Veteran’s Day

Today is Veteran’s Day. Please take a moment out of your day to remember the sacrifices made for our country’s freedom.

On Veteran’s Day we honor
Soldiers who protect our nation.
For their service as our warriors,
They deserve our admiration.
Some of them were drafted;
Some were volunteers;
For some it was just yesterday;
For some it’s been many years;
In the jungle or the desert,
On land or on the sea,
They did whatever was assigned
To produce a victory.
Some came back; some didn’t.
They defended us everywhere.
Some saw combat; some rode a desk;
All of them did their share.
No matter what the duty,
For low pay and little glory,
These soldiers gave up normal lives,
For duties mundane and gory.
Let every veteran be honored;
Don’t let politics get in the way.
Without them, freedom would have died;
What they did, we can’t repay.
We owe so much to them,
Who kept us safe from terror,
So when we see a uniform,
Let’s say “thank you” to every wearer.
By Joanna Fuchs

Kindle for PC Hits, Mac Coming Soon, Kindle Still Worth It?

Amazon released their Beta version of an e-book reader for their Amazon Book Store on desktops today (in beta of course). The app is rather simple, allowing you to read all your purchased content now on your PC (with Mac versions coming soon). But if the Kindle is already on the iPhone, PC, Mac (soon), and with the Nook’s $260 price tag, is the Kindle or Kindle DX really worth the money?

Mac OSX 10.6.2 Update Fixes Almost ALL Bugs

Apple has released an update to Snow Leopard (10.6.2) and a security update to Leopard. Here’s a list of fixes for Snow Leopard:

IF YOU RUN OSX ON A NETBOOK, DO NOT UPDATE. IT WILL KILL INTEL ATOM PROCESSOR USE.

- an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
- a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
- Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
- a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
- issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
- the reliability of menu extras
- an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
- an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
- Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
- a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
- an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
- Safari plug-in reliability
- general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
- an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.
For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

PC Users Get Ripped on COD4: Modern Warfare 2

Infinity Ward recently “announced” some pretty bad news following a chat with a popular gaming podcast, and a chat between Mackey McCandlish and Ryan Lastimosa from Infinity Ward and BestBuy. PC gamers won’t be too happy about the upcoming changes in Modern Warfare 2 for the PC.

The most stunning thing revealed would have to be the DEATH OF DEDICATED SERVERS. That’s right, they’re gone.

“kaRMa: Please give me a direct answer. On the PC version. Are all games hosted by players, and is there a five-second delay when host migration is in effect?

Vince-IW: yes.”

Further more, you won’t have any control over who is the host. The game decides that, not you. The amount of players in the game has also been decreased to 9 v. 9.

To sum it all up, Modern Warfare 2 comes to the PC with a lack of dedicated servers, NO CONSOLE COMMANDS, no human say in hosting games, a lengthy pause between switching hosts, no leaning, no recording matches, and no kicking players who hack, cheat, or cause trouble. Great job, Infinity Ward!!

 

Fortune Names Steve Jobs Top CEO, France Celebrates

A youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

Fortune today named Steve Jobs the CEO of the decade for his economical work and technological advances in society. I mean, cmon, who doesn’t have an iPod?

Meanwhile, Apple is busy with the opening of their first store in France.

“We are very pleased to extend the experience of the Apple Store in France, said Ron Johnson, Senior Vice President of Retail Apple. The new store is located below the famous Louvre Pyramid, in the Carrousel du Louvre. This is the place to go shopping, train and develop ideas.”

Apple has plans for rapid expansion in France, with the opening of a second store scheduled for November 14th in Montpellier in the South of France.

Apple Breaks 100,000 Apps

The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.

The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.
With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.

Quicknews: Apple Releases Apple TV 3.0 (Software)

Apple released their newest update to Apple TV (3.0) which adds several new features to Apple TV along with a revamped menu.

“The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “HD movies and HD TV shows from iTunes have been a huge hit with Apple TV customers, and with Apple TV 3.0 they get great new features including iTunes Extras, Genius Mixes and Internet radio.”

ASUS First w/ Motherboard Carrying USB 3.0

Looks like Asus has already beat Intel to creating the very first USB 3.o compliant motherboard. It’s an Intel P55-based mobo and it uses third party controllers for a pair of USB 3.0 ports.

The “Xtreme Design P7P55D-E” has 10 USB ports too. It also supports CrossFire and SLI with a pair of PCIe x 16 slots, a pair of Gigabit ethernet ports, and eSATA. Of course, there’s no price or date for this thing yet.

What a Week? For Games I mean….

How much can they cram in one week?

• Tekken 6
• Forza Motorsport 3
• GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony
• Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
• DJ Hero

Which one of these games will you pick up this week?

The Motorola DROID: Verizon’s iPhone Cure

Motorola is releasing their antidote to the iPhone sickness with the DROID. The Droid is an Android phone that will be front and center on Verizon on November 6th for $199 (with a contract). (Funny that Verizon’s CEO stated that Apple’s decision to let the iPhone run on Verizon was all theirs, especially considering Verizon was the first to REJECT the iPhone.)

Android 2.0 will be front and center, along with Visual Voicemail, a 3.7-inch display (854 x 480 resolution), 5 megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash), a bundled 16GB memory card and a beta version of Google Maps Navigation. There’s also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi, voice-activated search and over-the-air Amazon MP3 downloads.

DSi XL Coming to Europe in 2010

Yes, it’s a real product. An extra large DSi.

The Japanese DSi LL will be available in Wine Red, Dark Brown (above), and Natural White, and will come preloaded with Easy Meikyo Kokugo Dictionary, Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters and Brain Age Express: Math. There is no word yet about the color variation or preloaded software selection for the European version.

[Thanks to Joystiq for the picture]

What’s Twitter Great For? News! Enter the TweetPortal…

Twitter has become the go to site for many tech enthusiasts, but searching Twitter hasn’t always been the easiest when you’ve wanted specific news. That’s why Tweet Portal is here.

“Think of us as an online-only newspaper comprised of news from microblogs, or as a directory of popular “Twitterers,” or as a very cool social media gateway, or as a tweet directory, or as a Twitter aggregator, or as the next phase of news gathering and news presentation, or as a social media pr (public relations) tool, or as a step in the evolution of journalism in this new wireless age, or just as one of your daily must-visit websites that provides you with updated news and information and something to talk about.”

TweetPortal is a twitter based information pool in which news is output through different news caterogories, just like the regular news. What’s great about TweetPortal however is that each story is only 140 characters long, so you don’t need to sift through multiple pages just to find one interesting story.

TweetPortal is already up and running in it’s Beta phase, and they’re even working on local based portals. In fact, they already have one up and running for Utah. Go check it out today!

[tweetportal]

[utahtweets]

Barnes & Noble’s “Nook”, Kindle Digging It’s Grave

Barnes & Noble has officially release their e-book reader, and it looks like the Kindle has already been beaten.

The Nook has a six-inch 16-level E-ink screen with a color touchscreen underneath for navigation and settings, and — it’s running Android! You can lend a book to a friend, and there’s wireless on AT&T’s 3G network as well as WiFi — everything we saw earlier today. Pre-sales are live now at $259, and it’ll be shipping in November. All B&N stores will soon be getting a big crazy display unit that showcases the device and a number of cases from all sorts of designers. And what’s more, Nook owners can connect to B&N WiFi and browse complete ebooks in-store for free — just like a real book.

Other Notes:

• They like Android, but they’re not doing open app development — they just like the optimizations for the small screen. It sounded like apps are a possibility, through.
• There’s no browser, they think E-ink browsing is clunky.
• The Nook has 2GB of built-in storage, but there’s an SD slot as well.
• The WiFi will only work in Barnes & Noble stores at launch.
• The in-store book browsing doesn’t download books, it “streams” them. Uh, sure — we’ll see about that.
• The screen is capacitive touch — “just like the iPhone.”
• They’re looking at an actual Android app for the future, no commitments made.
• Nook will mount as mass storage over USB.
• Only some books can be lended, and they’ll be branded with a LendMe logo on the ebook store. It’s up to the publishers, but B&N says they’re working to enable as many as they can.
• They plan to support Windows Mobile in the future.