CyberSurge has moved. Well, not exactly, but I will no longer be spending my time writing here. Instead, I’ll be focusing my efforts on my new web site: mickerlodeon.com.
I will continue to write there indefinitely. This site will continue to operate, all of the archive posts and comments will remain but if something unexpectedly breaks through either a WordPress or plugin upgrade, it won’t be high on my list of priorities.
The feed for this site will continue to operate and will be populated by new content from mickerlodeon.com but again, if something breaks don’t expect it to be fixed immediately. Although you don’t have to subscribe to the new feed (http://mickerlodeon.com/feed/) I suggest you do so.
I’ve enjoyed my time writing here but it is time to move on to better things.
I’ve heard a lot of speculation of “The Brick,” which is part of a rumor talking about what may be announced in early October by Apple. Many have thought that it may have something to do with the power brick of the notebooks (and that’s what I thought at first) and others have thought that it could be a new Mac Mini replacement or a new Apple TV.
What it isn’t going to be though is a networked DVR, Apple has too much invested in the idea of users purchasing TV shows in iTunes. But, it should be a networked DVR because Apple would do it right.
I’ve talked before of my idea for a network DVR and I think Apple is the only one that would be able to do it right. If the Brick isn’t a networked DVR it should be and if Apple isn’t in development of one they need to get on the ball. The power of what this DVR could do would be amazing and would really change the way people watch TV.
I’m not going to run through my entire idea of a perfect DVR, if you want that you can read my post specifically talking about that (My Idea Of The Perfect Network DVR) but I will tell you a bit of the most important features.
Recording directly into iPod and Apple TV ready formats using a hardware H.264 encoder.
Remotely manage recordings through a web interface (or through iTunes if Apple makes it).
Automatically tag the recorded programs with descriptions, episode titles, show name, etc.
Recorded content would be shared over the network as if it was an iTunes share, so iTunes on other computers or Apple TVs could see the content easily.
The reason I think Apple should do this is because it fits into their world where media is easily transferable from device to device (as long as it is made by Apple of course) and everything works together so nicely. Apple would really only have to add an H.264 encoder and a TV tuner to the Apple TV and they would be able to have this exact functionality after just a few months of coding.
Apple, get working. And, by the way I would probably pay $400-500 for this type of box.
Just like Hulu, theWB.com has finally started up a closed beta. This new website is just like Hulu in terms of being a video portal but for this one it is going to be for old WB produced content.
The features of this site are very similar to Hulu, you can link to and embed videos. One of the cooler features is the ability to search for words within transcripts of the videos.
From the screenshots I’ve seen the site looks really good with a great color scheme, although I think it may be just a tad cluttered.
Shows available on the site include:
All Of US
Blue Water High
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Dangerous
Gilmore Girls
One Tree Hill
Smallville
The OC
The Wayans Bros.
There is supposed to be more coming although there isn’t any word on when that will happen.
Like I said earlier, the site is currently in private beta so you should hurry on over there and register for a beta account. No word on when the site is going to be opened up to the public but it does look fairly promising, if you like Hulu, you’ll like TheWB.com.
I’ve been spending the past couple of days setting up this new design for CyberSurge. I’m using the Red Three Theme from Desktop Vibes.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think about the new theme. If you are curious why I changed the theme it’s because the old one was feeling a bit stale to me and I felt like I was in need of a change. There are still a couple of things I want to do with the theme, hopefully all of the changes will be completed by the end of the week.
I wasn’t sure whether or not to go live with it today but even though there are a couple of things I need to do but I figured to put it up anyway, mostly because the things that I’d like to do either people wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t really care about (although I feel they need to be done).
Akihabara recently got their hands on Sony’s Mylo 2 Personal Communicator. The device is very similar to the Nokia N810 and features a 3.5″ WVGA display, slide out QWERTY keyboard, 1.3 megapixel, Skype, 1GB of on board storage, and a Memory Stick/ Duo/PRO Duo card slot.
The device has some interesting applications including a web browser, media player, IM client, and VoIP. What seems to be the only downside to the device is video playback which is restricted to 320×240 despite its nice 800×480 display.
I’ve been sick since Saturday morning and haven’t really been able stay up to date on the news and haven’t been able to post either. I’m feeling a little bit better now but am not 100% by any means. Hopefully I’ll be posting more regularly by the end of the week but until then expect either no posts or very little posts.
Happy Holidays everyone, This is going to be the last post for a few days. Christmas is tomorrow and I’m going to be spending time with the family most of the week. Hopefully I’ll be back to writing later on this week but I can’t make too many promises.
This Friday marks one year of CyberSurge and I have some cool plans for it that I hope will work out.
Happy Holidays and I hope you enjoy the time with your family this Holiday season.
If you aren’t from the US you may not be familiar with Thanksgiving, it is a holiday where families get together and give thanks for what they have, watch football, and eat until you can’t move.
Anyway, I decided to write this post because I’m not sure how things will go today, I hope I will find some time between the turkey and the mashed potatoes and gravy to write up a post but I can’t be too sure. Today the post I was planning was another Holiday Gift Guide, it may have to wait until tomorrow but like I said, I can’t be too sure.
But either way, happy Thanksgiving and I hope you have a wonderful holiday.
One of the things that I found myself doing after the first release of iToner and since then (especially at the time when I found out this way of getting ringtones on the iPhone), was searching online for free MP3s. Now there may be other search engines that can do the same thing but I ended up using this old fashioned solution, Altavista.
Altavista was once one of the top search engines on the internet but has since been overtaken by the all powerful Google. But, I there is one aspect of search where Altavista still stands out in my mind, and that is its ability to search for audio files around the internet.
All you have to do is click the MP3/Audio tab above the search box and now you can search for MP3’s, Wav files, Windows Media files, Real audio files, AIFF, etc. I do understand that there are ways of doing a similar search in Google but I also know that Altavista makes it really easy.
Altavista is how I found practically all of the ringtones that I have added to my phone with iToner. It may be difficult to find some of the popular “songs of today” through this search but you can find practically everything through it. A lot of the audio that I have downloaded through it were theme songs to some of the TV shows that I use to watch as a kid (which I then added to my phone as ringtones).
The only thing that I don’t like about about the search is that the link it gives you is to the web page that the file was found on and not the actual file itself, however Altavista does tell you the name of the file so if you “View Page Source” (in Firefox) you are just a ctrl+f (find) away from downloading the file.
I’ve been playing around with a few ideas of how I could redesign the blog a bit. I think I’ve figured out some decent ideas and hope to start changing some things soon. I can’t mention any hard dates when things will be implemented (mostly because I’m not very good at web design) but I really hope that things come out really well.
I’ve had this on my list of things to do for quite some time and I’m very excited to actually begin working on it. I love this theme a lot but I have begun seeing it around the blogosphere a lot more lately and figured it was time to have a change. The new design won’t be much of a change, it will still be based on this theme but you should see a new header image, footer, and maybe some changes to the sidebar as well, I’m still in the beginning stages of working on things but figured I would let all of you know as just sort of a heads up.
I’m planning on trying out some new plugins this weekend, hopefully they will work out, maybe they won’t. I currently have a list of 13 of them that I would like to try. But enough of that here are the most popular posts here at CyberSurge:
