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Tom Keating
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The Pirate Bay Offline for Christmas?

December 15, 2008

Interesting message on The Pirate Bay today. At first I thought maybe the FBI, Interpol, or some other law enforcement entity took them offline. Or perhaps the plethora of Christmas downloaders had knocked them offline. Though, I'm not sure giving a gift of pirated music or movies burned to a CD/DVD is exactly the type of Christmas spirit that Jesus would approve of.

Copy Paste Comes to the iPhone

December 11, 2008


Pastebud is a cool new service launching tomorrow that leverages javascript, web services, and bookmarks in mobile Safari to finally bring copy and paste to the iPhone and iPod touch. Thank the heavens! It's about time. What was Steve Jobs thinking when he didn't put copy/paste into the iPhone?

WordPress 2.7 released

December 10, 2008

WordPress 2.7 "Coltrane" was just released featuring some pretty cool upgrades in features. First, it sports a drag-and-drop interface for redesigning the layout of your WordPress blog/website. Second, it automatically updates core WordPress files and your plugins (if you so choose). Heck, you can even have it set to download beta nightlies.

Never Charge your gadget again - Free Electricity!

December 8, 2008

Intel said it is researching technology to harvest free energy from the environment, which could lead to devices such as mobile phones running for indefinite periods without recharging. Intel is working on tiny sensors that can capture energy from sources such as sunlight and body heat to power personal electronic devices such as MP3 players, cell phones, portable handheld gaming devices, etc.

Intel is also looking at powering a mobile phone by converting the energy the user creating simply by moving the phone's trackball. Additionally, the radiation of cell phone or TV signals might also be used to power devices. One example given is an accelerometer buried in the wall of a building that could automatically recharge itself by harvesting the energy of radiation from a cell phone tower.

That's very comforting to know that Intel plans to scavenge radiation that is beamed all around us from cell towers, TV towers, etc.



Facebook Connect for Movable Type plugin

December 5, 2008

Facebook Connect is appearing in more and more websites, including Techcrunch, SFGate, and more, allowing you to use your Facebook credentials to post comments on third-party websites. TechCrunch announced Facebook Connect support for their comments just a few days ago. Yesterday, perhaps in response to Google Friend Connect opening up their service to everyone, Facebook announced just yesterday that their Facebook Connect service was now open to everyone (previously invitation only). Any website can now pull personal data about visitors from Facebook and send back activity reports to their news feeds.

I told you it was going to be a Blu-ray Christmas!

December 2, 2008

I hate to say I told you so, but today's PriceGrabber.com gadget report on Black Friday sales, once again proves my opinion that this Christmas will be a "black" Blu-ray Christmas! My opinion goes against conventional wisdom that Blu-ray won't succeed, and that streaming HD using Roku/Netflix, and cable providers offering HD content is now closing the window of opportunity for Blu-ray. I'm not buying that theory. Additionally, several other articles, including CRN's Consumers Not Planning a Blu-Ray Christmas article and Register Hardware's 'A Blu-ray Christmas?

Disney World Deal - Buy 4 Nights, Get 3 Free

December 1, 2008

Knowing I'm a Disney fanatic, Rich just sent me this amazing Disney World deal that gives you 3 nights free and includes Disney World theme park tickets. This deal is via a partnership with American Airlines. You'll also receive a $200 gift card when you travel January 4 - March 29, 2009.I have a Disney World timeshare that requires I use my points towards my vacation, so this doesn't help me any, but it might help you, so enjoy!

Here's the details:

This Deal Will Have You Floating On Air Buy 4 Nights, Get 3 Free Includes Disney Theme Park Tickets

Offer: Buy 4 Nights, Get 3 Free Book By: December 20, 2008 Travel By: January 4 - June 27, 2009

 








Cyber Monday Amazon Deals

December 1, 2008

Amazon has a special landing page listing all their Cyber Monday deals. Amazon doesn't call it "Cyber Monday" but rather the "Black-Friday-After-Thanksgiving-Sale", so this landing page should be good until Christmas. Maybe they were afraid Cyber Monday was patented, kinda like their one-click ordering patent.

Anyway, here's the current category breakdown on the Amazon holiday specials landing page:

There are some Blu-ray DVD players for sale, including a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray Player for $199.



Alan Colmes Leaves Hannity & Colmes

November 24, 2008

FOX News Channels' Alan Colmes is leaving Hannity & Colmes (H&C) at the end of this year. Well there goes my 9 o'clock nightly timeslot. What the heck am I going to watch now? Reality TV?

Single Texting Addicts - Meet Speed SMS Dating

November 24, 2008

Texting (SMS) is certainly popular, especially amongst the younger crowd. In fact, one teenaged girl sends more than 600 text messages in a day -- almost double what an average American sends/receives in a month. A 29-year-old man travelled from San Francisco to Green Bay to meet a woman he met via text message. It was love at first texting.
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