Cheap Fun

So, if you're into gaming, or even if you're not, this is too good to pass up. A game called World of Goo is celebrating it's one year anniversary by allowing people to purchase it at any price. Any price. You could purchase this (really fun and well thought out, review here) game for a mere $.01 if you were so inclined, though I would suggest something reasonable, like $2. Do it. I did.

GEEK OUT: Sober News for Windows Users

Sooo... I haven't posted in a while, but now that school is getting into a rhythm I might start doing so again.

What brought me back was this sobering news from a Washington Post technological security writer. He says he has been investigating "organized cyber crime gangs" and finding out how they pilfer thousands of dollars from businesses using trojans and such-like nasties. His recommendation for said businesses after all his fact-finding? Don't use Windows. Yup. Not: get anti-virus software; not: follow good password practices; not: use a firewall. Just don't use Windows. There's no other way to ensure 100% that you won't have some nasty malware on your computer that's sniffing out your bank info.

Instead he recommends using a Linux live CD, which I think is brilliant. (He also suggests using a Mac, but not everyone can afford to do that). Basically, it's a CD with an operating system on it that you pop into your CD drive, boot up with your computer, and run it straight off of the CD (as opposed to from your hard drive). You can then access your bank via the web, free from worry. My favorite Linux live CD (which I've used extensively) is the Puppy Linux CD. It's fast, fully featured, and very cool. If you're curious about using this CD, I can help you figure it out...

GEEK OUT: Macs VS PC

Most people who know me know I use Macs and I love them. I also do PC repair so I know intimately how much a Windows computer can suck sometimes.

Yesterday Apple came out with some new "I'm a Mac" ads and the one that was particularly amusing to me was called "Legal Copy". Go ahead and check it out, I'll wait.

Anyway, if you don't bother to watch it, the ad involves PC making statements such as "incredibly easy to use" while legal copy increasingly grows in size at the bottom of the page. What's funny to me is what the legal copy actually says. A website called MacJournals.com actually took the time to read what it said, and came out with humorous, though sometimes admittedly exaggerated, gems like this:

Please note that when you first receive your PC there is some suggested work that needs to be done before PCs can perform at their peak. These steps include, but are not limited to, downloading and installing necessary drivers for peripherals. These drivers may include printers, scanners, cameras, storage devices, music players, and other media devices. There may be more depending on your needs. It is also recommended that first time users remove all unneeded bloatware and remove all operational components.

GEEK OUT: Networked Hard Drive Edition

So... occasionally I'll happen across something of a technological nature that I think is really awesome, but a great deal of people might not. For example, I described the gadget I'm soon to talk about to my wife last night and her response was a kind of "mmm hmmm" in so many words. But that's okay, prepare to have your collective minds blown.

What will do said exploding to you? Why, the Pogoplug® of course. Ha, you may scoff, how could something with such a retarded name be so profoundly awesome? (I may be exaggerating at this point, but bear with me). Well, let me describe what it does for you first. Essentially, it'll take any sort of hard drive or thumb drive and turn it into a network drive, no fuss, no muss. What that means is that any hard drive you have can be accessible by any computer on your home network or over the internet. Okay, perhaps you're a bit underwhelmed right now, but let me describe a few scenarios of how this could be really handy.

Scenario one: let's say you're chatting with your buddy about your awesome music collection and you'd really, really like to share an album with him, but you're nowhere near your computer. That's no problem with your Pogoplug®! You jump on his computer, log in to my.pogoplug.com and wala, all of your music collection is instantly available to download onto your friends computer because you have your hard drive with all your music plugged into your Pogoplug®. You can even preview the songs in the browser! The same goes for videos, documents, whatever; whatever you put on your hard drive instantly available over the internet through the Pogoplug®.

I'm sounding like an advertisement, but stick with me here. If you're a Mac user, you might be familiar with Time Machine, a really easy way to backup your stuff built into OS X Leopard. Well, with a Pogoplug®, you can now use Time Machine on any Mac you've got on your network and back that puppy up to your networked drive! That way, more than one computer at a time can work with the same backup hard drive. This, of course, would also work with Windows but it'd be a different process (read: not as easy).

Basically, the idea is that all of your information would be accessible from one central location and accessible anywhere you go, whether it's between computers in the same house, or you're at someone else's house. It's not that this hasn't been possible before, it certainly has. But it's now easier, and cheaper (only $99), to do this than it ever has been. Anybody can set this up (maybe).

So did anybody else out there see the potential in this device, or are you "mmm hmmming" me?