Monthly Archives: January 2009

Changes At Google

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Once upon a time everyone thought that Google was unstoppable. However, the worsening economy is taking its tole on search giant. The company has issued a number of official blog posts over the last week or so detailing the changes.

Google Video will no longer be accepting uploads shortly. No surprise there, actually, I’ve been wondering why this didn’t happen a long time ago. Google Video, IMO, should have been one thing… search for (and in) videos.

Google Notebook, a service that I actually love, will be stopping development. However the service will continue to work, for now. I guess with this service shutting down, I’ll have a reason to switch over to Evernote.

A number of services that Google picked up, but never really did anything with will also be getting the axe. Jaiku, Google’s service similar to Twitter and Plurk will be shutting down, and the code released as an open source Jaiku Engine under the Apache license.

Other fatalities include:
- Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service.
- Google Mashup Editor will quit working in about 6 months. Everything should be moved over to the App Engine.

That’s not all of the Google news. Google is also making changes to recruting and engineering. About 100 positions in the recruiting section are being eliminated, and 40 satellite engineering offices in 20 countries are being closed. No word on how many engineers that will impact.

As long as Google doesn’t mess with my Picasa, GMail, GDocs, GCal, or Grand Central I’ll be happy. Though I will miss Google Notebook.

I Won A Sapphire Radeon HD 4870

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Back in December I was talking about the 2008 OverclockersClub.com Christmas contest, where they gave away over 50 prizes including a fully loaded Intel Core 2 i7 gaming system that I estimated the worth around $5K. Sadly, I didn’t win the gaming rig… well, to be honest, I don’t know what I would have done with it. :D However, I did win a pretty slick video card.

Thanks to OCC I now have a brand new Sapphire (ATi) Radeon HD 4570 video card with 512 MB GDDR5. Just so you know exactly how much of an upgrade this is, the video card in my current system – yes, despite being a Mac user, I still have an old AMD64 rig – is a VisionTek X1550 256MB (DDR2) AGP. I didn’t even know video cards were using GDDR5! When did 3 & 4 come out?? Ok, so it’s been a good 5 years since I built a PC. I’ve just not had any reason to build a new rig.

Enough talk, right? I’m sure everyone wants to see the prize now… so here it is.

Now, I just have to figure out which end plugs into the motherboard, the power, and the video cards. :D

OCC Folding@Home Contest – Coming Soon

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Hot off the heals of that awesome Christmas contest, OverclockersClub.com will soon be running another contest of similar awesomeness. This new contest however is aimed at those that run Folding@Home for the OverclockersClub.com Team. More specific details about the contest, including prize information, will be announced sometime in the next few weeks.

Do you have a PS3 or a computer running Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD, or some other operating system? Good news, you can run Folding@Home, and participate in this contest! :) There is more to it than just this contest though. You see, Folding@Home is a research program that is looking to find a cure for cancer and various other diseases. The program is designed so that when you aren’t busy using your computer (or PS3) it’ll run as a screen saver or background process. After it’s up and running, you’ll probably notice no difference with your system, unless of course you enable the screen saver option. ;)

To join the OCC Folding@Home Team, simply plug in 12772 when it ask you for a team number. If you have any questions, or need any help getting it running feel free to drop by the OverclockersClub.com forums, or leave me a message in the comments.

I’ll let everyone know when more details about this contest are available.

Mac World Expo Keynote 2009

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So the Mac World Expo is over with now, and if you haven’t heard yet there are a lot of people that were rather disapointed by the event. Why? Two main reasons, first there were a lot of rumors floating around as to what would be announced. People expected these rumors to be true, and when they weren’t, people felt let down. The other reason, is the event was pretty boring.

If you hadn’t heard, this is the last year that Apple is attending the Mac World Expo. In addition to that, there was also no Steve Jobs to present the keynote, instead it was handled by Senior V.P. Phil Schiller. I don’t know if it was just Phil, or if it was the products he was announcing today but the event was boring. He spent half an hour along talking about iPhoto 09. iPhoto might be nice, and there may be a lot of new things in it, but half an hour? Really?

So what was covered during the keynote? If you fell asleep, or just missed it, here is a recap: Continue reading →

Janurary TV

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I hadn’t really thought about this until today, but it looks like Janurary might be a good month for TV. Returning seasons, new seasons, finalies… there is a lot going on this month!

24 – I’m hooked on this show, and season seven which starts on the 11th will be the first season I’ll actually watch on TV. Yup, I’m late to the 24 club, but thanks to a friend (and Best Buy) I’m now caught up and eagerly awaiting the new season. There’s not enough time!!!

Battlestar Galactica – For a show that started out as the “best thing on TV” it sure went downhill fast. Part of that is because they broke 6-12 months between seasons, and part of it is because the show just lost it’s edge. It returns on Janurary 16th for not only the final episodes of season four, but also the final episodes of the series. Will we find out what happened to Earth? Who is the final Cylon? What happened when Starbuck “died”? At this point does anyone care anymore? It’s coming to an end, and hopefully it’ll end on an up swing.

House M.D. – Returning on the 19th is Dr. House and staff. This show is simply awesome, and I’m always eager for more House.

Fringe – The best way to describe this is to probably call it a modern day X-Files. It’s close, but certainly doesn’t do the show justice. It comes back on the 20th, and I cannot wait to see what Walter has to say in the new episodes. :D

LOST – The new season starts up on the 21st after a rather pathetic online game, “Dharma Wants You”. I love LOST, but lost intrest in that whole game very quikly… it simply didn’t hold up to the past games. Will we get any answers this season? Probably, but as always expect every answer to bring a dozen more questions. Will we find out more about the four toed statue? Doubt it.

Burn Notice – The 22nd is the return of Burn Notice. This show really took me buy surprise. I read about it on Neowin.net, and finally caught an episode of it. Prior to Neowin.net, I hadn’t heard or seen anything about it. It’s about a spy who has been blacklisted and dumped in Miami, and he’s trying to figure out who did it and why. Bruce Campbell is a co-star, which should be more than enough reason to watch it! :P

Stargate: Atlantis – I guess I should also note that Stargate: Atlantis finally dies on the 9th. I’m really surprised that the show lasted as long as it did, but it’s finally leaving. Oh sure, we’ll get a couple of direct to DVD movies out of the series, which will most certainly suck as much as the Stargate: SG-1 movies did.