RoamingGecko

YouTube – Google Wave Overview

Ok, I am not going to suggest that anyone watch an 80 minute video to see what Google Wave is all about so I am using this video (It’s only 8 minutes long). Spend 8 minutes and you will get a pretty good idea of what Google Wave is all about. I see a lot of potential in this web app and think it will be an excellent group project tool.

Once this app goes mainstream things are really going to get good. Google’s choice to make it open source is going to really drive third party developers.

It’s Google for pete’s sake. They’re like internet gold.

THE BLOOD BROKERS – HOW BLOOD, THE ‘GIFT OF LIFE,’ BECAME A BILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS

Posting this link to explain to people why I detest the Red Cross and their business practices. Have you noticed how, if you are a blood donor, that they call you constantly with the zeal of a deranged telemarketer? You think they do this because for some holy, altruistic drive to help people?

You are delusional. They are doing it to make money. That’s their drive, to fill their pockets.

I could go on and on about this topic but I think you should do the research yourself. Spend 5 minutes with Google and see if you don’t come to despise them as I do.

To get you started I will list a few links for you to peruse at your leisure.

Bad Blood

Billion Dollar Greed

If you are like me and can’t stand YouTube annotations because most people use them way too much you can turn them off by following the instructions in the image above. You can turn them back on using the menu on the YouTube player but this will allow you to watch YouTube videos with the annotations turned off by default.

Thankfully the folks at YouTube were wise enough to provide this option or risk losing viewers at an exponential rate.

Penny Arcade! – The Wisdom Of Solomon.

This morning, excited about finally getting 3G and wondering if that meant MMS wasn’t too far behind, I did a Google search on what it was going to take to get MMS working once the 25th rolled around and I came across the 5.0 version of the carrier file. Well, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it out as long as I had a back up and so I uploaded it to my iPhone and discovered that I could receive MMS messages. I wasn’t able to send MMS at that time but after several hours (I am guessing AT&T’s system took a few hours to make the adjustment on its own) I was also able to send MMS.  Here are some images from my phone showing MMS is in fact enabled.

If you would like to give this a go yourself, follow the steps below;

• Make sure iTunes isn’t running and open up a Terminal window and cut and paste the following command into the window and hit enter.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE

• Download this file…

2. Open iTunes and select your iPhone. While holding down the Option key click the Update button. Browse to to the file you downloaded in the step above and continue.

• Turn off your iPhone to reboot it.
• Be sure your MMS settings are set the same as in the image below. (Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network -> MMS)

You should now be able to at least receive MMS messages. It took a couple of hours before I was able to send them myself but as the images above show I can in fact send and receive MMS. You will be able to tell that MMS is now enabled as there will be a camera icon in the MMS message window to the left of the text input field. Clicking the send icon in the lower left when you are viewing a photo will now show an MMS button. Now I am not guaranteeing that this will work for anyone else but if you are in Blacksburg as I am it should work. I don’t know what will happen when MMS is officially rolled out but my guess is I will update my phone at that time and every thing will be just as if I had not updated my carrier file early.

Good Luck. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

Here is a copy of the original ippc file should you want to revert back to the 4.0 version of the carrier file.

Wow! This is awesome. Sure it would probably suck if they did a full length movie but still, the effects in the short are done really well. I would probably hit the theater if they did make a movie but I will settle for the game out later this month.

Came across this annoying little quirk this evening while working in Photoshop. I was constantly rotating the canvas of my image accidentally using the trackpad on my MacBook Pro. Now, I love the multi-touch track pad but in this instance it was getting a little out of hand. If you have run across this your self, click the image above or the link below to download a plugin that will disable this feature while using Photoshop.

Adobe – Photoshop : For Macintosh : Adobe Photoshop CS4 Disable Canvas Rotation Via Trackpad plug-in

Just finished watching “Band of Brothers” on Blue-Ray. Has to be one of the best damn mini-series that I have ever watched and it looks absolutely spectacular on Blue-Ray. Which is why I am excited for March to arrive so I can watch “The Pacific”. Spielberg and Hanks team up once again to bring us another 10 part mini-series chronicling exploits in the Pacific by US Marines. Hopefully this will be every bit as good as Band of Brothers was and March can’t get here soon enough for me. See the trailer from HBO below.

via Flickr Photo Download: The Thing With Two Heads.

It sad but this was an actual real movie that someone spent money to produce.

Here’s the YouTube vid of the movie trailer.

New study finds close to one quarter of Xbox 360s fail within two years:

Sure, it’s not exactly news to hear that the Xbox 360 is the most unreliable console of the big three, but just how unreliable is it? Now there’s a point of contention. The good news for Microsoft, of sorts, is that a new study from SquareTrade found that just 23.7% of Xbox 360 consoles failed within the first two years of ownership, which is actually a fair bit better than some of the previous numbers that topped 50%. The study also found that 10% of PlayStation 3 users reported a system failure, compared to a mere 2.7% of Wii owners. The Wii actually fared the worst when it came to power and remote control issues, however, while the most common problems with the Xbox 360 and PS3 were disc read errors and output issues. For its part, while Microsoft hasn’t responded to this particular study, it has previously pointed to its ‘best warranty in the industry’ to reassure its users and, of course, to its more recently-produced consoles, which are less likely to buckle under the pressure of a marathon Call of Duty session.

[Via InformationWeek]

(Via Engadget.)