Newegg warehouse tour

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

Check out this article on AnandTech. It takes you through a virtual tour of a Newegg warehouse, complete with pictures.

The tour’s from the point of view of fulfilling an order: from receiving, storing, picking, to shipping out the door to you and me. When you get to the end, they give you a link to a Newegg sweepstakes page where you can enter your email address to enter to win an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4Ghz cpu.

Do the tour if you like those things. If not, at least enter the free giveaway to get a chance to win something.

How motherboards are made

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

This is an interesting article about how Gigabyte makes motherboards.

DSL or Cable? That is the question

Posted by Ed:

I get this question a lot.  Which should I choose, DSL or Cable?  Some locations don’t event offer DSL or Cable, but if you had the choice between DSL or Cable what would you choose?  The big answer is “it depends.”  I hate those type of answers, but that’s the reality of it.  I comes down to the following question:  Do you want the variable speeds you get with cable, or the consistant slower speed you get with DSL?  Here are the situations and the reasons I choose either:

Situation 1: I have Satellite for TV, no cable coming into my house, and I have good phone service.
Answer: High speed DSL – you will be happy with the speed and most of the upload speeds.  You can also get a slight discount from your phone provider for having phone and internet together on the same bill.

Situation 2: I have Cable for TV and a neighborhood full of people who have cable.
Answer: Go to DSL if possible because at peak web surfing times your neighbors will bring you down to a crawl and you will think you have a dialup connection.  Unless you really like to download those huge files, i would go with consistancy of the DSL connection.

Situation 3: I have Cable for TV and not many people in my neighborhood with Cable.
Answer: Get the cable!  You will be very happy with the download speeds as long as you can handle the slightly higher price tag.

Situation 4: I use the internet to check email, stocks, news, and occasional Youtube viewings.
Answer: Get DSL.  The cost will be lower and you really won’t need the high speed.  You will have a consistant speed for all of your web pages that you will be happy with.  Cable will be slow at times and get frustrating

Cable generally costs more but has much higher speeds.  If you are an average internet surfer and want to save a few bucks then you will be happy with DSL.  If you are a hard core internet user then Cable is the way to go unless you can find a provider that will bring fiber into your home.  Then you will be rockin!

Redeem Your Itunes Gift Card (or not)

Posted by Ed

Here’s the Chistmas present I got from Itunes this morning.  A lovely message box that tells me to wait for my present.  Christmas morning is one of the most difficult times to redeem your Itunes gift card.  All I want to do is use the gift card from my buddy Joe to buy some wicked killer sweet songs from Itunes.  Thanks for the gift Joe, but I need to wait for it.  (Sigh)

Mini cars show poor safety rating from IIHS

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

Mini-cars are cars weighing 2,500 pounds or less. This news release by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), reports lower safety ratings for mini-cars in rear and side collisions. In general, mini cars are not as safe as small or larger cars.

“People traveling in small, light cars are at a disadvantage, especially when they collide with bigger, heavier vehicles. The laws of physics dictate this,” says Institute president Adrian Lund. Death rates in single-vehicle crashes also are higher in smaller vehicles than in bigger ones.

I don’t find it amazing news, but just something that goes to support the absurd conclusion auto markers seem to be making for consumers — sacrifice safety for fuel economy and lower cost of maintenance.

Check out this video of a Smart car running into a cement barrier. That doesn’t seem too smart.

The ‘car cage’ looks like it survives, but the passengers unlucky enough to be in the car at the time of impact, probably don’t walk away totally intact.

Okay, now imagine what would happen if the car was hit from the side by a car, truck, or mini-van. Yeah. Hmm.

What would you sacrifice for a better 10 more mpg ?

Listen to the podcast 2gnj Episode 13: Smart Car.

Baby is sent through x-ray machine at LAX, the usability of everyday common things

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

The Los Angeles Times reported a story about a baby being sent through an LAX security screening x-ray machine by mistake by its grandmother.

The baby is okay, and the family was allowed to continue on to their destination after the baby was checked out by medical professionals.

Apparently, the grandmother does not speak english, and was not well accustomed to security check point procedures.

Uh, why would we expect that everyone passing through security knows english? Bilingual signs are common in many areas. But why would we expect everybody to know not to put the baby through the conveyor? Seems natural, I go through the gate portal, baby goes through the conveyor in a plastic bin made just for it.

So, this raises a good point my buddy Ed likes to bring up now and then. He says, and I quote,

>“If it needs a sign, it’s badly designed.”

Which makes sense, right? Most times I think. The design of everyday things should be so intuitive to as not need explanation.

• A coffee cup should be grabbed by the handle.
• Light switches should turn lights on when the flip up, not to the left or right.
• And swinging doors should have the push piece decidedly to the side of the door that needs push to open. If you’re suppose to pull the door put a handle, not a bar to push. ( btw, one of my favorite far side cartoons is this one: School For the Gifted . See if you can figure out what’s wrong here… )

You know what I mean… If you have to think too hard about how to do what with something, the point’s been missed on bad design.

Guess the TSA has to start posting signs.

“No live babies in machine.”

Better yet would be an iconic picture of a baby being passed through the machine with an overlaid red interdict scratch on it. Instant cross cultural understanding.

Firefox Magazine

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

I just found Firefox Magazine.

For all those people out there who love the firefox better than the others, here ya go.

If you like firefox, take a look. It’s light and meaty.

All hail the F6 Key!

Posted by Ed Maurer

Always on the lookout for a way to use a key stroke instead of moving my mouse, I discovered the wonders of the F6 key when I was web browsing today.  Sometimes you just want to type in an address in the address bar but you need to use all of those muscles to grab your mouse, move the little arrow up to the address bar, and click that pesky left mouse button.  Then you hope and pray that you don’t press an arrow key because the whole field won’t be highlighted again.  Doing all of those actions would burn about 1/2 a calarie.  Way too much for me.  While listening to the Buzz Out Loud Podcast, they mentioned the F6 key’s goodness and it has saved my life, or at least half a calarie.  Pressing the F6 key while in your web browser will highlight your address field and allow you to start typing the web address of your choice.  I know his works in both IE7 and Firefox 2.0, but have no clue about the other browsers out there.   Thank you F6 key, you’re my hero!

Blogging or Podcasting without disclosure sucks

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

This article captures my thoughts on deceptive advertising in the new media.

Let’s Try This Again: If It’s Not CRYSTAL CLEAR That Something Is An Ad, It’s DECEPTION

If you’re paid to advertise and opinion via the blogging word of mouth marketing (womm) machine, you have to claim it. This medium depends upon a certain level of authenticity and trust in your intent and motivation in making certain assertions or other statement of like, desire, love, or hate.

It sucks when someone tells me that they really like software program ‘X’, only for me to find out that they were really just talking through their wallet. Trust betrayed. Asshole.

This happened to me not to long ago. I was listening to a technology related podcast, no not mine, for the first time. I was gigged and excited. The podcast had been recommended to me by my cohort in new media podcasting — Ed Maurer.

The guy started to go on about program ‘X’, how he’s used it, how he loves it, blah blah blah, and then it came out — he recounted some contrived line of crap that was so blatantly half ass scripted. He read it like the same, contrived, like crap, and half ass. Oh oh. I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

I had to find out whether he was getting sponsored by said program ‘X’. He didn’t say so. He talked of and laid on accolades to program ‘X’ like he was being honest. Until he read the contrived line half ass. He hasn’t really used this program.

I checked. No where did he come out and disclose that he was getting paid to make mention of the program, not leading up, nor near or afterward. He just gave it out. Ouch.

Well I stopped the podcast and went to his website. There, on the top right, in full frontal nudity was a sponsor link for program ‘X’.

sigh.

The dude was sponsored by the makers of program ‘X’, but he never said so in his podcast. I downloaded his podcast and was gigged to listen to him. I never needed to go to, or probably would have ever bothered to go to his website. I would have taken his endorsement as genuine.

I was pissed. I couldn’t believe it. Such outright deception in a podcast medium that I love.

That’s not what podcasting, blogging’s about.

I made a even keeled anonymous comment on his episodes’ post. I just said something to the affect, “hey, you really should say you’re sponsored, give disclosure, when you throw yourself out as giving such a positive product endorsement”.

lol.

It’s a monitored comment blog — no one sees your comments till he reviews and approves. I never saw my comment up on the blog. So much for listening, having a conversation, and acknowledging the negative critique by letting it be part of the conversation on the blog. I’m not surprised. But I am disappointed. I just ran into a sell out.

Needless to say, I never listened to this guy again, and I started telling my story to other people, turning them away from his podcast too.

So, back to the FTC…

According to the FTC, you can still weasel out of full disclosure. You can bury, hide, make very small print, or otherwise not so CLEAR, to say you are sponsored by makers of program ‘X’. You can put the disclosure anywhere on your public website, easy or hard to tie to the actual statements of sponsored endorsement. And in the case of the podcaster in this sad story, it’s within your discretion to put the sponsor link on your website where no one subscribing through ITUNES ever has need to go to or see.

It’s a confidence CON. Don’t be conned. Demand full disclosure from your favorite new media blogger, podcaster.

Keep it real.

Time says YOU are the Person of the Year, I say YOU are much more than that

Posted by: Joseph Hershey

Time named YOU as their Person of the Year.

What does that mean to you? Let me tell you what it means to YOU.

The truth is what I say it is if I can get it to spread across the internet and be accepted by enough people to cross the tipping point.

I say this to you, in the true form of Truthiness, from a strong feeling in my gut, and because I didn’t research it anywhere.

I say this to you like Stephen Colbert would say it to you.

I feel it.

Don’t give me any of that Wikipedian type

“The neutrality of this article or section may be compromised by weasel words.
You can help Wikipedia by improving weasel-worded statements.”

HA.

Gone are the days where the big companies could host big sites and feed us crap.

Gone are the days where I simply watch the local sensationalist no content yellow journalism of the 11 ‘o clock news.

No longer, no longer do I even look online to the short concise pages of new items on CNN.com to see what’s happening.

No.

Today I look to YOU.

Because YOU are TRUTH. Whatever you can post and get promoted on the web of the masses, that is true.

If you write slurs on the candidate for state senate’s wikipedia page, I read it, and I believe it. It’s on the internet, it must be true.

If you write a blog and many people’s blogs reference your blog, and I found it by google search because you had link popularity, I read it, and I believe it.

If I gather enough of my friends up and Digg this blog post, then, YOU will read it, and you YOU will believe it.

That’s the thing about this Web 2.0 thing.

TRUTH = YOU and what you say it is.

This is the web of participation. This is the web of user created content — i.e., YOU.

MEDIA = YOU and what you make it to be.

It’s easy. And it can be done for free.

There are services like Blogger, YouTube, Feedburner that alone are great, but put together, they can make you an instant video blogger — for free. That’s the big one baby, putting yourself up on the internet for all to see.

Even if you are a Lonelygirl15.

But short of that, you can easy comment, or feedback on things you read, hear, or see. The old model is to send an email to the “webmaster”. The new model is to leave a comment on the content, inline with the content, so that others reading the content can read your comment too.

That’s it, poison the opposing candidate’s campaign blog by faking like a tainted believer and leave muy FUD on their main campaign information source. The spinner.

HISTORY is the story that YOU tell in the MEDIA that YOU create, and the mass of people who listen to YOU as you profess the new TRUTH.

The Time award merely acknowledges this. And this is a big shift for post modern media culture.

I don’t believe George Washington cut down the apple tree. I don’t Abraham Lincoln could have been elected to be the President of the United States of America, if he never told a lie.

What’s your truth? Are you going to let it be created for you, the tv generation, or are you going to claim it?

Get out there man.

I say.

JOIN the conversation.

Stick your voice in the New Media.

Check out this most excellent podcast — 2gnj Episode 11: Web 2.0.

So, You going to comment?