Yearly Archives: 2008

iPhone 2.0 – 3G, GPS, 3rd Party Apps on July 11th 2008

Apps, Technology

it’s been announced… straight from Steve Jobs himself. the new iPhone planned for release on July 11th will not only have 3G (which should’ve been included on version 1 imho) but more importantly it will indeed have native GPS!! with the open SDK and soon launching App Store this device is a bargain at what the old iPhone sold for. but hold up… the iPhone 2.0 is going to retail for $299 for 16GB and $200 for an 8GB. yeah that is cheap. afterall what’s a decent GPS only device running these days… $200+

sorry Apple haters… they’ve once again pushed themselves out to the cutting edge… and for once their not pricing themselves out of the lions share consumers. i dunno about all you other windows developers but my plans to dabble in the world of iPhone development just bumped up a notch on my endless todo list.

here are some great blogs that ran live during Steve Jobs keynote
News.com
Crunchgear.com

Free RSS Reader for Outlook

Apps

my friends and frequent visitors have undoubtedly noticed my lack of blogging over the past couple of months… but they probably didn’t know that I’ve been doing better at least with keeping up with their blogs. i’ve tried a few feed readers in the past and nothing really fit my style too well… i’m also not an iGoogle or MyYahoo homepage kinda user. but, i did find a really cool rss feed reader that integrates nicely with Outlook that has made it easier for me to keep up with the double digit number of blogs i try to frequent. that nifty rss feed reader for Outlook is called RSS Popper. it works with Outlook 2000, Outlook XP and Outlook 2003… and the makers claim it works with Outlook 2007… but i’m pretty sure 2007 supports RSS natively. Also, Outlook Express users can pull RSS feeds using RSS Popper!

you can get the RSS Popper here

Here’s a screenshot:
RSS Feed Reader In Outlook

thanks to this little rss reader i’ve gotten see just how much my buddy JJ (Double Danger) has been turning more and more into a garden blogger with each passing day 🙂 and it’s totally cool too… it looks like he and shala are having a lot of fun creating a beautiful yard.. can’t wait to see it one of these days!

Back in Black – blog upgrade

General

good things to come my friends… you’ll notice i finally completed a long overdue blog upgrade… and website upgrade for that matter. i cut out a lot of fat and modernized some things! i hope to turn blog commenting back on in the near future. also, you might notice some ads from time to time, i plan on keeping it extremely limited… i don’t think you’ll ever see ads (for revenue) on my blog homepage… only on archives and individual postings.

March Madness Tickets

Sports

March madness has begun… i can tell from all the buzz at work. the tournament brackets have been set and the road leads to San Antonio’s Alamodome for the Final Four.

for me basketball‘s regular season is just a tad too long… but i’m all about the tournament. i’m personally hoping to see the Texas Longhorns take down a national title, but that’s just me.

this year i think we’ve got more tickets for March Madness than any other ticket broker online; so if you want to try and make it out to a session goto >> March Madness Tickets

Make St. Patricks Day an Official Holiday

Fun, Funny, Politics

In these exciting political times aren’t you up for some new legislation that just plain makes good sense?? Guinness is promoting Proposition 3-17 in an attempt to make St. Patricks day an official holiday.

Whether or not this holiday becomes official… I gotta admit.. St. Paddys day is one of my favorite days of the year. As of now they’re needing over 900,000 signatures. This may not be something you’re gung ho for.. but if you’re not against it please sign the petition as a favor for me 🙂 i promise if you need a petition signed and i’m not against the cause i’ll pay you back!!

So, Make St. Patricks Day an Official Holiday!!

Liberty, Thomas Jefferson, Ron Paul

Movies, Politics, TV

have you seen Ken Burns documentary on Thomas Jefferson? I just watched it last week and I’ve got to say it was extremely impressive. my intrique with Liberty has been re-energized. however, i’ve got to thank Ron Paul for this. if i hadn’t heard his political views in last year i don’t know when i would’ve taken the time to dig a little deeper into our country’s founding on the principals of Liberty. as an American it’s easy to take our privledges for granted; from here on out i refuse to do so.

in the upcoming elections there a 3 primary political philosophies that are battling for the acceptance of the American people. they are Federalism, Anti-Federalism and Socialism. i’m not going to spoon feed you my beliefs on these matters, but i do think you should take the time to research these political philosophies for yourself… start with Wikipedia… that’s easy enough right?

Democracy is young and because it affords more personal liberties than any other form of government it allows the few ‘representatives’ put into power the ability to take legislate away Liberty itself.

2008 Presidential Election Candidates

Politics

Take an anonomous and very quick quiz that will show you which 2008 presidential candidate would be a good representative for you! I was skeptical of the quiz, but it validated my thoughts that Ron Paul is the presidential candidate that best represents me and my ideals on the issues of the day.

If you already have a presidential candidate you believe in, just take a minute to see if this quiz agrees that your candidate is the best fit for you.

If you don’t know who to vote for President of the United States in 2008, take the quiz to at least get a general idea (if not discover precisely) which candidate is your man… or woman.

>> http://glassbooth.org/

~thanks to tim for the link!

.htaccess files for IIS on Windows

Programming

if you’ve ever needed to password protect a directory on a Windows IIS web server, in the same way you can on an Apache (Linux) web server you’ve probably been hunting for a better solution than what is built into Windows / IIS. that is, in Windows / IIS you have to actually create a Windows user account for each username that will have access to the directory. that’s just plain stupid!!

sometimes you just simply want to use .htaccess files on IIS! don’t fret, you can use htaccess files on a Windows Server & IIS, no problemo!

i found a freeware solution that makes protecting directories and files a snap… just like using an htaccess file on Apache… but it’s an htaccess file for IIS / Windows. it’s called IISPassword, from a company called Troxo (iistools.com & troxo.com). it has a very nice gui and works like a charm… so if you’re in need be sure to checkout the site and download it >> http://www.iistools.com/en/iispassword.html