TheAppDotNet

Internet Explorer 8

2009-03-24T22:09:36Z

So Microsoft has released IE8. I ran it for a while during it's beta phase, prior to my computer biting the dust but just have not cared enough to reinstall it on my new laptop. I just don't really care. It doesn't seem to offer me anything that would get me to switch from using Flock.

I'm sure I will eventually install it, if only to test my crime site when I finish rebuilding it, but for now I'll stick with what I have. Anyone else running it yet? Pros or cons?

Stardock Impulse Nears 1,000,000 Users

2009-03-23T20:29:11Z

Image via Wikipedia

Impulse is Stardock's online digital download platform and they are nearing 1,000,000 customers as they start to round the corner on Impulse's one year birthday. Initially famous for their eye-candy and ability to extend Windows, Stardock has jumped into the gaming environment over the last few years, rolling out a platform for other companies to release their games on.

Stardock will be giving away a $4,000 gaming PC to it's one millionth customer. Check out more about Stardock and the details over here.

New Storm OS Leak: 4.7.0.114

2009-03-12T15:13:28Z

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

OS 4.7.0.114 for the Blackberry Storm has been released into the wild. Before you head over looking for links to download bear in mind that this is a beta release and can hose your storm and turn it into a brick if you screw it up.

That having been said I am currently running version .103 right now, the last official Verizon release being .75. I tend to wait a while myself and let everyone else find all of the bugs before I upgrade myself simply because my phone also doubles as my home and business line and I don't need a non-working device if the bugs are too ugly.

If you are still interested, head over to the CrackBerry forums where you can find more information.

New Game for the Storm - Crackberry Smash

2009-03-11T15:06:46Z

It's been quite some time since I posted over here. I've been putting all of my energy into my crime blog and now it's time to rectify that. I will attempt to start posting here at least once a day. Anyone else interested in helping out is is more than welcome to shoot me an email to rm_blogger@yahoo.com as well.

Anyhow, on to the post. Once of the places I've been hanging out at online since picking up my Blackberry Storm back in December is CrackBerry, and one of the folks over there has released a fun 'game' for the Blackberry entitled Crackberry Smash. Check out the video after the break...

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Head over to CrackBerry and download it now.

AT&T HomeManager

2009-01-02T22:28:20Z

The AP video below tells you a little bit about AT&T's HomeManager which is basically a little touchscreen that allows you to access the internet. I was not particularly impressed since it doesn't do anything I can't already do with any tablet PC hooked to my network, my Blackberry or the wife's iPod Touch, or my old Audrey that's sitting unused in the closet for that matter. Still, it does show that slowly but surely some of the behemoths like AT&T are trying to move into the 21st century even if it is with the wrong choice of hardware.

BTW, I know it's been quite some time since I posted over here. I'll try and rectify that and not stay so busy at the crime blog.

HAppy New Year!

2009-01-01T05:16:54Z

Just wanted to take a brief moment to wish everyone a Happy New Year! One more time 'round the sun. I probably won't be posting much later today (possibly this evening) as I am getting ready to go in to work and don't get off until 1pm this afternoon. Ugh. Not much fun.

SecureZIP Express Software Giveaway and Contest

2008-10-21T23:29:19Z

If you have used computers for any length of time, think about how many companies you know of that have been around for over a decade. I'm not talking about companies like Microsoft or Apple or even any of the application companies like Intuit. All of them have proven histories of course but I'm talking about the smaller guys, in this case PKWare. I've been using their products since the early nineties, most specifically PKZip for DOS and then Windows. They have really come a long way over the last 22 years since they were founded. PKZip was a must-have for old BBS system operators like myself back in the days before the World Wide Web came along and even now Zip is the standard for compression amongst most PC users. Linux fans will take issue with this and while I also like running Linux and use GZip compression Zip is much more well known.

Anyway, on to the reason for the post. PKWare is giving away a free non-commercial license for SecureZIP Express for anyone to download and you can also win some pretty cool prizes in the Decrypt and Drive contest such as a Honda Scooter, bicycles, a Nintendo Wii and Mario Kart for the Wii, gas cards and iTunes gift cards. You can play the game daily in order to try and win one of the great prizes but it needs to be on the computer that you have installed SecureZIP Express and the digital certificate.

To enter the giveaway you need to download SecureZIP Express at www.securezip.com and then go to www.DecryptandDrive.com to register.

One of the really cool things about using SecureZIP Express is that you can compress and encrypt your files using a digital certificate so that whoever the file was encrypted for doesn't need a password. It's a nice way to carry around files on an SD card or USB drive. Remember the old days of carrying around files on floppy? Thank goodness those are gone :)

Anyway, head on over and download SecureZIP and enter to win their giveaway.

Gadget Blogs

2008-10-20T20:23:22Z

I run a tech site. It's just a small blog where I will occasionally post news and videos and such. I have never intended for it to be one of the huge gadget blogs, don't consider it a 'contender' or anything like that. I just enjoy writing. I also run a very specific site targeted toward HTPCs and home automation, two of my hobbies. As a result I surf tech sites a couple times a month looking for cool new gadgets or software that I might be able to use or that I might want to post about.

Gadget Advisor is a relatively new site but one I seem to be going back to on occasion for the news and gadgets. What got me hooked was an article on the Logitech Harmony universal remote. Being an HTPC freak I enjoy reading about stuff like that and I will sometimes get a severe case of gadget envy at the same time. I wouldn't use the Harmony simply because I use my own hardware/software solution that incorporates my HA stuff but if it weren't for that it's a pretty cool remote.

]]> What's nice is that it's not just some junk site. There is one article about online backup services that I agree with and I actually use their top pick. I used to think it was stupid to backup online but now that I've been doing it for a few months I wouldn't do anything else. I still do occasional backups to DVD but it's a pain to back up 40GB of info to DVD. I don't have the time or the patience for it.

One article that's been at the top for a few days is about the best Firefox extensions. Doesn't really apply to me anymore since I seem to be using Chrome almost exclusively but it's still informative nevertheless.

Anyway, if you like tech stuff go check out the site and let me know what they think. I may start linking to their feed on one of my tech sites pretty soon.

McCain Campaign Releases Ayers Ad

2008-10-09T12:45:40Z

It's about time they took the gloves off and released this. H/T to Red Alerts Blog for pointing me to the video. I'm cross-posting this to several sites as well.

WinModify Turns Five!

2008-10-09T05:12:29Z

Winmodify is another site that has a bunch of cool skins and also offers plenty of community news on an ongoing basis. Well, today they turn five so head on over and wish 'em a happy birthday!

Blackberry Storm Release Soon

2008-10-02T11:21:51Z

The Blackberry Storm should be out at the beginning of November at some point. Vodafone will have it as will Verizon. I have heard four different release dates for the Verizon version ranging anywhere from the 1st to the 11th. Suffice it to say it will be sometime in November :)

Judging from the pictures of the dummy model sent out to Verizon stores it's not too much bigger than the pearl. I've been waiting on my next upgrade and this may just have to be it.

How Does the G1 Compare to the iPhone

2008-10-01T15:19:13Z

I don't seriously consider the G1, running Google's Android, an iPhone killer. I don't use the iPhone mainly because of the lack of a keyboard, bluetooth or the fact that there is no 3G service where I live, yet Verizons high speed network IS out this way.

CBS has this report and compares the two.

Do you use either one and if so what do you think? Shoot me an email and I'll post some of the results here. Sorry about comments being turned off right now. Eventually they will go back on.

Comments

2008-10-01T15:00:49Z

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Due to the huge amount of comment spam I have been getting over the last few days I have turned off comments temporarily. It's not as if I have been doing anything on the poor neglected blog lately anyway.

I have all but stopped doing the paid links and nonsense posts now and will sooner or later get back to posting actual technology related posts.

T-Mobile Google Powered Phone Available

2008-09-23T19:17:27Z

Google has finally made it's debut as a cell phone software provider and as of yesterday T-Mobile had the phones running Android available online as well as in some of it's stores.

According to the AP it looks something like Apple's iPhone. WTF? Except for the fact that it has a large touchscreen it looks nothing whatsoever like the iPhone. It does have a trackball as well as a slide-out keyboard which looks really nice. Not only that but the phone debuted at under $200. That is great! I normally pay between $300-500 for a new phone.

There aren't really any 'new' features in the phone that other ones don't already have but Google is counting on developers to really extend the phone by writing applications for it. Apple is at at disadvantage here because it keeps such tight control over the stuff you find in it's app store.

Google Chrome

2008-09-05T09:02:59Z

I decided to check out Google Chrome and downloaded it the other day to check it out. I am back to using Flock again as of this morning but I am still not happy with it.

I really liked Chrome and probably could have come to use it as my default browser. As a matter of fact I had even set it as default until last night. It is faster than Firefox, Flock and IE 7 (and 8) on my system and used quite a bit less memory. I also like the way it compartmentalizes the tabs and memory usage. If one of them became non-responsive the rest were fine and I could kill the task without crashing down the other 25 tabs that I might have open at the same timr. I was very impressed with it. Using Flock, Firefox or IE for a couple of hours and a bunch of tabs and windows open I usually have to kill the whole process after a couple of hours and forget using iTunes and actually listening to music at the same time. WIth Chrome I was able to not only listen to iTunes but keep several different windows open and working at the same time.

So why the switch back to Flock?

I spent two and a half hours working on a post last night. Several thousand words. Shadowscope was apparently offline for 40 minutes or so for some reason so the last autosave Movabletype had done missed 3/4 of the post. I wasn't aware of it because my connection was fine. Anyway, I went to publish the entry and of course got a DNS error. When I tried to go back to the previous page most of the entry was gone. I wanted to cry. With Firefox and Flock I can spend an hour or two working on an entry and if for some reason my draft isn't saved on the server I can go back to the posting form and most or all of it will still be there. I have even used Task Manager to kill flock and when I reopened a new browser window it has saved my entered text. That in itself is worth sticking with to me.

I don't even mind not having access to plugins. If Google would add in saving of text entered into forms I would switch back in a heartbeat. It's just not worth losing two frigging hours of work.

Technorati Tags: Google, Firefox, Flock, iTunes, Windows Live Writer, Google Chrome