Specifically, we have decided on two things…

1. We have too much telecom in our budget. We do not use our cell phones as much as our family plan dictates, specifically me, so we will be moving to prepaid plans.    We have vonage, but do not use it a ton either, so we have bumped our service down to the 500 min. a month option.  We also have a data line that is used for fax and home security connections.   Considering the free services like efax that exist, we will be dropping that line and connecting the home security system to the vonage ata box (after notifying the home security monitoring people of course)

Bottom line: telecom will go from $200 a month to about $50

2. We have decided to cancel our digital cable service, considering the fact that we pretty much only watch the major networks and movies on HBO/on demand.   Thus we will be moving to a combination of OTA (over the air and adding in a Home theater PC box for DVR and media consolidation.

I have not decided yet specifically what to use for the HTPC solution.  On the one hand there is vista windows media center. The bennies of that are the media consolidation components and a simple interface for the not so techie in my household, but there is also some crippling features, such as if we go and add media extenders to the other TV’s in the house, like something like the linksys DMA 2100,  the media extenders themselves will not allow for web browsing….so using websites like hulu.com to watch speciality network programming like comedy central, would not be possible on the extenders.

On the other hand, myth TV for linux has come a long way, and might be the way to go.  The bennies are that I can build a couple of htpc’s for the price of a copy of windows vista ultimate, (including the spare computers i have lying about)  The downside is that it’s a little bit more difficult to use and get working properly…especially if I build one for each TV in the house ( we are up to 3 now).  Another issue would be the consolidation of the media across multiple computers, and the learning curve for the others in the house.

Of course a third and fourth option is Sage TV and Popcorn Hour…hence why I have not decided yet…

Bottom line savings…home entertainment will go from about $150 a month to $10-$15 (for on demand purchases)

I’d like to hear from you if you use a HTPC solution instead of cable as well, what do you use and more importantly, do you like it or do you miss cable?

Corsair has added to the Flash Voyager line, and they really done it this time. Corsair announced on Monday the new 65GB Flash Voyager USB thumb drive. Woah! Thats more than most laptops have for hard drive space. Can you imagine the possibilities for this drive. If you remember back in May I wrote about putting linux on a flash drive, with a 64GB flash drive and Corsair’s unrivaled speed, installing linux on one of these might not be bad idea.

Basically 64GB will get you:

20,000 6 megapixel images
16,000 MP3’s

Not to mention that you get a water-proof flash drive, and a 10 year warranty! What more could you ask for. With Corsair’s reputation and all these features you can’t go wrong here. You can grab one of these babies from newegg for $199. Not bad considering the suggested retail is $250.

The group known as Anonymous has denied allegations that they hacked into the account, according to a message printed across the top of their website. Anonymous is known around the Internet for causing problems here and there such as, their exposing the true nature of the Church of Scientology among other things. According to one screenshot Anonymous played the good guys and tried to contact someone to report the account as being stolen and changed the password so no further damage could be done. This screenshot included the new password and caused a flood of people to try to log-in to the account which caused Yahoo to suspend and delete the account. No big deal right? Wrong, now that the account is deleted this could be considered destruction of evidence. Gov. Palin was trying to dodge laws that required the retention of emails and documents by using a personal Yahoo account instead of her official .gov account. The other issue with this is that Yahoo is not a secure channel and has no encryption such as a .gov account would. So there are many problems surrounding her use of a Yahoo e-mail account.

All I can say is what was she thinking? With the immense amount of genius on the Internet, if you have something such as this to hide, someone will digg it up and show everyone. I’m not sure what the repercussions of her actions will be but this sure does damage her reputation. Ever since McCain’s announcing her as his running mate she has met some fierce criticism and now this just makes it worse.

Here is what Gov. Palin’s Campaign Manager had to say on the matter:

“This is a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities, and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.”

You can view the screenshots here: http://gawker.com/5051193/sarah-palins-personal-emails

I have to say, this could be a big mistake for Best Buy in the long run if things don’t work as they hope. With big hitters like iTunes and Amazon’s new music store, I think they got in over their heads. And turning Napster into a profitable company may not be an easy task. Napster reported a loss of 16.5 million earlier this year. What is Best Buy thinking? Also with MySpace expected to roll out it’s own music service soon, that’s just another hurdle that Best Buy may have trouble jumping.

I’m no expert in business but I have to say, this seems like a bad idea. Napster already has a scorned reputation with the music industry, which it has tried to repair over the past few years. Currently Napster

offers subscription based music downloads and says they have over 700,000 paying customers. I’m willing to bet that Amazon and iTunes blow them away in customers. Who know’s, maybe Best Buy can keep Napster afloat and turn a profit.

All of these are nice features in a car, but when gas is so high will people actually buy? The cost of this feature will most likely play a big role in it’s success. Another point to look at is the ability to stream audio and video using the cars Internet. If Chrysler was to go with WiMax then streaming video would work much better than using cell towers for Internet access. I look forward to seeing how successful this will be in the future.

Whats your opinion? Will car buyers wave this feature for a vehicle with better MPG?

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Streetline is new technology that will help drivers find available parking spaces. This is expected to relieve traffic congestion from motorists driving in circles trying to find parking in busy towns. Streetline is a start-up which is going to start off in San Francisco as a pilot program. If successful other major cities are expected to jump aboard.

The idea is that on you way downtown you can fire up your smart-phone or other device and view a map that is color coded to show where the most spaces are available. The system uses sensors set in parking spaces to know if the space is occupied or not. The sensors are a small bump on the pavement, they are designed to go unnoticed to motorists. These sensors require no cutting or modification to the pavement, they install with adhesive right on top. Streetline states that they take less than a minute to install.

This sounds like a great idea on the surface but I can see this going badly. I see motorists with smart-phones all trying to get to the last parking space in the area in a hurry and causing the traffic congestion to be even worse. Not to mention the road rage when they get there and someone takes it before they do. That’s just my opinion, we will just have to wait and see what happens when this rolls out.

What’s your opinion? Is this a good idea or a good idea doomed to go bad?

Western Digital has done it again, taking the throne as speed king in the storage world. First it was the Raptor, now its the VelociRaptor. The first thing you may notice is the odd look of the drive itself, this is due to the fact that WD decided to go with a 2.5″ drive instead of 3.5″. Why did they do this? Well, according to them this made the platters smaller and decreased the time it took to reach data on them. Also, the smaller size meant less power was needed, so that’s a plus also. Don’t get any wild idea’s though, like trying to remove the IcePack surrounding the drive and put it into your laptop. First, if you remove the IcePack you void the warranty, second, if you put it into your laptop it won’t work because it draws too much power. This IcePack also acts as a heat sink that will keep the drive cool. Perfect for a high performance rig.

At this time the VelociRaptor is the fastest consumer hard drive you can buy. Even though it can’t hold a lot of data, it makes up for that in speed. Take a look at the stats for the VelociRaptor:

Rotational Speed 10,000 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 16 MB
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Load/unload Cycles 50,000 minimum

Seek Times
Read Seek Time 4.2 ms
Write Seek Time 4.7 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time 0.7 ms (average)

Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)

This drive is an awesome choice if you are in the market for a new one or just want to upgrade an old one. You can’t go wrong, since it’s release it has won several awards and is the most recommended drive for 2008. You won’t be disappointed. One note though, there were some issues with the first edition of the drive that the IcePack made it impossible to use in a hotswap. The second edition fixed this issue, so make sure when purchase this drive you get the second edition if you plan to use in a hotswap interface. You can pick this baby up on newegg.com for $269 after a $25 rebate.

In case you don’t know who MrBabyMan is, let me give you the run down. MrBabyMan is the king of digg.com. It seems as though the front page is dominated by his submissions, anything he submits instantly becomes popular. That’s the way it has been for quite a while now. He has made over 10,000 submissions while almost 3,000 of them have been made popular. He is the man on digg, until now….

Recently there has been a lot of controversy on Digg over how stories are made popular and users gaming the system. What I mean by gaming the system is users who use scripts to cheat the system. Nobody knows Digg’s algorithm used in deciding when a story becomes popular. One thing we do know is if your diggs come from the same people all the time then it makes it harder for a story to become popular. Also if you don’t participate in the community by digging other’s submissions then it becomes more difficult. So users use scripts to digg other’s submissions.

Today someone posted an image that showed MrBabyMan made 82 diggs in 3 minutes. This doesn’t seem very likely without the use of a script or bot. You can view this image here:

http://digg.com/comedy/82_diggs_in_3_minutes

This is good evidence that MrBabyMan is cheating the system and also polluting the way the site is supposed to work. Digg is plagued with users who digg submissions without even reading them. Why is this so bad? Well because this defeats the purpose, if you just digg stuff without reading it and so does everyone else, then useless crap makes it to the front page while some really good submission gets left behind. This is why 90% of the time when you visit Digg’s front page you see that it’s polluted with some really stupid shit sometimes, and you will also notice that 9 times out of 10 MrBabyMan has at least 2 submissions on the front page.

So it seems as though the Digg community is reaching out to the management of Digg to do something about MrBabyMan and the various polluter’s of the system. The easy fix is to just quit using Digg and start using Reddit.com which has a much better and more mature community. Digg’s community is made up of mostly teens that digg really stupid shit and bury submissions for no reason. All you have to do is read some of the comments to realize this.

What is in MrBabyMan’s future? Probably a ban from the system and further investigation in to what is going on. It is also possible that nothing will happen, but lately a lot of users have been busted for using scripts and banned for doing so. This is what should be done and I have no sympathy for people who game sites like digg. What’s your feeling on MrBabyMan and the Digg community? What do you think should happen to him?

Here is a youtube video of MrBabyMan called a day in the life of a digger.

Showdown LAN 2008

For gaming enthusiast Showdown LAN is the place to be in September. They are traveling to three cities this year and hosting one of the biggest and baddest LAN parties. If you love gaming then you need to be here. You can register for the events online at the official Showdown LAN site.

The games that will be played are Call of Duty 4, Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. In addition to the tournaments there will also be various games and raffle’s including a special type of Musical Chair’s, Showdown style. With your admission you will also receive 1 raffle ticket, various swag from sponsors, LAN admission for 3 days and 3 AMPs of power per seat.

Dates:

Worcester, MA - September 5-7 2008 (6PM Friday - 6PM Sunday)
San Mateo, CA - September 19-21 2008 (6PM Friday - 6PM Sunday)
Peoria, Illinois - September 26-28 2008 (6PM Friday - 6PM Sunday)