Light Speed Panel

If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time now you should know that I really like free stuff. Who doesn't, right? Well, I've found a new way to get free stuff, Light Speed Panel. With LSP you can take consumer surveys and earn free stuff. Most of the surveys only require 15-25 minutes of your time and you can ear from 75-150 points per survey, some surveys that are longer could even earn you up to 500 points for only 30 minutes of your time.
You may be wondering how much these points are worth, right? Well, 550 points will get you a $5 Amazon.com giftcard and 575 points will get you $5 straight into your Paypal account. There are some other really great offers for participating in surveys. Also for every survey you take you are entered into a monthly drawing for $5,000.
I even took a survey the other day that offered $50 if I was willing to participate even further. They are going to send me a special palm pilot to keep track of all tv snacks I eat for 2 weeks. To me that is definitely worth $50. I really like this site and think you should definitely check it out.

Amazon Video on Demand

I've recently fell in love with The Office, not the one I work at, but the one on NBC every Thursday night at 9:00 PM E. Since I'm just now tuning in I wanted to catch up with some previous episodes. Buying the DVDs is costly, Season 1 costs $22.99 on Amazon.com, and only six episodes aired that season. I found a way around this, however.

Pepsi Points was my answer. I've never been a big Pepsi fan, I would choose Coke if given the option, but I never really cared which carbonated beverage was washing down my lunch. That was not until I saw the Amazon.com logo plastered on the Pepsi bottle (The amazon logo has since been removed) which piqued my interested. I decided to start buying Pepsi products from the vending machine at work and see what I could actually get with Pepsi Points (I had been collecting Coke caps, but the promotions were either a) lame, b) too expensive (read: I couldn't drink that much coke in my life) or c) drawings which I knew I could never win). I soon discovered that with 5 Pepsi Points (1 point per cap) I could download most any MP3 on the Amazon.com MP3 store (totally DRM Free by the way), or with 12 points I could download an episode of a TV show. Since then I have been continuously collecting Pepsi Caps (even to the extent of picking them up when in public) so that I could earn more music and TV shows.

The experience of the Amazon Video on Demand store (previously the Amazon Unbox store) is pretty seamless. It's not the best ever but it is better than most for what it does. First you have to download the software from Amazon.com. Then you go to Amazon's Video on Demand store and select the video(s) you want to download, choose your method of payment and to which PC you want to download them to. You can also choose to watch the videos online without downloading the software if you wish. Once the videos download to your computer you can watch them whenever you want on your computer or use a Windows Media Extender like the Xbox360 to view the videos. The videos do carry a heavy DRM lock unlike the Amazon MP3 experience. Some of the frustrating things for me about the expirience is that you can't just transfer the videos to another computer; you have to download them again (there is an option to import videos into your library, but you have to be connected to the internet because of the DRM restrictions). Another problem is that I can't watch the videos on my iPod Touch. There is a mobile transfer option and I thought that I could watch them on my Samsung a727 phone which wouldn't be optimal, but it would be an alternative. However, the videos wouldn't play on my phone for some unknown reason. Amazon does offer help on the mobile option and provides a list of Microsoft certified Play for Sure devices if you happen to have one of those.

All in all this service is great as I can watch my videos in a good resolution on my TV through the Xbox360 media extender, but I would like to be able to watch these on my iPod. I don't see that happening in the near future, though, because I can see how that would be a conflicting interest for Apple as they already offer these videos in their store.

iPod Touch/iPhone Apps

Well, I got my iPod Touch Wednesday as an early Christmas present and after extensively playing with it I would like to give you my top 5 Free Applications (Hey, i'm cheap okay).

1) Mighty Docs - With Mighty Docs you can view your documents and spreadsheets from Google Docs. The great feature about Mighty Docs is that it caches the documents and spreadsheets when you open then. That way when you don't have an internet connection you can still view your documents. I love this application, it works great and is pretty fast too. Some updates I'd like to see in the future would be ability to edit documents and spreadsheets (create them also) and save changes to server when you are connected. I'd also like to see presentation functionality which I believe is being developed now. You definitely need this app if you use Google Docs.

2) Remote - I believe this application was developed my Apple. The application is simple, connect your iPod Touch/iPhone and computer to a local network and turn on iTunes on the computer. The first time that you use the app for your library it will give you a four number passcode to enter on the computer to verify the connection. From then on it remembers the library and works like a charm. All of your playlists are shown in the application or you can browse your media by artist, album, etc. This app works great if you use a media server or a home theater PC. I really like this application.

3) Facebook - This application is nice and polished. Basically, if you like using Facebook then this app will be natural for you. If you use Facebook then there is no reason for you not to get this app.

4) Movies - Movies is a great application. The front screen brings up movies that are released that week, and then other movies still hot in the box office and then lesser known movies still playing in theaters. You can search for theaters near your location and select your favorites. Movie times are also listed for all available theaters. When you select a movie more information is given about it and some movies have the ability to play the trailer for you. This is a nice clean app that easily lets you select your entertainment choices for the night.

5) Twitterific - This is a really good Twitter app. You can view your friends' tweets and post your own. You can also view all tweets if you choose. There's nothing spectacular about this app, but it is pretty good.

Bonus: I also liked the game Fuzzle. It's a really neat free game that will take up lots of your time. The Labyrinth lite edition is pretty good also, I'll probably wind up buying the full version of that.

Post in the comments and let me know what your favorite apps are.

Microsoft Expression Blend

Until recently the way Microsoft allowed you to design windows programs with .NET was called Windows Forms and this feature set of familiar looking tools was built into Visual Studio (which is a relatively expensive program but makes editing code much easier). Now Microsoft has released Expression Blend, the new way to create Windows Applications. Guess what, Expression Blend is a completely separate program from Visual Studio. You know what else, you can't edit your code directly from Expression Blend either now. So if you want to use the newest Microsoft technologies you have to fork out the money for both programs.
Now that I've got that out of my system I'd like to introduce you to creating Windows Applications with Expression Blend through what Microsoft calls WPF or Windows Presentation Foundation. Essentially you don't need Blend to create forms through WPF but it's a lot easier if you do. CoDe magazine online has a great article that helped me get started using WPF called WPF meets iPhone. This tutorial takes you through the steps of creating a new project from scratch making an interface similar to the iPhone. The online article has everything you need except Expression Blend and C# 2008 Express or VB Express (depending on which language you prefer, the tutorial offers code samples for each) including the C# and VB source code and all the resources needed. Following the article isn't hard and taught me enough to start creating my own forms with Expression Blend.
If you like this article and use Microsoft Technologies for your programming I would highly suggest subscribing to the magazine. You can read a lot of the content online, but as usual subscribers usually get a little more content.
Try and put your own twist on the iPhone interface and

Google Tools

Ok, I discovered this a while ago but haven't used it much or discovered how powerful it is until recently. Google has a list of products that are very useful. Some of those that I have been experimenting with are Gmail, Google Docs, Reader, and Calendar.
Gmail is a very popular web based e-mail system. It is pretty comparable to other web based e-mail systems out there (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc). I haven't used Gmail extensively but it works. I don't know why it's still in beta, but it will probably be in beta forever. Don't let that stop you from using it, as far as I can tell it's fully feature complete.
Google Docs is really the tool that I think is so cool. With Docs you can upload an array of files or create your own files right on the web. With Docs you can store Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. You can upload files of type DOC, RTF, ODT, SXW, TXT, PPT, PPS, CSV, XLS, ODS, PDF, and more. After you upload the files you can view and edit them online. You can also create Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations online. After you create or edit your uploaded files you can download them in any of the different formats that apply. You no longer need Microsoft Word to create a word document and send to your professor. You can create a document online and download it as a .DOC file and send it to your teacher. You could also upload an Open Office document and download it as a Microsoft Office document or vice-versa with any of the types.
Reader is an RSS reader just like the one integrated into your web browser or e-mail program. An RSS reader is something that is really lacking from Google's Chrome browser but they do have a web service for it. Google reader is a straight forward RSS reader. When you pull it up it will show all of the posts agregated and sorted by date. All of the different feeds are listed down the left side and clicking on one will show the posts for that feed sorted by date.
Calendar works similarly to the calendar that is built into Microsoft Outlook. You can add events, set reminders, and repeat events in a multitude of ways. The whole experience is very intuitive. You can embed the calendar in your website or export it to iCal, XML, or HTML formats. You can also add multiple calendars and share calendars with friends.
There are many more tools on Google's product site. All of these tools are great and useful. One thing that I would like to see would be these services integrated into Google's Browser. How great would it be if I could actually read my RSS feeds when I'm offline which I currently can't do with Chrome. Also it would be awesome to open and edit documents while offline because Chrome cached them. I would also like to be able to check my calendar without logging in to Google to do so. I'm just saying that would be a super nice feature. The really great thing about all these services is that you can use them from any computer when you log into Google.

Google Chrome

Well, Google Chrome has been out for a few days now and I have to say I like it. If you've been keeping up with my posts you should know that I regularly use Opera as my web browser. So far I don't think that has changed. Chrome is laking some very important features that Opera includes, such as syncing bookmarks, no Mac support, and a built in RSS reader just to name a few. I do like how the bookmarks are set up similar to Safari. As far as the RSS feeds go I've been getting by using Google Reader online, but sometimes I'm not connected to the internet (Shock!) and I would like to be able to read previous posts on some blogs. With Opera I can go back and reread blog posts because it download the feed to the hard disk and I can read them when not connected. Google Reader requires a connection to the internet to load. At first I downloaded Chrome on my work computer and as soon as I tried to run it an error message came up saying that the program failed to initialize in memory and nothing would happen. So, I installed the browser on my laptop and it worked just fine. After a couple of days a solution arose on the internet. Chrome does not play well with Symantec programs. See Chrome runs each tab in a sandbox so that if one tab crashes then it will get rid of that tab and it's instance in ram, allowing the other tabs to run smoothly. Symantec doesn't like this feature and thinks that Chrome is trying to do something funny to your memory so it blocks it. How do you get Chrome to run with Symantec? Well you turn the sandbox feature off. Can you do this through the setup or options? Sadly Chrome doesn't have an option for turning off sandbox, so you have to edit the shortcut icon that links to Chrome. In the target box you have to add a space and --no-sandbox after the last quotation mark.



This will turn off the sandbox feature and allow Google Chrome to run alongside Symantec programs.
Overall I really like where Google is taking the browser experience, especially with the search feature built right into the address bar (Opera will search Google if you type in g and then the search terms). I acknowledge that Chrome is still in beta and being developed, but I can really see this going places. Is Chrome going to be my default browser, no. Will I use it and keep an eye on updates, yes.

You can download Google Chrome at Google.com/chrome

Kids In Mind

Today I bring you Kids-In-Mind.com. If you have children, take children to movies or just like to know what the movie is rated for then this is your site. I like to know what kind of content is in a movie before I watch it, sometimes I can tell by the trailer, sometimes I can't. At Kids in Mind there is a listing of movies currently out in theaters. With a quick glance you can see the ratings for sex, violence and profanity. When you click on the movie title you can read a synopsis of the movie, and then detailed offenses in each catagory.
Under the sex category anything from kissing, touching, lovemaking or displays of skin are recorded. The good thing about the review is that it doesn't specify which characters offend or when so you don't know who is kissing who, you just know that somewhere in the movie someone kisses. If you haven't seen the movie this really shouldn't spoil it for you.
The violence/gore catagory is just as strict, any kind of physical violence or general gore (blood, guts, etc) counts. The same spoiler rules count here also so you don't know who got their head chopped off.
The profanity category simply counts the number of times certain words are used, and also catalog gestures and explain what the gestures were mentioning. This usually goes into even categorizing name calling and steryotypes.
There are also additional sections for substance use, discussion topics, and message. In the substance use section they discuss any alocohol or other drugs used or mentioned in the film. Discussion topics are a list of moral or values that are displayed or challenged in the film. Topics range from what did the character do right, how could the character have made the situation better to simple moral issues discussed in the film. The message section simply talks about the movies message and tones about certain subjects.
There are also links to the movie's official site, IMDB listing and critics.com.
The site's design is very clean and functional. There are adds on the site, but they don't get in the way and are minimal. Overal this site is very enjoyable and the best I've come across so far, if you're iffy about whether or not to see a movie I would check out this site for a content rating first.

Fantastic Contraption

I really like my blog to have pictures and/or video with the text, 'cause quite frankly pot (plain ole text) has to be pretty interesting if I'm going to read it. Too bad I can't have any pictures or videos with my post this week, but it would kind of spoil the whole subject. Now for the good stuff...

I spent most of my free time yesterday playing a game called Fantastic Contraption. The game is very simple, use five types of items (clockwise wheel, counter-clockwise wheel, neutral wheel, fluid rod, and solid rod) to make a fantastic contraption that will move an object from the start area to the goal area. Sounds simple right, trust me, it's not. What I love about this game is that the physics are pretty much spot on which is good because that's what the whole game is based on. It's really great because every control works just as you think it would (BTW save yourself some time and use the shift key when resizing and moving instead of clicking the resize button).

When you make a contraption that successfully completes a level you can save it and share it with your friends. I've saved some of mine which you can see links to at the bottom of this post. Once you get the hang of it I think it would be fun to have a challenge and see who could come up with the simplest solution to each level. Anybody up for it? Discuss it in the comments and see if we can come up with some rules for what the simplest design is. Maybe see who could get the prize in the goal quickest, who knows? Write in the comments and let me know what you think.

Here are my submissions for
Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, Level 6, Level 7, Level 8, Level 9, Level 10, Level 11, Level 12, Level 13, Level 14

Brain Den

So, you're at work and bored in front of the computer (duh! Why else would you be reading this?). Brainden.com is a place that I often wind up when I'm in this position. Please don't go there now, finish reading this post. Most of the time I just try to solve the puzzles in my head because people have already posted an answer. The thread that you see below was first solved by yours truly and the first puzzle that I solved first, btw. See what you can do with the puzzle before moving on to the website. I'll post the answer and the link to the post later (I want you to figure out the answer on your own). So here it is:

Most of today was spent in meetings with the PHB*, explaining why our project is behind schedule.

A quick virtual summary (what I imagine was said, rather than what was actually said): So anyway, it was a relief to get back to programming. As I dug into a bitmap edge detection algorithm, I ran into a spot where I needed to check the eight pixels surrounding the current one, in clockwise order, given any starting position. I whipped out a quick conditional statement that tested for each of eight possibilities, which works fine, but is ugly. Since it worked ok, I couldn't justify a lot of time to optimize it, so I gave myself five minutes to see if I could come up with a slicker way to do it. I didn't, so I moved on, but now it's 11PM and I just thought of another way to do it, and I figured it might be fun to see if anyone can find an even simpler solution.

So here's the problem ...

Consider the following diagram:



Find a single function f(x,y) that, given any one set of the eight coordinates, returns the coordinates of the adjacent square, moving clockwise. You may use any mathematical operands, including rounding, absolute value, trig functions, etc., but no conditionals.

*Pointy Haired Boss

E3 Update

Well, we got back from Charleston Saturday. Had a blast, while we were there we went to see The Dark Night, which was awesome. The movie was so awesome that we are going to see it again, and I usually don't watch movies a second time in the theater.
Now down to the real stuff, E3 has come and gone and some really big announcements were made. Xbox 360 Dashboard will get a complete makeover in this fall's update you can read more about it on Gizmodo. The new dashboard looks so much better than the old one. Microsoft has also contracted a deal with Netflix so that you can use your Xbox 360 like a Roku box to stream movies to your TV. To use this serviceThe update will also include what looks like the Nintendo Miis where you create your own 3D avatar.
Speaking of the Wii, the major announcement for me from Nintendo was Wii Sports Resort (seen in the video above) which is almost like a sequal to the most loved Wii game Wii Sports wich came packaged with your Wii. At E3 three of the activities in Wii Sports Resort were shown: Frisbee, Jet Ski, and Sword Fighting. Wii Sports Resort will also include a new Accessory for the Wiimote called the Wii MotionPlus that will increase accelerometer controls for the new game. Hopefully this new accessory will be utilized in future games for better control with the Wiimote and more realistic gameplay.
Some other things I am excited about are Fable 2, Lego Batman, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and a new edition of Tecmo Bowl on DS.


















Click the image for more screenshots

Geni.com

How many monkeys or nuts do you have hanging in your family tree? At Geni.com all you have to do is put in your name and e-mail address and start adding members of your family. In about five minutes I had put in almost three generations of my family. With Geni.com the whole family tree thing is easy, and you can put in your family member's e-mail so that they can sign up and add their information (B-Day, special events in their life, etc) so you can stay more in touch. The whole thing is super easy. I encourage you to start your family tree and put some family member's e-mails in there so that they can extend it and see how far you can get with it (if you go far enough you will hit a nut like my uncle who will have huge books of family tree that will be glad to spend hours putting in information from centuries ago). Try it out, what do you have to loose.

P.S. I'm getting married Saturday and will be on the honeymoon all next week so I probably won't be posting. Thanx.

Opera 9.51

If you have downloaded Opera 9.5, you should check for updates, because v9.51 was released recently and it is supposed to update security. I would definitely recommend getting it as soon as possible. If you haven't downloaded opera yet get on over to Opera.com to download it.

Hulu

Ever missed an episode of Lost and forgot to tell you DVR to record it, how about started to watch The Office mid season and wanted to go back and catch up on previous episodes. Hulu is a great website that lets you stream these videos and more. Hulu also has a great selection of movies that you can watch on your computer right through a little thing I like to call "The Internet." The best thing about Hulu is that you can watch as many TV shows and movies that you like for the low low price of $0/mo. That's right, by using the invention of what's known as a tasteful 30 second commercial Hulu can provide content on demand for free. The future of TV is the internet baby. The advertising is tasteful and relevant. Plus the commercials are only 20-30 seconds long and you don't have to watch fifty of them, only three or four during an hour long show and less on half hour shows. Movies are good too, as the movie isn't chopped up into ten minute segments with long commercials between each like on TV. The commercials are conservatively spaced and are hardly noticeable, as the video is streaming and has to catch up with itself every once and a while anyway. My only problem is that when I try to watch a TV show or movie over the wireless connection at my house (54 mbps Wireless G with a great connection) the videos are a bit choppy, but when watching them in the standard flash player in the browser they look fine. Check out Hulu and let me know what you think about it. Anything free can't be that bad right?

iTunes Tip: Top 2Gb Most Played

So you've got an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and like me have well over 30Gb of media. I've been contemplating the possibility of getting an iPhone and was wondering, how am I going to manage to only carry 8Gb of media around with me. Here's the solution I came up with, create a playlist that will hold 2Gb of my most listened to songs, a playlist with 3Gb of the least often played movies, a playlist with 3Gb of the most recently added TV Shows, and a playlist that gets 25 of the most recently added songs that are not in the most played list (all of these are smart playlists btw). Then I made a playlist called Media that will randomly grab about 7.5Gb (7680Mb) of the playlists listed above. After that I plan to synch my unplayed podcast episodes and a static playlist called Misc that will hold anything that I put in it that I explicitly want to appear on my iPhone and the Media playlist. Since I usually don't have more than half of a gigabyte of unplayed podcasts this should work. You may need to adjust the numbers on some of the playlists according to your media tastes, if you don't watch TV on your iPhone then you can allocate those 3Gb to music or movies, I think you get the point. You can check my flickr page for screenshots of the playlists if you are unsure of what the settings should be. Leave a comment and let me know how your playlists worked and how the transition was to the iPhone/iPod Touch.

DIY iPod Charger (AKA MintyBoost)

A couple of weeks ago I saw the MintyBoost on the Make Blog. I have had some experience with electronics before. I ordered a DIY guitar pedal from Build Your Own Clone. When I ordered it, it came with a Confidence Booster Circuit, which is a very simple circuit which boosts a guitar signal, sort of like a volume switch. I did pretty well on that, but I could never get the real pedal, a Tube Screamer to clone the TS-808 to work correctly. Anyway, I ordered the MintyBoost last Monday and it arrived at my house on Thursday. Friday night My Fiancee and I put the thing together. If you’ve never done an electronics project and you are interested I would highly recommend starting here. There aren’t many parts and there are no switches or knobs to worry about mounting on the case. I haven’t finished mounting the whole project in the Altoids Tin, but other than that I’ve got it completed. All in all the project will take about thirty minutes to assemble and put in the case. The assembly was very simple and easy. The charger works perfectly and automatically started to charge my iPod. I’ve posted some pics of the final result. To see more about the product you can check out Lady Ada for more information.

Opera 9.5

Here's another short for this week. Opera released a new version of their great web browser. If you haven't downloaded it yet you should. It has all of the great features that I talked about before and some more. If you've already downloaded it or when you do download it let me know in the comments, I'd like to see what you think.

DRM Wars

So I've been downloading music from iTunes for about two years now. I love the iTunes interface and streamlined aproach. When I buy something it's there, I don't have to import it and worry about if all my songs are there or not. Alot of people complain about the DRM (Digital Rights Management) that iTunes has to offer to keep the record industry happy. It really doesn't bother me, I don't have more than 5 computers and I only put the music on two portable devices so I'm well within my parameters there. I did run into one thing that has bugged me before and ir rared its ugly head again the other day, I can't play the DRM music on my Xbox 360 or through TVersity (AGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRR!). Not such a big deal 'cause I mainly wanted to watch podcasts on my tv, so I calmed down and realized I could handle it. Then I found out about Amazon.com MP3 downloads. Amazon is able to offer DRM free MP3s of about the same selection as the entire iTunes store, not just iTunes Plus THE WHOLE STORE! Why won't the entertainment companies let iTunes offer DRM free content? I decided I wouldn't spend money at the Amazon store and I would stay faithful to my friend iTunes. I have heard Apple express their feelings about DRM and how it is a pain for them and the user, the only reason they have DRM protection is because the recording labels make them use DRM protection or they won't let iTunes provide the content. Then I started collecting Pepsi bottle caps, which let you acrue points and buy MP3s from Amazon for 5 points per song, and downloaded a song yesterday. Amazon provides a program to download the MP3 and will automatically add it to the iTunes library. Now I have a complex, do I continue to be faithful to iTunes who have to use the limiting protection on their music or do I switch to Amazon who can offer the media without protection. It's not like I want to share music through peer to peer services, I just want to use what I've bought on all my devices. What really intrigues me is how the music labels can demand that iTunes sell their music with copy protection and then turn around to let Amazon and other services sell the music with no protection at all. Let me know what you think in the comments section for this post.

Heroes Con

Anybody interested in comics that will be near the Charlotte, NC, area from June 20 - 21, should check out Heroes Con. It will be at the Charlotte Convention Center. The schedule is as follows Friday the floor will be open to the public from 11:00am - 7:00pm, Saturday from 10:00am - 6:00pm, and Sunday from 11:00am - 6:00pm. Tickets will be $10 at the door for a one day ticket and $20 for a three day ticket. Three day tickets are available in advanced for $20 and will include some goodies. If your children are interested in comics you can take them and get in one day for $5 (plus $10 for child's ticket) or three days for $10 (plus $20 for child's ticket). Kids 12 and under will get in for free. I have never attended the Charlotte Comic Con before, but it looks like it will be a great event. Leave me a comment if you are going and maybe we can meet up while we're there. You can see more about the convention and read the Heroes Con blog.

Lego Indiana Jones DS

Alright, last week I talked about the demo of the Lego Indiana Jones game. I got the game (fiancee bought the game for me) for DS Tuesday when it came out and have since played it for about two hours since then. I definitely love this game.

The gameplay is very similar to Lego Star Wars. Instead of Force powers you get to use Indy's whip :). I can't directly relate this game to Lego Star Wars because I have Star Wars on Xbox 360 and got this on DS. The quality of the game is still just as good, and oh yeah you get to use the whip! The game has a lot of built in replayability like Star Wars does. If you haven't played Lego Star Wars each mission has to be played in story mode first and then can be played in freeplay. When you play in Story Mode the game automatically gives you the characters required to complete the mission, but when you play freeplay you can choose your own characters to play with you. There are certain areas built in that can only be accessed by characters in freeplay and some characters that you need won't be unlocked until you finish other missions later. Another big aspect of the game is the puzzle solving aspect. The puzzles aren't super hard, but they are fun. It's easy to relax while playing just running around smashing everything collecting coins and special items.

The two screens are handled very nicely. The main game goes on in the top screen and miscellaneous options are displayed on the bottom screen. The touch screen is used in a very natural way. For most of the things you use the touch screen for you could use a button to preform the same action. The things you use the touch screen for are when the whip could be used for special reasons (eg swing across gaps, hit special switches, climb, etc), when there are special items like cranks, digging when your character has a shovel, and special weapons. There is also a room that has special touch games that you have to unlock through the different missions. I haven't unlocked many of them, but it doesn't look like it's going to add a whole lot to the game. The microphone is also used in a very interesting way. The microphone is used to blow out torches which usually triggers something to happen, you can also blow on the microphone to activate fans that will elevate you, and do more stuff with blowing into the microphone.

There is a multiplayer option for either hosting the game from one cartridge or by having two cartridges. I haven't tried this out as I don't know anyone else that has a DS, but when I do I'll let you know.

I would definitely recomment this game to anyone. You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to enjoy this game or the star wars games. I am a big fan of the Lego games genre and hope that they continue to make them (Batman should be coming this Summer sometime). I really like the way you just play and play until you finish the level because you don't really die any time, you just lose some coins and reincarnate where you were last. This feature makes the games really fun to play with kids or just to play to relax, becuase you really can't get stressed out playing this.

TVersity

I downloaded TVersity saturday. I saw it featured in a Tekzilla episode. TVersity is a media server that can play your videos, music, and stream pictures. It also serves up your media to a variety of devices including the iPhone/iTouch, Xbox 360, PS3, other Computers, and the internet. Not only will it stream media from your PC, but it will stream media off the web. If you're not familiar with Revision3 it is a website that hosts shows that would be equivilent to a small broadcast television station. All the shows on Revision3 have feeds that will update you when new shows are out, like podcasts. You can subscribe to these feeds in TVersity and stream the media off the internet if you don't feel like waiting to download the whole High Definition video to your hardrive.
Right off the bat I thought it was going to be super easy to stream media to my Xbox 360. Not so, I did have to spend some time setting up my Xbox to notice the TVersity server as a media server. I googled my problem and found an answer from After Dawn Guides. After reading the entire After Dawn guide and setting up my Xbox 360 wireless connection again. I messed with my router to make sure all the ports were open, they were. After banging my head against the wall for about an hour I decided to turn off Windows Firewall. DING!!! Why didn't I think of that first. Windows Firewall is always the answer. After a few minutes the TVersity server was streaming media straight to my Xbox. You do have to mess with the settings to get the video to look better, the default resolution makes the videos kind of grainy. I double the resolution and the picture looked acceptable. I still need to play with the settings for a while, but I was tired of messing with it after all that.
TVersity does so much more than what I've discussed here. It can stream images from a flickr feed or your computer, and it can stream to a Wii or over the internet. If you get TVersity up and running in any way let me know in the comments and maybe add some screens shots or pictures of what you've done with it.

My Opera

If you use the newest beta of opera. Then you have access to a feature called Opera Link. Opera Link allows you to sync your bookmarks wherever you are surfing. Your bookmarks are even stored online at my.opera.com. Not only will Opera sync your bookmarks, but your widgets and personal bar also. The only extra item I'd like to see would be to sync my Feed list also. All you have to do is create an account at My Opera and then all your information will go with you wherever you go. Whether at home, work, mobile phone, or even on other computers you will never have to struggle to remember horrible URLs that are miles long, or search the exact same sentance in Google again. Start bookmarking and syncing today!

Lego Indiana Jones

Today I downloaded Lego Indiana Jones for Windows and played it during break. I have played Lego Star Wars Episodes IV - VI for my Xbox 360 and love it. From the fifteen minutes of playtime I got I found that if you loved Lego Star Wars, then you'll definitely love Lego Indiana Jones. Kinda sucks 'cause I don't have my Xbox 360 controller here with me at work, but the keyboard worked just fine for the fifteen minutes I played.
There was one mechanical difference that I found in the gameplay from Lego Star Wars. The way you switch players is alot easier. I don't know how it will be for more than two characters, but you don't have to be directly facing the character you want to switch to, all you have to do is press the switch button and you're switched. I haven't played all the way through the demo, but I'm sure I will tonight. I think I'm gonna try Lego Indiana Jones out on my DS and as soon as I play through it I will write a review on what I think about it.
My first impression of Lego Indiana Jones is that I'm definitely going to buy it, it's very pretty and easy to manuever. Make sure you download the demo and watch the trailer.

StrokeIt

Currently, my favorite web browser is Opera. One of my favorite features is Mouse Gestures. I've gotten so used to using mouse gestures in Opera I often find myself trying to do the same things in IE and Windows Explorer. This was getting on my nerves so bad, because I would right click drag left and a context menu would popup. And I would remember that I wasn't in Opera, cry for a minute, then resume working by moving my hand and clicking on the back button. Today I was watching a Tekzilla episode on mouse gestures and saw a program called StrokeIt. Stroke it works similar to mouse gestures, but it works for everything else. It comes preprogrammed with some basic mouse gestures like Opera, but you can customize it with your own gestures. One really great thing is that when you right click and drag it starts to draw on the screen to show you your gesture. If the gesture is unrecognized in the software, then it asks you if you want to add functionality for that gesture. It's a free download so try it out and become even more productive than before.

Digsby

Recently a friend referred me to Digsby. Digsby is essentially an instant messaging interface. Above that Digsby is a social networking interface. Digsby handles my Windows Live messenger account, my Facebook and Facebook Chat accounts, and my Twitter account. If you're not familiar with any of these things check out the links. Digsby is very powerful because it can do so much more. You could add your AIM and/or Yahoo! account(s) and it would aggregate all of your contacts so you could completely not care who is on what interface, but could talk to them all with one simple interface. If you use instant message (AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, and Facebook Chat) and/or Social Networks (Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter) you should definitely check out Digsby.

Too Much Security

After writing my previous post (it looks like I'm writing both of these today, but I wrote the previous post much earlier and just got around to publishing it) I started thinking about the problems with too much security. The main reason I got started thinking about this is because I got a Nintendo DS for my birthday and it doesn't support WPA encryption. I then got to thinking about the area I live in. I live in a rural neighborhood where the neighbors are spaced out pretty well. There really isn't much need for heavy encryption becuase someone would have to be in the room closest to my house at my neighbors house or would have to be pulled up in my driveway or backyard. I doubt this is really going to happen at all so I decided to loosen my security a little bit. Most definitely though, if I lived in an apartment complex I would use the heaviest security I could get because someone in a neighboring apartment or the apartments above or below could intercept and use my wireless network. So now after I've scared your pants off with all the security talk, really consider what type of security is right for you. Obviously the more secure your network is the harder it is going to be for you to use it, so think about it before you completely lock it down.

Securing Your Wireless Network

According to an Accenture survey quoted by Robert McMillan in an article for NetworkWorld 12% of U.S. and U.K. consumers 'borrow' free Wi-Fi access. This free wireless access is provided by personal unprotected networks. For those of us with wireless networks in our homes this is a scary thought. Never fear, there is a solution to the problem, encryption. Encryption means encoding the message much like most of us did in middle school. Devising a scheme where A = M, B = N, C = O, etc. This is a very simple type of encryption, but nonetheless we've been encrypting data for a while.  
We can also encrypt our wireless networks. Encryption is important, because without it hackers could log on to our open wireless access point and use programs called sniffers to sniff the network traffic and pick up things like the password to your online banking account or your PayPal password. Another thing that hackers can do is use the internet illegally through your network connection, such as upload/download copyright protected files or explicit material. How fun would that be if the police came knocking on your door one day saying that they traced an illegal host for the newest blockbuster movie to your address? That wouldn't be a very fun day.  
We can, however, encrypt our network traffic by not broadcasting your SSID, utilizing MAC address filtering, and using WEP or WPA encryption. You should consult the manual to your wireless router to see these security settings and how to change them.
SSID stands for Service Set Identifier, which is essentially the name of your access point. Broadcasting your SSID is known as SSID beaconing. If you turn this feature off users are required to provide the name of the network before they are allowed to connect. This will deter most users from trying to get on your network but as long as the person wants to sit and try to figure out your access point's name they will be able to and if you've never changed the name from the default of "NETGEAR", "LINKSYS", or whatever the default name of your router is it probably won't be that hard to guess. Also, your information is still roaming around the air waves in plain text (plain text means unencrypted data) and could be retrieved by sniffers.
Another way to keep unwanted users off your network is to limit the MAC addresses that are allowed on your network. Every Ethernet network interface card (NIC) has a MAC address that is specific to that card. Every manufacture of network cards is assigned a "half" MAC address and the company generates the other half, so by looking at the MAC address of a network card you could tell the manufacturer of it. You can tell your wireless router which MAC addresses are allowed on the network and all others will be rejected. This method is a pain for some users because if someone comes to your house with a laptop and wants to get on your network, then you would have to change your router settings to let their MAC address on, which would involve getting their MAC address and typing in to your allow list. Then after they leave you might want to remove their address from your list. This method like the first will deter most unwanted users from breaking in but a simple MAC address spoof would get them in and your data is still plain text.
To get your network traffic encrypted you are going to want to use WEP or WPA encryption. If you Google WEP vs. WPA you will find some really good articles debating which one is more secure but I'll let you figure that out for yourself, I'll just tell you how each works. WEP encrypts your network traffic by getting a password from the user and then if that password is correct the user's machine and the router start to "Shake Hands." There are two flavors of WEP 64-bit and 128-bit encryption keys. To understand what I'm going to say next, you need to know that network traffic is sent in packets or small packages that allow for management of the network. These packets allow the network to speed up and "multi-task" so that instead of finishing my total request for a 300Mb file and then transferring your request, the packets are interlaced so that it seems that both of us can be doing something at the same time. With that said on a WEP encrypted network each WEP packet sent is encrypted with a RC4 cipher which is generated from a separate encryption key. This encryption key is made up from two parts; the first part is 24 bits and is known as the initialization vector (IV). After the IV either 40 or 104 bits are added to the key to make up the 64-bit or 128-bit encryption key. The IV is transmitted in plain text so that anyone sniffing your network traffic can see the first 24 bits of your key every time packets are sent across the network. I would suggest reading the article at wi-fiplanet to find ways to make the most of WEP.
With WEP your data is encrypted but it doesn't take much for a strong willed sniffer to get past that. WPA encryption, however, uses the temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP) to scramble the keys using a hashing algorithm. TKIP also includes a tamper-proof mechanism to check that the keys haven’t been changed or messed with to ensure the integrity of the keys. WPA also includes user authentication through the extensible authentication protocol (EAP). EAP utilizes a type of MAC address filtering like we discussed above and is built on a public key encryption system. WPA was created to address some of WEPs failures, but it is only an interim solution. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is currently defining a standard that will be called 802.11i to replace both WEP and WPA.
Make sure that you’ve got your wireless network secured by disabling your access point from SSID beaconing, utilizing MAC address filtering and implementing some encryption system either WEP or WPA. Also keep a lookout for 802.11i when it gets finalized by the IEEE to take place of WPA. By securing your network traffic you greatly decrease your chances of identity theft or other severe problems.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/041608-survey-12-percent-of-consumers.html
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/2106281
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/WPA.html

About Me

Hello everyone!  This is my first post here.  I am currently working at Geppetto Kitchens in Rutherfordton, NC, as a comptuer programmer and working with Kelly Gilliam on developing dmg3dsystms.com.  Thanks for checking me out.