Wii Sports Experiment

Like it or not Wii Sports has you doing parts of the exercises the game simulates and as such has you exercising. Shocking and kind of weird for most people I would imagine. This guy decided to play a half hour of intensive Wii Sports. He lost 9 lbs and there is definately a difference in the before and after pictures. Is this the start of a turn around for gamers and their image of laziness? May be but probably not quite yet. I’m waiting for full body DDR. Dance Dance Revolution combining both feet and arms. Now that is going to be a true video game work out. I give it a year or so.

I’ve decided I’m going to give this thing a try. I only have a TV input on my computer at the moment so I’m stuck with my 19″ LCD and video upscaled and kind of blurry to full screen to play. But I need to lose a few and if I can do it playing video games then that sounds ideal to me. I wonder if you can actually work up a sweat doing this? Between this and Brain Age on the DS I should be a well oiled machine.

Apple, supply and demand.

So this new Iphone thing has an uncertain future at best. At least in it’s current state. “Why?!” you may ask is that? Ok so it’s true that it’s an Apple Inc. product and that kind of gives it a marginally higher chance of survivability but it has a good number of problems to over come first. Not least of which is supply and demand.

Problem number one is legal. Cisco tried to play nice with Apple over some trademark issues with the name iphone. Apple likes to do things their way. Play by their rules and isn’t  playing ball over the name. Not yet any way. I think in the near future either Apple is going to simply pay out for the name in order to keep it. Or they are going to change it. Apple Phone any one? Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Problem number two is price. $500 for a phone? Holy crap! Ok so it has some neat features and everything but according to apple it isn’t even going to be expandable in the software department. Even my $100 Fusic is. On top of that my Fusic kills the music when calls come in and via the sprint store I get to see album art and stuff too. Oh yeah and back to that expandability thing. I can download any java based app to do what ever I want. I’ve got gmail, map quest, weather and just about any other flip’n app I can think of. Don’t get me started on games. So why the heck would I even consider paying out half a grand for a phone!? Cause it’s touch screen? Read the last sentence over a few times and then think how stupid that sounds. Ok so the price needs to come down. That will happen over time but problem 3 is what is going to effect problem 2 the most I think.

Problem 3 is one of supply and demand. Apple wants the cash and thats the bottom line. They know they have to have a slick and friendly product to create the demand. They also have to make it available to every one. This is where they need the work. They went with Cingular because they are linked to AT&T which means brand recognition but they arn’t going to see the sales that really makes them the cash till they diversify with the phone and go to other providers. Basically they are limiting their market by sticking with one provider. This is not going to fly as most people are rather entrenched in their phone providers. I’m sure as heck not going to pay to break my contract and then pay some more for a way way way over priced phone and a new contract all at once. The demand is going to force Apple to bring the phone to other providers and those providers are going to pay Apple to give them the phone. That is how supply and demand are going to make Apple the bank. I give it a year or less before Apple gives the phone up to at least one other provider. The larger demand is going to help drive the price down as well.

If the phone runs a full fledged copy of OS X as Apple claims then there should be no good reason that they don’t open the phone for development by others. OS X and Apple have been doing nothing but gain market share off of how nice OS X plays with Windows and other OSes. This part doesn’t exactly make the most sense. Iphone must have been gotten a hold of by the same guys that insist on Apples DRM.

I’ll own an iphone, or what ever it’s called, when it drops to $200 or less and is offered by Sprint.

Content Control and Filtering

Ok so here is the skinny. I’ve got access to some computer hardware that is fairly cheap and I’ve got access to and the knowledge to use some really slick open source applications. Putting the two together I feel I can produce a pretty nice, very user friendly content control utility. A nice little box that you plug in to your home or office network in between your internet connection and your router/firewall/hub and voiala! You’ve got a nice web interface for controlling the content that comes in to your network over the web. That part is easy. Now I need to know how much I should be charging for such a contraption. That’s where you guys, the readers of this blog, come in. If you have children or if you can imagine that you have children or run a small buisness or would have a need to control the content coming in to the web browsers on multiple computers how much would you be willing to pay?

Give me feedback!

Thank you for letting me know what you think. If I do manage to put this product together and put it out there it’ll go up on the blog first before anything else.

Mole! Moley Moley Moley Moooole!!!

So Apple makes some of the sexiest products on the planet. I gotta give them props for that. Not only are they sexy but they are functional much as I would imagine most models are as well. But Apple has this big blemish that I just can’t get past. I keep trying to avert my eyes but it’s one of those things that just sticks out at ya. It reminds me of Mr. Powers reaction to the mole. What I’m actually talking about is the DRM Apple wraps it’s music/video in.

The Apple store is doing well and has tons of content. So why are services like allofmp3.com posing any kind of a threat at all? Lack of DRM. I can download what I want and play it on what ever player, computer, stereo I want to and not have to worry about being limited. Kind of like when I buy a CD. Do they still sell those? And now there is word of record companies dropping DRM on for sale discs all together. Thank goodness some one is starting to get it.

BonjourNet any one?(Apples own torrent for Itunes) $10 says Jobs reads this. Patents it. And it comes out next year and I dont see a dime.

In Gear

Ok so if you drill with me or work with me you know that I’ve been sick. If you arn’t one of those people then you must be a friend or relative that I’ve gone wayward from in the communications department. For that I apologize. But you know how the girl friend, work, drill combo can put a hurt on the time management abilities. I’m trying to find time to fit every one in. Really! So if you’re one of those people that I am failing terribly please contact me and keep trying. I really do want to talk to you. E-mail seems to be the best way to get a hold of me. That or myspace/facebook. I suck at the phone thing for the most part.

So I was so sick last week that I didn’t make it to work Thursday or Friday but I absolutely had to drag my butt out of bed to go to drill. I fear the fedral government a little more than I fear my employer. I’m not sure if this a good or bad thing to have an attitude like that about. Regardless drill ended up being a mixed blessing. And the following is the good and bad.

First the good. I found out that my new unit is made up of a bunch of people a lot less grumpy than my previous unit. To people like Rony this doesn’t include you but in general the old unit was not the friendliest feeling place. Every one in the new unit constantly has a smile on their face and they seem to enjoy what they do. Very laid back. I also found out that the new unit is a step up the command structure. We seem to be command and control for all the rest of the Iowa Reserve units. Pretty sweet! This means we have funds to do cool things like take AT(active trianing), my two weeks a year, in realy cool places. For the sake of Op. Sec. I wont be letting slip where. If you really must know and you are a personal friend then feel free to ask and I’ll probably tell you because I’m really excited about it! And finally we have a chaplain who runs around Iowa so I’ll be getting to travel quite a bit for drill. There is a lot more cool stuff this new unit is getting me in to and I’d love to share it but I have kind of a limited amount of time to write.

The down side to this past drill was that I felt terrible on Saturday and got some sleep Sat. night. Then sunday with PT etc. had me feeling good but was long enough that the evil festering cold that I have just wasn’t going to give up. So alas I ended up to sick to make it to work yesterday. I’m still not over this cold quite yet but I managed to make it in today and not appear to be totally dead and gone.

The last thing I wanted to do was make mention that I have some items up for sale on ebay. I’ve got to much stuff and just need to clear it out and hopefully make back a buck or two in the process. If you’re interested and live in the area just bid away and we can work out the shipping cost on the back end. Click the image to be taken to the auction!

      

Hit me up for anything. Peace out!