Archive for March, 2009
I read an interesting article today over at Yahoo! tech. Apparently the company Psystar is marketing a Mac OSX compatible desktop that is essentially a Mac clone for far cheaper.
I found this article fascinating as I had never heard of an official company making and distributing “Mac clones”. My question is- what took so long? The term IBM-PC clone has been around for almost 20 years now. Rumor has it Mac is suing Psystar too. I suppose if I had a distribution monopoly on something as large as the Mac brand, I’d want to sue the cloners too.
Given you could always build your own machine and put whatever operating system you wanted on it (like my Frankenstein machine), but this is one of the first I’ve heard of in mass production. Head over to Psystar’s website if you want to read more.
I was reading this press release regarding Rockband on Punknews.org earlier today and was pretty astounded. Since Atari, Sega and Nintendo I’ve always said video games are the next big entertainment industry and they continue to prove me right.
Now I haven’t played much of the music game genres and can’t completely place my finger on why they’re so popular other than the recent US trend in the last decade to convince every little boy and girl that they want to be a rockstar. I’m not sure how I feel about that aspect of it (whatever happened to sex, drugs and rock n roll?), but I have to say the Rockband games have an amazing track record for breaking barriers for console games:
- First music game to have downloadable content (this is huge! – used to be entirely PC only options)
- One of the first cross-console games to offer full compatibility and interoperability between competing peripherals (leading to this whole new era of controllers that look like their objects)
- One of the first games to be involved in releasing new albums from artists (Judas Priest and Motley Crue)
PC Games still have the towering income from online multiplayer games, but console is definately rising. You may also want to check out this article about the rise in video game revenue in the US, it was a $19 billion market in 2007 and continues to rise, so start buyin’ those games and boost the economy!
Wow, I love new openness of our new administration. Mentioned in the President’s press address yesterday, there are a suite of tracking tools available at the new White House website.
You can check up on up-to-date issues via the blog, get details about the cabinet, and check out a whole range of pertinent info regarding the budget and recovery phases. There’s an interactive timeline of how the recovery project is progressing, and a complete readable breakdown of the president’s new budget (its even organized by department!). Also new is a spot where you can vote on the relevance of the next questions asked at the upcoming town hall discussion.
Very “web 2.0″. This definitely looks like the start of a true 21st century president.
This weekend I received a report on some of my financial investments and much to my amusement, in addition to information about my losses, my finances crew sent me a comprehensive guide to stress relief. I guess you know what state the economy is in when your finance advisers have to become mental health professionals to keep their customers from going nuts.
I made my first real investments a little over a year ago back when I had a “real” job, and have to say I’m not so pleased with the results so far. Those little red “loss” numbers just keep climbing every day. I’m literally banking on President Obama to turn this economy around.
I do believe, however, its been a mixed blessing for my business. Since the economy is in a down turn I’ve seen a rise in people hiring temp/contract agents to get work done and when things are looking down, people are often opt to go for cheap marketing methods to boost their business. Viva freelance graphic and web design!
I’ve been having a lot of mixed results with my internet connection lately, and based on a conversation I had with friends last night, I’m not the only one. It seems like its been a roller coaster of connectivity lately and, of course, it always drops out right when I’m uploading something important for a client.
However, I figured before I jumped all over my lousy internet provider (rhymes with “Pomcast”), I’d do a little bit of research. I’ve become a huge fan of the site Speedtest.net- it has some really cool visual bandwidth tracking tools, keeps a running track of your connection rates, and best of all its entirely free.
Using their tools over a couple of days testing from different ping locations, I got a pretty good feel for my connection’s performance and delivered a convincing case to my provider. So far its been running much better!
I recently picked up the new album from Propagandhi – Supporting Cast(e) and have to say its pretty mind-blowing. I’ve been of fan of the liberal Canadian hardcore punk group for awhile and I am constantly impressed with each new addition.
Propagandhi
The newest album could best be described as a mix of the last 3 and continues on with the epic hard rock meets seriously sophisticated lyrics. Tackling political issues from general dissidence to animal rights and social inequalities, this album is a monumental political punk achievement.
Go buy it and memorize the lyrics- it could be a life altering experience!
I finished reading the revisted version of the book E-Myth by Michael Gerber a few weeks ago. I’m not really a fan of all the trendy “self-help” books out there, but this one had come highly recommended by a number of my colleagues. I typically think most of the topics are common sense, and while many are in this book, I didn’t think it was half bad.
E-Myth - Michael Gerber
Maybe its because I’ve made many of the entrepeneurial mistakes outlined in this book myself, or maybe it just carried a certain entertainment value, but I consider it a success since it still has me thinking about a key theme. The main point Gerber makes is that solo proprietor really has three personalities: the entrepeneur or big idea guy, the techy who gets the work done and the manager who keeps it all organized; to really be successful one must try to encompass all three.
Thumb through it if you haven’t done so already, and I’m going to keep trying to be the best entrep-tech-ager I can be.
I’m admittedly a late one to getting the most recent software, but today I finished upgrading all my Adobe software to the latest version (CS4), and have been pretty pleased with the results so far.
It seemed to me like CS3 was still a little clunky with leftover pieces from old Macromedia software and ran a bit slow on Vista; not nearly as bad a CS2 however. The newest versions run noticeably faster on my machine and have a number of neat new innate features that make each application more compatible with its associates.
I’d recommend upgrading to the new version. While I hate the fact that the new model for software is to force an upgrade every year, I agree that this upgrade was worth it. Check it out for yourself by going to Adobe.com and downloading the free trial, or click the link on the bottom right of my blog- I believe you get a discount.
I’ve become a huge fan of WordPress lately. Its backend platform runs this blog and a number of other sites I’ve developed for clients lately. I’ve worked with and built a number of website content management systems in my day and none of them were without their flaws. It seems like they either lack the options I’m looking for, or are too complex for my clients to manage. Its no good if they spend all their time trying to figure it out! Several I’ve made have worked out fine, but its quite an undertaking for just one developer.
Enter WordPress 2.7. I’m very impressed. Earlier this year I started writing my own CMS system, but its taken a back seat to WordPress. Adding plugins and writing custom skins for it has been super-easy to master, and the interface is nice and light. Just wait- soon Colorado will be swarming with elegant sites of all shapes and sizes all running on WordPress.
I’ll be the Colorado WordPress master! Interested in learning more about WordPress or data-driven websites? Check out my portfolio or contact me.
Today I was thankful for a simple yet often taken for granted function included in most PC software- Find & Replace. Upon realizing I’d have to update one line of code on 250+ pages on the site I was working today, I promptly opened up the Find & Replace panel, pumped out a simple macro, and bam! 250+ pages updated in a matter of minutes. I repeated the process again to clean up 1000+ records in the accompanying database.
I remember when computers first got “copy & paste” functionality. I was head-over-heels for Wordperfect when I found I could duplicate a whole mess of typing in a simple keystroke. Often I think 1/4 of my working life is spent copy and pasting. Lets consider how much time that could actually save!
Lets say I save 20 seconds of typing code every time I copy/paste. Lets also say I do this around 25 times a day (which is probably a low estimate). Thats an average of 8 minutes a day saved. If theres 260 work days in a year (in a 40 hour work week- yea right), thats 34 hours a year! Multiply that times 8 years at the computer grindstone and thats 4.6 entire days copy/paste has saved me. Wow- thanks simple keystroke macros!