Technology and Other Musings

Blizzard’s Mobile Gaming Mistake

Jim — Sat, 12 May 2012 05:28:09 +0000

Blizzard is generally regarded as a smart company with a savvy business model and knowledgeable developers. However, it has made a terrible mistake by not developing mobile versions of its popular games. Oh sure, Blizzard released its Mobile Armory ages ago. And it’s fine for what it does, but it doesn’t let you play World of Warcraft on your iPad, iPhone or Android device. For some reason, Blizzard has allowed the mobile revolution to pass it by. That could ultimately prove to be a very costly mistake. More and more gamers are finding that their phones or tablets provide hours of gaming fun. The days of the PC, Mac or console being the bedrock for gaming are swiftly drawing to a close. Think I’m kidding? Check out the sheer number of games available for the iPad or iPhone. Games make up a big chunk of app sales. And, as mobile hardware gets more and more robust, mobile games keep getting better and better. WOW Gamers Ready to Go Mobile? Don’t take my word for it though, a mobile version of World of Warcraft has already come up in multiple threads in the official WOW forums. Here are a few links [...]

Ebooks: Goodbye Kindle, Hello iPad 3!

Jim — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:56:26 +0000

A while back I wrote a column called “Why I Bought a Kindle 3 and Why I Stopped Using My iPad to Read eBooks” in which I explained why I had moved away from reading ebooks on my iPad in favor of my Kindle 3. Well, with the introduction of the high resolution iPad I have reversed myself. I’ve stopped using my Kindle 3 and am now using my new iPad 3 exclusively for ebooks. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the new iPad has basically double the screen resolution of the iPad 1 and 2. The iPad’s resolution went from 1024 x 768 to 2048 x 1536 (which amounts to about 264 pixels per inch). It even beats an HDTV! If you’re coming from an earlier iPad then you will notice the difference immediately. Text in ebooks looks much crisper, without the fuzziness that you saw if you read ebooks using the iPad 1 or 2. It’s not just ebooks that look so much better though. Photos, games and anything else that takes advantage of the iPad 3′s screen just looks phenomenal compared to prior versions of the iPad. If you looked at my earlier column, you know [...]

Mobile Devices: iOS Versus Android

Jim — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:25:55 +0000

Have you noticed the inane babble about mobile devices happening online lately? You see it on technology discussion forums, but also on Facebook and other social media. It’s the dreaded “iOS Versus Android” battles. Ever since the release of the iPhone and subsequent release of Android phones, there have been battles happening as partisans of one platform attack users of the other. On and on it goes, with neither side ever giving ground. And all this over mobile phones and tablets? Sheesh. Get a life, folks. Not Just Online: The Battle in Meat Space Unfortunately, the Android versus iOS battles aren’t just happening online. The mobile OS partisan fighting can be found wherever you have groups of people using one platform or the other. Not All Gay Guys Own iOS Devices I’ve seen this first hand with some of the guys I hang out with. A lot of them are gay, and guess what? They don’t all own iPhones or any Apple products at all. I know this will come as a shock to a lot of people who view Apple as synonymous with gay, or vice versa. In fact, I think the gay Android users outnumber the gay iPhone/iPad [...]

A Kindle for Everyone

Jim — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:27:48 +0000

You might have heard already that Amazon has announced a number of new versions of the Kindle, including a touch version and a tablet. While I have some misgivings about the specifics of these products, the overall message from Amazon seems to be that there’s a Kindle for everybody…literally! Choice is a beautiful thing and Amazon seems to have pulled out all the stops to give users a range of devices to choose from. I’ll share my thoughts on each in this column and you can make up your own mind about which one(s) appeal to you the most. The Kindle Fire Let’s start with the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new tablet. It’s clearly aimed at Apple’s iPad and it is tightly integrated with Amazon’s content ecosystem. It will sell for $199 and will let users read books, watch movies, browse the web, play games, etc. One of the big pluses for it is that Amazon is reportedly making the web browsing faster by using the power of the cloud. It’s also smaller and lighter than the iPad. Here’s a technical spec list from Amazon’s site so you have a clear understanding of what the Kindle Fire offers: Display 7″ multi-touch [...]

Apple, Greed and the Amazon Kindle App

Jim — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:16:34 +0000

A while back I wrote a column explaining why I stopped reading ebooks on my iPad and started using a Kindle 3 instead. Well some time has passed and things have changed for the worse for Amazon and other companies on the iPad.

Amazon’s East Coast Screw Job

Jim — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:38:38 +0000

One of the most widely read and much loved fantasy book series is George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire.” This series includes the books “Game of Thrones” and its sequels. Millions of people have read these books and mostly enjoyed them. Well the latest release is called “A Dance With Dragons” and it was finally released yesterday. I made it a point to pre-order the book on my Kindle so I was quite excited when I realized it was going to be released last night. I was eagerly waiting for the clock to tick 12:01 AM so I could sync my Kindle and start reading the new installment in Martin’s series. However, a strange thing happened when the clock finally struck midnight…my damned book never appeared! I kept trying to sync my Kindle and it kept telling me that I had no new items available. I did a bit of googling and found, to my utter horror and dismay, that Amazon does not release pre-ordered Kindle books on east coast time. Instead, Amazon – which is based on the west coast – releases pre-orders on west coast time. So this means that if you live on [...]

The 20 Best Free Mac Games

Jim — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:20:59 +0000

In my last roundup I looked at the 25 Best Free Mac Apps. But a Mac owner has to have fun too, right? So this time around I’ve found the 25 best, free Mac games. These games are all available in the Mac app store and they won’t cost you a dime. What could be better than downloading free games for your Mac? Enjoy! To download each game, just click on its name or its image. Be sure to see the last page of free bonus games! #20 Hedgewars Hedgehogs are adorable critters in real life, and now you can play them in this turn-based strategy game for the Mac. Hedgewars combines comedy, action, artillery and strategy into one hugely fun package. You command your hedgehog soldiers and they must do your bidding and destroy your enemies. Up to eight players can play locally or via a multiplayer network. There are also optional computer AI enemies. Maps are randomly generated and come with more than 20 different environments. There are more than 50 different weapons including shotguns, cluster bombs, baseball bats, dynamite, mines and many others. There also 18 different game modifiers that will let you change the game to suit [...]

5 Reasons Why the iPad 2 Sucks

Jim — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:38:57 +0000

Well here are again, a new Apple product has been launched and various presstitutes are falling all over themselves about it. This time around it's the iPad 2 that has so many journawhores gasping for breath and oozing Apple worship. Ugh. Must we go through this yet again simply because of a new iProduct?

How to Live With Noisy Parrots

Jim — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:16:07 +0000

I recently changed the title of this blog to “Technology and Other Musings” because I wanted to add an article here or there that wasn’t necessarily about technology. So I thought I’d write one about how to live with noisy parrots, since many parrot owners run into problems with their birds making a lot of noise. I have two parrots that live with me in my small apartment. One is a brown head parrot and the other is a caique. Brown head parrots are relatively quiet, low-key birds while caiques can be a bit louder and more energetic. The two birds together though can get a bit noisy, since they like to call to one another sometimes. So here are a few tips on how to live with noisy parrots. They’ve worked well for me so they might also help you. This is by no means an exhaustive list, it’s just a couple of ways that I’ve learned to deal with my parrot’s noise. If you have additional suggestions, please feel free to post them in the comments section below. Blackout Curtains: How to Keep Parrots Quiet in the Morning Parrots are like any birds, when the day begins they [...]

The Great Huffington Post Exodus

Jim — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:47:17 +0000

So AOL has decided to pay $315 million dollars for the Huffington Post? Wow. I am in absolute awe of the incredible stupidity of AOL executives. Have these people lost their freaking minds? They are shelling out tons of cash for a site that is essentially a left-wing version of the Drudge Report with commenting & social media plugins? Amazing! The Huffington Post itself produces very little notable content and has obtained a bad reputation for leeching off of other sites by dubious linking practices and content usage. The Huffington Post, a venture-capital-backed new media site that mixes links to other sites content with hundreds of celebrity and volunteer blogger posts, is being accused of slimy business practices by a handful of smaller publications who say the site is unfairly copying and publishing their content. And this sort of site is what the AOL executives are willing to shell out a third of a billion dollars for? I’m so glad I don’t own stock in that company. If I did, I’d have already dumped it. Digg and Reddit: A Tale of Caution The dumb executives at AOL seem blithely unaware of what happened when Digg changed its site and angered [...]

The 20 Best Free Mac Apps

Jim — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 01:08:22 +0000

Following in the footsteps of its hugely popular iPhone/iPad app store, Apple has released an app store for the Mac. Like the other app store, you can download paid or free applications for your Macintosh computer. Unfortunately it can be difficult to sift through all of the various applications to find the golden nuggets.

Will Amazon Kill the Kindle?

Jim — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:35:08 +0000

Remember when the iPad first came out and everybody thought it would kill the Kindle? Well it might just do that but not in the way everybody thinks. The Kindle is currently still at the top of the heap when it comes to ereaders but that could change...very quickly.

Why I Bought a Kindle 3 and Why I Stopped Using My iPad To Read eBooks

Jim — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:15:23 +0000

If you’ve read any of my previous columns, you know that I’ve always been a big fan of ebooks. I started out with a Kindle 2 and then proceeded to buy an iPad. I loved both of these devices for different reasons, but I finally decided to replace both of them for reading ebooks with something new: the Kindle 3. This column is broken into two pages. On the first page I explain why I bought my Kindle 3 and on the second I share the reasons why I’ve found it to be better than my iPad for reading ebooks. Why I Bought A Kindle 3 I’ve had a Kindle 2 for quite a long time and I’ve enjoyed it. But there were things about it that I didn’t like and so, after doing a bit of research, I decided to buy a Kindle 3. Here are the five reasons why I bought my Kindle 3: 5. Slightly Smaller Than the Kindle 2 The Kindle 2’s size was never a huge issue with me, but I still felt that Amazon could have chopped it down a little bit. I was quite pleased to notice that they had, in fact, done [...]

The Web’s Welfare Readers

Jim — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:40:51 +0000

There’s a new kind of person visiting web sites these days, I call them the web’s “welfare readers.” These are folks who feel deeply entitled to free content, without any sense of obligation to give anything back to the sites that produce the content they enjoy so much. Who the heck are these welfare readers? I’ll explore that in this column. Ad Blockers Welfare Readers Versus Whitelisters & Donators Welfare readers usually use ad blockers. Chances are that they’ve run into a site with obnoxious ads that they hated, and thus they now browse the web using an ad blocker. This has the unfortunate effect of penalizing every site instead of just the one with the obnoxious ads. Please note that not everybody who uses ad blockers does so indiscriminately, and not everybody who uses an ad blocker is a welfare reader. Many ad blocker users are not welfare readers at all. They take great care to white list their favorite sites, and for that web site publishers should be grateful. I call these folks the “whitelisters.” In my own case, I have readers who use ad blockers who have told me they turn them off while on my blogs. [...]

The 10 Best Free eBook Apps for iPad

Jim — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:52:14 +0000

I read a lot of ebooks on my iPad; it’s actually replaced my beloved Kindle. However, there are so many different ebook apps available for the iPad that it can be tough to sort them all out. In this roundup I’ve included the 10 best free iPad ebook apps, plus two free bonus apps! Please note that while all of these ebook apps are free, some of them also provide books that you must purchase (as well as providing free ebooks). This roundup is broken down into four pages. The first page contains numbers 10 – 6, the second page contains numbers 5 – 1, the third page contains two free bonus apps, and the last page is an image gallery of screenshots of each app. Hopefully these apps will make your reading experience on the iPad as relaxing and fun as possible. Enjoy! #10 Bookman Bookman is a reader that includes a bookshelf function that lets you organize your books by category. Bookman supports the PDF, CBR, CBZ formats, and it also provides support for RAR and ZIP archived PNG, JPG and BMP files. The app also lets you transfer folders and files via FTP using Wi-Fi. You can [...]

Linux Mint’s Debian Delight!

Jim — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:10:28 +0000

Life is full of surprises, some of them good and some of them bad. This week I got a great surprise when a Debian version of Linux Mint was released. I wasn’t aware that the Linux Mint developers were even working on it, so the release was quite unexpected. I did a full review of Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) for the Desktop Linux Reviews blog, but I wanted to talk about why this release is so important and helpful for desktop Linux users. Not Everybody is a Fan of Ubuntu As you probably already know, the other versions of Linux Mint are based on Ubuntu. There are various versions including the GNOME version of Linux Mint, Linux Mint KDE, Linux Mint Xfce, etc. Each of these is popular, in their own way and with their own base of users. But not everyone is enamored with Ubuntu. There are those who think that Ubuntu has made Linux too Mac-like. Remember the controversy over where the title bar buttons were placed in the last release of Ubuntu? Swarms of angry Ubuntu users castigated Canonical for following too closely in Apple’s footsteps. Personally, I think the hostility toward Canonical and Ubuntu is [...]

War of the Peppermint Gargantuas

Jim — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:42:37 +0000

When I was a kid, I used to watch the Creature Double Feature on channel 56. The Creature Double Feature was something I loved tuning into every Saturday, it was basically a double blast of monster movies. What could be better than two monster movies for a kid to watch on a Saturday? One of the best movies was called War of the Gargantuas. The film was about two brother gargantuas who go to war against each other. One was brown (the peaceful one who lived in the mountains) and the other one was green (he was psychotic and lived in the ocean). During the course of the film, the two gargantuas went to war with each other and mayhem resulted. The green gargantua still gives me the willies, even after all these years. The trailer for the movie is below, along with another clip. A true monster movie classic! The Peppermint Gargantuas Now – many years after the War of the Gargantuas movie – there are two more gargantuas that are at war. These two aren’t brown and green, these two are peppermint. I’m referring, of course, to Peppermint OS One and Peppermint Ice. Both are web-centric Linux distros, [...]

The Death Grip Drama Queens

Jim — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:07:05 +0000

What a bunch of namby pamby whiners. You know the people I’m talking about, the ones bitching up a storm about the iPhone 4’s supposed “death grip.” These types of people are always looking for something to complain about. If it were a movie it would be called “Attack of the iPhone Hating Idiots”. Let’s face it, a lot of this “problem” has been created and reinforced by the media. Over and over and over again, the presstitutes in the technology media have blathered on about the iPhone 4’s “antennagate.” Aside from the idiotic referencing of Watergate, the whole thing has been vastly overblown. You’d think, given the media hysteria, that an iPhone 4 is good for everything but making calls. My own experience has been much different as I noted in my column “10 Reasons Why I Love My iPhone 4.” I’ve had three iPhones to date: the original iPhone, an iPhone 3G and now the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 is, by far, the best phone I’ve ever had. I have not encountered dropped calls, poor signal strength or any other terrible problems with my iPhone 4. So far it’s been a genuine pleasure to use it and [...]

10 Reasons Why I Love My iPhone 4

Jim — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:38:04 +0000

I got my iPhone 4 last week, but I wanted to hold off writing about until I'd had some time to actually use it. Since last week I've spent a fair amount of time using the new features and I took my iPhone 4 on a long hike up Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. Before I tell you the ten reasons why I love my iPhone 4, let me tell you how it performed on my hike.

iBooks for iPhone Review

Jim — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:53:30 +0000

A little while back I wrote a comparative review of iBooks and Amazon Kindle for the iPad. One of iBooks biggest weaknesses back then was that it did not have an iPhone version, unlike Amazon’s Kindle app. The release yesterday of iOS4 for the iPhone & iPod Touch has finally remedied this problem. So I thought it would be a good time to look at iBooks on the iPhone and see what it has to offer.

The Great iPhone 4 Pre-Order Disaster

Jim — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:32:10 +0000

Well it's that time again, folks. Another iPhone is almost here and today is the day that Apple and AT&T are accepting pre-orders. It should be a joyous occasion, right? We should all have placed our orders by now and should be eagerly awaiting our new iPhone 4 deliveries. Unfortunately, it hasn't turned out that way. Again. Today's pre-order situation has turned into an absolute fiasco.

The Safari Reader Arms Race

Jim — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:24:32 +0000

Last week I caught a lot of heat for my column about Safari 5's Reader feature. The column seemed to go a bit viral and I got quite a lot of visitors, many of whom were angry. They felt that they were entitled to a quiet reading experience, totally free from web clutter and ads.

Safari Reader: Apple’s Weapon of Mass Destruction

Jim — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 02:25:34 +0000

Steve Jobs gave his usual keynote address at WWDC today. The iPhone took center stage, as expected. But there was another announcement that web publishers should take note of and should dread: Safari 5. The release of Safari 5 does not bode well for web publishers. Specifically, the inclusion of a feature called “Safari Reader” may ultimately prove financially devastating for many web publishers. Here’s how Apple describes it on their site: “Safari Reader removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. So you get the whole story and nothing but the story. It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view. You see every page of the article — whether two or twenty. Onscreen controls let you email, print, and zoom. Change the size of the text, and Safari remembers it the next time you view an article in Safari Reader.” I highlighted the two worst parts of the description: 1. No ads. 2. Multi-page articles are now essentially one page. The End of the Web Advertising [...]

Amazon Kindle for Linux

Jim — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:38:14 +0000

Amazon’s Kindle applications are one of the most popular ways to read ebooks. Oh sure, some people actually own a Kindle reader but quite a lot of people don’t. They simply use the Amazon Kindle application for their particular hardware. To date, Amazon is supporting the following platforms: iPhone iPad Blackberry Mac Windows Hmm. It seems that one VERY prominent platform is missing. Yep, that’s right. Amazon still has not released a Kindle application for Linux. This is a very stupid and shortsighted decision on Amazon’s part and I’ll explain why in this column. Linux has a tremendous amount to offer Amazon…if the company is smart enough to understand why. Kindle on the Linux Desktop? Some will ask why on earth anybody would want to read Kindle ebooks on their Linux-based desktop computer. Well, why not? People do, indeed, use the Amazon Kindle application for the Mac and Windows to read ebooks on their desktop computers. No, reading an ebook on your desktop Linux computer is not going to be as comfortable as reading it while laying in bed. But, hey, that’s for the individual user to decide. If you aren’t interested in reading ebooks on your computer, then you [...]

The 25 Best Free iPhone Apps

Jim — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:32:46 +0000

It’s been quite a while since I last wrote a roundup of free iPhone apps. Much has changed and there have been many new, free apps added to the iTunes store. So it’s a great time to do an updated list. If there’s another free iPhone app that you really like that isn’t in this roundup, feel free to post about it in the comments. And don’t forget the secret bonus app and the free app image gallery. You’ll find them on the last two pages of this roundup. To download an app, just click on its name or on its screenshot. Happy downloading! #25 Bump Bump makes it very easy to share photos and contacts, and to become Facebook friends. Pick what you want to share then hold your phone and bump hands with another person who is also using Bump. #24 Dictionary.com – Dictionary & Thesaurus We can all use a dictionary or thesaurus at times. And now, thanks to Dictionary.com, you’ll have both on your iPhone. This app features reference content from Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com. It provides nearly 1,000,000 words and definitions, and 90,000 synonyms and antonyms. You’ll also get the Word of the Day, similarly spelled [...]