Thursday, October 30, 2008

Idiot Love Cold Weather?

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Apparently the good ole north (Canada that is) thinks that they are the kings of multitasking. Seems like someone like John McCain might take this as an offensive maneuver since the man loves to tout that he can talk and air quote like mad. Techdirt has unearthed a bill proposal from the love-able northerners that demands that playing video games while driving is potentially dangerous and therefore should be strictly disallowed. Good job Canada! However, tomorrow is going to be a big pole day around the office when it comes to everyone playing video games while driving. Lets all hope for the best concerning this bill ya'll.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

A Netbook worth it...Maybe

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HP guys, hp is back on the netbook bandwagon with their release of the Mini 1000 which is a bit of a knock off from their old Mini-Note 2133. However, this new guy has an all plastic shell, (aluminum was standard on the 2133 and is ridiculous on a netbook) web cam, 92 percent sized keyboard (great for NanoWrimoers), and a very functional and cool looking tack pad. Of course being a netbook all you anorexic freaks out there are drooling over the size. Well you should be happy that it crams itself into a 10.3 in (L) x 6.56 in (W) x 0.99 in (H) interesting designed, swirly 2.5 pound shell. You also seem to get a choice of an 8.2 or 10.2 screen with the same 1024 X 600 resolution, a 8, 16 gig SSD or 60 gig spinner, a sweet atom processor, and windows Xp home.

All and all the design of the shell, the size factor, the hope that winows 7 will fly on it, and the keyboard size should be what draws people in. At 399 it is a great deal and should be on most if not all of our netbook wish lists for the christmas season. Looks really cool folks and that is comming strait from the mouth of a certified netbook hater.

MyFace

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Facebook is always a heated topic in the world of web 2.0, 2.5 if you want to be super technical. Because of this, you see Facebook on the top of the ip block on the company black list. This has always been a perplexing fact because why would a company, where many people are suppose to coalesce in order to complete a random, often times useless task in a set amount of time. Why on earth would locking people out of this increase their productivity? Well seems that my almost dead cries have fell onto someone who happens to work for the BBC.

The BBC released an article that ramifies my very point. Why would you search out the very brightest people and hire them then never utilize them to their fullest? These social networks allow someone to release a question and allow the entire company to look over it and perhaps find a potentialy great. Instead of people worrying so much about what their actual employees are doing maybe they should spend that time to make the employees much more effective in the company. This idea comes accross much like these new layoffs: there are the companies that layoff people because they are scared of their money and there are companies that do not layoff their employees and use the idle to come up with new projects. So do you want to be the stagnant company that goes for the layoffs or do you want to be the radical that looks for change?

Monday, October 27, 2008

An oddly Sad Day

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Most of the world we live in is experiencing a real problem when it comes to our amount of cash flow. We seem to have been floating above our means for some time and now the tell tale direction of it all is going disgustingly south. We are seeing what I might call a second round of layoffs at one of my static jobs. Being sort of wounded in the whole attack, I have decided to do something that I have yet to do for almost 2 years: turn off my World of Warcraft account. Yep Azeroth, for now we are done. Love ya all, peace. On a much higher note, I am up for being on board with any start up. Need a PHP / CSS programmer, maybe even more...who knows? I am putting myself out there boys and girls and you can use me any way you want to.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Netbook Revival

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Yep, the word netbook should be placed in either the Guinness Book of World Records or Websters dictionary; you decide. A sorta new netbook has sorta hit the streets and Engadget has an article about it here. Dell has finally put their money where their mouth is and released their 12 inch Inspiron Mini. Being less then one inch thick and weighing in at 2.7 pounds (2.72 for the uber nerds) the Mini looks to bring some serious power to the table with it's 1.6 ghz atom processor, 80 gigs of "space" and 1 gig of ram. This new contender will definitely stew up the netbook pot and give the envy 133 / macbook air a good run for their money comming in at 600 dolla-ry-d00s. Of course this is all a huge amount of speculation since it is now only offered in Japan (maybe US next month).

ON a side note, We are definitely on track with the amount of posts this month along with the 3 to make up for our neglect last month. However, this will be the last time this occurs. I will try and get close to the 20 mark but for the remainder of this blog being with blogspot, the time will shift from quality to quantity. Thanks all.

Get Scrappy

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Yello all, sorry about the new banner. It is definitely one of those temp ones that will change with a good amount of time...like tomorrow. However, I have been doing my a much better time of scrapping around the internet and stumbled upon an interesting post by Paul Graham.

Paul talks a lot about how right now, in this fist of economic uncertainty their exists great start-ups. During the .com bust great companies like digg and delicious came out of no where and they are going to stick around because they were born in hard times and will survive in them as well. Bring it together all, keep those ideas a flowing, and meet cool people that will either help you out, or be a great investor. Oh year, and just like Paul says, keep the day job, it might suck but it is consistent income.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Post Update

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Having just hit the submit button on the last post, I worked my internet sniffing over to digg.com and found this article posted by appleInsider. This seems to be the origin for the Cnet article and definitely contains a lot more information on what is going on with the possibility of a new Mac Mini. The article is worth shooting over to just for the pictures alone and the possibility of ditching the optical drive for a second hard drive. Go and read, y'all!

A Mini Revival

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The MAc mini has seen its fair share of haters out there but Cnet, through a horrible article seems to think that it is going to make a return. Although the little scrumptious thing is a throwback to the Mac cube, it seems like it would be a fairly powerfull beast in the right hands. Sure it is not going to run your "run of the mill" high end games, cad software, etc but if you want a machine that does repetative tasks (ie torrenting) then these things would probably bring the house down. Actually I have been searching for a little box just like this to do all my home needs and a revision would sure be intriguing. However, in terms of dollars it would be much cheaper to throw some simple components in an ubuntu powered Shuttle and call it a day. Anyway, long live the mac mini and a great entry level computer for the pocket starving mac user.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

While You Were Out

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All us techies have been bombarded with the idea that our jobs are in danger just because quite a few companies are doing percentage layoffs. To be worried that you will be fired is a pretty common human mechanism but, and I have a bit of experience with this, it is a very good thing. It allows you to pursue different avenues, meet new people and even learn things that you never thought you would do. Cnet put together a fairly good article that concerns these very thoughts. So instead of me regurgitating you go read.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A Truly Great Game

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Most of us disliked the blocky, heavy, and homely design of the original xbox. Moreover, most of us simply thought it was designed to play the ridiculous and overly hyped Halo. However, in doing so you would have missed a great game known only as Fable. Eventually, it did come to the PC which is where I played it over the course of a winter break from college. I absolutely fell in love with the game, the decisions and all of the repercusions that came with them. On the 21st of this month Fable 2 was released for the much sexier, much sleeker, much more powerful xbox 360.

Fable 2, just like the game it preceeds is an absolute gem! These RPGs are from from the Japanese RPGs or the famous World of Warcraft. Fable 2 will do something that none of these games will do; it will put a huge smile on your face and keep it there throughout the emntirety of the game. There is no tedious grinding, instance running, etc which makes it a great game in it's own regard. Fable 2 extends the idea of consequences through actions and anything you do, any decision you make has a repercussion somewhere during the game. I could go on and on about the beautiful world it is, the intricate details, your dog, the fighting system, etc but what needs to happen is you need to go and play it. Sure it is not WOW but it never tries to be either. A game that you can play and smile about is rare, real rare and threrfore worth the time to go find a copy.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

US Unhappiness

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In most cases when someone refers to the word "us" they are talking about the group of people they are around. In this case we are talking about "US" meaning the United States. Seth Godin, who in my mind is a mastermind when it comes to marketing and the economy at hand blogged here about how Americans never seem to be fulfilled in their lives. This want drives us to desire more and more or simply just negates our systems from ever being satisfied. To tie this all together, Cnet wrote an article here describing how Google, Facebook and Yahoo are having a difficult time selling their website changes.

The most amazing comment from the Cnet post was from someone complaining about the vertical tab bar in the new iGoogle home page:

"Google has decided to unilaterally change the layout of my page. If I can't find a hack or a Greasemonkey script to undo this, good-bye Google, hello Yahoo!"

It is wonderful to see people and their passion accumulate onto the internet but do you (mainly the new facebook hater) really think that everyone else who uses facebook, or in the above case iGoogle, feel the same way as you? Another post found on 10.21, also at Cnet mentioned some designer who had refused to upgrade his software and was still designing on software that was more then 10 years old. All of these posts prove that we panic when there is any kind of change in our lives and when there is little change we tend to want more and more. I say find great easter eggs in web site change, accept that software will change so change with it, have fun, be happy, and be flexible.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

A Teetering Divingboard

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We all know that we are heading strait into the red with an imminent recession. However, most of you only know this because of what you hear on Fox News day in and day out. This is not a shot at your intellect but simply a huge shot at how much this word is thrown around the newsroom and into everyone's willing ears. So with the, so called troubling times ahead people are worried about the longevity of certain .com business.

Cnet has recently posted an interesting article on several web 2.0'ers that are bound to close their doors when the real recession floats their way. On the very top of the list is everyone's favored Twitter which has actually been in the news lately for it's unknown business model along with its CEO founder swap. I will come to the forefront and say that I simply adore Twitter and everything the little micro blog who could has done for connecting people in the internet's community. Without Twitter on this list I would have simply looked over it as another pot shot on what will disapear in the iCommunity. So how do you all think we can help Twitter and the other folks in the web 2.0 world that we love?

Well I am going to put it out there that we off load some of the server space onto our own homes. There has been plenty of talk about taking the business away from the office and saving the world through telecomuting with your peers. So why not help these companies out by telecomuting their server space? What would happen if a bunch of us got together, asked for static IP's, opened up some ports, and put some big hard drives in a Ubuntu LAMP box? Let Twitter or whatever have remote access to it and simply let them offload some of their problems onto the people who love them. Open it up to a true community (of course it would take a lot more work then what is described but is very doable). The economy might beheading south for a bit but that does not mean we need to sit idly by and watch our most beloved web 2.0 die in our face.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Office for the Economy

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Microsoft office is a key dominator in the world of office suites. Everyone knows what anyone is getting on about when they refer to the term “word” and everyone has created some kind of material on it in the past years. One thing that we also know is that it is incredibly expensive, bloated, and if most haters have their ways, the new iteration and the ribbon is rubbish. Well if you hate it so much why not move to an open source, free alternative.

In walks OpenOffice. A suite that has always been free and has been hanging around for many years. As of late (Monday actually) there has never been a Mac native OpenOffice. It has always been ported over to the Mac under the name NeoOffice. Well, time to rejoice my Mac loving comrades, OpenOffice 3.0 will work spectacularly under the Mac Intel architecture. Actually, this entire post was written in OpenOffice just to see how stable it was under a simple test. It opens faster then Word 2007, it has all of the basic word, excel, powerpoint, access functions, it does not cost a single dime and is completely customizable. The world of paying for expensive suites, especially when it comes to Mac specific clients, is over. Recommend it to your friends or simply download it here.

Net-er-riffic

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One thing that we are not too keen on here at Tkubed is lack of horsepower. If your technology or even your car (extends to bicycles) does not include a lot of rampaging horse powers then it is far from getting this blogs paltry seal of approval. I have actually decided to call give the seal, perhaps in hopes of raising its own sexiness and usability, some kind of acronym. Any good ideas out there? Shoot me a response and maybe you could WIN...maybe not but anything could happen.

Anyway, getting back on track, horsepower is not an absolute, it can be easily substitutued with a hefty amount of sexiness or sex. Worth mentioning: depending on the amount of sexiness a lot or a little is needed to substitute horspower (case by case basis). All of this babbling brings us to the point of Netbooks. They seem to be a very cool concept, expecially with a flavor of the linux month club. However, they seem to be a real let down when one surpasses the need for simple email, word, and internet surfing. Personally, they seem to just be a simple macbook air which after their last update blows most netbooks out of the water with it's bigger screen, thinness and horsepower all packaged quite nicely (please refrain from flaming about this concept, I know the Air is not a true nebook). Enter the Asus Eee C s101. It is a simplistic, sexy (who does not love the color brown?), and powerful little pc. With its 32gig ssd (16 for windows) and expansion slot for more memory you have a powerful little pc with a heaping amount of sexiness. Props to Crave.uk for a great preview.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Lost Data

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Anyone who spends any moment, maybe even just a franction of a moment in the IT world knows how very important people's data is to them.  In the education world, you could simply throw it over you shoulder and explain to the child that the back up "missed" them or something and everything would be kosher (I originally misspelled this word and "wrote cosier" which come to find out is a kind of knitted hat for your teapot to keep the tea hot when removed from the burner).  However, in the world of business if you lose even a simple file people throw temper tantrums like nothing the child from the private school has ever seen.  There exists just one exemption to the above rule which can be fixed by simply being a general backup nazi.


Complete laptop missplacement or generally whatever had a lot of data on it has been stolen or "misplaced."  This is of course an OK event as we have seen with many government officials and their stolen goods which often contain quite a few of yours and my social security numbers.  Through some good ole studies it looks like folks found out that it is mostly their own employees that cause these breaches not hackers.  This also means that the IT pros out there are not creating overly complicated security systems that do not work it can merely be chalked up to a healthy amount of stupidity.  The article can be found here and maybe if you lost some company laptop you could read it and figure out why you feel a little far from the tree.  

It is Official

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Yep, we know officially have an official seal of sexiness or for short sex. So if anyone needs to wonder what I am banging on about when I say some piece of hardware is sex well, you now will. Official seal can be found and printed to the left and I grant anyone free right to reproduce and modify to their hearts will. It is pretty ruff at the moment and might...might go through some kind of finalization and committee work. But I doubt it.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Space

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It is really, really, big...yep. So big actually that we as a species pine to stuff space with random things. In the case concerning computers we attempt to stuff it with music, videos, documents, and other great files. The problem being that those files seem to simply get bigger and bigger without any kind of management committee or overhead budgeting office (much like the spending of the good ole US these days). And please feel free to not get US messed up with us.

Anyway, as blogs go we should be linking things to our community right? Well as a point to all of the above rambling, here...nope I meant here...nope here. Seems that Kingston has crammed a whooping amount of space into the size of a thumb drive and even gave it quite an attractive price. I thought my 8gig thumb drive was big but this is just plain sexy. With the shrinking size and raising space of flash drives these days it should not be long before my dual platter 2 tb usb hard drive could be considered a dinosaur.

Having only tested the SSD in a Asus EEE pc I must admit the flash drives are very quick and very appealing if there was one for 400 some odd dollars at the 240gig range. But since that is a completely rediculous thought for right now it looks like we are going to have to wait it out.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Be Safe, Be Seen

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This link was forwarded to me by a very, very nice human being and the mere fact that I am about to rip it apart both saddens and titillates me. Yep, so we all know that this is voting season..or something like that and people seem to have some real problems when it comes to the folks who actually understand (I must admit, somewhat) the political system we are in.

Sure we all care about the economy right now; shit you gotta be an idiot not to care how these banks are spending your money. But are we sure that Toby McGuire knows that this election, I mean THIS election is going to decide the world? He said the world, and I mean he is some type of superhero so he MEANS the world. All these people who we watch on television are poking us in the rear to go and vote. It is super admirable but viral idea making during a time like this? I need to work my knuckles to the grind just to get by; I do not have time to go and VOTE! Come on folks, keep it together.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

A Car Review

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If you love cars, much like I do there really is no substitute for hilarity, information, and informality as their is with the UK based show Top Gear. Today however, you all are going to be graced with a little review of the early 2000 based Audi TT. This post was spurred from me witnessing a very prominent, pipe smoking individual driving one.

To begin, lets take a quick look at aesthetics. On the outside the Audi looks very much like a low slung, cabriolet but enhanced with Audi's engine and 4 wheel drive technology. The small and minute lines go well with the car and the overall outward aesthetics make one think that it is a very nice car. However, this is where we need to stop. The car itself seems to be made to look (and once you wedge yourself in it unfortunately the ride and the power) are designed very much like those of a fine woman's hand bag. Sleek, sexy but nothing over the top and nothing that could or even should really make you want to own one.

On the upside they are fairly cheap, reliable and great in the snow (much like all Audi's). However, these compromises should ultimately push someone elsewhere. Perhaps into the seat of a VW Gti which happens to be a much more refined, fun and safe car. Or maybe an Alpha; the main thing is, any self respecting human should never find themselves in one unless they accept that it is a very sphelt way to transport him or her around town. But is foremost NOT a sport car. Looking back at this post and the seriousness of it I will make sure in the future to keep my car reviews to twitter.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Video GamES!

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Video games can be the bane of people's existence. They can take over your lives and make you a brainless fool who can merely chuckle and talk to your other friends about the same games you are playing. OR they can be a creative and most of the time amazing distraction from the real world (as long as you practice sensibility and restraint this can be a very good thing). Gamepro has compiled a list of 35 of the best video games (so says Gamepro) and is definitely worth having a look at. The link can be found here.

One of the best things about the list is how anyone over the age of 20 has probably played every one of them. Some highlights from the list; for the folks to lazy to read themselves.

#28 Grim Fandango: One of the greatest adventure games of all time. Still lots of stuff to haul around but manageable and old Lucas Arts hilarity.

#20 Fallout 2: Possibly one of the best turn based post apocalyptic RPG. No doubt anyone who is a fan of games is a fan of the Fallout series and is wetting themselves for the upcoming third game.

#13 Half Life 2: Nuff said

#12 Sins of a Solar Empire: Amazing strategy game on a truly solar system stage. Fun and some very well thought out multyplayer.

#10: Company of Heroes: First World War 2 strategy game to really capture my imagination.

#7: Starcraft: Nothing needs to be said about the brilliance of this game. Another one of those "I can't wait for the sequel to arrive titles."

Missed Connections

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Well as you can all tell I definitely missed the 20 blog posts for the month. However, out of a damn good amount of fairness I did hit the 17 mark which is way beyond anything that has happened before. So out of even more fairness to the community I am going to keep this staunch effort together and MAKE UP for my lackluster September attempt. So in the age old spirit of the butt pat, lets hope for the October best. Big high five for everyone who is standing behind my questionable blogging abilities. Oh yeah, and this one counts, look at your watches, ya freaks.

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