He opens the box and reveals the shiny new PSP GO. I was a little
jealous because I did want one at the time, but the fact that you
could not play your old PSP games on it held me back. He turned on the
system and got the low battery message. No problem, just plug it up,
but their was a problem. The charger is in 3 pieces. When you have to
look at the manual just to find out how to plug up your system,
something is wrong. During this process, I noticed the mini usb plug
has been replaced with a proprietary plug.

He has it charging and wants to play a game so he tried to download
one. He buys the game as we both are trying to look at the screen to
see what it looks like. The download screen appears and it says
estimated time 42 min. WHAT?!?! 42 min before he can play the game? I
have a g network with a very fast cable connection. I can download a
8.3 gig linux ISO in under 42 min. Also, come to find out the game was
the same price as if he bought it at any retail store, so Sony just
made more money off him. They didn’t have to package, ship or pay the
store their cut. They just got all the profits from the game.
As he is downloading the game, we discover another annoyance of the
system. You can’t do anything else while it is downloading the
game. You can’t look at the calendar, play a game, watch a movie, or
listen to music. If you are trying to back out of the menu, it cancels the
download. The download process took about 50 min to complete. I tell my
friend that I could of made it to the store,
bought the game, made it back, and been playing for 30 min while he
waits on it to download.

At this point, he doesn’t feel so smug anymore, he is starting to
realize that he traded in his PSP for another PSP GO that has less
capability. He had one shining hope, he said and I quote “Well at
least I don’t have to leave my house to buy the games.” I told him he
was wrong and I didn’t have to either. He then proceeded to give me
one of his PSP GO game cards, saying if you can play it on your PSP
you can have it. I say thanks, update my firmware, and download the
game. An hour later I have a freshly downloaded God of War game
playing on my PSP. At this point, my friend packs everything up and
takes it back the store saying it will not keep a connection to any
wireless network. Not sure how, but that worked and they took it back.
He now has a PSP 3000 and is enjoying it.

Lastly, a few other things I found out while my friend had his PSP GO
was that no accessory from the PSP will work with the PSP GO. The
battery can not be replaced which is a major annoyance to me. I like
to go a lot of places that I don’t have access to a power outlet, so I
have backup batteries for most of my devices. Also if you are someone
who likes to trade in your games or buy used games then you are out of
luck with the PSP GO. You can only buy things directly from the PSN
and they can’t be traded. Another annoyance is that it says its a 16 gig
system, but when you look at the free space on the system, it only says
14 gigs. The biggest annoyance is that every game that is released for
download is also going to be released on UMD so their is no reason to
buy it off the PSN.

I know the majority of these are petty but there are so many minor
issues with the system, that they add up to a very crappy piece of
hardware. If they had a way to transfer all your PSP UMD games to the
PSP GO, then I could over look all the issues. The fact that I would
still have to keep my origional PSP to play my old games just makes me
think why? Why do I need something that I have to start my game
collection over and not get any increase in graphics or functionality.
If you do not have a PSP and don’t care about after market games, then
it may be a good buy but if you have a PSP, don’t bother.

Biz’s e-mail opened innocuously enough—the kind of casual, just-in-case-you-were-interested tonality that characterizes the social networks’ business correspondence: “We’d like to let you know about our new Terms of Service. As Twitter has evolved, we’ve gained a better understanding of how folks use the service. As a result, we’ve updated the Terms and we’re notifying account holders.”

But since few may actually click on the link to try to wade through notoriously boring legalese, here’s a distillation, interpretation, and speculation on what it all means.

It sounds pretty good, actually—for you. For starters, advertising yourself or your company on Twitter is now legit. Oh, good, because everyone has been doing that from day one. The move is an example of finally legalizing something that everyone is doing anyway. In this case, it’s not a problem, and as the blog stated: “we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open.”

In addition, Twitter now makes it plain that anything you tweet is your tweet and yours alone. “They are your tweets and they belong to you.” Unlike Facebook, which eagerly takes ownership of your pictures, your status updates, and your favorite music list, Twitter wants you to know that you can keep it. Obviously, in an apropos gesture of ownership, Twitter does clarify that when you tweet, “you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).” Just in case you were wondering.

Twitter APIs are an industry all their own, and Twitter puts a stamp of approval on them. The guidelines for API use are still under construction, but they are welcoming developers who want to create piggyback apps for Twitter. So far, the guidelines are simple, straightforward and nonrestrictive.

In a final tweak (not Tweet), the terms stiffen policies regarding spammers. With recent Twitter imposters, spammers, and other malcontented tweeters, the company has to stiffen the upper lip a bit, just to remind everyone who’s in charge.

While the terms of service are pretty mild and non-life-threatening, they still leave a lot of people wondering, “Is Twitter ever going to make some real money?”

The major similarity between the Palm Pre’s onscreen keyboard and the iPhone’s onscreen keyboard is that they’re both onscreen keyboards. Both have a full querty layout, caps ability, and animation to visually clue you into the fact that you’re typing a certain letter. All similarity ends there.

Precentral’s Homebrew Apps page comes with an apropos disclaimer: “The apps you’ll find here are all beta and are for testing purposes only. They are all under development – use with care.” The WebOS statements goes a step further by stating: “While a number of people are having success with it, it makes DEEP changes in your Pre. You choose to use this entirely at your own risk. It may cause your pre to melt into a puddle and dissolve while turning blue. Use at your own risk!” While blue dissolving puddles haven’t been witnessed yet, crashing Palm Pres abound.

For starters, installing the app is a bit of a trick. Unless you have a software engineering background or are a tech junkie, we don’t recommend that you try to install it. Even Dieter Bohn admits, “it’s not…simple,” and delves into the Palm’s innards to launch a patch that opens the app and rearranges the graphical user interface in order to present you with…voila…the Palm Pre’s onscreen keyboard.

In addition to a penchant for crashing, the keyboard has difficulty with symbols, even on the widely publicized YouTube video. Unfortunately, you can’t have your keyboard and update your OS, too. First, you must uninstall the keyboard and then update the Web OS and then go back and reinstall the keyboard. If you try and update with the keyboard installed, experts say, you could “break stuff.” Hmm. Beyond the vague and chilling statement “break stuff,” the keyboard has a lot of other problems, too. It does not have auto-correct, lacks the ability to use backspace and return while in webview, contains positioning glitches, lacks a clipboard and shift-highlight, and a smattering of other ghastly errors.

But Palm Pre owners are gloating over the bug-ridden app. After all, the Palm Pre is one step closer to being like the iPhone.

Google Docs
Most of you are probably already familiar with Google Docs, but for those who are not, it is an office like app that lets you create and
edit documents. If you are using the desktop version, you can email a document from your computer to someone else as a file attachment. I
still prefer using Open Office for major document edits, but Google Docs is great for quick notes or if you are on a computer that does
not have Open Office or MS Office on it. The mobile version of the site is here. It is great for
viewing documents on the road. I wouldn’t advise doing any major editing unless you are a huge fan of the iPhone keyboard. I have only
had 1 problem with the mobile version of Google Docs and that is I am unable to view some text document in it. I haven’t had any issue with
spreadsheets to my surprise, but text documents do seem to have some issues. It may be some sort of formatting that is in the document,
preventing it from displaying.

Google Voice
I am one of the lucky ones that has a Google Voice account and I love it. If you haven’t signed up for an invite yet, you can do so href="https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/">here. I primarily use mine for text messages, but my favorite feature is
call filtering. I have it setup so when someone calls me that is not in my contact list, they get a prompt asking for their name. Then it
calls my phone and tells me their name. From there, I can either accept the call, send it to voice mail, or block the call permanently. There
is a text version of Google Voice for the iPhone here. You can make calls, send
text message, and read your voice mail. Yes Google voice will take your voice mail and convert it to text so you can read them. The only
problem I have with Google voice is that it is hard to tell when you have a new text message. You have to manually go to the page to see if
you have one, but that is better than the price of some text messaging plans. I am hopping that the official Google App for the iPhone will
solve this if it ever gets approved. If you can’t wait for the official Google Voice app and you have a hacked iPhone, you can
download an unofficial version from Cydia called GV Mobile.

Google Reader
I have heard many people say they do not like Google Reader, but I am not one of them. For those who do not know Google Reader, it is an RSS
reader. It pulls the RSS feeds from your favorite sites so you can easily see when a site is updated. The mobile version for Google
Reader can be found here. I really enjoy using this on my iPhone because most sites are not
formatted for the iPhone, making them harder to read. With Google Reader, you can see what sites are updated and the first part of the
update without going to the site and having to load the entire page, saving you time and bandwidth.

What’s that?!

I refer to what seems to be an endless list at times from a process called svchost.exe or service host. At first, the only understanding I could fathom from its annoying presence was that it was consuming a lot of memory.

Windows XP introduced the concept of svchost to start running multiple services within a single process. You can see that the list of processes is a long one. Just take a look at your processes where we will begin to control svchost.exe’s presence:

1. Right click on the clock.

2. Select the Processes tab

3. Scroll down the list and you will see a list of svchost.exe instances.

The system processes listed on the Services tab will show you what is attached to each of those svchost.exe instances. For various functions within windows from when it starts up to running desktop applications, many services need to run concurrently so you will see several instances of svchost as shown above.

Right click on one of the svchost.exe files as above and select ‘Go to Service’. This will take you to the service attached to that svchost process. You will find that 3 or more services are attached to the svchost files. However, too many svchost files can drain memory resources.

Another issue with svchost is that it can attract viruses. Trojans can sit comfortably inside the svchost shell and do their dirty work. This causes sluggish behavior, and random system error messages. But, don’t let this allow you to wreak havoc on the files – whatever you do, don’t start deleting them.

Your system will crash and even suffer irreparable damage that only a reinstall can fix if you do.

Viruses prey on svchost’s RPC (Remote Procedure Call) which is a core function of the system. This way Trojans can infiltrate critical system components.

Though, if your PC is slower these days, and you can see lots of svchost instances, this doesn’t mean you are infected. I do recommend you run your anti-virus and close any ports on your router that are not being used (ask your vendor on this). Though, it may just be a case of having services running that are not needed.

If the performance tab in task manager shows 100% CPU usage, and your fan speed is adjusting itself very rapidly, these are clear hardware signs that running processes are eating up too much memory and CPU power. Before performing these actions, create a system restore point.

So, to begin shutting down services that are not needed, right-click these and select ‘stop service’:

1. Check your system tray, how many application icons are sitting there. Your anti-virus is needed, do you need the others?

2. Go back to Services.

3. Do you need the iPod service? Are you seeing any p2p references?

4. The Application layer Gateway Service which connects to Internet Sharing and the Windows firewall can be safely disabled.

5. To round this list off: Windows Error Reporting Service, Cryptographic Services, Shell Hardware Detection, ReadyBoost (on Vista), Remote Access Connection (only needed for dial-up users or VPN), Network List Service (if you don’t mind losing the network icon showing the connection is working).

This is a good start towards controlling svchost.exe as far as helping ease the burden on your processor and memory resources is concerned.

Google Wave – the ambitious, potentially ground-breaking new communications medium the company first announced earlier this spring – could be soon coming to a web browser near you. The company plans on sending out invitations on September 30 to users who previously expressed interest in testing the new service.

In a post to the Google Wave Developer blog, product manager Dan Peterson explained that the company intends to reach outside the development community (who have already been granted access to a “sandbox” version of the service) by sending out 100,000 invitations to regular users. Those users will be chosen from the “hundreds of thousands” of users who expressed interest in both using and beta testing the nascent communications platform.

Google Wave is the company’s brand new attempt to redesign Internet communications. In a nutshell, the new service is a cross between instant messaging and traditional e-mail, but that description really doesn’t do it justice. On the service’s about page, Google explains that “waves” – individual messages – are updated in real-time and sharable with others. There are a few example videos to demonstrate. The conceptual underpinnings might be a little difficult to wrap one’s head around, although in a sense the new service is not very much different from the hybrid chat and e-mail experience Google currently offers through Gmail.

Google Wave might revolutionize online communications, or it might prove to be an over-engineered effort to duplicate three things (chat, e-mail, and collaborative editing) that online users are already doing. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to sign up to beta test – even if at this point you might be getting in a little late in the game.

Before I list the features which separate it from previous versions, I ran some speed tests on various web pages to see how the changes were implemented here. Information from Mozilla suggested that a number of changes have been applied related to speed. I did notice a speed of about 8 secs when loading a flash intensive page, though general sites like Google and MSN loaded in 5 secs. That’s an improvement on the usual 15 secs or more on some sites where flash movies needed to load.

Here is an overview of the changes that make a difference to the avid web surfer:

1.A tab can be dragged out of the window to be opened in a new window. Conversely, a new window can be dragged to a tabbed window.

2.Less display differences between versions of IE and Firefox 3.5

3.More integrated support for HTML 5 so embracing the new generation of standards for web graphics and flash movies.

4.A new private browsing mode allows users to visit web sites without leaving a record of those sites in cache, cookies and history.

5.No plug-ins needed to add videos that use formats like the Ogg format. Video formats requiring 3rd party plug-ins now play directly in the
browser.

6.You can choose as you browse whether or not to record the page in history by using the ‘Forget this Site’ option.

7.Location-based browsing can help you on sites where you need to find a venue, restaurant, etc. This works by providing information on your location so sharing your location information and is manually enabled by you if so desired.

8.Improved language support, Mozilla state on their site that the number of languages supported is now over 70.

Developers should check the full range of feature improvements on Mozilla at http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/

Some drawbacks include the fact that some extensions may not work on 3.5 from your previous version. Though, Firefox 3.5 certainly never adopts a hackneyed approach to its updates. There is always a fresh new function that improves our daily surfing requirements. The number of downloads in the first 24 hours of its release was reported to be over 5 million.

Firefox continues to shine as the browser of choice to the everyday web user.

Electronic Arts is well known for their games like Harry Potter, Battlefield 1943, The Sims, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and the many versions of Need For Speed. When iPhones began to cover the earth with their multifarious touchpads, EA started recreating pocket versions of their games to sell on the app store for a modest $10. But with thousands of free or almost-free apps, $10 was a lot to charge for just another game.

Enter 8lb Gorilla, a sliver division of Electronic Arts commissioned with the task of producing $.99 games for the iPhone. Obviously, the games are littler, simpler, and there will be a lot more of them—a new one coming out once a month. The new games mark an attempt by a major game producer to gain access into an iPhone game market crowded mostly with solo tech geeks or teeny startup companies. Getting an EA game at a mere $.99 is a great deal. But do remember, the kind of game you’re getting isn’t along the same lines as NCAA Football.

The first game of the lineup is something called ‘Zombies & Me.’ If you’re thinking along the lines of a juvenile kill-the-bad-zombie-game, you’re exactly right. A fearful grandma (screaming “wholly unholy”) is under the attack of human brain-hungry zombies. You, her loyal defender, are charged with the task of dispatching zombies like crazy.

Yes, I can tell you’re salivating for the game already. Perhaps this is the kind of quality we can expect for EA games on sale for 90% off.

Search Pad is more than just a glorified “history.” It enables the users to add notes to particular entries, move entries, categorize searches, delete sections, save searches—and all the while not distracting you with annoying upkeep. The cloud-computing technology of the Search Pad has it poised as a helpful feature for the kind of research that most of us are accustomed to doing on the Internet—from figuring out when to seed our lawns, to determining the best smartphone to buy. Users don’t need to download a new app or plugin; Search Pad is right there, all the time.

Positioned in the upper right-hand corner of Yahoo’s search page, the recording feature offers one-click access to all of the notes you need to aid and sustain your research. Want to do some research for a friend and send her the results? Yahoo allows the search notes to be sent via e-mail, which means that you can share your Search Pad notes with others.

Some have speculated that simply on the basis of this feature, Yahoo will “steal the search throne from Google.” Such a claim may be basing way too much on the mere initiation of a note-taking feature. The question is, who really wants to take notes while they search the web? For some, it will undoubtedly be helpful. But, if Yahoo is thinking that this is going to be a web-changer and propel them back into the limelight of search engines, they may need to add a few more tricks. One of the problems is that non-Yahoo devotees may be disenchanted by the need to perform all searches through Yahoo. According to their thinking, if they want to do research that badly, why not use Google’s own note-taking feature?

For Yahoo’s own review of the Search Pad, check out their site.

With songs, videos, and graphics becoming larger and more complex, an e-mail attachment limit of 25MB is nice increase. With the bigger attachment limit comes the potential that the recipient’s e-mail server might not accept attachments of that size. To warn against this potential, Gmail kindly states “that you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use other email services with smaller attachment limits.” Currently, Gmail has one of the biggest attachment limits of any webmail provider. The solution according to Gmail? “If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail.”

YouTube video limits increased as well. Now, users can post videos up to 2GB in size. The increased size limit may have the growth of high-definition video to thank. Prior to the increase, YouTube capped file sizes to a mere one gigabyte—hardly enough room to get a sneak peek of an high definition video. Unfortunately, the ten minute limit for non-YouTube partners is still in effect.

As files get bigger and bigger and Internet speeds get faster and faster, these size limits will probably get higher and higher.