Here is a quick 2 minute video that will give you a sneak peak at the new XBOX360 dashboard and show you how to install a game right to the hard drive. It appears that you will need to have a copy of the game in the tray to play the game, sorry pirates, but even so, having the game installed on the HDD will make loading a thing of the past.

Now we just need XBOX to lower the price of the dang 120 GB drives.

Turbo = Super Fast Blogging…Maybe

Wordpress has an update today that adds a new feature called Turbo. Turbo is Wordpress’ brand name for its Google Gears integration. I just updated my software and noticed the new link in the top right-hand corner of my screen. When you click on Turbo, it opens a window that lets you know that you will need Google Gears in order to enable Turbo. I downloaded Gears and then enabled it.

The popup window also touted a speed increase after enabling Turbo. So far, I haven’t really noticed a speed increase, but to be fair I have only been using it for a few minutes.

Google Gears is Google’s app that allows users to take their computer offline and still be able to use their online apps. In other words, you can still get to your Gmail when you take your lappy on a plane with no wi-fi. Google Gears works in the background saving the necessary files to enable offline functionality.

Obviously, if a large portion of your page is pre-downloaded, you should see a speed boost. Again, so far… not so much, but it is still early.

Other Additions

A welcome addition to Wordpress is the ability to see all the revisions that have been made to an entry. This is particularly handy if you share a blog with someone and you want to see what they have added to you entry.

Also, just under the Save and Publish buttons there is a new Word count feature that will let you know if you need to spend a little more time on your entry in order for it to get to an impressive, unreadable length that will convince your readers to skip your blog. Handy.

It is now possible to add a caption to images. This is an incredibly handy thing. Now if you have a somewhat cryptic image that needs a little explanation, you are in luck. Now you can put a caption at the bottom of the image and your readers will never be confused ever again…ever.

Another new feature of Wordpress in 2.6 is a little, red speech bubble that now lives above the link to Plugins letting you know how many plugins you have installed. I have 13. Super.

It doesn’t just stop there, if you go into the plugins management area, it is now a lot easier to manage your plugins. The interface is now a lot more ajaxy and draggy and droppy which makes it much easier to manage the plugins that make your blog so special.

Since draggy and droppy is so cool, Wordpress has updated its media gallery to allow drag and drop functionality allowing you to better manage the content uploaded to your blog.

And finally, keeping with the drag and drop theme I’ve got going, the Press it linklet has been updated to make quoting blogs and other websites much easier.

All in all, it isn’t quite the continental shift type of change that we saw with the release of 2.5, but this update does bring a lot of good functionality that will make your blogging a little easier.

Well, I finally did it.  I made the jump the Mac.  I went to Best Buy today and got a 20″ iMac for our new home computer.  I just got tired of trying to keep my old Windows box running.  It was time for a new computer at the house.  And, when faced with all the Vista computers out there and having two kiddos in the house it became very apparent that it was time to make the change.

Right now, I am going through the arduous process of getting a new computer set up.  You know, the initial search through all the mp3s and pictures.  It is pretty exciting and I can’t wait to learn everything there is to know about Mac software options.

It has been so long since we have had a decent computer here at the house that I havn’t looked at my photo collection in a LONG time.  As iPhoto went through all our old photos it was neat to see all the pictures of Wyatt and Mary Hadley as they grew up.  If nothing else, this new computer is going to breathe some new life into our old content.

Goodbye Windows, I can’t say that I will be missing you.  I already have started to reconnect to my love of computers.  Finally, I can watch videos again here at the house.

The computer was so bad that I stopped using it to sync my iPod.  Now I have to make the decision of whether or not I am going to make this my main music computer.  It is handy to have all my music and media on my work computer, but it seems to make more sense to have it here at the house.  I may have to take my external HDD to the office and copy all the new music that isn’t on this computer and bring it home.

Megan has long since given up on syncing her iPod.  I hope this new computer will breath some new life into that situation.

I am still getting used to this new microscopically thin keyboard.  It is super cool looking, but typing on it is a little daunting.  There is a lip on the little keyboard shelf it is sittin on and it makes typing a little clumsy.  My old keyboard was a lot taller, and I had gotten pretty used to it.  And, don’t even get me started on this Mighty Mouse.  It may be a mouse, but it is hardly mighty.  I forsee the purchase of a good ole Microsoft mouse and sending this little beauty on its way.

Next, I am going to download Adobe Air and Twhirl so that I can keep up with my Twitter.  I may do that tonight, or I might just go to bed.  I don’t feel like twittering tonight anyway.  The real trick is going to be getting Hamachi working on this computer.  On the Windows side, there is an installer and a graphical user interface which make it exceedingly easy to install.  On the Mac side, it involves Unix commands and liberal use of the Terminal.  I have tried twice to get it running on the Mac at the office and have failed twice.  Now that I have this here at the house, I might get it working.

It is important to get Hamachi working on this computer so that I can access it from the office or whatever computer I am on.  I have already gotten TightVNC to work which allows me to remote in from my other Windows computers.  Using Mac on a Windows box is rather intoxicating.

I also have to make the decision of whether I am going to purchase iWork or just use NeoOffice.  NeoOffice isn’t that big a deal to me, but the interface may be a little arcane for Megan.  And, it is important to me to get her using this computer.  It is a much better computer than our ailing laptop which is failing to see one of the two expensive RAM simms I intalled earlier.

Blogging on this computer is rather fun.

It all started with the spark and the new tagline of ‘Save money. Live better.’ which made its debut last year. It all culminates with this. Presenting the brand new Walmart logo.

Its letters are now more rounded and the hyphen has been removed.  The changes definitely freshen the look and gives the logo a decidedly european feel to me.  I like it.  The Walmart logo has been in need of a refresh for a long time.

The branding change comes hand in hand with Walmart making a concerted effort to rebrand itself on all fronts.  It is trying to make its late nineties image of ‘Always the Lowest Price ALWAYS’, a tag line that has a decidedly authoritarian flavor, a thing of the past.  That old tagline seemed to say that having the lowest price was worth whatever it took to get it, and customers began to cry foul.

Now, Walmart is taking the lead in green issues and working very hard to address social issues an organization its size causes.  It is hard to miss that they are spending a lot of money and effort to put together a newer and more approachable brand.

I just started using the social music site last.fm. You can check out my page! They have a journal/blogging system on the site that allows you to post entries about your thoughts on music. I posted something there, and I was afraid that the post would just disappear into the ether so I am going to post it here too!

I have heard about this site for years now and I haven’t felt like jumping in, but now.. it is a Friday, and I just bought Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and music is on my mind so now is as good a time as any to jump in and do some social music.

Shuffle on iTunes

I have iTunes set to shuffle on a playlist I call Super Mix. I put all the albums I love in there and turn on shuffle. Sometimes I have this creepy feeling that iTunes shuffle has a personality and makes weird picks. Today, iTunes is in love with Coldplay. It won’t stop playing them. I hit the next track button and then it gets stuck on The Cure. I am trying to get to the magic number of tracks on last.fm so that I can see trends in my listening and all the other fun stuff this site does and I want the trends to be correct. iTunes, quit screwing me.

New Coldplay

The latest Coldplay album is a departure from its first three albums. Where the first ones were sparse and patient in bringing the full band to bear. This album is adventurous and more in your face. It has a definite flavor of 80’s new wave and is deliciously english. I am still in that strange honeymoon phase with this album, and it is a bit of an acquired taste. I am only now starting my third listen and the songs (itunes just played another Coldplay song… what the…) are starting to grow on me.

It seems very evident that Coldplay has a lot more money to throw at an album because every song is crammed with instruments, like I said earlier. A real departure from the sparse patient sound of their earlier albums, Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and X&Y.

I am interested to see whether or not this new album will grow on me as their first three have (iTunes just played another The Cure song… this is weird…).

Adobe has just released a brand new online word processing application called Buzzword. You can find it at buzzword.acrobat.com. It is a very nice and clean looking interface that fades into the background as you create. That is nice, and it gives you some handy stats as you write. In the bottom left hand corner of the screen, it keeps you up to date on how many words you have type so far, something handy for those columnists who have to come in around 500 words every time. It also keeps you up to date on how many misspellings you have in your document. Something that is quite handy for those of us who are copying and pasting content written by others.

One thing I did notice which I thought was pretty strange. Even though Buzzword is housed at acrobat.com, you can’t save your document as a .pdf. What the…? Come on Adobe! Ridiculous.

My biggest fear for the product is that it may be a little to late to make a big difference. I don’t use online document creation much, but when I do, I use Google Docs. Not so much that it is the absolute best online document creation experience, but rather that they were first, and all my online documents are already there.

Good luck Adobe.

The following is copied and pasted from what I wrote using Adobe’s new online word processor offering, Buzzword.

Hello there you slick little interface. I just wish that I didn’t have such a backlog of documents in Google Docs. You see, this interface is quite slick, but I am not in this world. Flash is getting better and better, but it is so hard to shake those bad feelings I have accrued since the advent of Flash. There were so many sites that used Flash badly. You could use the back button, you couldn’t see the history, and for some reason, the fonts were rendered poorly which led to a ton of illegible, unnavigable sites. Yuck.

In comes Web 2.0 where we go back to standards and get back a lot of the functionality lost just prior to the big web bust of 2001. But, there is a problem a brewin’. With more and more money being funneled into Web 2.0 projects, the market is more and more palatable to larger companies who aren’t as passionate about web standards.

Are we going to go back to an era where tools such as Flash and Flex are used losing the ground yet again that was gained back over the past 3 to 4 years?

Buzzword looks nice, and maybe this rant belongs somewhere else. But is it nice try but too late?

One thing that I am noticing about this tool. There is a word counter and as of this word, I had typed 235 words. Wow that is an eye opener. I figured I had typed much more than that. I wouldn’t work out too good at a newspaper. Writing is like pulling teeth for me, and I realize it is the same for a lot of other people, but the finished product isn’t valuable enough to me to endure the pain on a daily basis.

I like being creative, but just in other ways. Blogging is only a hobby, and one that I don’t believe I will ever pursue much further than that.

Ok, I don’t have any, and I mean any, inside info on this, but while watching the latest Tekzilla video podcast, Patrick and Roger gave some hints about the fact that they had “maybe” found a new co-host for the show. The co-host position was left vacant when Jessica Corben left to go and start two new shows on the network, popSiren and The Digg Reel.

In the meantime, Veronica Belmont has done a couple of guest appearances on the show, and did a great job. Veronica got her start on a CNET podcast, Buzz Out Loud with Tom Merritt and Molly Wood as the producer. Early on she chimed in sporadically, but over time she became more and more involved until she was for all intents and purposes the third host.

Jason Calacanis, ex-Weblogs, inc, ex-AOL, and present grand poobah at the human powered search engine Mahalo, snatched Belmont up to host a new video podcast called Mahalo Daily. Mahalo Daily had a predictably bumpy start but matured quickly to become a very enjoyable daily vidcast.

Recently on guest appearances Veronica has announced that she was moving on from Mahalo Daily to a new and secret project.

Mark my words, Veronica Belmont will be the next co-host on Tekzilla, making yet another addition to the now very formidable Revision3 team. She will be a great co-host because she is fun to watch and she almost always has interesting insights that add a much needed female influence on the show. I have missed Jessica Corben but I look forward to Veronica Belmont.

By the way. Now that Revision3 has matured, I officially no longer miss TechTV.

Ten Years After : LOL: The Life of Leo

Leo LaPorte is finally completely off the TV airwaves. Sad day. But, it is also a happy day because I couldn’t get the show here in these United States, and it has freed him up to think outside of the box and start putting together an online network of video-taped podcasts. I am calling it that because as it stands right now it doesn’t sound like what he will be producing will look anything like what we see on tv.

Right now, he runs the TWiT Netcast Network which produces around 12 different shows per week that are available for download from his site. Now he is looking at how to bring an element of live tv to it. At this point it appears that he will still keep producing the same shows with maybe the addition of a few more, who knows, but he will have multiple cameras aimed at him and his guests so that there will now be a live, interactive element to it.

LaPorte has always said that he likes the idea of interactive which was one of the driving forces behind many of the decisions made at the now defunct network TechTV. His desire was to always find ways for the audience to participate. TechTV lead the charge in using webcams so that the audience could actually be on the shows and asks questions and leave comments. It was an openness that we haven’t seen since.

I believe this openness is what engendered such a tight following in his audience. We have always felt that we are a part of the action, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter where Leo goes, if he is producing content, his audience will find a way to consume it.

I am looking forward to the changes in the upcoming months to TWiT and I am excited that I don’t have to bittorrent his content in order to see it.

If you are looking for interesting, well-produced podcasts that have a bit of a tech angle, check out TWiT.tv.

I just uploaded the backend of my blog to Wordpress 2.5. It is a lot cleaner and makes writing posts easier by hiding a lot of the more technical stuff you don’t use often a little deeper in the site. I realize that this is a little inside baseball for most people who read this blog, but hey I can geek out a little every once in a while.

The interface is a lot cleaner and uses different shades of light blue for the different sections of the page. It is actually quite pleasant to look at. Obviously this is the first time I have used it so I can’t give a real review, but on first blush it is nice. I likes it a lot.

On another note, I am always a little scared when I upload a new version of Wordpress to my server. You see, I no longer use a hosted blog service like blogger. If you use blogger, it is up to them to keep the backend working. If it screws up, you can relax knowing that there are Google engineers pulling their hair out trying to get everything fixed.

Now that I run my own blog software, if everything blows up, it is on me. To be honest it is kind of exhilarating, but it’s also scary. I have a lot of content that I have uploaded and written over the past 5 years. I would hate to lose it. Maybe I should back up more.

Cool New Features

One of the coolest new features is how this new version automates the updating of plugins.  In Wordpress, you can augment the functionality of your blog by installing plugins.  I use one called Twitter Tools to post my tweets right here on my blog.  I have a ton of other plugins that I use to make it easier on me to use Wordpress.  In this version of Wordpress, updating out of date plugins is as simple as hitting a link on the dashboard.  Awesome.  To make it work, you have to put your FTP settings in a form that pops up the first time you click the update link.  After that it works.  Click the update link under the out of date plugin, then click the ‘Proceed’ button and boom it just works.  ROCK AND ROLL… I love it.

Bug Fixes?

There is one bug that annoys me and it hasn’t been addressed by Wordpress. When you embed a video from Youtube or other video site, it works fine the first time you publish the post. If you go back to your post later and then republish, Wordpress messes up the html and makes the video malfunction. I am about to test this new version of Wordpress to see if it fixes that problem. I know I can’t be the only person to have experienced this problem.

—-Update—-

Hooray. It now works. The video embed bug is now dead! Hooray. Embed videos to your hearts content!!!