Goog-411 Improvements

One of my favorite Google services, Goog-411, has added an awesome feature, maps. When you make the call just say "map it" during the call and Google will send you a text message with a link for the directions plus the information about the location.

Google seems to be integrating into my everyday life more and more every day. They not only make applications you can use on a daily basis, but they continue to improve on them. Keep up the good work Google.

Save Money on Your Mobile Phone Bill

Did you know that you may be able to get a discount on your cell phone bill for nothing? Most mobile carriers offer discounts to students or employees of certain institutions or employeers. Most of the carriers have sites that allow you to check to see if you qualify by checking the domain in your work or student email address. In most cases the discounts are 15%, and can only be applied to one line on your calling package. So if you are into saving money check it out to see if you qualify.

Below are links to 3 major carriers, and if you know of anymore that I haven't included just leave a comment and I will update the page.

AT&T

Verizon

Sprint

Adsense Expands Referrals

Google has expanded the Adsense referrals program to include many other products. The image posted in the Adsense blog shows categories such as automotive, photo & video, and travel to name a few. Previously the only option you had for referrals were Google products or Firefox, and this isn't going to appeal to someone, for example, on a cooking site.

Options are not available to all Adsense accounts as of yet, but they should be rolled out to everyone very soon according to the blog post.

Writing for Pronet

My first post at Pronet Advertising is up Beginner's Guide to Digging on the Nintendo Wii. Pretty excited about writing for the guys there they have a great site going so be sure to check it out.

I will also be posting to this site as well so be sure to check both places.

Will the RIAA like Pownce?

This is all speculation so don't get mad at me yet, but I can't help but wonder if Pownce (Kevin Rose's new Twitter like event, link, and file sharing project) will have any problems with users swapping copyrighted material. The RIAA would seriously frown upon this service if strong restrictions are not put into place to prevent this. I'm sure the guys doing working on the site have already thought all this out, but it may be pretty hard to control if users rename files with different extensions and such.

It does sound like a great idea though, and it seems the cult following Kevin Rose carries with him will be a huge advantage for the site. There are so many questions I have about the service right now, but have no answers to such as will you be able to update via sms like with Twitter. Hopefully we will have some more information in the next few days, and maybe we can get an invite.

Popular Science's: Worst Jobs in Science 2007

Ever think that your job stinks? Well it literally does in many cases if you are in any of the fields listed on Popular Science’s worst jobs of 2007. The jobs range from Microsoft security grunt to hazmat diver. One of the worst to me in the list is the thought of laying upside down in a bed for 21 days working for NASA as a gravity research test subject.

Dell Puts on Makeup

Yesterday Dell announced they would be offering multiple colors in their Inspiron line of notebooks. The folks at Dell must really be struggling they have strayed so far away from what made them the massive pc maker they are today. There are really a few reasons Dell is struggling, and the lack of a pink notebook was not one of them.

The home support division of Dell being outsourced to other countries has really hurt them. One of the great thing about Dell about 6 years ago was their tremendous support. If anyone had any issues they could call get knowledgeable technician, who was not reading a script and quickly get the help they needed. The reason for the move to outsourced support is obvious, but to me this really hurt their image with many consumers.

Quality of the systems hasn't really changed over the years. The plastic cases on the laptops still feel really cheap, especially when you compare them to what Lenovo is offering. This can be blamed on the company not changing over the years, and sticking with the same game plan for so long. If anything this new Dell that we have seen lately is trying to be the 50 year old dad who has started to dress like his son. Image is everything for these companies, and Dell is just not the cool kid anymore.

Next up for Dell the hello kitty edition line of notebooks.

Wendy's is trying to kill me

In a strange move Wendy's has removed one of my favorite products and replaced it with a heart attack on a bun called the "Baconator." With 6 strips of bacon, 2 burger patties, ketchup, and mayonnaise they have removed the "Big Bacon Classic" from the menu which featured bacon, one patty, tomato, lettuce, pickles, and mayonnaise. So they removed everything that is good for you and doubled everything that is bad for you.

It looks like Wendy's is taking the Hardees approach that the more un-healthy you make the burger the more you sell. This is what makes us the fattest country.

Digg Users Own Digg

It doesn’t matter any more what the owners of Digg.com think is in the best interest of their company. The very vocal Digg user base has shown that they have the power to change the minds of Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson after the HD-DVD key revolt, and these users are now actually running the show at Digg. When Kevin Rose made the post stating they had changed their minds and would not try to censor the key the community took over. This is bad news for Kevin and Jay if they ever want to sale Digg, because who would want to buy a company they have no control over and their users who could care less about what is profitable make all the decisions.

The revolts and mob mentality at Digg may eventually cause the downfall of the social news site. The only way to stop this is for Digg to get a backbone and stand up to their users. This will cause the loss of some users, but will be better for the site overall. Censorship in some cases is the best answer to many of Digg’s biggest problems, and when they realize this so much of the bad publicity will go away.

Current NASCAR Tracks Satellite Images

I'm not a big race fan, but I thought it would be pretty cool to put together a list of all the current tracks in use by NASCAR with links to all all the images in Google maps and Microsoft Earth. So here are the sites in alphabetical order with their respective links. Most of the information was found through Wikipedia, but there were a few tracks that didn't have the image link.

Atlanta Motor Speedway
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Bristol Motor Speedway
California Speedway
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Chicagoland Speedway
Darlington Raceway
Daytona International Speedway
Dover International Speedway
Gateway International Raceway
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Infineon Raceway
Kansas Speedway
Kentucky Speedway (Not a good image)
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Lowe's Motor Speedway
Mansfield Motorsports Park
Martinsville Speedway
Memphis Motorsports Park
Michigan International Speedway
Nashville Superspeedway
New Hampshire International Speedway
O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis
Phoenix International Raceway
Pocono Raceway
Richmond International Raceway
Talladega Superspeedway
Texas Motor Speedway
Watkins Glen International

Calling up Kevin Rose

The first purpose of this post was to just link to the street view of the Digg office in San Francisco, but after doing a little research I found something that seemed more interesting. All of Digg's contact information is actually listed, and for some reason this just amazes me because of all the Digg riots in the past.

So I decided to call up the number listed to see if it had been changed or anything, and to my surprise it is still the same. An automated system answers the phone and gives you the option to search the employee directory, and to no suprise everyones favorite Digg founder was listed.

Lost Subscriptions in Google Reader

A couple of months back I switched from Wizz rss news reader to manage all of my rss feeds to Google reader. At this moment I regret that decision, because it seems (for at least right now) all of my subscriptions are missing. Typically feeds are added through finding and article I like then adding that paticular site to my feeds. So as you can imagine there are quite a few subsciptions in the list, and this is the only place they are stored.

Hopefully this isn't just a problem I'm having right now, and this is a mass outage on Google's part. If anyone else is having this problem please leave a comment.

Using the Apple remote in PowerPoint

If you are needing to give a presentation from PowerPoint with your Mac, and you want to use the remote that came with it then Case Apps has what you need. Sofa Control seems to do exactly what I was wanting it to do, plus a little more. The trial last 30 minutes each time you open the application so you will want to buy it unless you want it turning off every 30 minutes, and for $15 its not a bad deal.

1. To use the remote in PowerPoint just launch the Sofa Control application.
2. From here click on the script menu and then installed scripts.
3. Scroll down and double click on Power Point, then choose run script PowerPoint will open at this time.
4. Hit the menu button on the remote, this will bring up an open or close menu for PowerPoint hit the play button on open to browse to your desired presentation then hit the play button again to choose the presentation.
5. To put the slides in presentation view hit the play button, and now you will be able to move through the slides using the left button to go backwards and the right button to go forward.
   

It is a very easy application to use so if you need an application that will give you more control of your Apple remote it is great.

Could Idiocracy Happen?

Seeing this article on MSNBC titled Have kids? Sure ... someday maybe think of the movie Idiocracy. So many intelligent people are waiting on society to improved before having children, but the people that keep reproducing like bunnies have no concern.

So my request to all you intelligent people out there is to get to breeding.

Authentication Coming to a MyBlogLog Near You

So it seems I'm not the only person who thinks MyBlogLog needs some type of authentication to verify you are a sites owner. Eric Marcoullier has come to our rescue commenting in my last post about MyBlogLog site verification "Just a heads up that we're aware that authentication is needed and we're working on a good solution. Thanks for your patience!" So it seems they know there is a problem and are trying to figure out the best way to implement a solution.

In other MyBlogLog news the guy that kept marking me as a schmoe has had all of his accounts removed (or he deleted them, but I will bet he was removed.) Feel free to look for yourself no more Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. On a much sadder note I lost 4 members of my community since the accounts have been removed.

Surfing with Mahalo

Ok I will admit to at first being a skeptic of Mahalo, but after using the site for a few days I think that it has some really great uses. Take for example the MacBook Pro page all the information you were probably looking for is on one page. This has really been needed for some time now with the human element it gives such cleaner and more precise results to what you are probably looking for.

Many people were also (myself included) were questioning who the so call professionals are. It suddenly hit me who the professionals are after looking at the Kevin Rose page and noticed C.K. Sample III was the author of the page. If Jason has people like C.K. on his staff there will be some great pages.

Jason Calacanis is onto something with this Mahalo, and I think this will be one service you will want to keep your eyes on.

MacBook Pro Upgraded

Apple upgraded the MacBook Pro today so I thought it would be a good idea to compare this generation to the previous generation. Low end will refer to the 15.4 inch for $1999, high end will refer to the 15.4 inch for $2499, and high end will also refer to the 17 inch for $2799.

The first thing is the processor has been upgraded from:

1. Low end 15.4 previously 2.16 core 2 duo, now comes with 2.2 core 2 duo.
2. High end 15.4 and 17 inch previously 2.33 core 2 duo, now comes with 2.4 core 2 duo.
   

Memory has been upgraded on only 1 model, the low end 15.4:

1. Low end 15.4 previously standard 1 gig memory now comes with 2 gig.

Video cards have been upgraded which is a plus for me personally as I prefer Nvidia:

1. Low end previously came with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual link DVI, now comes with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 128MB SDRAM.
2. High end previously came with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual link DVI, now comes with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM.

Optical drives have been upgraded from the standard configuration on one model.

1. Low end previously came with 6x super drive, now comes with 8x.

Weight has changed on all 15.4 inch MacBook, and is down .2 pounds. This is due to the use of LED for the display, and this is the main reason I want a new one. Apple is claiming 6 hour battery life for the new 15.4 inch, compared to the previous 5 hour and this should be mostly because of the LED display.

If you want to look at the old tech specs page and the new I have them posted below.

MyBlogLog Site Verification

One thing MyBlogLog needs to do is verify a site owner in the same way that Technorati does. One user has created many accounts using celebrities to grow a community, then after the community grow he points the URL to his blog or whatever he chooses. You can't really blame him for it MyBlogLog is doing nothing to verify any of these celebrity sites belong to him. It would be very easy for them to add little java script code, and require it to verify that a blog or site belong to the person creating the community MyBlogLog.

This could really become a problem for MyBlogLog in the sense of spam, and hurt the sites reputation. So MyBlogLog please hear my request and verify who the site belongs to before you let them take over the community. You have a great service in your hands please don't let the black hate SEOs take over and ruin the communities.

More MyBlogLog Schmoes

Seems as though the accounts have now been pointed to the stars actual domain. Also Lindsay Lohan and 50 cent have joined the others to call me a schmoe. Can we get some real celebrities like Thom Yorke or Eddie Vedder? Bill Gates would alos make a great addition to the MyBlogLog community.

Attack of the Schmoes

It seems as though I managed to piss off the wrong person/people on MyBlogLog. There is a whole group of fake celebrities on MyBlogLog and they have started attacking me for calling them out. If you look at my TechSpews MyBlogLog account you will see that I have been marked schmoe many times and am now the top result for schmoe placed there by none other than Eminem, Bam Margera, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears.

So I could just hide the tag, but I will just leave it up for now in case you want to go mark them as schmoe as well.

MyBlogLog Retaliation

MyBloglog recently unveiled their user generated tagging feature. This is a great feature since it lets other users classify your blog. They also told the community to tag anyone who spams you with the tag SCHMOE. I decided to put these tags on two users that are gaming the system claiming to be someone they are not, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. One other user Louis Gray tagged the identity thefts as well. Now it seems the fake Britney has retaliated marking me as a schmoe, and both fake Paris and Britney have marked Louis as a schmoe.

I'm sure the real Britney and Paris would love to know their names and pictures are being used to promote an SEO blog and vitamin store. I'm going to attempt to contact their publicists, through their real site, and let them know what is going on. I will also be contacting MyBlogLog to let them know of the schmoe retaliation.

If you think it was wrong of these two imposters to mark myself and Louis as schmoes please mark them as schmoes to let the MyBlogLog team know that this type of activity should not be tolerated.