The Geek Media » Amber from Simian Downtime

What Facebook is Really For

Amber from Simian Downtime — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:19:55 +0000

somegreybloke tells us what Facebook is really made for

Spy Pen

Amber from Simian Downtime — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:15:58 +0000

Tons of people wanted cool spy gadgets to carry around thanks to James Bond. You coveted all the seemingly normal household items that did extraordinary things. Now is the perfect opportunity to invest in a Spy Pen/Cam. You can covertly get the dirt on whoever in a time of concern, if you want to.

We do not want to condone illegal behavior, but there are plenty of legal reasons to carry a DVR in your pocket. Fortunately, this pen is really easy on the eyes. With 4GB of storage, this pen also comes with a slew of good points.

Dimension:150mm*15mm*15mm

Real time recording in AVI video format

Color video with voice lets you clearly see who’s there & hear what they say.

Place it up high or conceal it down low. With built-in rechargeable battery so there’s no long cord for you to hide.

Internal memory: 4GB

Playback video on PC

The website which offers it includes a handy video on how to reset it:

via

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BlizzCon 2009 Announced – 2.17.2009

Amber from Simian Downtime — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:21:55 +0000

Could there have been a better day for my return to posting regularly than today?

Earlier today, Blizzard posted a press release on their website announcing yet another BlizzCon event for 2009. As always, the event will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. The event is fairly far off though. The announced dates are for August 21st and 22nd, so just about six months from now.

Something that I find interesting is that they will be expanding to four convention halls this year. Now, if I remember correctly, it was just last October, at BlizzCon 2008, when Blizzard had to expand to three convention halls, versus the two they had the previous year. It sounds like this event just gets so much bigger every year!

IRVINE, Calif. – February 17, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans for its fourth BlizzCon® gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on Friday, August 21 and Saturday, August 22. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment®’s Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® universes. In response to the festival’s increasing popularity, this year’s event has been expanded from three convention halls to four.

“We’ve been amazed by the incredible response to each of our previous BlizzCon events,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re pleased to be bringing the convention back to Anaheim this year, and we look forward to this new opportunity to meet Blizzard gamers from around the world.”

BlizzCon will offer a wide variety of activities throughout the two-day event. In addition to serving as a gathering place for Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, attendees will be able to enjoy:

Hands-on play time with upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games

Discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers

Competitive and casual tournaments for players to showcase their talents

Community contests with great prizes

Commemorative merchandise based on Blizzard Entertainment’s game universes

A silent auction

More exciting activities and attractions to be announced

Further details, including ticket availability and pricing, will be announced on the official BlizzCon website, www.blizzcon.com, as the event draws closer.

So, here’s the big news. I am going to try my best to make BlizzCon 2009 the first BlizzCon event that I attend in person! I also hope to bring you readers the best possible coverage of the event! Now, no promises, but I’ll be trying my best!

-Matt Graham

The Comic Has Been Released

Amber from Simian Downtime — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:58:18 +0000

I tried a few CMS solutions for the comic and have finally found one that I do not hate. So TS and TJ is now free from the confines of the blog. This will likely increase actual posts instead of the comic substituting for other content.

TS and TJ is now here

Fear

Amber from Simian Downtime — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:28:21 +0000

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News to Me

Amber from Simian Downtime — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:30:22 +0000

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Robot Working the Pole

Amber from Simian Downtime — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:25:27 +0000

Nowhere on my list of places to fear robot overlords has strip club popped up. To ensure that No Place Is Safe, someone has decided that we need some robot strippers and DJs. Not only is it creepy, its composed of bots made from scrap.

Old Windows

Amber from Simian Downtime — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:42:51 +0000

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iCap

Amber from Simian Downtime — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:07:51 +0000

At some point we have all wondered it, when can I get an MP3 player that I can put in my hat? We of course quickly wrote this off as silly and moved on with our lives. Not the folks at Gesten, who decided to run with it and create the iCap.
If your goal is to jam out with a goofy looking contraption on your head, then the iCap is for you. $99.95 gets you a heavy hat with only 1GB worth of storage.

via

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Another One Down, This Time Its Personal

Amber from Simian Downtime — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:23:07 +0000

Image by via CrunchBase

Back when I started this site, it was completely free. Built on Blogger, images hosted at photobucket, and email provided through a service that had just sprung up at AOL: My eAddress. At the time this was fantastic because I could pick an email for the site which was close to the domain that I would eventually purchase. It turned out that AOL was not going to give users access to the domain outside of emails, so I bought up a couple of domains anyway. Still ended up continuing to use the emails since the first hosting service I had was terrible and did not want to put emails there. A different host and a couple of blogging platforms later, the eAddress is no longer going to be around.

Today there was a lovely email in my inbox:

As of December 31, 2008, AOL will no longer maintain ownership of domain names registered through My eAddress. Before we release all registered names, however, we are offering our users the opportunity to take ownership of the domains themselves, while continuing to use the My eAddress service. You must take advantage of this offer before December 31, 2008 to avoid disruption to your email service.

So now its time to stop being lazy and then wait for the domains to go to back into gen-pop. Its too bad, those emails were handy for beta testing software and the spam that followed.

Search Me, Snatch Me Network Solutions has been slinking around with an unhealthy yet…

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I’ll Woolly you tonight

Amber from Simian Downtime — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:49:55 +0000

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ride your own Battle Mammoth? Using your magnificent steed’s tusks to gore and rip at those who oppose you? Those who would fight truth, justice, fairness and the vagabond way? Well dream no more my friend, for RIKEN, a genetics lab in Japan, is having great successes in the fields of cloning long frozen & damaged cells.

Sure, it may only be mice at this time, but soon we shall have Siberian Tigers, Woolly Mammoths, and the great Dodo. (No, not you Mr. President, I meant the Dodo Bird, no, seriously, I’m not calling you a Dodo or a bird, I’m not British, sheesh, shut up! Stop talking! That’s it, I’m going back behind the bookshelf after this post, and won’t return until they elect a new president.. Oh, they did? Maybe I should pay attention some time?)

Even better, they can reproduce! So, if your entire family is inadvertently killed by the Robot Overlords, then you can replace them 100% now, and even have them reproduce, creating additional non-cloned children (Results may vary.)

Unfortunately at this time, it has not been proven to be able to recover damaged cells, or aid in the reproducing of hair follicles for those with thinning hair.

Lastly, there is no more need to take care of the environment if we can just recreate entire populations and house them in frozen tundras.

Via Pinktentacle

It Starts With the Children Aeon Co. has dropped off this lovely robot babysitter…

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Drinkolic Helps You Make the Perfect Drink

Amber from Simian Downtime — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:22:19 +0000

Technology is wonderful. Only technology could bring together tons of people who don’t mind throwing a few back, without them having to leave their house. Drinkolic brings the drinking expertise of many and presents it in a big list of recipes.
While it is not a social network (unlike most of the new guys lately) it is a nice portal to login, rate and make comments on just about any drink thats not bound by a trademark. The entries for the drinks are sorted by recipe, glassware served in, or ingredients involved so you could stumble over your favorite recipe at random.
Since it is a site all about drinking, it does not leave out the folks that do not drink alcohol. Drinkolic features Non-Alcoholic cocktails, milkshakes (just one for now since most of the content is user generated), coffees, and teas. One quick warning though, considering the names of many of the beverages have been coined by drunk people, this site is mostly NSFW.
A lovely addition to the option of listing recipes and posting photos is the option to add video of the drink being made. Right now the video content is restricted to youtube videos, but that will probably not limit the findings too much. If you like beverages you should check out drinkolic. Don’t let the simple design of the site fool you, there is lots of useful information in there.

Drink Hard Mix/Chase it with some Slusho….
Six Pack on the Fly Chances are you like beer as much as I do….

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All Nighter

Amber from Simian Downtime — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:21:45 +0000

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Automattic + PollDaddy= Win

Amber from Simian Downtime — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:10:05 +0000

Image via PollDaddy

One thing I could never get to work the way I wanted in WordPress for a long time was a good plugin for polls and surveys. Had to give up on the available set and writing the code out myself–which was not pretty. Then PollDaddy showed up to save the day.

If you ever tried to do either of these things and are not a coder, you may have run into the same roadblocks. The folks at Automattic have swooped in to make this easier for us all. Automattic has just acquired PollDaddy, facilitating an easier to integrate (if not already included) system of polling/surveying.

Some will question the acquisition of a company that provides surveys into the blogging platform when it can be easily added by plugins. Many users of different systems currently recognize PollDaddy as the go-to entity for this purpose, and with this acquistion may be swayed to the WordPress platform. Also anyone newer to the circle will soon be able to implement a simple solution for their survey/polling needs.

Especially at a time when many less technically savvy users are starting their own blogs and want to use services that aren’t as well integrating in the blogging platforms, this acquistion is a great idea.

While many fully support acquisition of companies such as Intense Debate earlier in the year and Gravatar before it, there are many detractors who believe that WordPress should be kept pure and simple. What we all have to agree on is that there are many more bloggers out there who have great ideas but have no idea what PHP is, and that expanding the WordPress platform to these users is not always detrimental to the group.

We should wish Automattic luck with their recent acquisitions and hope it turns out to be a better experience for everyone involved.

Automattic Snatches Up Intense Debate
Image via CrunchBase
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Well when…
WordPress In Your IPhone Update 7/22 it is out. Now it is time…

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Blog Action Day — Help Out Someone Less Fortunate

Amber from Simian Downtime — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:36:04 +0000

Image via Crunchbase

This post exists so that there is another link to Kiva.org.

If you didn’t know Kiva lets you loan money to an entrepreneur in a less fortunate country.

Feel free.

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Addict

Amber from Simian Downtime — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:44:46 +0000

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View original here:

Addict

Verisign Picks Up .NAME, A Few People Care

Amber from Simian Downtime — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:03:50 +0000

Last week, Verisign acquired the company that controlls the .name domain. When I first read this, I was concerned since that meant one less entity involved with top level domains. After a bit of thought, I wondered who actually used a .name domain. The only place I have seen a .name address is when I signed up for a Naymz profile and they gave me one free for a month or so.

I just pulled up a couple of search engines and its either that or those services that try to charge you for an email with your name in it. I’m sure the acquisition is appalling news to someone, but I bet a good number of people who read this post did not even remember the domain existed.

Clearsprings Picks Up AddThis

Amber from Simian Downtime — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:26:48 +0000

AddThis, the most popular tool for bookmarking on websites, has recently been acquired by the leading widget network Clearspring. Separately the companies were doing quite well, together the two pave the way to create a flawlessly integrated system for sharing content.

As is common with many acquistions, this forces any other similar services to step their game up a bit. Although we do not use AddThis currently on SDA, its now crossing our minds. It all depends where the platforms decide to take this new collaboration and what direction ShareThis turns with the new beta.

See the rest here:
Clearsprings Picks Up AddThis

Facebook Redesign Optional No More

Amber from Simian Downtime — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:29:26 +0000

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

Anyone who still uses Facebook has probably been dreading the official implementation of the redesign. Soon, you will have no choice but to use the clunky and slow look they have decided on. At first everyone was forgiving about the “new Facebook”, but after a few profile visits the honeymoon was over. It is a shame that a system that was working just fine for the folks who didn’t add every application known to man has to fall to the wayside.

The tab called “Boxes” is just a statement of indecision in itself. While it is understandable why the design has been setup a certain way, it is unclear why the implementation is going to be completed in September when only around 20% of the users have even tried the new look. It is likely that the developers would wait until there was a larger base of people familiar with the redesign if they were not in such a hurry to run the new ad system.

So…what do you think? Let us know in the comments….

—–Amber from The Simian Downtime Analyst