If you have any blog ideas for me, let me know!

The mGuard Smart draws power from the servers USB, and replaces the ethernet that plugs into your server. The ethernet from the PEER 1 powered network is then plugged into the device, allowing filtering to occur before entering the server.

The mGuard smart is currently the smallest security device on the market, offering an extremely high degree of security and performance. It can be integrated anywhere both quickly and simply without modifications to the computer system, regardless of the processor technology or operating systems used.

The mGuard Smart, although small in nature, packs some serious punch; this is a shortlist of just SOME of it’s features: VPN, Configurable Firewall, Integrated AV Supporting HTTP, FTP, SMTP and POP3.

The deadly confrontation between the accused and an innocent 80 year old man that occurred on Halloween 2005 “resembled a video game”. I wonder, is this a reason to take someone’s life? If I am walking down the street and say to myself, “Hmm, this street reminds me of a violent video game I just played”, do I automatically react violently? No, and I’m sure you don’t either.

Clearly, this is just another over-the-top, flashy defense hoping to confuse the jury so much that they are left asking themselves, “What the hell just happened in there?”

The elderly man was left “lying on his living room floor in blood-soaked pajamas with more than 70 stab wounds, one eye gouged out and a gunshot wound”. Now, that sounds more to me like a cold-hearted murderer than a confused kid, but hey, that’s just my opinion, and I’m no defense attorney, right?

This is clearly a robbery gone very, very bad, especially since the defendant can be heard on the 911 call screaming, “Where’s the vault?” the entire time. This sounds like an open and shut case to me.

I’m just glad this lunatic is getting the attention he was craving, because clearly, that’s the only reason they could be throwing this out there. That, and to try and drag down the gaming industry. You heard it here first, folks: video and computer games don’t kill people; crazy people with weapons kill people.

I am very excited to get out there, in the sun. I haven’t had a real vacation for years, and some serious downtime, without the laptop, without the smartphone, is going to be totally awesome.

Unfortunately, even with lots of effort, and negotiating on our part, Liz is unable to come with us, on this vacation. The time that worked for the group fell directly onto her exam period, and some of her teachers were less that willing to negotiate. I would really love her to go with us, but unfortunately there is no choice in this situation. Luckily this isn’t an extreme downer for Liz, she was just in Scotland in August of 2007, and she’ll be going with her Mother and Sister to DisneyLand / LA for Dance in July.

I all be departing on April 12th at 5:30AM, for 7 days. Woo hoo!

Put Apple to Work for You

Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-MY-APPLE to request a credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the credit you must notify Apple within 14 days of shipment. In the event a credit is given to you, the same credit card that you used to make your purchase will be credited.

The price difference was a mere $61, but none-the-less, this is money I paid, and could easily get back. I called Apple Support at 1-800-MY-APPLE - After collecting my order number, the agent quickly offered me the discount that I was looking for.

When purchasing hardware from a company like Apple, Dell, etc - Always check out the policies on price change. I did this well before my purchase of the iMac, it offers a certain satisfaction that I won’t be left completely screwed in the event of a price change.

Some companies may try to pull a fast one on you. Don’t accept no for an answer, if you are within their written policy! In Apple’s case, the agent quickly accepted my request, and put forward the refund. Nice Job Apple.

Wait… what is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

Now that you are up to speed, it’s time to become an RSS master, and it doesn’t really take much effort at all to make it happen. See, I use a nifty little app called “NewsFire” developed by David Watanabe. This fantastically stable, and reliable RSS application has provided me with an oasis of streaming content delivered to my desktop every 15 minutes, for over 45 websites.

I am probably a more advanced RSS user than most, as I monitor quite a few feeds. I find this useful for:

• Tracking Software Updates from Companies I Purchases Products From
• Reading up on the next “Make Money Online” schemes from the SEO brigade
• Keeping up with corporate blogs, such as Apple, Microsoft Technet
• Read news headlines for Silicon Valley Gossip, Game Politics, and GamesPress
• Monitoring my own feeds, and the status of SpawnPoint.com
• and of course, keeping up on the activities of my friends.

Stop wasting your time “surfing the web” and let NewsFire bring the web to you, when something worthwhile is available to read. Go grab a trial copy of NewsFire right now… below are some of the great features:

A Dynamic Performance
NewsFire is the first RSS reader to use animation to alert you to news and convey meaning. Watch your feeds and groups swoop around as news streams in.

Intelligent Search
Search for news, blogs, and podcasts everywhere directly in NewsFire and save the results as live feeds. Even cooler, NewsFire articles show up in Spotlight.

Groups and Labels
NewsFire lets you group and label your feeds, so you control the news reading experience.

Smart Feeds
NewsFire takes feed organization to the next level, letting you create smart feeds that match whatever criteria you want.

NewsFire Main Window

NewsFire Preferences

NewsFire Viewing Blog + YouTube

This is a demonstration with tonybevilacqua.net, which is hosted on Site5.

Just a note on Site5, they have been a fantastic host, and I have been with them for several years. Recently I converted Lucas, a programmer for SpawnPoint over to Site5: “It’s one of most pleasant web hosting experiences I have ever had”. Anyway….

My Site5 package provides me with a dedicated IP address. I was humbled to see only domains that belong to me, pointed at this address. Although I have a dedicated IP address with my Site5 account, this is still hosted on shared hardware; nothing really interesting to see here.

This is a demonstration with toph.ca, which is hosted on MT.

Christoph hosts toph.ca on a Media Temple’s (gs) Grid-Service“. MT doesn’t provide a dedicated IP with his package - you can find out some interesting information with this tool… like who your IP neighbors are! In the query below for “toph.ca”, you can see a variety of other sites that are hosted at Media Temple.

I was a bit shocked when I recently read a post on Village Voice; they have an in-depth review of the entire taping experience, and the how the show works. However, at the end of the review, I found myself a little bit shocked, disgruntled, that a show that I enjoy so much, was completely and totally staged.

It’s obvious that several parts of the show are staged, like the menu, timing, delivery of menu to the judges… but I was a bit surprised at some of the details of this article.

At one point, with only minutes in the real-time hour to go, one of Nicotra’s sous chefs—an attractive and poised brunette named Lara—was seen kneeling next to the ingredient table, stacking and restacking the spice jars so that the one she had used would fit perfectly back in the shelf. Urgency, indeed!

I expected the dishes to be whisked over to the judges for tasting, but where were the judges? The finished concoctions—many involving raw fish—languished on a side board as the judges ambled around and production people wiped their brows and relaxed. At one point, one of the judges—Queer Eye guy Ted Allen—strolled over to our bleachers and chatted up the guests like he was running for political office.

Anyway - check out the full post at The Village Voice….

The new MacBook Pro is now boasting hot new NVIDIA graphics capability with up to 512MB of video memory. The highly acclaimed “Multi-Touch Trackpad” first seen in the MacBook Air at release, has been integrated into the MacBook Pro line, but not the MacBook line. [Edit]

The New MacBook

Featuring a gorgeous 13-inch glossy widescreen display, and with prices still starting at just $1,099, the new MacBook lineup comes in three models and includes faster processors and larger hard drives across the line; sleek white 2.1 GHz and 2.4 GHz models with 120GB or 160GB 5400 rpm hard drives and a stunning black 2.4 GHz model with a massive 250GB 5400 rpm hard drive, previously only available as an option. The 2.4 GHz MacBook models ship with 2GB of memory standard, expandable up to 4GB across the line.

The New MacBook Pro

The new MacBook Pro features the latest Intel Core 2 Duo technology with
up to a 2.6 GHz processor with 6MB of shared L2 cache; up to 4GB of 667 MHz
DDR2 SDRAM memory and up to a 300GB hard drive, plus NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
graphics with up to 512MB of video memory.

The 17″ MacBook Pro also incorporates an optional LED screen.

The new line is looking fantastic, and I’m excited to see what else is coming out Apple in the future… They have 1-1.5 years before I am going to want to drop a wad of cash on a MacPro and some massive screens.

That being said - I felt it important that I drop the extra dough, and go for the AppleCare extended warranty. It was an extra $200 on top of the price of the iMac, but it did extend the warranty up to three years:

Even though I wasn’t executing AppleCare at this point (I was still within 365 days of my purchase) - I had the need to use their services to resolve an iMac related issue I was having. My keyboard squeaked… chalkboard style.

I gave them a call on Thursday afternoon, spoke to a very nice gentleman on the phone - He received my iMac Serial Number, I told him my problem, he asked for my address - all set. I did however, have to provide them with my credit card number; apparently if you don’t send the defective part back, they will charge your credit card (pretty standard, at least when I worked with IBM and HP).

The keyboard came on Monday morning at 9:15AM via DHL in a nicely appointed box. The keyboard was accompanied by a well written set of directions in both English and French - as well as return labels for UPS ground.

Overall - AppleCare has been good to me so far. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Since getting my new mac, I have been working with a lot of great applications that have been created by the community, and specifically for this blog, a great little application called “MarsEdit 2” by Red Sweater.

Just a few of the features…

Intuitive Interface
MarsEdit’s no-nonsense interface works just like email. Edit your drafts in a convenient text editor, spell-check, and publish.

Wildly Compatible
Works with WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, and Vox. And that’s just to name a few.

Easy Uploads
Upload images and files directly to your weblog. When you want to reuse an item, just select it from the media catalog.

With it’s user friendly interface, 10 second setup and configuration, it’s definitely something that I would consider taking a look at. MarsEdit offers a 30 day trial for this application. If you have a Mac, and are on any of the above compatible platforms, I recommend checking it out!

Microsoft was one of HD DVD’s main backers, along with Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp., and its support for the format was seen as a big win for Toshiba’s format.But support for the HD DVD waned as major movie studios — Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co., News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. Entertainment — picked Blu-ray to distribute high-def DVDs. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. struck what seemed to be the final blow just over a week ago when it said it would only sell Blu-ray players and discs.

Read the entire story, and the continued demise of the HD DVD format. Do you have your blu-ray player yet?

OpenX has been through its fair share of identities, phpAds… phpAdsNew… Max Media… OpenAds… the list goes on. What’s in the future? OpenX will begin to offer a hosted service and continue quickly evolving their ad serving suite.

SpawnPoint and PHXX have been active users of phpAds, phpAdsNew, and OpenAds over the years, serving millions of ad impressions through this open-source software. I am quite excited to see the evolution of their software, and this “hosted service” that is on the way.

Word of advice to the OpenX team, add the ability to “Forecast” ad serving over periods of time; this is an essential tool for ad sales team looking for information and delivery expectations for clients. This missing feature causes quite a few issues with our group. This feature is offered by DoubleClick (DART).

An EA press release claims that it offered $26 per share for Take Two stock in a February 19th letter from EA CEO John Riccitiello (right) to T2 boss Strauss Zelnick (left). After Take Two management rejected EA’s offer, Riccitiello decided to appeal directly to T2 shareholders. The $26 offering price represents a better than 60% premium over recent T2 share prices.

Read the entire letter from John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts.

I have searched around the net a bit, and from what I have read, their “HTML Support” is limited to changing the colors, size, and adding an image. They don’t allow you to externally insert any sort of HTML code, HTML code that is entered goes it as text and doesn’t render. Entourage 2008 apparently storages the signature source within your Mail Datastore, Great.

What does this mean? No HTML code, no external images, no links on text, or on images! I did however, find a work around to get a link into your signature.

How to Add a Link to Your HTML Signature in Entourage 2008

1) Send an email with your prefered signature in HTML from another computer to yourself.
2) Copy it from inside Entourage 2008, and paste it into the Signature Editor.
3) Done.

Yep, pretty sad work around, but it’s the only way that I could find to pull it off. Pasting from Safari, or even Microsoft Word failed. For now, I’ll be forced to leave out an external image from the Entourage signature.