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My buddy technology called, so him and Lifehack came over today for some fun.  Lets go right into what we talked about! According to Engadget, my cell phone provider, AT&T, has dropped some extra cash on those fancy Microsoft Surface table computers.  You can drop any AT&T display phone on the table and get the specifications.  Putting multiple phones on the table allows you to directly compare them.  Pretty awesome technology overall, but it certainly doesn’t make help them not drop my calls.  Take a look at the new surface mod:

Being an avid soccer fan, I truly can appreciate anything David Beckham does.  Although I’m not a huge fan of Beckham since he plays for the Galaxy instead of my ol’ Dynamo, its nice to see he’s getting appreciated for his 100th cap in England by an American company.  Look at this hunk of gold Apple presented him with [via Gizmodo]:

Speaking of Apple, the iTunes store has finally hit #1 according to Ars Technica.  It seems the iTunes store is now the leading seller of music.  This includes all those people who sell CDs.  Yes, congrats to Apple.  Its been a while but the digital wave has apparently caught on.  Now can you make it cheaper?  I’m just saying…

Finally, Lifehack commenters have come up with some genius advice for the younger generation (me?).  I really hope some of these things stick with me.  I sometimes need to take this advice: 

8. Keep playing, laughing and having fun, don’t get too serious!

 
Other times, you just have to go for it.  I thought #20 was funny:

20. Get over it and kiss the girl!  

Finally for some inspiration, this was thrown in:

32. Whatever you do, believe in yourself. You have untapped potential, and you will accomplish everything you have dreamed about. 

For more great advice, check out the article, here. 

Well I’ve been so busy as of late, that I’ve been neglecting the tech biz.  So tonight after I was so uninspired by the democratic debate (at least us Texans were pumped about it), I decided to show some love to the tech world.

First off, Apple has filed a patent that involves tons of touching, recognizes typing, and incorporates tracking.  Engadget jokes about this being a surface-like (see Microsoft Surface) device.  Although, that’d be really cool and interesting, I’m going to speculate it might end up being a tablet-like computer.  Regardless of what it is, I’ll welcome the new addition down the road.  More, here.

Microsoft finally (yeah its been a while) dropped Service Pack 1 for Vista.  Although its great that Microsoft is advancing the OS, I’m afraid you won’t notice a huge difference.  So yes, all those hardware issues you’re having will probably remain issues.  Anyways, there are security and internal system updates that are included and probably should be downloaded.  Boot up that Windows update and get on it.  PCMag’s coverage, here.

Redhat has finally realized Data Portability exists and sent a cease and desist letter.  They claim the logo looks oh too similar.  If I remember correctly (and I do), I called this when DataPortability first started to gain momentum.  Oh well, maybe it took them a while to round up their lawyers.  RWW’s coverage, here.

And just to leave you a little something, Troy sent me this photo from XKCD.  Apparently its supposed to be about me.  Surprisingly, I agree.

Has anyone ever mentioned how they love Fridays? For me, its normally a good day. I have Computer Security which is typically interesting. Its also an arm day at the gym so I get to flex and feel proud when I can barely feel the guns any more. On top of that, its an ab day. I love working on abs and getting some hardcore multi-mile cardio in. Hoo-rah! That didn’t exactly happen today though. I went to class, like always. Today we talked about DES, which is a quite boring encryption algorithm. Yawn, I won’t bore you with the details. After class, I was asked to give a tour to my alumni. I felt its nice to give back, so I agreed. An hour after class, they arrive to meet with another grad student’s advisor. Then we took them out to get the grand tour. After some nice conversation and a few hours of time passing, they left. At that point, I was starving so I opted to not work out (blasphemy!). Ah well, at least there was a good Las Vegas on tonight.

In other news, I’ve been a long time supporter of Yahoo! Inc. Eloy got me hooked on the lovely photo tool called Flickr. I am also a del.icio.us user (sparingly) and an early adopter of KickStart. Why the Yahoo love today? Well, according to the NYTimes (and everyone else), Microsoft has offered a whopping $44.6 Billion to Yahoo for ownership (roughly $31 per share). We should all start jumping for joy right? Wrong (unless you like failed online businesses). Microsoft buying Yahoo! is admittance of Microsoft’s faltering web market. It shows they have finally given up competing with Yahoo!, AOL, and Google. Fine, Great, even monopolies need help too. If you can’t beat them, buy them up right? The problem is, people actually like Yahoo (like myself). Seriously. A Microsoft buyout will potentially degrade Yahoo’s products and kill all the creative juices that made Yahoo innovative in the first place.

With this news, are their alternatives for the ever popular Flickr, del.icio.us, and Upcoming? Lets start with Flickr. Google offers a photo service called Picasa Web Album. Aside from not having a fully featured toolset available for Mac users (grr!), Picasa just doesn’t have the pizazz that Flickr does. Here’s my sample album so you can see how it looks and feels. It seems Google forces you to create albums which is great for organization, but not so great for a quick look at the full image set. Also there isn’t a preview to see what’s images are coming up next (like Flickr’s PhotoStream feature). Just a little tidbit I missed. Tagging is still available which is really really nice. Its also quite easy to geotag images base off of the albums. Its a nice little image album program, but nowhere near as robust as Flickr. Another great online image app is SmugMug. I don’t have an account, but I hear tagging and organization is easy there as well. The downside is the roughly $40/yr price tag. Ouch!

Next up is social bookmarking from del.icio.us. There are again, a few options to replace it. First and foremost, Google has a mini-app in their igoogle (or personal homepage suite) that allows you to save bookmarks and retrieve them from anywhere. Each bookmark is tag-able and search-able. The problem (or maybe not for you) is that none of my friends can see the bookmarks. So it makes it just that much harder to share cool stuff with others. Another wannabe del.icio.us replacement is Spurl. It falls under similar sharing issues with Google Bookmarks. So, these do patch the problem well but aren’t really del.icio.us replacements.

Finally, Upcoming is a great event site broadcasting parties, conferences, and all other events going on in your area. Eventful is another solution to this problem. In this case, its actually a good solution. They both cover a broad range of events, are search-able, and can limit events based on a timetable (say like the next 7 days or the next month). The only advantage Upcoming has over Eventful by allowing users to proclaim their attendance. This could potentially show if the event is going to be a bust or not. Of course this is relative to all the Yahoo! users that actually use Upcoming and not representative of the event as a whole, so this feature can be quite easily forgotten.

Overall, there are many alternatives to these great Yahoo apps, but not many are as robust. Each have their own disadvantages of use (except maybe Eventful) when compared to the Yahoo alternative. What’s the verdict? Either better apps need to be produced, or we need to fight for our Yahoo goodness. I personally prefer to fight for Yahoo (especially since I paid them for Flickr Pro already this year) to live Microsoft free. The choice, is yours my friends.

Thursday, Oh wonderful Thursday.  How uneventful you are this week.

I saw a friend who I haven’t seen in a few years.  She’s cool, so its nice to see her again.  Other than that, not much happened at school.

At the gym, I conveniently broke my mp3 player before I worked out.  *sigh*   I’ve had an iRiver T10 for quite a while.  So long in fact, it has since been discontinued.  So I’d like to pay some homage to the T10.  It was a great alternative to the ever so popular iPod.  It comes with a built-in FM tuner which was a big draw for me.  Just a side note, even the iPods STILL don’t have a built in FM tuner.  I mean, c’mon Apple.  I want to listen to more than the iTunes store.  Sometimes I like to listen to the mix on 93.3, ya know?  Oh, and they have far superior sound quality to those iPods.  I can’t say its better than the Zune, since I haven’t heard the Zune first hand, but I’m sure its close if not better.  With that said, I think I’m leaning towards getting an iRiver Clix (2nd gen).  The engineers at iRiver worked hard to make sure the navigation is as intuitive as possible.  I adore them for such thought.  Usability should be key for all devices.  They should make our lives easier, not more complicated.  That rant can wait for another day though.

In other news,  Steve Jobs threw some pimp slaps at Microsoft over the Zune.  Robbie Bach, president of entertainment & devices at Microsoft, said the Zune was a worthy alternative to the iPod.  OoOo.  Thats actually not a bad statement.  The second generation Zune IS a worthy opponent and has come a long way from the first gen horrors (Side note: It HAS a FM tuner *cough*).  When asked about the comment, Jobs questioned, “Was he inebriated?”  The slap goes further when Job questions, “Do you even know anyone who has a Zune?”  Harsh Steve, Harsh.  Its quite alright to dominate the market, but to rub it in others face doesn’t become you.  If you remember, Microsoft still dominates the OS market.

Today, Bill Gates delivered his last speech at CES. He is retiring from his full-time post at Microsoft and branching off to save the world with his wife and the Gates Foundation.

Now many people these days aren’t huge fans of Microsoft. I’m not exactly a groupie either, as I’m typing this post up on a MacBook Pro. Even if you don’t like Microsoft, you must of the utmost respect for Bill Gates. He completely changed an industry, exploded an economy, and contributed to a product that has touched most everyone’s lives in some way, shape, or form. So, Bill, as you leave us all in the computing industry, I’d like to say “Thanks” and “Best of luck” in the future.

During his speech today, he left us with a great video showcasing his departure. Bill is actually funny and bold, something I like and look for in people. He has many guest stars in the video including: Jay-Z, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bono, Mathew McConaughey, and a few others. Also in one scene, he is sporting a One Campaign shirt which ties into a similar field he is going into with the Gates Foundation. Here’s his video, the final farewell: