Articles, Tutorials, and Reviews

Somewhat inadvertantly, I have been thrust into the world of the latest Mac OS X system, Leopard. Some months ago, I bought a top-of-the-line Apple MacBook Pro from my friend and colleague Jeff Walker (thanks Jeff!) and have subsequently had a variety of hardware problems with the unit. The first problem was the power switch, which ended up slightly akilter inside the unit and would stick. Not good. But quickly fixed.
This time, however, the power switch went a bit wonky again and the latch switch also became sticky. To top it off, a few keys on my two month old keyboard were already losing their letters / details, so when I took the unit in this time, I asked them to fix everything. They did. I have a new keyboard, new lower chassis, new power switch assembly and, yes, a new latch switch. Very cool.
Unfortunately the Apple techs went above and beyond and did one more thing while they had my laptop, something that caused me to lose 130GB of data…

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It was less than a year ago that I bought a 256MB thumb drive and thought “man, lots of space, that’ll be handy”. In fact, I added my keys and made it my keychain. Then I decided it was too small and upgraded to a Lexar “Jump Drive” with an impressive 512MB of space coupled with some encryption software that would ensure that if I lost the drive, I wouldn’t be out of luck.
Problem is, unless you have incredible personal discipline, it becomes quickly obvious that it’s useful to have more space, not less, and just like modern housebuying, while it’s impossible to have too much space, it certainly is possible to have too little.

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When I bought a new television (a splendid Sony Bravia KDL-40V3000 40″ LCD) I decided that it was time to update the sound system hooked up to the TV too, and after much research, I decided not to get a five speaker surround sound and clutter up the room with wires. Instead, I read lots of reviews and opted to buy the Philips Ambisound HTS8100 Home Theater Surround Bar.
The specs are awesome for this all-in-one stereo system, iPod dock, and DVD player that can upscale the movie being played to 1080p, the reference scanrate of high def video (1080 scan lines, progressive). Heck, the sound of the unit is terrific too.
Except for one problem: less than a month after I purchased it I have had to take it in for service, and it’s been there for ten days now, with no resolution in sight…

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It’s impossible not to have heard about the many different social networks online nowadays. Seems like a new one pops up every week and indeed the single most popular site on the Internet is a social network (MySpace). I know because I am part of at least a dozen different social networks, ranging from focused professional venues to chaotic amalgamations of various ideas without any rhyme or reason. You can figure out which is which. 🙂
One of my favorites has always remained LinkedIn and since I just this morning needed to track down one of the executives at web hosting company Dreamhost, I thought it would be useful to demonstrate exactly how I used LinkedIn for this task.

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In the early days of the Internet, back when we called it a “dirt road” and were delighted when email bounced from UUCP connection to UUCP connection as is slowly wound its way from one end of the topological jungle to the other, email mailing lists were quite the cool thing.
Years have passed and we now have sophisticated web-based discussion boards, blogs and many other venues for interpersonal interaction, but email remains, to me, the killer application, and it’s on my mailing lists that I encounter the freshest thinking and most valuable information.
I can remember when there were two main places to find mailing lists too (other than the List of Lists and other short-lived directories), Topica and Yahoo Groups. Google’s added its own collection — of course — with Google Groups too, but in many ways, Yahoo Groups was always my favorite place to look for people with similar interests.
Which is why it’s so distressing to see that it’s become an absolute safe haven for porn and spammers in ways that were unanticipated when Web-based lists were first envisioned…

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This is a user-contributed article.
TV has evolved in the last 5 years and can be difficult to understand. There are many technologies out there in the marketplace that are worth being conscious of as you go and buy an HDTV. Today’s HDTV’s also come with a variety of resolutions. You may see 720p, 1080p, 1080i etc. We are going through a changing of the guard, and it’s all gotten rather complicated when you want to purchase a replacement set!
The first generation of HDTV’s had maximum resolution or lines of 1080i/720p but today’s TVs have a maximum resolution of 1080p. When buying a TV you’ll find these 1080p sets to be more expensive than those that have a maximum resolution of 1080i/720p. This is because these ‘true’ HD TV sets are not only newer but they can accommodate optimal resolution on blu-ray and HD-DVD players without having to scale the image. The i/p behind the number indicates whether the resolution is interlaced (an older method of scaling images that results in the image having to be put back together and the signal to degrade) or progressive scan (a newer, superior method that results in no signal degradation).

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Can you learn how to relax, achieve a meditative state and control your own brain waves with a computer game? That was the premise of the biofeedback-based series of games from the Wild Divine Project, and when the company gave me a copy of their flagship title The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage, I was eager to check it out.
And y’know what? It’s extraordinarily cool. It’s unlike any computer game you’ve ever played and even though I am not a fan of children playing computer games, I was happy to watch my children learn how to explore the lush interactive world of Wild Divine and overcome the various challenges and obstacles that are the heart of the game.

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