April Fools Day - Are You Ready?

Are you ready for the mischief?

Do you have your rubber chickens out from the closet and dusted off?

Is your fart cushion in good, working order? Test it!

Only 1 day to go!

Who the heck came up with this anyway?

Origin of April Fools Day at Wikipedia

The Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time

How to Use the iPod Diagnostic Mode

Turn that frown upside down. Is your iPod poopy-droopy? Do you have a distressing icon on your ipod screen? Does it refuse to pump out your favorite Milli-Vanilli classic, Blame it on the Rain?

Find out what may be ailing your little musical friend by asking it: "What's wrong with you little buddy?"

Methodshop has a nice little piece on how to use the iPod's built-in diagnostic mode. Very nice site to have bookmarked. You may not need it now, but you might someday. (Knock on wood.)

Methodshop's iPod Diagnostic Mode Tutorial

Apple Finally Releases Volume Limiter

Engadget covers Apple's release of an update for the ipod that will allow users (and parents) to set a volume level limit on their ipods.

All I can say is, It's about damn time. What took them so long? Let me guess. The freakin lawyers.

The new functionality is available by updating your ipod software.

Apple's iPod Updater Site

Jack Black Gives Us a Behind The Scenes Look on the Set of His Movie 'Nacho Libre'

Crazy man Jack Black is at it again in his new movie Nacho Libre. And in a show of marketing genious, they're releasing periodic "confessionals" taking us behind the scenes on the set.

The episodes are only a minute or three long, so don't expect much, but if you're a JB fan, check them out on the movie's official site, or through iTunes.

iTunes Music Store Link

Nacho Libre Official Site

Diggnation #38 Live from Reno

Diggnation #38 Live from Reno released to all of us non-paying people in the world. Alex and Kevin get seriously toasted on free Jager shots and take an incredible amount of time to slog through the top stories of the week.

I suspect they'll not forget the "candy water" any time soon.

Alex is in serious trouble if his g/f watches the show this week. Not a kid-friendly show this week.

Of course all the covered stories are old news by now.

Keith makes a cameo this week. Pragula sneaks on for a bit of the candy water as well.

Alex is getting a freebie Falcon Northwest laptop. (Personally I think they should spend that coin buying off the squatter than owns falconnorthwest.com and ditch that lame-ass URL of theirs.)

Kevin hints that Ramzi and another episode of the the broken is coming!

A drunk fan shouts out that Digg has surpassed slashdot in the Alexa rankings. Kevin addresses the rumor that he bought a Porsche by declaring that he drives a 2-door Golf. He may not be rich yet, but he will be, and that's gotta make him smile every morning when he gets up.

Ctrl+Alt+Chicken Launches First Episode

So Alex Albrecht et al finally got the chicken off the ground.

Following the pattern of diggnation, it's a duo, with Alex paired up with Heather Stewart, who I've not seen before. Also, ala diggnation and the broken, alcohol is involved. Sounds like the idea will be to feature a different wine each episode. I'm sure wine outlets in population centers with a high-density of geeks will see sales soar as a result. Maybe not.

Alex is entertaining, but the charm and wit is wasted on this effort. I'm sure we'll all continue to watch for a while, but how many different ways can you make watching someone do a poor job of preparing chicken funny?

Here's hoping Kevin and Dan find a spare moment to bring us another ghetto edition of the broken with Ramzi throwin down some of his tech genius. Alex might also be a welcome addition to that concept.

Things That Make You Say HOLY SH*T!

LEGO Nation readies for War!

Rocketboom Time Machine

A little baffled by Amanda's "news" on Monday.

First she mentioned the Badonkadonk.

Then she touched on the Herman Miller Babble.

Both are way old news. Musta been a slow news day, or a rough weekend.

Tuesday's show made me wish Lance was still racing. I'll still watch the Tour this year, even if it's just to see Bob Roll rant, but I doubt it will be the same.

TWiT #47

So it looks like TWiT has a new logo on iTunes. Still not seeing a new web page design as Leo mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Slowly but surely it looks like Leo is cobbling together his own IPTV network, creating additional shows with him as the host/moderator and well-known folks that he has relationships with in the tech world as the star(s). Personally I think he and Kevin Rose should get together and pool their talents and contacts.

Revision 3 is building a geek video network, and so is Leo and his gang. At some point they'll realize they're competitors of a sort, or at least that they'd be stronger (and more valuable) together. Get together now gents.

John C. Dvorak needles Leo later in the show about getting VC funding if he wanted. I think Leo know exactly what he's doing... Waiting. Perhaps not so patiently, but I think he's waiting for the right time and the right opportunity.

The TWiT folks discussed the Windows Vista delay, and whether or not anyone cares. I know I don't care if Vista gets released in 2007 instead of 2006.

I am firmly convinced that Patrick Norton just makes shit up. No, really. I realize he must have a huge following since people still give him a spot in front of a camera or a microphone. Leo asked Patrick if Vista still had a registry, like XP does. Leo's really smart. Does he really not know that Patrick wouldn't have a clue if it did or didn't? It's not that Patrick is dumb. I actually like his personality and thinks he's quite an interesting guy. He's just not learned to say "I don't know/I don't care." yet.

IE has another critical flaw in it allowing spam loving hackers to take over your PC. Surprise.

Dell bought Alienware. Yawn. Suits don't get it. Now that Dell owns Alienware the game playing Geeks are not going to buy their PCs from them anymore.

John attacks Patrick. Go John! (I suspect he's been holding his tongue for a while. - and still is.) But he also thinks Patrick is photogenic. Hmmm..

Borrow wifi, get prosecuted. A cop that actually knew what was going on? Good for him. Bad for the guy getting his pron on the run.

Tiered broadband access pricing may be coming. No kidding. You mean someone will actually have to pay for the bandwidth being used? Of course this should happen. Clearly I should be paying more for access than my Mom. When will Comcast come and slap a meter on the side of my house?

ajaxWrite gets mentioned on the show. Very Cool web-based word processor. No worky with IE though. Firefoxians only.

If you've not seen it, protopage gets a mention as well. Very cool site that uses ajax to let you create your own page using drag and drop.

Leo uses Netvibes.

Dvorak is now doing Cranky Geeks, a new vidcast that allows him to rant.
I can't help but wonder how many episodes of TWiT people will listen to before they get tired of hearing about other podcasts and how to monetize the podcast and if they'll ever get any money....

The minute it became obvious to Leo and the gang that maybe they could make some money (and I mean serious money) doing the podcast, everything changed. The focus of the discussions changed. Their perspectives changed. I hope they get a VC sugar daddy soon and get back to talking about tech.

First Post - Why Not Just Rant a Little?

So I've been a techie for 20 years now. Not the kind that likes dismantling and cobbling together the old and the new ala Make, but the kind that all the friends and relatives bug when they need a new PC to browse the web. (after they screwed up windows with spyware and malware by clicking on every link in every forwarded email.)

I've worked for Gateway (yes, I know, crash and burn) and I now make my living selling technology independently. (perhaps more on that in a subsequent post.)

I follow technology on a pretty regular basis. I listen to some of the more popular podcasts (mostly former TechTV people) like Leo Laporte and the gang on TWIT, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on Diggnation, and Patrick Norton and Robert Heron on DL.TV.

I also visit some of the popular sites like engadget (which has been really on it lately), and digg as well.I really miss the old TechTV. Comcast bought em out last year and merged TechTV with their G4 and destroyed the network. It's just another Spike TV now with a little bit of tech every now and then. Oh, and shows that cover video games. Blah blah.

The Screen Savers went from a watchable show with occassionally great segments to a piece of crap offering up segments on drinking games. They changed the name to Attack of the Show after the merge, which conveys absolutely nothing. At least their not destroying the name of the old show in the process.

Then in a flash of nostalgia, someone over there put Leo Laporte's show Call for Help (from Canada) on G4 for a while. Great show. But it's no longer on. And I can't seem to reliably find it on BitTorrent either.

Speaking of BitTorrent and podcasts, this is the segment of technology that is really the most exciting right now in my opinion. Not the illegal file sharing aspect of it, but IP TV and the future of all media. Audio, Video, Print. All the traditional models for content distribution are being effected by the ubiquity of the internet. As hardware manufacturers finally embed ethernet connectivity and software to manage feeds into their devices, time and place shifting becomes accessible to the non-techies of the world. As people begin consuming content in new ways, creators and providers will change the way they provide that content, and perhaps even the content itself.

more ranting later...