Zane Savage on Apple TV

Makes Sense to me.

Zanesavage | September 01, 2010

This device is a DOWNGRADE for anyone who currently owns an Apple TV. I like the price, I just don’t like the hardware.

Very Well put.
I like my media I want my media.
Least they can do is sell some of the New apple tvs come with multiple usb ports, That way you can watch home videos without needing yet another device hooked up to your television.
It looks cool. The concept is good. but the full end delivery is not up to my likings either.
Maybe they should call it the mini or the “budget apple tv” Wait, net flicks on apple???
but they don’t let anyone on their stuff right? Apple is screwy and it trips me out what mac people think is acceptable.

T-mobile and Me

After three and a half years with T-Mobile. I am done, again. Yeah I was with T-Mobile a few years back. I left them for sprint. That in it’s self was a nightmare. I later moved to Cricket who really had good service, but the phones looked like garbage and had nearly no features. After a few years I left Cricket and went back to T-mobile. I guess it was long enough that I forgot what I hated so much about T-mobile. T-mobile had a really nice looking phone they were offering for free with a $39 a month contract. That was a great a deal, considering I was sick of the cheap plastic barely functioning phone I had.
As soon as my new Motorola Rizr showed up in the mail, Google released the G1. I had just signed a two year contract and couldn’t change to the G1. Two years later I finally got my G1.
I was happy with all of the features the phone had, The cool aps that let me log into facebook from anywhere, the myspace ap the twitter ap and all of the little games. All of the additional software you add to the Google G1, neat stuff. but now I was paying 92.40 a month. That’s $100 a month for 300 minutes, unlimited internet, unlimited text. My cricket account I had everything unlimited for $59 a month, but a crappy phone.
I got fed up with the T-Mobile bills so I logged into their website and changed my settings. I ditched the G1 and changed to a blackberry I had in a drawer. Knocked everything down to reflect $59 a month. This was on the 18th of august. My bill was due on the 21st. The next day I got text message from T-Mobile showing my bill will reflect the changes starting on the 19th of August. Here it is, today is the 1st of September, my bill shows I will be paying $91 on my next bill. This of course is before tax. So, something is wrong with my account.
Today I make a call to T-mobile by just pressing 611 on my Blackberry. I go through the whole automated voice thing. I get a second voice that comes on and says all of the representatives are busy and they could call me back in 8 minutes if I opt in. So I did. 8 or 9 minutes later I get a call. There was tons of noise. I could hear dishes, lots of laughter. It sounded like either a bar or a very popular crowded restaurant. i was not sure the guy could hear me at all. There is no telling what was going on up there. Probably someone’s birthday. I am not in anyway mad about celebrating at the office. I am cool with that. just bothered by the fact I didn’t get my issue resolved. The guy really sounded like he did not want to take that call. but he was nice. Just not very involved. The guy tells me that it’s just me paying for last month. No I paid for last month and the text message confirmed this. I told him I was considering changing to another plan they have and he brought to my attention that I would not get the phone deals. I laughed and told him they sold me a G1 that was two years old for $100 off of the $400 price they showed on their website while at the same time the same phone was all over the internet for sell for $150 and less. He plaid “oh your cheap, cheap people aren’t cool” bit with me by saying ” Oh yeah if you go to ebay you can get all sorts of used stuff for almost free”. I popped off with ” Well compusa-tiger direct, and fry’s have ebay accounts and well they were not selling used phones” Before he could go off on what ever he was about to get into, I asked if it would just be cheaper if I dropped my T-mobile account all together. He offered some other plan that would have lowered my bill by like $2. I had to end that call. It was getting goofy, so I said “I have to shop around for a new phone and carrier I will be calling later to pay off the contract”. That phone call had to end.
I have to call back tomorrow. I will keep calling back each day until I get this resolved. if they refuse then at the end of this billing period, I will drop their service. I would do pretty well if I drop off the grid again. i have been getting alot of wrong numbers lately and it has been getting worse. So it would be nice to get a whole new number. Seems some moron out there knows nothing but dyslexic people, or he is himself.

so let’s see what T-mobile does. I think it has run it’s course.

Oh, here s picture of my billing.

T-Mobile, unexplainable bill

I added a post on T-mobile’s website

New digg Is Launched

Well Kevin and the gang finally opened the new digg for the public.
We no longer have to go the long way to get there and we don’t have two separate versions of digg. It’s all in one now.
So if you didn’t get an invite a week ago, No worries. You can now see what we all were buzzing about.

Submit it to Google buzz. lol

Myspace to Sync With Facebook

A Little to late. But hey now facebook is dropping  all embedded outside aps. So this could be perfect for Myspace or now could be the time that everyone is tried of the flood of Social networks.

Exciting new things at MySpace

We know you’re eager for change, and we’ve been listening. It’s time to dust off those cobwebs and get back in the saddle, because today we’re introducing you to some new features and products that you’re going to love.

Don’t waste time visiting so many sites – our new sync function allows you to update all your friends from just one place.

Learn more

It’s cleaner, easier to use, has better design tools, and if we can be perfectly honest – is ridiculously good looking.

Learn more



Stay tuned for even more exciting updates to come.
You’re not going to want to miss what’s next!
See you there,
The MySpace team


Read more: http://messaging.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mail.readmessageV3&userID=129209639&type=Inbox&messageID=248545093#ixzz0y8OFctA6

Sync Myspace with Facebook and Twitter


Just needs friend feed and the ability to put your own personal feed in there so that you can post a bulletin to all of your friends.
Good luck Myspace. Maybe you guys can sell Myspace back to Tom for $500 and let him get it back off the ground again.

Paypal Android Bump App

Just by being at the correct menu and fulfilling the proper credentials, you can now bump your android phone to another android phone and make a payment of a specified amount.
Android application that allows paypal payment via a bump? lol now the pick pockets just have to bump into your phone? If you are a moron walking around looking for some who is ready to receive while you have a specified drop amount in hand.
What will this do for smuggling or laundering. Probably not much. Except when you see the Knux bump, It could in fact be an exchange of money. An accidental hand bump in a a crowded bus, airport, mall or what ever. You can then pretend to be someone that witnessed a spy transaction. Or you could be someone that really did witness one and just not wake up in the morning.
Well you can get your android bump ap and see who all out there is willing to test it out with you.
Go to Paypal’s site when you get the free time or look in the android market for it.

paypal android

I.P. List of Spammers

Maybe not all of these are spammers, but Akismet seems to think that all of these are spammers. I use “WP-Ban” to ban these ip addresses simply because I am sick of the types of spam they send.
I see a list of failed attempts to come back to my sites and post again.
208.115.111.244 5,438
Total Attempts: 10,125 Reset all IP ban stats and total ban stat?
I reset the count back in April .
I don’t have the heart in me to call them all spammers. I am sure some of these i.p. addresses are Hijacked computers from some botnet spamming group. but I have to ban them because they just do not stop attacking my comments area with spam.

98.142.212.112
189.85.30.106
58.185.166.243
217.170.97.242
61.213.158.124
87.126.247.51
139.132.12.19
187.49.174.245
190.8.32.47
209.62.26.82
69.163.39.233
213.208.139.2
189.85.30.106
188.92.75.148
61.67.7.140
173.234.11.92
67.22.99.211
212.65.244.147
69.147.240.193
174.140.172.7
80.86.201.83
173.234.19.228
217.10.246.2
173.234.54.50
173.234.38.21
212.160.130.217
64.120.248.211
173.224.218.156
203.92.211.166
69.147.240.178
210.89.91.45
41.190.16.17
222.165.130.214
173.208.124.235
69.45.74.253
82.143.255.135
122.146.153.135
208.115.111.244
178.49.12.75
202.229.99.154
200.192.89.231
212.154.216.50
77.240.81.20
217.6.171.194
74.115.6.56
173.234.46.63
91.212.226.41
72.37.244.20
81.191.229.167
125.168.56.240
81.9.62.213
200.101.66.123
144.71.169.20
74.206.98.195
61.192.219.190
192.239.84.73
163.15.183.29
85.25.86.215
195.127.150.117
204.236.254.16
77.233.4.138
213.134.176.111
69.69.215.196
203.216.220.11
115.42.158.18
188.168.85.131

I just really do not see how some of the big websites can deal with spam on the levels they must be dealing with it. We have a very low Google rank at TruXterTech. I mean our name is “Budget Tech Review” not ” The hot spot for everything tech” even though we try to be. We just cover the simple cheap products, hardware and software. This by no means should be an invite to spammers. We do however request human comments on TruXterTech.com . We like to see other people’s opinions.

Is there a way to just stop this entirely? A couple years ago they created some law that nailed spammers for email spam. Why is there not someway of nailing these people who run spam bots across everyone’s website continually hitting the sites with spam ?
The search engine that creates a linking system that filters out spam programs (by crashing their computer) Will be the search engine of my choice.
if we could only still write scripts that crash bots in our websites, that would be a favorable idea. but in crashing spam bots, you stand a chance of crashing Google bot or some other webspider.

I do however have a redirect page for spammers that make the list. In the redirect there is a link to “add comment” and that link sends the spammer to some website that logs spammers and ads them to a list.

if anyone has a better method. Let me know. and yes I weed out the spam.

Adbrite Vs Adsense 1 Year

Well all. It has been a year since our post about switching to Adbrite and dropping Adsense. ( We dropped Widget bucks fast)
We didn’t drop Adsense because shortly after that claim, our revenue dropped traumatically.
It is true, you never let people know you are being taken advantage of.
We took some tips from a site about Adsense and posted them.

Adsense report for one year

Adsense Results 1 year

And now the comparison

Adbrite report for one year

Adbrite Results 1 yr

It seems there is no pay out for people doing searches on the Google searcher. Or at least the pay out is not what we expected.

Google’s pay has dropped (from the way this looks). A Website that made just over $100 a year, split into 7 websites and took on 5 more writers, now only makes $17 year. We have to assume that the current crunch is also on Google. That $100 Was paying for the domain storage. but now, it does not look like this will be much fun any longer.
We are considering a bit of a change though. We are looking of stripping Adbrite from all of the sites except for one, and putting another Adsense ad code in their spot. It will have to be a bit of a slow change so we can monitor the activity. If the change does not go fast enough, then the opportunity of Google Adsense having contextual related ads could be missed. That’s one thing for certain about Adsense. Is the contextual advertisements are spot on. Adbrite is only close if you select the ads yourself. and well, close is not good enough. Close ads are not showing the readers what they may be interested in.
So now we will see what adsense alone does in 6 out of seven website.

See you all next year.

Oh and fyi, the $17 you see in ads revenue was just one site with 1 adsense ad on it. And the adbrite $4.5 is across 5 websites in three spots. per site. Clearly adsense is the better choice here.

Here’s an update to what my adsense account is doing. I think it’s just broke. I know I’m broke.

Gmail Phone

Well I logged in today to my gmail account while on my Xubuntu partition and saw something new (to me).

It seems that Google has released  and internet based phone that we all can use locally for free.

There is a page that describes the rates. but there was also a pop up ( I did not screenshot) that says calls within the country I am in are free, but calls outside of the country have extremely low rates.

Here is a list of the rates for the google phone and the page the rates are listed on.

Now you can make phone calls from Gmail at extremely low rates — so you can share your two cents with France
(or Argentina, or Iceland, or Guam…) for $0.02. Check out some sample per-minute rates below or see the complete list.

Google Leading internet telephony provider
United States free 2.1 ¢/min + connection fee
Canada free 2.1 ¢/min + connection fee
India 6 ¢/min 9.2 ¢/min + connection fee
UK landline 2 ¢/min 2.1 ¢/min + connection fee
UK mobile 18 ¢/min 25.3 ¢/min + connection fee
Mexico landline 10 ¢/min 9.9 ¢/min + connection fee
Mexico mobile 19 ¢/min 33.6 ¢/min + connection fee
France landline 2 ¢/min 2.1 ¢/min + connection fee
France mobile 15 ¢/min 20.3 ¢/min + connection fee

Wooo hoo… It’s like the G1.1 for all of us lol… I wonder if they will slip in some ads in there.

Google Phone picture

The reason I mentioned Xubuntu is that I had just installed the latest version and then tested the  Ethernet driver adapter support by heading straight to gmail and I got the notice. Since I was on Linux, and all of the android phones are owned by Google, and well since Android is based on Linux , My assumption was that Google gave all of the Linux users a cool little secret treat.

But then I booted to my winseven partition and :-(

There it is, the google phone for gmail.

I remember when msn and yahoo did this years ago. As soon as they stopped, Skype took it over.

**updated**

My question is, if you have the official Gmail ap on your droid. Does this mean you can now make calls and bypass your phone billing service since you are paying for unlimited internet ?

Apple Makes 99 Cent Shows Store

Cnet reports that Itunes has a new store for tv shows. 99 cent shows on itunes.

Everyone already knows what will be on that section of their site. The office,Family guy, Southpark and a few other internet trends. Lots of Chick flick tv shows. Resolution will be above par. 48 hours is the window of time we have to watch the videos and then bam it’s gone.

Well cool, that actually brings media to the public the way we have kinda always wanted. Really we wanted the owners of tv stations to stream for free. Well we could handle adverts and stuff. We kind of expect it. So the rental of a tv show we could probably watch on time, is kind of lame. Does give us the chance to watch the movies we would have missed because a late day at work or what ever catastrophe we would encounter that would prevent the enjoyment of our favorite show. DVR.

It’s a good idea for some.

For me it’s not what I am looking for. I refuse to put quicktime,itunes or any other media from apple on my computer. They just don’t have enough  bugs worked out to keep me interested.