Category: General

Definite sign of the times: Rockstars next release, Manhunt 2 is being developed for the Playstation 2, PlayStation Portable and….the Wii, but not the XBox 360 nor the PlayStation 3. I keep reading reports of people trading PS3’s for the Wii, and of the massive backlog of orders in the US and Europe for the console. You can’t buy it here in Australia either at the moment, as soon as a shipment comes in, they’re straight out the door. It’s literally the MUST HAVE console of this generation, and even hard core gamers are starting to come across…after all, playing computer games in a group has never been so much fun!

Disclosure: I own a Wii 🙂

It’s official. As of this morning I’ve decided I hate Gawker Media’s Lifehacker. Why? because it’s so infuriatingly useful. Nearly every single day I find something interesting to download, really really good stuff as well. I’ve already got 3 columns of programs in All Programs, I don’t want a 4th column. Today’s key download: RocketDock. It’s brilliant. Ignore the Mac OSX styling for a minute, download it, and have a play. The last thing I wanted is some giant program dock sitting at the bottom middle of my screen (even if it is 22 inches). You can move it, and even strip the background! I ended up with this:

All my favourite programs fitting nicely at the top hand right of the screen all the time, no need to enter start anymore to get to them. Bloody Lifehacker!!!! stop being so useful!!!!!!!

Great news for owners of Inkjet Printers, according to USA Today Kodak is about to launch a new line of Inkjet printers with CHEAP INK!

To quote:

For years, companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Canon and Lexmark have sold inexpensive consumer-grade inkjet printers ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù many are about $100 or so ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù and made up the difference in ink sales.

Manufacturers can make as much as 75% profit on the sale of ink cartridges, says Jim Forrest, an analyst at Lyra Research. Printer ink is a $32 billion market worldwide, he says.

Inkjet manufacturers have never lowered their prices or engaged in a price war, Forrest says. But that could happen if Kodak’s printers take off.

This is great news for consumers. The inflated prices of Ink from all the manufacturers to date smells like and looks like a price fixing cartel. If the Kodak product goes well it will hopefully force other manufactureres to follow with cheaper ink prices. Next time I’m in the market for a printer I’d 99% more likely to go out of my way now to buy a Kodak printer to support what they are doing, and so should others.

The latest and greatest ebook out there (again): Day Job Killer (not an affiliate link). I must have half a dozen emails from marketing gurus in my inbox all pushing the program. I must admit, I’m tempted to buy it, Affiliate Project X wasn’t a bad read, but there’s one big question though, is the program using fake product endorsements?

Joe Birstle, Perth, Australia

That’s my neck of the woods, sort of, well give or take 200kms. Interesting name, one problem, if this guy is real he doesn’t exist in the phone book:

He could potentially have a silent number, I do, but the odds of that are about 1 in several thousand. I also can’t find any mention of him on Google either, aside from the Day Job Killer affiliate sites. The guy literally doesn’t exist online, and as we all know, that’s next to near impossible. If it smells fishy it probably is. Food for thought.

Tags: Day Job Killer

Tired of Mac users telling you how wonderful their Mac is? We’ll have I got the antedote for you, compliments of a wonderfully earnest peice of journalism by Charlie Brooker at The Guardian:

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb.

Read the full thing here. It bought a very big smile to my face at least 🙂

More David Hicks BS: this time an advertising campaign trying to “humanise” him. Enough is enough. Hang him, shoot him, do something to him please Mr Bush, just something to shut the nutters up. Am I really alone in being sick and tired of hearing the whinging day in, day out about Hicks being in Gitmo? The f*cker was caught in AFGHANISTAN for christ sake! Let me give everyone a bloody great big clue: he wasn’t there on a Club Med or Club 18-30 holiday. David Hicks should be grateful that he’s alive, after all the best thing for terrorists is death. Oh yeh, this dinky dye, true blue aussie also changed his name to Mohammed Dawood, and whilst converting to mohammedism isn’t a crime (mind you, if you’re a muslim and you convert to Christianity, they consider that a capital crime) he took that to the extreme of fighting in Kosovo, before taking up the fight in Afghanistan. The guy is an admitted Muslim fighter…a fighter who took on allied forces in Afghanistan and who had strong ties to Al Quieda. He’s lucky he is where he is…alive and fed, because he doesn’t deserve it.

Tags: David Hicks

Despite all the hype about Windows Vista I’ve not felt the need to run off to the shops and buy a copy, after all, what exactly does it do that XP doesn’t do? having said that however, I love to play with new things, so I remembered today that the Acer Laptop I bought in December came with a Vista upgrade voucher. I naturally presumed there would be some sort of cost involved, but it was a voucher none the less. This is where it gets interesting.

So the intructions say to ring the appropriate number for your country, which I do. Within a couple of seconds I could tell the call had been routed offshore…you could hear the line quality. First option: do you speak English, press 1. So I press 1. 20 minutes later, I get an operator, but the “do you speak English” part might have been a moot point, it wasn’t an Indian Call Centre but at a guess mainland China. So I explain the situation, it doesn’t compute, and about 10 minutes later I get through to the operator what I’m saying. Great, you’ll need to scan a copy of your purchase receipt and a copy of the Certificate of Authenticity, and send it to the email address you’ll get in the email Acer will send you. Two problems. 3 hours later: NO EMAIL. second problem, the Certificate of Authenticity consists of a sticker on the bottom of the laptop, how exactly am I suppose to scan it (photo below). I await with interest the email, and look forward to sending the picture :-)…good news I guess, free upgrade via Acer….if I ever get the email.

Tags: Acer

It’s all happening in the Philippines. Despite the occasional bad strange odd different apple, the Pinoy blogosphere is rocking, and it’s not just the Philippines greatest export to the world BryanBoy, it’s The Bayanihan Blog Network. OK, so the first word is a definite tongue twister, but take a look anyway!

Interesting, just dropped by my old stomping ground The Blog Herald, the site has dropped down from it’s PR 7 to a PR 6. I wonder why?

I read in the weekend papers that there was a strong chance of this happening, but it’s confirmed: Crowded House is reforming after a break of 10 years, minus of course Paul Hester who very sadly took his own life in 2005. The great new for fans who were never particularly fond of Tim Finn is that Neil doesn’t seem to be dragging his brother along this time (Woodface being the worst Crowded House record released, and the only one featuring Tim Finn). Neil has also announced that along with touring, he’s been working on a new album for the last twelve months with Nick Seymour: “Time on Earth” that will be released later this year. Personally, I couldn’t be happier, and I can’t wait to they hit Perth, Gold/ A class, what ever the best ticket is and costs, I’ll be there 🙂