I have a small stack of Visa check cards that have been collecting on my desk over the last year an a half. I buy a fair amount of tech gear online throughout the year. I get hardware when I find a good deal, and in many cases that involves a rebate from the manufacturer. But recent trends have the rebates coming back in the form of Visa check cards. No more rebate checks. Everyone issues the rebate on a check/debit card. I'm not sure of the upside for the company issuing the rebate, but when you want to redeem the gift card it can be a pain in the ass.
For example, say you want to use the gift card to pay for a meal. If its a $20 gift card, you can't actually spent the $20 on the meal. 15% or more is held back from the available limit to allow room for gratuity on the purchase. On top of that, the total for the bill will never equal that of the check card, so you either split the payment between the check card and a credit card, or you make up the difference in cash. And not knowing if the gratuity hold back is 15%, 20% or 25%, its impossible to spend the balance of the card without a lot of screwing around and hassling the already overworked waiter/waitress. Using a gift card for payment at a restaurant is a fail...
Back for the second season, ABC's Castle is one of this seasons prime-time shows that I am most interested in. Season 1 was compelling and sure to interest fans of Nathan Fillion. Many will remember Fillion from his role as Malcolm Reynolds on the classic but short lived Firefly series. Needless to say, Fillion's roll as crime author Richard Castle plays to the actors strengths and makes for an amusing series.
So, here's why I find this show interesting enough to warrant a post. The shows main character, Richard Castle, successful author who decides to kill off the character that made him famous. The plot explains that Castle is bored writing about the character because he knows him inside out. He wants to create a new character.
Castle spends some time with the NYPD and finds inspiration for a new character. He pulls some strings at the NYPD and the Mayors office and get assigned as a consultant to a detective on which he plans to based his new character. The new character, Nikki Heat, is based on NYPD detective Kate Beckett. Wikipedia has some interesting background on the characters.
At the beginning of season 1, Castle kills off the lead character that supposedly made him a house hold name and risks his career with a new book. He starts investigating strange cases with Beckett. Shortly into season 2, Castle is about to release the first book based on the Nikki Heat character. This is the part that I find fascinating.
In this weeks upcoming episode Castle's book is supposed to hit fictional store shelves within the show. But in real life, a physical copy of the book is also hitting book stores. In fact Amazon.com is offering both a hard cover version of the book as well as a copy of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. And, just to be clear, the book is being published in real life. Further more, its being published under the author name of the fictional character, Richard Castle!
I really enjoyed this book. The story was interesting, and largely plausible if you really understand the technology being employed. Plus, being someone who is technically aware, I thought the author did an amazing job of employing current internet based concepts to build a story that is simply a great read.
The story centers around a massively multi-player game analogous to WoW (World of Warcraft). The developer of the game dies before the story begins. When he dies, it triggers hidden code in the game that runs as a distributed daemon service on a botnet spread across the planet. Without giving the plot away, the story is extremely engaging and uses social engineering, security exploits, spiders, and the internet to take a really fresh look at what could really happen to our world if current technologies were properly manipulated.
Mozilla recently released Firefox 2.0. While the esthetics of the changes were minimal, the browser has clearly come a long way. With 2.0, the interface icons are more refined and the tabs look a little more polished. Perhaps the most impressive and long overdue feature to be added is spellchecking. But for all of its refinements, sometimes Firefox still manages to leave me frustrated. In this case, the browsers autofill feature can be problematic...
Another threat has surfaced that could to be the greatest threat to the privacy of American internet users. It’s not a security hole in Microsoft Windows this time. Now the federal government is proposing legislation to effectively destroy the anonymity of the internet as a whole.
Last week, US Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller privately met with members of AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon. And the topic of conversation? The Washington brass wants ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to retain mail, web, and radius logs detailing their users activities for a long as two years. ISPs normally use these sort of files for billing purposes and to troubleshoot technical issues. The logs typically have a very short life span, mainly because there is simply too much data to be easily stored and organized. For example, once and ISP has completed a billing cycle, the authentication logs are typically purged in preparation for the next billing cycle...
When Apple added Dashboard to OS X 10.4, it opened the door to limitless possibilities. Widgets can be created to do almost anything. And while this is a very good thing, it can also be a very bad thing. People are creating widgets that do a lot of crazy and ultimately useless things. That's why I enjoy finding a widget that is exceptionally useful. Once such widget is called, appropriately enough, Gas...
Be sure to keep track of Maclive.net's latest news and posts. Download our Widget for OS X 10.4's Dashboard. It displays up to the minute headlines as they appear on our site. The widget is now also available via Apple's Dashboard page...
On January 24th, the Walt Disney Company announced the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios. The sales price has been reported as $7.4 billion. The acquisition puts Steve Jobs, Pixar's majority share holder, on the Disney Board of Directors...
Project Motorsport started out as a fun way to spend an afternoon. We set out to shoot some motorcycle video and have a good time. Once when we brought the video back and began to edit, we realized we had the making of a music video.
Check out the video and see for yourself. And, if your interested in further information on the project, we give you that too!
The Freedom to Switch:
In 2003 Apple Computer released a marketing campaign with the intention of showing Wintel users how easy it would be to "switch" platforms.
One of the Mac's main selling points, ironically enough, was Digital Video Editing. Apple wanted the world to see how easy it was to edit video on the Mac platform. And, in overwhelming response, Mac users set out to show the world just how easy it really was.
The campaign was effective for Apple, but also spawned a unexpected parody campaign in the Mac underworld. Users from all of the world whipped out their camcorders and set to work making spoofs in the same cinematic style as the acclaimed commercial line.
With this, Maclive.net rose to the challenge and shot our own spoof. We think it proves that a Mac can be a powerful tool in the wrong hands. It also shows how far a couple of Mac fans will go for a laugh. We hope you enjoy our contribution, aptly named The Freedom to Switch.
I have a small stack of Visa check cards that have been collecting on my desk over the last year an a half. I buy a fair amount of tech gear online throughout the year. I get hardware when I find a good deal, and in many cases that involves a rebate from the manufacturer. But recent trends have the rebates coming back in the form of Visa check cards. No more rebate checks. Everyone issues the rebate on a check/debit card. I'm not sure of the upside for the company issuing the rebate, but when you want to redeem the gift card it can be a pain in the ass.
Mozilla recently released Firefox 2.0. While the esthetics of the changes were minimal, the browser has clearly come a long way. With 2.0, the interface icons are more refined and the tabs look a little more polished. Perhaps the most impressive and long overdue feature to be added is spellchecking. But for all of its refinements, sometimes Firefox still manages to leave me frustrated. In this case, the browsers autofill feature can be problematic...
Another threat has surfaced that could to be the greatest threat to the privacy of American internet users. It’s not a security hole in Microsoft Windows this time. Now the federal government is proposing legislation to effectively destroy the anonymity of the internet as a whole.
When Apple added Dashboard to OS X 10.4, it opened the door to limitless possibilities. Widgets can be created to do almost anything. And while this is a very good thing, it can also be a very bad thing. People are creating widgets that do a lot of crazy and ultimately useless things. That's why I enjoy finding a widget that is exceptionally useful. Once such widget is called, appropriately enough, Gas...
Be sure to keep track of Maclive.net's latest news and posts. Download our Widget for OS X 10.4's Dashboard. It displays up to the minute headlines as they appear on our site. The widget is now also available via Apple's Dashboard page...
On January 24th, the Walt Disney Company announced the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios. The sales price has been reported as $7.4 billion. The acquisition puts Steve Jobs, Pixar's majority share holder, on the Disney Board of Directors...
