Archive for March, 2009

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Psystar Clones Macs (Gets Pants Sued Off?)

Monday, March 30th, 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.

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Posted in IT & Tech

RockBand Franchise Surpasses $1 Billion

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

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!

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Posted in Music, Recommended Reading

White House 2.0

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

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.

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Posted in Random, Recommended Reading

You Know the Economy is Bad When…

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

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!

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Posted in Random, business development

Speed Test Your Bandwidth

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

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!

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Posted in Random

Supporting Cast(e)

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

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.

propaghandi

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!

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Posted in Music

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