art of constraint and kindness of my hart, I will just be posting one and letting you know about a few others.

[More after the jump]

After scanning through the recent posts to Video Jug, I couldn't help but to post this following video for the upcoming Christmas holiday. It could sometimes be the most difficult thing to do or the most simplest. How to thank someone for a present.

VideoJug: How to thank someone for a present

Other favorites of mine include the following:
How to turn your bedroom into a sanctuary of seduction
How to throw a card through a window
And the always useful, how to tie a tie

All of the videos have tags. So, for example, if you want to see some more howto's for tying different knots in a tie, just click on the tag tie and you will be brought to a page that has other knots for you to test out for that next fancy-shmancy gala you are attending. Also, some of the videos are a bit NSFW and you will need to register an account with an acceptable date of birth in order for you to view it. The sanctuary of seduction video is an example of this. I needed to create an account in order to view it. It wasn't hard though, you don't even get an activation email.

How To Stay Anonymous On The Net

2006-12-20T21:19:00.000-05:00

With more and more sites out there that you are just itching to test, they keep asking for register information. And the easiest way to stay safe on the net is to just flat out lie on that registration form. But these days those sites are getting smarter and smarter and while asking for more information, they also want a confirmation email as well to validate at least one of the bits if your online identity you gave them. Now there are several ways to lie on the registration, still get that confirmation email and stay as safe as possible.

The first on the list is dodgeit.com. A service that creates an email address, if one does not already exist, of any name with "@dodgeit.com" at the end of it. Just put in fakeemailaddress@dodgeit.com in the registration of the site of your choice and check your email at dodgeit.com once you are done and reply to the confirmation email. And thats it. Seems easy enough, but the dodgeit service is free or it can be pay based. When it is free, anyone can check any email address they want to. They just have to type in the name just like you do. Whats so bad about that? You think it's just a harmless spam email address? When, you might want to double check some of the things you get in one of them confirmation emails. Some times it will contain the login information that you think might be available only to you. When, in reality, is accessible to anyone that visits the dodgeit website.

[MORE AFTER JUMP]

Some nice side features of dodgeit:
- Can add a dodgeit email address to a feed reader to watch as the spam comes rolling in.
- Can check this email at work since it is not pop.
- Emails get erased after 7 days.

Whats a safer alternative you ask? You can throw some money at dodgeit, or you can use the Firefox extension Tempomail. Once installed, go back into the add-ons menu and click on the tempomail extension and select settings. Put in the real email address you want to get things forwarded to and you're ready to go. Next time you hit another registration form for a site, just right-click and select tempomail. Make up some fake email address and pick how long you want to to last for and put that email address into the registration form. Then, after the time you selected, the email you originally registered with will be no good and you still got that confirmation email.

Some other things that may be asked of you with asterisks next to them would be your home phone number. There are now very easy ways to get around this now as well. The first would be Craigsnumber, no relation to Craigs List. Craigsnumber is basically the same as Tempomail, in which you input your real phone number and are then given a false number. Any calls made to this false number will then be forwarded to your real phone number. And, similar to Tempomail, you also select a time period for which this false number is in existence. So, if you just want the fake number for an hour or a week, just make it so. With Tempomail and Craigslist, you might be a bit worried about giving your real information to someone, like your real phone number in Craigsnumber and your real email address in Tempomail. While there is only a small tidbit of info on this subject on the Tempomail firefox add-on page (not Tempomail's main website), Craigsnumber has a FAQ on the subject letting us know that they will not sell any information and that the employees are legally obligated to safeguard that information.

Another was to protect your real phone number is the new Grand Central site. No, not New York's Grand Central station. This site deals with phone numbers. You pick what area code you want your virtual number to be and then pick from a list of phone numbers that are available with that area code. Then add up to 5 numbers that will be associated with your new virtual number. You can have it set up so that if anyone calls your virtual number you other phones will ring. Say you have your work phone, home phone and cell phone set up to ring when your virtual number is called. There is just a simple check box for each number. If you don't want your phones to ring just un-check the boxes. If you wish to seriously start using your new virtual number you are able to upload your outlook contacts into your Grand Central account and begin to add tags to each contact (tags available: friends, work, family and other). Then, instead of having it set so that all phones ring (which is the default setting), you can have it so that just you cell phone rings when your friends are calling, or just your work phone when your business people are calling.

All of these services are free and some, if not most, are questionable. But I encourage you to try it out to form your own opinion before you accept anyone else's. Enjoy and have a safe internet experience.

Find A Ride And Get Abducted!

2006-12-20T20:22:00.000-05:00

With cars getting more and more expensive these days you are going to have more and more people needing to hitch a ride. And with the following two sites it will make it even easier to find that ride and/or get kidnapped when doing so.

First up is Google's Rider Finder. With ride finder you will be able to see what taxi/limo/shuttle service is in your area to get you out on the road as quickly as possible. This service is tied into Google maps and is updated after you click on the "Update Vehicle Locations" button located right underneath the map. Then just click on one of the dots that represent a taxi service of some sort and give the number a call. All the phone numbers are the same for any given company in the same area, so just keep an eye open for the same color dot of your favorite service to give them a call. The only problem that i saw with this service is that some of the taxi/shuttle services don't appear to participate in the program any more. Just be sure to hit that update button a few time before you go to make that call for a ride. If the dot's don't move within the first 2 updates, then don't bother calling.

The other service is Ridester. Here you are able to plan any route you want to or see if anyone is offering a ride that way. With a feedback system, ratings system and detailed user profiles, you can find who would be the best driving companion. And you can also suggest a price for your ride, in order to differ the cost of the trip. Taking a look through the available rides, it would seem that this site is mostly for trips of a much longer duration. So, depending on what you like, you might want to take some extra time in picking a driver/rider for your trip.

Both services seem great, but it would seem that Ride Finder would be a bit more practical. But then again, you might be in the need for a cross state trip and would be able to save some money by using Ridester. Ride Finder seems a bit more safe in my opinion, but feel free to go with your gut. Just be sure to bring your towel.

via LifeHacker [Ridester]

Obnoxious Driver Wrap-Up

2006-12-20T16:34:00.000-05:00

Tired of that complete moron on the highway or that asshole taking up 6 parking spots in the parking lot? Well let the venting begin! With PlateWire and YouParkLikeAnAsshole, you are able to upload pictures, give information and tell stories about the people that annoy you on the road as well as the parking lot.

Both sites offer commenting on their stories. However, PlateWire is in a bit of an updating period and only offers a generated license plate and a story. Future plans involve user supplied pictures, video and audio. Meanwhile, YouParkLikeAnAsshole offers picture upload to add with your story.

via digg [youparklikeanasshole] & Wired News [platewire]
pic from youparklikeanasshole

How To Live a iLife gLife googLife

2006-12-19T12:37:00.001-05:00

After browsing through the feeds in my reader, I cam across an article that critiqued a bunch of readers. One of them, Google Reader, was my new one that I have just fallen in love with. So I was going to write an article about how good it was. Then I realized that I use a hell of a lot more Google products than just their reader. I am now living what I dub the googLife.

You can’t just have "g" in the title and expect everyone to know what it is, especially when compared to "iLife". You would just never know that the "g" was for Google. Hence the goog. Plus I like saying goog a lot...goog. So, without further hesitation, the list of things you need to live a googLife.

[Full article after jump]

1) Google Reader, from the Google labs section
I have used a lot of in-browser readers in my time, but none have the functionality that Google reader has.

Pros:
- I used to just read the feeds when I was at work. Now I don't have to. Since this is a Google product, I just need an internet connection and a computer in order to read my feeds where ever I go.
- Say that I still just read the feeds at work. When I get back to work from a weekend, or a long weekend, I would only find 20 new stories/articles in each feed when i was using the in-browser rss reader. Just to put this into perspective, digg's front page is one of my feeds. Now those of you that are not familiar with digg, there are a hell of a lot more articles than 20 that reach the front page over the weekend. With Google reader I get an accurate number up to 100. After 100 i1 just goes to "100+".
- want more articles from your feeds? Just keep scrolling down in Google reader. With the in-browser feed readers, I was only able to get the articles from when I first subscribed to the feed. If I wanted to go back further than that, I would have to go to the feed's website and dig through the archives. If you run out of articles in Google reader, just scroll down a bit more and it will automatically read more of the rss feed and populate them on the screen for you.

Some functions/features that Google reader lacks:
- A simple button to go from the Google reader page to your personalized Google home page. sometimes there are pc's that I’m on (take my work pc for instance that goes to the intranet home page instead of Google), making it difficult to go from the reader page to the Google home page where I have my favorite widgets (gmail, reader, clock, calendar and traffic for my area). So instead of relying on the home button in the browser, there should be a button build into the Google reader page, as well as the other Google items I will be talking about below, to go to Google personalized home page from the reader.
- There is already the ability to share some choice stories that are accessible through a feed. But a small step up would be the ability to share all of your subscribed feeds with other people, instead of just choice stories. I don't mean share all the stories from all your feeds, just what feeds you subscribe to. Sure they can probably get the hint by the handful of stories you share, but do you share stories from all of your feeds? I don't. Perhaps even the ability to visit one's Google reader home. Crazy enough to work? I think it would be cool to go to someone's reader’s page and see if they have anything interesting that I might want to also subscribe to, if not something to poke fun at them for.

2) Google personalized home page as your home page
This is a must have for the googLife. And it is especially necessary to have a handful of Google widgets on your personalized page. Yes, you do have to personalize it a bit. Some suggestions for widgets: weather, clock, traffic. Some necessary widgets to classify you as living the googLife: Google calendar, Google reader and gmail.

This leads me into number 3...

3) A gmail account
More specifically, 2 gmail accounts, because just one account won't do. You need one entirely for spam that you might be interested in the near future and one for regular use. If you have spam that you know is just completely junk and you will never be interested in it at all, feel free to use either dodgeit.com or the tempomail firefox extension.

This should be a bit more enticing these days since Google now has pop functionality. Allowing you to forward a copy of incoming email to a desired separate email address as well as being able to add your gmail account to outlook.

4) A Blogger blog
Gotta love blogs. And with googles new blogger beta, with increased functionality, it’s even better these days. Its cake to do a quick post, tinker with the html in your template to adjust your main blog page or just to double check on your adsence account. It's a bloggers world out there these days, and Google’s Blogger is extremely easy to use.

5) Google's Calendar
This one is not a necessary one for you to use extremely strictly each and every single day. This is just something to lightly use. Going away from work for a week or more? How are you going to remember the meeting you have on the Monday you are coming back? Simple! Just upload your outlook calendar to your Google calendar and check your Google calendar before you go to bed Sunday night. This can be checked in a flash if you have the calendar widget on your Google personalized home page.

6) Google docs/spreadsheets
with Google expanding more and more into the office world, this one is a must for the quick document that you wish to share between computers. Feel free to do up your resume allowing you to not have to hunt and peck for the most up-to-date version of it between your work computer, your home computer, monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

7) Google Earth
I'm talking about the free application, not Google maps here. The application is more flexible than maps. There are user options that you can customize to your needs. There are just a lot more functions in the application version than the Google maps version and I suggest you give it a try.

8) Google Notebook w/firefox extension
take notes one whatever website you are on with the firefox extension. When you start a new note, Google notebook automatically puts in the URL of the current site you are on as part of the note. After saving the note(s) you can use the maximize function of the extension to go to your Google notebook account and take a look at all of your notes on a bigger page. This application is extremely flexible and, like all googLife products, the follow you around the net to whatever pc you are on.

9) Froogle
Whether you are selling something, buying something or just looking for gift ideas froogle is the place to take a look at. And it is incredibly easy to get to as well. Just do your Google search like you normally would (from your personalized googLife home page), click on more at the top center of the page and then froogle.

10) Specialized Searches
And just to keep this list to a nice round number, specialized searches. This is where you would go if you are looking for that special search that has to do with c++ code or Linux commands. I am a programmer and work and this site is very useful.

And that wraps up the googLife list. Be sure to stick to the rules and you'll be living the googLife in no time flat. There are a lot of these products that are still in the beta phase. So I encourage you to frequently visit the Google Labs section of Google to see what is new and what has been updated and to see if there are new things that can help get you closer to living a full googLife.

My Last Hope For Selling This Stuff

2006-12-17T16:02:00.000-05:00

I have tried craigs list, with no luck. I have tried ebay before, but didn't see much the things i am trying to sell, so i skipped it. I even took them all over to Barracks Trading Post on Route 38 in Maple Shade. The dude behind the counter took time away from his busy schedule of playing online card games to inform me that they only wanted name brand stuff. I saw the amp that i want to sell behind the counter for $55. But i was more interested in getting rid of the subs instead of just the amp. So, as a last resort, I thought that i would bring them over here and try and sell them.

[Full article after jump]

First up, the amp. Jensen XA4100:

Amplifier Type Multi Channels
Bridgable Bridgable
Bass Boost With Bass Boost
Bass Boost Frequency 45 Hz
Low - Pass Frequency 40 Hz - 240 Hz
High - Pass Frequency 40 Hz - 240 Hz

Other Features
MOSFET Circuitry Yes
3 Way Ready Yes

Dimensions
Height 6.7 cm
Width 29.8 cm
Depth 28.3 cm

Miscellaneous
MPN xa4100

Product ID 20295457

I was going to sell this for $50. It was $55 at the trading post, so i just figured i would make it a nice even number.

And next up, the subwoofers. Not much to say about them here, 450W 4 Ohm 15" subs. I want to get rid of both of them at the same time, but I'll settle for anything. I was going to price one at $80 and 2 at $150.

So thats all of that then. Leave some comments if you are interested in buying anything please. I'll also accept pricing suggestions. What i really want is a place to sell them! I renewed the listings for this stuff on craigs list and skipped ebay again. The pennsauken mart would be the perfect place for getting rid of this stuff, but that closed down a while ago. Ah well. I await further comments to see where to next.

Picture People Coupon

2006-12-16T14:15:00.000-05:00

Got this in the email and thought i would pass it on to my loyal readers/visitor. Its a coupon for a free 8x10 as well as 10% off additional picture purchases.

If you get any issues with the link just click on this pic to the right and print from that page. Enjoy and have a happy holiday!

Undo TV Private Beta Is Now Open

2006-12-15T23:14:00.000-05:00

TechTV alumni Chris Pirillo (member #1) and Leo Laport (member #2) have opened up a private beta version of their "tech-centric" UndoTV where users of any sort are free to submit audio, video, text or slide shows about their favorite tech topics. Below are some shot as well as the welcome note from Chris and Leo. Enjoy some screen shots as well as the welcome note from Chris and Leo.

(my profile)

[More after the jump]

(the home page)

(Leo's profile)

(Chris' profile)

(a portion of the tag cloud)

(the first page of users along w/their stats)

Hey there!

Today, the idea of a tech-centric TV network has disappeared from the minds of Hollywood's elite. Par for the course! Passionate communities are often kept an arm's length away from their favorite broadcasted content in traditional media circles.

It's time to undo that way of thinking, don't you think?

TechTV alumni just wanted a place where we could all come together and funnel our independent efforts. "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" keeps ringing through my head - not just our existing content, but NEW stuff (and NEW faces) as well. Leo Laporte and I have done our best to set the stage for UndoTV.

The blogger Steve Borsch commented in a previous thread: "So, who decides what gets 'on' UndoTV? Who the talent is? What emerges?" The UndoTV talent base is starting with the former ZDTV / TechTV staff, previous show guests, and vetted friends. Without a base of quality content, we'd be nothing more than a video portal clone.

Everybody is welcome here.

The community (you) will determine the direction of our efforts. Certainly, some former TechTV talent has gone on to do fantastic productions far outside the realm of the tech industry. Everybody is welcome to help us undo the idea of television - helping reinvent the way community can influence the active development of a site, its content, and its superstars.

You are tomorrow's network. You control the horizontal - and the vertical, too. As such, we only want to see your own creations here. If you want to upload someone else's content, please do so elsewhere? It's the community's job to keep this community clean, cool, and collected. We hope you take that responsibility to heart.

Expect, in short time, new features and functionality, new ways to interact, and new ways to find a passionate audience for your own talents.

Yours Digitally,

Leo Laporte Chris Pirillo

Keeping Your Personal Data Safe During a Crash

2006-12-14T20:04:00.000-05:00

A long time ago my hard drive crashed and i thought i had lost everything. I was lucky enough to get my hands on some awesome software to get the data off of my one hard drive after i did a minimum install of the OS (xp home). I was extremely relieved that my kids pictures of them from the past 3 years (since they were born) as well as some wedding pics were all safely recovered. Ever since then my data has been safe.

[More after jump]

How do I do it? Quite simple actually, thanks to my old cube mate: just have 2 hard drives. On my master hard drive disc (hdd), i have the operating system in all it's flawed glory (160 Gigs). On my second hdd i have all of my personal files such as my old "My Documents" folder from the crashed hdd, pics, tunes and other material that i would be lost without if i were to loose it.

now, if my master hdd crashes again or gets "FUBAR'ed", i don't care. there is nothing on my master drive that i care about. any programs or add-ons that are on there would not be life threatening if i lost them. and i could just go download all of them again. I just have all of my torrent downloads, digital pics, and anything else go right to my secondary hdd.

If my master hdd is messed up beyond all repair i also have linux on a stick. so if, for any reason at any time, i am left without my master hdd, i just pop in the usb stick and boot from it. Until i get my master hdd fixed/replaced i just use linux off of the usb memory stick.

Bathroom Hack: Fogless Mirror

2006-12-12T20:19:00.000-05:00

Save yourself some money this Christmas season and skip buying that special someone that shotty, tiny fogless mirror that they would have to hang somewhere in their bathroom. Instead, all you need to get them is shaving cream! Thats right, good old fashion shaving cream. No, not that gel stuff, the jawn your grandpa used way back when.

All you need to do is just take the can of shaving cream and give that mirror a good spraying. You don't need that much. After you spray, just take a paper towel and wipe down the entire mirror to remove the shaving cream. And what is left behind is an invisible protection layer that will protect your mirror from the heat of the air during your shower. You can also apply some shaving cream to you glass shower door to help prevent the build up of soap scum. Then bask in your superiority after your shower as you are able to see your self in the mirror!

My Grocery Deals.com: Your One Stop for All Your Shops

2006-12-12T19:40:00.000-05:00

After a painless and free sign up over at mygrocerydeals.com, I was flying through the fliers of 5 stores at the same time! This is great if you have competing stores, like I do, in your area. A lot of the time Shop Rite will have Coke on sale while Acme has Pepsi on sale. Now I can save myself a visit to both sites and just go to one, mygrocerydeals.com, and look at both, and more, at the same time. You can also browse one at a time, as well as add items to your shopping list, all right through their website with just the click of a button. You can also visit their coupon clipping area, where you can find even more great deals for items on that shopping list of yours.

MyGroceryDeals.com [via Life Hacker]

Product Review Followup: Vonage

2006-11-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

A while back i did a post on how good vonage was and the packages and deals that came with signing up for vonage. I'll let you read through that post and just give an update in this one on how vonage is working for me still.

I still have the same package. For $25 a month, plus some taxes and fees and whatnot, i get unlimited calls to the continental us and some other places. All the good things in that other post still stand, only i found one bad thing about vonage.

Situation:
You're downloading some stuff off of the internet. Say some tunes or shows off of iTunes or something. *cough* *cough* *bit* *torrent* *cough*. Excuse me, had a tickle in the throat there. Anywho, so your downloading and the phone rings. You can hear the person on the other end perfectly crystal clearly, only they can't hear you all that well. To them you sound broken up and choppy.

In order to fix this problem you need to stop the downloads while on the phone. I was also told that if you have Quality Of Service features on your router you should be able to fix this problem. I haven't been able to tinker with those setting for vonage just yet though, but i will soon.

Other than that, vonage works fantastically. I just download at night while sleeping and everything is hunky dory. And if you did not manage to read the entire original post that i did on vonage, my offer still stands. If you want your first 2 months to be free, give me your email address and I'll send you an invite through vonage's referral program. Sign up for the same package that i have and you'll get 2 free months and you can keep your phone number. I moved from cherry hill nj to mt. laurel nj and got to keep the same phone number. It confuses the hell out of some of your bill collectors that ask you for your home phone number in order to pull up your account, but just switch the phone number to your cell number for a week or so and you'll be fine.

Product Review: The Roadmaster VRFM9 - MP3 FM Modulator

2006-11-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

After reading quite a few bad reviews, I decided to just get it. That was last June, and this is now, my review.

Some of the reviews hold true, but non of them tested them out for 4 months and then gave a review. The Roadmaster VRFM9 - MP3 FM Modulator is a small fm transmitter that plugs into your lighter adapter. You can plug into it various forms of media, such as an jump drive (usb stick), sd card or something that has a headphone jack. It comes with a cord that has 2 male ends on it. one end is to plug into the roadmaster and the other end it to plug into something like your ipod, or portable cd player or anything else that has a normal headphone jack on it. I just use a usb stick.

this thing is compatible with wma and mp3 format. I only use mp3 format, but every once in a while i run into a wma on my computer and want to toss it on there.

Pros:
For those of us that do not have an ipod, or something similar, this is very convenient. You do not have to burn cd's or tapes, if people still have that in a car, to listen to your favorite music. All you have to do is pop out the media, in my case its the usb stick, plug it into your pc and throw on whatever you want to listen to. The size limit is based on what you can afford in terms of size on the usb stick. I got a my 512 stick from work and use that one. I got that one for free, but i also have a 2 Gb one that i got for $40 at comp usa. The size just keep getting bigger and bigger and the prices keep getting lower and lower. So getting new music out of this thing is as easy as click and drag.

Cons:
The sound quality is ok. It does not carry out the bass well at all. I'm into blasting music every once in a while, but i feel pretty embarrassed doing so when using this. The louder the volume, the closer to a tin can sound you get. But if you don't listen to your music loudly, then you should be ok. I managed to make due with it.

As you can see from the pictures, there is a pivot point in the center of the device. It work quite well, for a while that is. These days, if i pick it up to read the display, it just flops right back down. No resistance at all when it falls down. Just like a rock in air. I have managed to deal with this as well. The display is dangerous to read while driving anyway since it is so small (perhaps another con).

and the last con is that something is a bit hokey about it now. Sometimes if i pick it up to go to the next song i get some type of error or something. The song will either start skipping or just start making some bizarre noise. Eventually the noise/skipping stops and the song restarts, but if you just hit the next button it will move on to the next song and be ok.

Sure there are a lot more caviates for this product, but I'm sticking with it. It still works, knock on wood, and it is really easy to put new songs on it. I always hated having to burn a new cd and have a bunch of old cd's lying around collecting dust. Sure i could use cd-rw's, but then i would have to go out and buy them. And i also managed to find this product for $30 at walmart, so i got it for my birthday last june. I'll keep you posted on the deterioration of it over the coming months, but i say buy it for now. Buy this or something similar to it.

Vonage For Teh Win AND How To Get Cheaper Cable!

2006-11-01T20:27:00.000-05:00

So me and the family recently moved to a condo. With this condo came a condo association. When we moved, we had direct TV for satellite television. However, the condo association did not allow the dish to either get strapped down to the side of the house or put it on a pole in the front of the house. It would be in the way of the landscapers if it were on a pole. It turned out to be ok, because that let us out of our direct TV contract and let us get this for our TV needs. This media adapter allows me to beam whatever the hell is on my computer right to my TV without wires between the two. It's freaking awesome!

My wife, however, did not like the idea of having to wait to watch whatever she wanted to watch. She did not want to wait until it was available from the internet, she wanted to be able to watch whatever whenever. Well, we managed to come to a compromise. We got the $250 media adapter and got the antenna service from comcast. No, this service is not some antenna sitting on top of your roof. the service is just called that. there is still a cable from comcast running to the house with the service on it. the service just has the local channels, like 2-25 or something.

and that leads me on how to get cheaper cable. I was on the phone with comcast and wanted some prices. Their site is not that good on just giving you the gist of things. So the lady is offering me this $33 each plan where you get voip, internet and cable from comcast for $33 each. I'm sure you have heard of the deal. I said that i did not want that, i already have vonage and internet. So then she throws some "basic cable" package at me. All i wanted to know was the price, so i asked how much. She said $50. I said "too much, whats cheaper." The very next priced package down from "basic" at $50 is Antenna at $10...TEN!! How do you go from 50 to 10?! I have no idea, but that sure as hell was in my price range. And, get this, since i only had the internet before i was paying $60 a month for that. Now that i have another service from comcast my internet service went down to $40!

So, lets calm down and take a recap of everything thats going on here. I had internet for $60. I managed to beat out the cheapest TV package for $10 and then my cable service went down to $40. I think that deserves a woot!

And thats how to get cheaper cable. The vonage part of the title comes in when i was talking to the lady about getting cheaper packages and she starts to talk about comcast's voip service. i told her that i already have vonage. Then, she starts feeding me some bull story about how comcast's voip isn't like the other ones and how it comes through a separate line. Long story short, it was bull. Voip is voip. what i wanted was for me to be able to download a lot of stuff and not have it eat up my bandwidth and mess up my phone calls. This comcast rep was telling me that the voip comes to my house in a completely sepperate line and will not effect the service of voip or internet at all. BULL! But, just to double check and make sure that it was too good to be true, i called back later and spoke to another person. If i got voip from comcast it would be set up the exact same way i have everything set up now. The only way to get around that is to have a router with quality of service settings. I managed to get my linksys router flashed with a different rom, following this procedure, which added some QOS settings. I'm pretty new to the whole QOS, but i did manage to figure it out for programs running on my computer. Just not the router...yet.

And thats it. I got cheap ass cable, a bit cheaper internet, vonage still and a media adapter that will pay for itself in a little bit over 4 months since i did not get the $70 digital cable package.

Also, i did do a previous post on the goodness of vonage. Feel free to give it a read. It was so good that it was even featured in Voip Central! My offer still stands, by the way. First 2 months are free if I use the refer a friend deal for on you. Just leave me with your email address and I'll shoot you an invite to vonage.

Mach 3 vs. Mach 3 Turbo vs. Gillette Fusion

2006-10-31T21:27:00.000-05:00

I just moved to a new place and the previous owner got some left over mail. It was a free Gillette Fusion. I decided to take this opportunity to give it a test. If this is some type of illegal breaking into someone's mail or something i would gladly give the previous owner the razor. But, since i don't hear any cops breaking my door down, i think I'll just continue on with my comparison of the razors.

Mach 3:
I first decided to try out razor blades when i started shaving. I dabbled with electric razors, but all i got was an extremely irritated face and neck. Soon after i began to shave the mach 3 came out. I got one free in the mail and thought what the heck, I'll give it a go. I loved it from the very first stroke.

This blade has a built in moisture strip and 3 blades for a nice close shave. it was unlike any other blade i have ever tried before. and since it was free, it was even better (at the time i was living with my parents and they bought all of the blades for me).

Mach 3 Turbo:
When the turbo version of the mach 3 came out I got one as soon as i could. My next shave was the best one ever.

The only difference between the mach 3 and the mach 3 turbo is the space between the 3 blades. With the turbo, the blades are spaced further apart. and with my thick hair it was just great. This one still has the moisture strip and some weird rubber things at the opposite side of the strip and 3 blades in between. Like i said, same as the regular mach 3 only the blades have more room between them for the hair to go.

Gillette Fusion:
With all of the ads going on for all of the fusion stuff, i was a bit disappointed when i tried this one out.

the Gillette Fusion is the same as the mach 3 only with 5 blades instead of 3. After using the mach 3 turbo for years and years, i put down the fusion after the very first stroke.

the problem: the blades have the same spacing as the mach 3, not the mach 3 turbo. granted it was about 3 or 4 days since my last shave when i did test out the fusion, but i shouldn't have to change my shaving habits depending on what razor i have. It was a bit disappointing since the fusion razor has a trimming razor on the reverse side of the blade. perhaps the mach 3 turbo guys will jump on that soon.

Conclusion:
Mach 3 turbo for the win. with the spacing in the blades, this razor is the best shave you can get with a razor. And the design is so good that i was using the same blade for about 4 months. I decided to swap out the 4 month old blade for a new one when the moisture strip looked like it was deteriorating.

Suggestion for you (men):
don't take my word for it, try them out for yourself! I have gotten so many razors in the mail for free i started giving them away to other family members. They do this because the real money is made when they sell the blades. Its freakin $16 for 8 blades for crying out loud! I'm not sure if that is the actual price, but i do know it's dam close.

Anyway, free samples are available online:
free fusion
free mach 3
free mach 3 turbo (sorry, i can't find any free sample sites. perhaps one of the other readers can help me out?)

Suggestion for you (women):
you can either hit up the above sites for a free sample or you can hit up the free Gillette Venus site

Suggestion for you (Gillette):
All of the above discussed razors are Gillette products. So, Gillette, keep the good stuff coming. Just keep making "turbo" versions of them all.

The Ether Thing

2006-10-30T20:32:00.000-05:00

I'm back to trying the Ether thing again.

I think i did a post about this before, but i never got any calls from the Ether community. I have changed my listing, an ad about your services offered, a few times and still no calls. In between the times that i have changed my listing there was a long period of several months in which i have completely forgotten about the entire Ether thing. But I'm back on the wagon again.

the first listings i created basically said that i am a jack of all trades when it comes to computers and laptops. but then i heard the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" and wanted to change it. I didn't want to come off like a phony when i know that i can help others with their computer problems. so the next set of listing were short and to the point and consisted of something about no "beating around the bush" in an attempt to "level" with the community. I wanted to be more straight forward than, what i believed, the rest of the Ether providers were/are.

but still no luck! not one phone call from anyone in need of support. I am extremely capable of helping out with pc/laptop troubles. i have helped friends and family and feel that i have out geeked the Geek Squad. And yet my phone does not ring. So i decided to put a new spin on the whole ether thing. I offer my services for $5 for 10 minutes, then we move the call to remote service mode vie logmein, a free service that lets me poke around on your computer and try to find what might be wrong. the first 10 minutes of the remote service are free and then we can talk price after that. Hell, i can even physically repair your pc for you if you live in the Mt. Laurel/Moorestown are of southern NJ!

i have tested logmein on several of my friend's and families computers with fantastic results. of course, it does work better with any speed internet connection but dial up, but i think i might be safe there since, i feel, that the number of people that still have dial up services is getting smaller and smaller.

so i just though i would let off of you readers know that if you or any of your friends or family members have any trouble with their computers to give me a call. With other companies (comp usa, best buy, circuit city...) charging $60 to just look at your computer, you can't go wrong! If i can fix your computer in 20 minutes (10 through Ether and then 10 free minutes via remote connect) you will have your computer fixed for FIVE FREAKIN DOLLARS! That is just plain bananas! Hit up the Ether button in the side panel if you are interested and I'll talk to ya soon!

Look Like A Mac, Get Infected Like A PC

2006-08-12T09:58:00.000-04:00

After you are through with installing the following programs you will have your pc looking like a mac and running like a pc! It's just a couple of programs that hide the usual pc stuff while the mac stuff is running.

The first program is RK_Launcher. This program put a movable, expandable, customizable doc on your desktop. It utilizes high quality dock icons, that you can pick and choose yourself, to represent all the programs that you click and drag onto the dock. Don't bother trying to edit the itemlist.conf file to get your programs on the dock or to move the around. You can just drag the icons around on the dock, or just click and drag the quick launch programs onto the dock. The latest build can be found on their forums, and does contain vast differences between the earlier builds. This is still in beta, but is a very good program. And with an already impressive beta version 0.41 out now, I think we will be seeing a lot of innovative add on's by the time 1.0 comes rolling out. You already have the option to move it on any side of your desktop, and it does a great job on hiding the entire task bar.

The second mac-like addition to the pc is yahoo's widget engine. With everything from a fuzzy clock widget to an air fare widget, you can find anything to your liking.

Along with the above programs some needed desktop cleanup was a necessity One of the standards that comes with my new dock is a recycling bin, so the old xp one had to go. The best, and quickest, way I found to do this is with this simple registry edit. After the edit is complete, go over to your desktop and do a rick click and refresh. Your recycling bin is now gone! Another thing that I did was add gaim to my collection of programs on the dock. I was a fond user of trillian, but it kept minimizing to the task tray instead of the task bar. When things minimize to the task bar, they will minimize to your new dock. However, they will not minimize to the dock if they minimize to the system tray. A trillian thing that might be fixed with future releases of RK_Launch.

And the final program added to the desktop was Brutus, a one click application for shutting down, locking or logging off. The window key button on the keyboard does still work, but if you want to keep the illusion of having a mac going you might want to give this a try. And for the one-click shut down just drag and drop the Brutus shut down button onto the dock and your good to go.

All of these programs are free to download and use. I did not spend one cent on getting them and they are all full releases, not a timed trial. And, after a bit of searching for icons, I found that deviantART had the most complete and best selection of icons. All of the icons that I found at deviantART were free. The site, however, was blocked at work, so i had to wait till i got home to find all of the good free icons.

So now you can just sit back and enjoy your new mac, only you can play your favorite pc games on it and have all of the security flaws as well! Besides, it will give you something to do over the weekend!

Some before and after pics:

The Results: Ask.com Vs. Google.com

2006-07-26T09:22:00.000-04:00

A while back I posted that I would completely abandon google.com for my preferred search engine and move to ask.com. This test was inspired by an article at Econimist.com that interviewed the Ask's boss, Jim Lanzone. Inspired by his enthusiasm towards ask.com, I decided to leap head first into the search engine and did not use Google for one whole month.

The results after the jump!

I thought about doing this in pro's and cons, but that won't be necessary. At this point in time, I feel that Google is just a better search engine. Don't get me wrong, I did get some results with ask and I did like ask. Ask.com has a great image database. I got more results with ask.com than Google’s image search, not much more but more. One good thing that you might like is that ask.com has "Adult Material" images. Anyone that has searchable free pr0n get a thumbs up from me! Sorry, but I’m a straight guy and that's how I think. Ask.com also has some nice sidebar of search tools. I didn't really find the need to use them that much though. But there is one that is worthy of a mention. It is called "my stuff". Similar to di.li.co.us, you are able to save search results online. Say you do a search and you come up with one page that you really like. Instead of going to that site and then bookmarking it, you can just click on the "save" that is next to the url of the page in your search results.

However, there were more noticeable caveat to using ask.com. Since it is not one of the more used search engines, they do not have a lot of cached sites available just yet. I have been seeing more and more, however, cached sites as the month went on. Another is that there are no "groups", as in Google’s groups, to expand on your search some more. A lot of times I have found that the answer is more clearly printed in the groups section of Google than on some website page that is full of ads and other subjects. You can search blogs and feeds with ask.com, but it’s just another website page that will be cluttered. And for my last caveat, c++/UNIX searches. I work and tinker with c++ code as well as UNIX distributions. And most of the time, when searching for c++/UNIX commands on ask.com, I often got back gibberish that was often in a foreign language, usually Chinese or something similar. I do more searches for c++/UNIX commands/code than any other search that I perform, so to get the results I did with ask was a real pain in the butt. And that is where Google comes back into the picture. Not only did I get better search results from Google’s home page on the c++/UNIX commands, Google also has the UNIX search page that also is extremely handy for c++ searches, not just UNIX.

So I'm back to using Google all the time now. I do go back to ask.com for my images search. And ask.com also has an "Adult Material" feature on their main search page as well, not just their images. And you can also customize that adult material alert to be shown or not shown, which is sort of like a parent filter if you kids use your pc at home a lot. That way, if they are searching for something that might be considered a little risqué. You get a little alert and a link:

Alert: Filtering has occurred which reduced direct exposure to sexually explicit content.
View all Adult Web results

That "View all adult web results" is the link that, if clicked, will display the adult material. you can make it so that it is not displayed and thus no adult material will be viewed. But my kids don't use my computer, so I’m sticking with Google for now. Perhaps, in the future, ask will be more developed so that can completely replace my search engine needs.

Digg Version 3 Is Now Live And Doing Great

2006-06-27T07:39:00.000-04:00

I figure that since every other blogger out there has a similar post, it was about time for me to get one as well. Digg.com just rolled out their newest version of the site. It has a pretty new GUI (graphical user interface) and a butt load of more categories for you to submit stories on.

The newest categories are in a beta status right now, so only registered digg.com members can post to them as well as view them. However, if you are an unregistered user, you can only view the Technology section of the site. The digg blog states that when all of the bugs are worked out over the next week or so the beta status will be lifted. So if you are attempting to view the newest material on the site that is outside of the tech area, just register or log in.

These new sections of digg.com include world/business news, videos and entertainment. And those are not including the new sub categories! There are a lot more sections to conform to what you want to post on digg now, so we should see a lot less more of those "This is not tech news! What the F are you posting this for?!" comments. Along with the new categories comes new content. I don't know about you, but I use the NewsFox extension for firefox for all of my tech news sites, and my digg.com feed has been blowing up lately. Normally I have 15 or so new posts to read when I come to work in the morning. These days I have 40+ topics to catch up on.

And with the new material digg is churning out, you can bet that it will be giving all of the other news/tech news sites out their a run for their money. Not just slashdot.org will be chocking on digg's dust as digg continues to change, but others as well.

Ether Is Coming To Town

2006-06-26T12:49:00.000-04:00

A very long time ago, I tried getting into ether beta. I did not manage to get into their beta, however, but they are now taking the next step by going into "zeta" mode. I am now a member of ether and will be giving it a go.

Ether is a site that anyone can sign up for. You can be one of two people in ether. One is the type of person that offers their services to the public. This person can make his/her own hours as well as rate of pay. The other person is the one that is purchasing these services.

The services are limited only to your imagination. However, if you are a little to "out there" you might not be getting paid much. I have become a member of the ether world to offer my services as "Tech Guru" to help people out with some computer troubles that they might be having. I am able to connect remotely to a pc, which works best with broad band connections on both ends, to help with anything from installing some software to setting up a bit torrent client on your pc. You also get an ether "business card" in html format for any website you might have. Mine is on the 'ol side bar.

Finaly A Reason To Ditch That "Baby On Board" Sign

2006-06-26T12:29:00.000-04:00

There is a new sign coming to town that will soon replace your cleaver "baby on board" sign that keeps you immune to that crazy driver coming along and slamming you in the rear end for no reason. Now you can sort of talk to him!

With the hands-free remote controlled new, and soon to be new and improved, Driv-e-mocion you can shoot that crazy driver a frown, a smile, a "thanks" or a "back off". That will keep you safe from any harm at all...maybe.

Anyway, it is also soon to be new and improved because the current one mentioned above and pictured above is now out of stock and not being supplied anymore by the manufacturer that was linked to above. They are now developing/making a "new and improved" version. So hopefully the boys over at Hack A Day will get their hands on one and make it so you can put what ever vulgar comment or hand gesture your mind can think of! And with prices starting at $16 (USD), it shouldn't take long.

The Most Ultimate Satellite TV Package Ever!

2006-06-26T12:08:00.000-04:00

I recently ditched Comcast as my cable TV provider and adopted Direct TV instead. It's actually an ironic situation, too. I live right next door to a Comcast corporate center, and the new dish is pointing in the Comcast's building general direction. Well, I think it is quite humorous anyway.

Anywho, Direct TV is rolling out a new package that would attract anyone with their service. The new package is called TITANIUM™, and includes every channel, every movie, every ppv, every sporting event, every adult channel...you get the idea. You get it all, as well as up to 10 high def DVR receivers for all of those TV's in your house, and a 24/7 concierge service! And you can have this all, for the low low, once a year cost of just $7,500 (USD). Yeah...I guess that's kind of the catch. It will cost you an arm and a leg. Hell, you could get a car for that amount of cash! But can you watch the tour de france in high def while ordering plane tickets for a trip to vegas at the same time in some lousy car? They do not give the details of the concierge service yet, but flight tickets and event tickets are the basic function of the typical concierge. And the service will be available in just a few days, June 28, 2006. Can anyone spot me a few several thousand grand?

[via Gear Live]

The Bars That You Shouldn't Frequent

2006-06-26T12:03:00.000-04:00

With more and more news coming through these days about RFID tags it was only a matter of time before they became an everyday application. Only the application I am talking about is not for sticking an RFID tag into your hand, but for insertion into your favorite bottle of liqueur.

Yes, thats right. There are now more and more bars adopting Beverage Tracker Software that can, and does, keep track of the bartender's pours that go into your drink. So you might want to ask the hostess what type of tech they have going into the booze bottles before you decide to finalize that reservation if you intend to be drinking a lot of cocktails.

Vid and pics after the jump.

So you might want to visit that local hole in the ground by your house that is BYOB instead of hitting up the latest Vegas Hotel/Casino to adopt such ways to save money.

I'm Back

2006-06-26T11:15:00.000-04:00

Hello out there in blogger land! I'm just letting everyone know that I am now back and will be on a regular posting schedule now. I must say that I am glad to be back, Florida was way too hot!

Vacation Notice

2006-06-17T12:28:00.000-04:00

I just started reposting to my blog, and I am going on vacation already. Me and the fam are heading to Florida for the week. Posting will pick back up Monday June 26. See ya then!

Ask.com To Dominate Google [In The Future]?!

2006-06-16T12:52:00.000-04:00

Just to get things out of the way here, you might be asking yourself "Self, who is this ask that the King of all Ryan's is talking about?" Ask is the search engine formerly known as Ask Jeeves, actually a quite popular search engine. They dropped Jeeves last February.

Now that thats out of the way, in an interview between the Economist.com and Jim Lanzone, the boss over at the top search engine #4 Ask.com, Jim has stated a few flaws that exist between the top 3 search engines and why he sees that Ask.com will be the prevailing search engine...After a long period of time that is.

More after the jump.

Jim actually has an overall theory on the subject, using the old physics formula for momentum. Anyone remember the formula from school with out me having to say it? To get this article done with sooner, it is mass times velocity. The true winner of the most momentum, of course, is Google with the distant runner up's being Yahoo, MSN and Ask.

Keeping with the momentum theme, as of last April, Google has a commanding mass of 43% of the users that use search engines. This value actually climbs up to 50% after including AOL, which uses Google's search technology called the PageRank algorithm. This algorithm, Jim thinks, will be the downfall of Google, since it just takes into account the amount of times a link is clicked on. Much as a link creeps up the pages and ranks in your Google search results, "the best academic papers tend to get the most citations in other research". More on that later. The first on Jim's list to critique, because of this algorithm, among other things as well. Google, by far, has the most mass, as stated above, but due to not having a very clear strategy, they seem to be just "dabbling aimlessly" around the Internet. Google doesn't know if they want to be the best search engine or the best over-the-Internet-office-software-provider.

Then comes Yahoo!. Do I need to use the double punctuation marks there? I'll skip it for the rest of this post and lose the "!". Yahoo, with a mass of 28%, has recently stated that they are not out of the search engine race to become the best of the best. They, in fact, just like any business, desire and thrive to become the best search engine. They were actually using Google's algorithm, and soon realized that this was a weakness, because thats where the money was. Yahoo has people working to refine their searching engine with the desire to combine "the best of people with the best of technology”. This just means that through the various products that yahoo has (search engine, instant messenger,...) they will be able to keep track of what everyone likes through either a ranking system or tagging system. Jim describes that as "taking a long walk for a short beer." I agree, who wants to keep tabs on all of the stuff that they like while surfing the net? I would think that, due to all of the security programs and spam programs out there, that people would want the complete opposite; online anonymity, where no one knows anything about you so they cannot keep a growing rap sheet on you or your ip address.

Next up is MSN, with a dwindling 13% of mass. MSN, or Microsoft, has identified Google as it's sole competition and is scrambling to extend it's clutches to grasp as much of the Internet as it possibly can. However, Microsoft tends to jump into the pool a bit late and needs to scramble to stay afloat. We see this as fact since Google has launched multiple programs that are Internet based that Microsoft is now attempting to copy, such as Google Maps Vs. Microsoft Local. Last winter, MSN actually started negotiations with AOL to attempt to gain more mass in it's Internet search field. Google, as we know, went a bit more aggressively towards acquisition of AOL and won it in the end. Microsoft has also hired formal company rivals in an attempt to gain more ground as well, such as Ray Ozzie, to attempt to gain a commanding lead in online activity.

And yet, in the eyes of Mr. Jim Lanzone, Ask.com will prevail. So he hopes anyway. Ask.com actually as the least bit of momentum, however if you break down that equation into mass and velocity, Ask has the most velocity. Last year Ask.com started out with 6% market share (read: mass). But in just 4 short quarters, it has grown by 35%. This is the most growth when compared to Google's 17% while Yahoo and MSN have both lost shares. What is Ask.com doing differently? Jim is very proud to talk about Ask.com's search algorithm's. Ask.com is calling it's algorithm "ExpertRank". This algorithm does use something similar to Google, where it takes into account the amount of traffic it has incoming to a link, but differs since it first groups, or “clusters”, pages and links by theme. This algorithm "finds the pages that are most popular among experts on a particular subject, a method that often returns better results than Google's. Ask also uses these thematic clusters to suggest the best ways to narrow or expand a search, a feature called “zoom” that is very popular."

Chris Sherman of SearchEngineWatch thinks that Ask is as good as Google for general web search—but better than Google for finding online maps and images. Ask, he thinks, is therefore starting to resemble Apple in the computer industry, which has a small but dedicated following of fans who consider the Macintosh operating system superior to the dominant Windows system by Microsoft (a comparison that is sure to make Messrs Brin and Page at Google cringe).

After reading various articles about Ask.com, I was very pleased by the strides they have made and with the excitement that Jim Lanzone has. So I pledge to give Ask.com a try for a month. Starting today I will no longer have FireFox's Google start up page as my home page. I will change it to Ask.com and leave it that way for one month to give it a test. I liked the change from IE to Firefox, but it did take some time getting used to it, so i think a month on Ask will allow me to adjust. Wish me luck!

Read full Economist.com article here

Hide That Power Stip!

2006-06-16T10:55:00.000-04:00

EVOline has come out with a nifty little power strip, called the Port, that is hidden beneath your desktop, kitchen counter or even the kitchen cabinet. Just put the tube in, plug in the power cord to the unit, and then power away. This would even be a great father's day present for that perfect addition to dad's workbench out in the garage. It even comes with different colors and/or with lights! Perfect for just about any situation. Sleekness don't come cheap though with prices starting at about $100 USD, dad might feel a bit cheated if this is the only thing he will be getting from you for father's day.

Ozzie Gets a Promotion!

2006-06-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

No, not that Ozzy. The Ozzie I am talking about is Ray Ozzie. Yesterday afternoon, at Microsoft's TechEd 2006 conference in Boston, Billy G gave journalists a better story than they were hopping for. Bill made the announcement that he will be retiring in July of 2008. The man stepping up to the plate as Microsoft's new Chief Software Architect will be current CTO Ray Ozzie, while Steve Ballmer will remain CEO.

Ray Ozzie started off by earning his bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he first learning about computer-supported cooperative work. His experiences at UI sparked his interest in software development and collaborative systems which influenced him throughout his career and made him what he is today.

More on Ozzie after the jump.

During his flourishing career, Ozzie was one of Lotus Symphony and Software Arts Inc.'s key developer for TK!Solver and VisiCalc. He then moved on to become the founder and president of Iris Associates Inc., where he created Lotus Notes. Then, in October 1997, Ozzie founded Groove Networks, home of Microsoft Office Groove.

Along his travels from business to business, Ozzie was named PC Magazine's Person of the year. He was also inducted into the Computer Museum Industry Hall of Fames as well as the InfoWorld Hall of Fame. These are just naming a few of Ozzie's awards that he received throughout his career. Good Luck Ozzie.

Money

2006-06-15T09:56:00.000-04:00

I am going to attempt to make some changes around here and see if i can't make some money on this thing. I'm going to ditch all of the blog mad stuff and quite possible erase all of the posts and just start over.

I may or may not keep the layout. I would like for this blog to be both IE and firefox friendly. Whenever I take a look at this blog in ie, the right tab doesn't work quite right.

Just a heads up to all you readers out there. Stay tunes for major changes over the next month or so. I will also be ramping up the posts to stick with the 'ol tech news theam that i origianlly had in mind for this blog.

The Official Terry Tate Trilogy

2006-03-16T16:40:00.000-05:00

This all started with a simple rebok comercial. And has now become way too popular at my work.

Videos after the jump.

Part 1) Terry Tate: Office Linebacker

Part 2) Terry Tate: Office Linebacker- Sensitivity Training

Part3) Terry Tate: Office Linebacker- Going on Vacation

Gamers: Be Prepared To Cream In Your Pants

2006-03-15T10:13:00.000-05:00

Need to borrow a video game? I probably won't have it, I usually stick to PC games. But I sure as hell know that this guy will have it! And if he doesn't have it, he will soon, because he looks like he is trying to buy every video game and consol out there.

More pics, just hit the Read More link below.

via TV Game Paradise

If You Bike, You Might Want This

2006-03-15T10:12:00.000-05:00

If you are a biker, then this is the product for you. Airfix, by Blackburn, is the all-in-one bike fixer. This bad boy sports a 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8mm hex key, Torx T-25 wrench, chain tool, steel core tire lever, Phillips/flathead screwdriver, a Co2 cartridge tire inflator with safety switch and a lifetime warranty. If you like the Airfix, head on over to Blackburn's site and check out the rest of their bike gear.

Need A Place To Vent?

2006-03-15T10:09:00.000-05:00

Someone or something pissing you off? Well there is a place for you now! No, not your blog or some forum! Snubster! Snubster is a place where you can go and literally make a list of things, people, places or animals that are good to you, bad to you, or are now, or soon will be, dead to you if they keep on pissing you off.

The idea behind snubster stemmed from the creator's boss. The boss, Doug, placed a dry-erase board on the wall of the company’s lab that the employees could put down the name of a person and the beef they have with that person. After the creator of snubster, Bryant Choung, came across his very own name on the list, he promptly erased it, thus bringing to light the flaw in the boss's plan to boost morale or productivity or something. So, in order to make a better system of lists, Bryant moved the list off of the dry-erase board to the internet, and has dedicated his site to Doug.

So are you are having trouble telling your boss, friends or loved one(s) about some ass that is pissing you off beyond belief? Have you have told your boss, friends and/or loved one(s) about sed ass and they answer "Meh." and just brush it off and not realize how the entire situation between you and this ass is, in fact, a very serious matter in your mind (something that seems to happen a bit much between me and my wife)? Or do you just want to vent about your sucky booking agent, crappy lawyer, or people that show up late for work and can't go to lunch with you to Burger King to grab a King Kong Triple Whopper and a KFC half gallon mega jug of soda? Well then snubster is the right site for you! The site also features a feed at the top of the page randomly lists the site's subscriber's beef with other people, letting the entire world know that "Yuri Koester is On Notice because not drinking with me in dc", by Anton Johnson or "Wal-Mart Electronics is Dead To Me because Because stuff from there stops working affter 6 months", by Ted Sbardella.

Pissiors That I Do Not Want To Piss In

2006-03-10T07:39:00.000-05:00

Just some weird urinals that I might skip and pee in the toilet instead. But if the bathroom has these for pissers, you can just imagine what they have for toilets. Probably something to do with one of them Real Dolls.

More crazy pics after the jump.

Uhh, yeah, that looks like a camera, and there are also robotic arms that can probably do something very harmfull to your "member." And it can probably talk, too.

Cingular Wireless And AT&T Wireless To Merge

2006-03-07T11:13:00.000-05:00

Yep, that's right, AT&T, AT&T wireless, and Bell South, Cingular Wireless, are to merge. You might be asking your self: "Self, didn't AT&T and Cingular already merge?" Well, you would be correct... sort of anyway. Come, let us hop into my Delorean and take a trip back in time and look upon just what the hell is going on in the wireless world from then until now.

The Background:
A long time ago, in a valley far far away, Silicon Valley that is. It all started in 1947, when the fat cats at AT&T Bell Labs invented wireless (or cellular) phone service. Shoot forward in time to 1984 where AT&T is the end-all-be-all phone company. Some courts thought that this was just a tad bit monopolistic and made Bell Labs split into a total of 8 smaller companies. These companies are Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, US West, Bell South, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, and AT&T. Shoot forward again, to the late 1990's, where one of these "Child-companies" of AT&T, Southwestern Bell, starts buying up a few local phone companies, including PacBell (or Pacific Telesis), Southern New England Telecommunications, and Ameritech, forming what we now know as SBC Communications.

Read more after the jump!

Then, in 2000, SBC got together with BellSouth and formed Cingular Wireless, the second big merger. The fist being NYNEX, General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) and Bell Atlantic forming Verizon in 1998. This brings us to now, where we have Verizon, Cingular Wireless and AT&T. AT&T wireless is included in with Cingular Wireless. AT&T split into AT&T and AT&T Wireless, and AT&T Wireless joined in with the Cingular merger in 2000. Now Cingular Wireless and AT&T are going to merge into one huge company.

Here is a chart if I lost you along the way:

The Problem:
Here comes the weird part, out of the 8 companies that came about from the first split up of AT&T back in 1984, 5 of them are about to become one company! After thinking about this for a bit, I guess it is ok since there is more competition on the market for wireless technology. Either way, the stock holders at AT&T much have some fat bank accounts, because Verizon, which is now Verizon and Verizon wireless, and the soon-to-be AT&T/Cingular all came from the same company.

After reading the press release on the AT&T/Cingular merger and some other sites, I realized that there will be a lot more people pissed off. First off, Duane Ackerman, chairman and CEO of BellSouth, said that "This was the right time for this merger. This combination is good for our employees, our customers and our stockholders." So let’s go through his list.

Ackerman says that this merger is good for their employees. AT&T plans to eliminate about 36,000 positions between now and 2008. If I were an employee of AT&T or Cingular, I wouldn't be too happy right about now. Then he continues and says it is good for the customers. I don't know about you, but everyone I knew that had AT&T before the first AT&T/Cingular merger was extremely pissed off when they merged. They had problems with service on their cell phone as well as with customer service. And with the problems they brought to customer service they just go the run-around. The main excuse they received from the customer service rep was "That's a feature that AT&T had, which was eliminated with the merge." Now they are going to merge again! And I don't care about the stockholders...they are rich to begin with. They need to start giving me some of their money.

I feel quite board with this article after reading and writing it. I wonder if journalists feel the same way after reading their own stories a bunch of times. So I think I'll spice things up a bit with the new X-Men trailer!

Word Of The Day

2006-03-06T16:58:00.000-05:00

Today's word of the day is "Caveat." The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines caveat (pronounced kah-vee-ott) as

1 a : a warning enjoining one from certain acts or practices b : an explanation to prevent misinterpretation c : a modifying or cautionary detail to be considered when evaluating, interpreting, or doing something
2 : a legal warning to a judicial officer to suspend a proceeding until the opposition has a hearing.

And one of Google's definitions is an acronym for a Canadian lobby group ("Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating for its Termination").

Anywho, today's word of the day is brought to you by Mark: Come, let us see how many times we can use this word of the day in one meeting!

Please stay tuned for tomorrow's "Word Of The Day." Here is a hint of what it will be: it start with the letter "C" and ends with "aveat" and might be brought to you by the same person as today's word of the day. Sorry, that is all of the hints I can give, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if you guessed correctly!

And now... A clip of the Real Life Simpson’s (intro)

Another Great Knife Block

2006-02-28T13:32:00.000-05:00

If you didn't go rush out and by my last suggested Knife Block, you NEED to get this one!

I present to you "The EX"! A CSB Commodities, Inc. production, The EX is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, block o' wood. Not only does it hold, and come with, a 5 piece stainless steel knife set, you can also store your knives in "AN ANONYMOUS EFFIGY DEDICATED TO WHOMEVER YOU PLEASE!" So slap on a snap shot of your boss on the head and store those knives! With a 25 year warranty on the knives and the special holder, why wouldn't you want to pay $79.96 (USD) for this steel of a display?!

Am I on Crack or Are These Cakes Talking To Me?

2006-02-28T08:08:00.000-05:00

Nope! It's just the lovable Cookie Puss and Cookie O'Puss from that 1982 Carvel commercial! I could make a joke out of their names, but I'm above that...And it would be too easy. But if I did it would probably involve something with the word "puss" in it and be about eating cookies or something. Use your imagination while you watch the video.

Oh, and one more thing! I dare you to call the 800 number on their and ask to speak to either Cooke Puss or Cookie O'Puss and post a comment on the results! The number is 1-800-327-GIFT.

The Perfect Chair for my Father-In-Law

2006-02-28T07:31:00.000-05:00

What did you give to your special someone this Christmas? Hunting gear? Ammo? A new tie? Well here's one for you to slap on your Amazon Wish List for that special someone's next birthday or Christmas present! It's a chair, titled "Fully Loaded", by Alexander Reh.

Yes, Fully Loaded. Made from only the highest quality of cheap shotgun shells, and some other common material found on earth. Actually made from 450 shotgun shells, .12 gauge. The description of the chair describes the brass covered back of the chair creates a "massaging texture". Let’s just hope the avid do-it-yourselfer doesn't see this, make it, and forget to empty out all of the shells!

BlogMad Comming Soon... Real Soon!

2006-02-24T07:11:00.000-05:00

In the latest new letter to the beta members of BlogMad, a statement was issued that every thing could be up and running as soon as next Tuesday, February 28. You can get into beta right now, but it's by "invite" only. I say "invite" because all you really have to do is click on the link in my side bar to sign up for it.

BlogMad is a credit driven trafficking sight. The more credits you get the more traffic you get. You can get credits a few different ways, by just surfing other BlogMad blogs, playing poker style games, or by winning them. Yes, the last two are different. You can win the credits different ways between the games and the winning of the credits. You can just win the credits when you are surfing the blogs. The more you surf the more credits you get per blog, but you also have the chance to just win extra credits while doing this. Kind of like a lottery thing.

So what are you waiting for?! Sign up at BlogMad.net now! When you sign up during beta you get 25 free credits to start!

Google's Page Creator

2006-02-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

I found out about Google's new Ajax website creating service called Page Creator. I spent some time tinkering with it this morning and have some pros and some cons.

First off, I have been thinking of moving from Blogger to something else, most likely Word Press. I do like Blogger, but I just need something that is a bit easier. I want to have a second side bar on the left of my page, but first I want to adjust the main column's width, as well as the main header's width. But in order for me to do that, I need to adjust the width of the images that they are sitting on. That's where I'm having some troubles. So I figured a new service might make it a bit easier.

Here is what I came up with so far on my Google Page. I would like to keep it similar to what I have now, but I think that it might just be a simple web site creator with nothing too fancy to offer me. There is a lot of stuff in my blog now that I need access to the template in order to make the link work, ie my site counter.

Maybe when the service is officially released I will be able to get a better feel for what it has to offer. I think they are still testing it out, because I kept getting booted with a note saying something along the line of another user has ended my session and some changes may be lost. I didn't loose any changes I made, but it kept happening over and over through out the time I was fiddling with the layout.

My Take on the Winter Olympics

2006-02-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I don't really car about the Olympics. Be they winter or summer, or any other season that they can think up, I will not give to fucks of a rat’s ass for the Olympics. So, in order to celebrate my not caring-ness, we shall watch a video of a bunch of figure skaters falling on their asses and/or faces. Come now, and join me in a good point and a laugh!

via: Glumber.com

Customize Your Google Search

2006-02-22T08:23:00.000-05:00

Are you tired of Google's sassy Doodles? These doodles tell you what is going on during the day, such as holidays or special birthdays. Well now you can get rid of them!

Do this by making your very own personalized Google search page. The sky is the limit! Get rid of those doodles, or even that crazily colored "Google", and put in what ever you want. Anything from your favorite curse word to your new blog's name for a point of advertising. And your custom search page will be around for a while. I don't even remember when I did my search page, and it is still around today! Have fun making one, or more, of your very own search page!

How to Get Rid of a Charlie Horse

2006-02-21T07:18:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been awakened at 2 AM by an excruciating pain in the back of your lower thigh? Well you wouldn't have been the only one to feel the burn of the Charlie horse. Friends of mine have recently been talking about how they get Charlie horses late at night. So I ask them how they get rid of them. Their answer is usually something along the lines of getting up and walking around and/or stretching. My wife would bring her knee into her chest area and try and massage it out.

I pointed out that all of those are quite bad solutions to the Charlie horse, if it did solve the problem that is. So I tell them what I do to knock them out in no time. All you need to do is roll onto your back, straighten your legs out, and point the tips of your toes to your head, as much as you can, while keeping your legs straight. This just stretches your hamstring out, relieving the Charlie horse. And just lay on your back for another few minutes, while stretching, in case it decides to come back.

That’s what you can do during the middle of the night to get rid of them. After doing some stretches during the day, you will be able to eliminate them all together. Just perform the same stretch, only not in bed. I like to get on the first step of a stair case, or a curb maybe, to do some really good stretching. Just put the front half of your foot on the curb or step or whatever you are using, and drop your heel down as far as you can go. If you constantly get Charlie horses, you will feel the best stretch in a long time when you do this.

And that’s my health break. Now for a chain mail that I received from my myspace account that struck me as funny, then painfully sad:

A man walks into a drug store with his 8-year old son. They happen to walk by the condom display, and the boy asks,”What are these, Dad? To which the man matter-of-factly replies, "Those are called condoms, son."

Men use them to have safe sex. "Oh I see," replied the boy pensively. "Yes, I've heard of that in health class at school."

He looks over the display and picks up a package of 3 and asks, "Why are there 3 in this package? " The dad replies, "Those are for high school boys, ONE for Friday, ONE for Saturday, and ONE for Sunday." "Cool" says the boy.

He notices a 6 pack and asks, "Then who are these for?" "Those are for college men," the dad answers, TWO for Friday, TWO for Saturday, and TWO for Sunday."

"WOW!" exclaimed the boy, "then who uses THESE?" he asks, picking up a 12 pack!

With a sigh and a tear in his eye, the dad replied, "Those are for the married men. ONE for January, ONE for February, ONE for March....etc."

That should make your day! If your not married that is. :(

One Cool Dog

2006-02-17T07:26:00.000-05:00

Check out this skateboarding dog!

He's freakin leaning on the turns!! This is way better than that cat crappin in the crapper.

MySpace users to get their own cell phones

2006-02-16T15:30:00.000-05:00

For those of you that just can't get enough myspace... "The social networking site MySpace, hugely successful among teenagers and twenty-somethings, is about to become more ubiquitous with the launch of a cellular service that will let users read and post to the site for free."

The MSNBC Article | The Digg Story

UPDATE:

The first two phones have been planed. They are called "the Hero" and "the Kickflip", where the Hero, the black one, is a slide-type phone, and the Kickflip, process of elimination tell us that it’s the white one, has a "side-kick" style bi-directional swivel to open up in either direction (left or right). Both phones sport a 2 MP camera, 70 MB of internal memory with optional expandable microSD memory slots, and speaker phones. And the main service that this article is covering is called MySpace Mobile, which will debut when Helio plans the launch of the phones later this year during the spring season.

The Daily Show's Coverage of the Dick Shooting

2006-02-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

This Daily Show coverage of the Cheney shooting also includes a dramatic reenactment of how the Vice President of the United States of America shot an 78-year-old man in the face while mistaking him for a small, slowly-moving, quall that couldn't fly. Only in America folks!

First Nintendo DS Light Commercial

2006-02-15T09:34:00.000-05:00

"This is the first Nintendo DS Lite commercial to air in Japan. The system goes on sale March 2nd."

via: TechEBlog

A Video of A Cool New Touch Screen

2006-02-13T22:37:00.000-05:00

This one is defiantly going to be a must have once they come out.

I'm not sure if this will be practical at the home, but I'm sure that this will be in most businesses when it becomes the next big thing. It will definitely be in arcades, and, with that part of the movie with the maps, I think it will also be in airports and other commuting facilities.

What makes this touch screen better than the others is that it uses sophisticated unprecedented technology to implement a force-sensitive multi-point widgets so that it can read in multiple forces on the screen. Thus allowing all of your fingers to play as well as all of your friends, and at the same time, too!

via: Jeff Han