March 2007 - Technology Bloggers

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Technology Bloggers - March 2007

Playing To Win

March 28th 2007 20:19

Tournament promises to pay your gamer to play.
Up to $50,000.00 is at stake...

Here's a blurb from the website:

"The great cash giveaway explained!
Many of you have been asking for us to clarify the details of the $50,000 giveaway and how you can grab your share so here is a full detailed explanation of how you can be rewarded for playing games for free!

Firstly, I want to make it clear that all games during Beta are free to play! Each game does have a joining fee, however you can top up your wallet for free by going to the wallet tab and making a new deposit. This will cost you nothing during Beta.

Secondly - how to win that cash! We are giving away 'player points', which basically act as loyalty card points, for every game you play. The points awarded will vary depending on the type of game you play. So essentially, the more you play, the higher your number of points at the end of Beta will be. Quite simply, at the end of the Beta period we will converting all your player points to cash within your Tournament wallet. This cash can then be used to enter 'real money' tournaments (i.e it can't be withdrawn straight away). Any winnings you make from those tournaments can, of course, be withdrawn straight back into your bank account/credit card etc.

What effectively we want to do is give you guys a 'risk free' pot of cash to play in real money tournaments. Real money play is very different from 'play for fun' and we want you all to be able to experience it without putting in your own cash.

Finally, we have not limited the pot to $50,000 (this is more of a benchmark figure) so please invite all your friends to play - they will not be taking away from your share of the prize money! There is no limit to how much you can earn and the best way to accrue these points is to be playing games. Currently people are finding they are waiting in game lobbies for games to start and this is eating into time they could be earning player points by playing games. The only way to remedy this is to get everyone you know to join the system - the more people there are the quicker the games will kick off!

Have fun!

Bennylove "

Worth a look?

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Posted By: Theresa - Category: Blogger Digest

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Skype

March 22nd 2007 16:38

In California Lawyer this month, Rosie's Ramblings column was so sold on Skype, it prompted me to take a look.

Here's an excerpt from Rosie (actually Sandra Rosenzweig)

"...[R]ecently, a couple of our tester's raved about the relatively new Skype VoiP...phones that cost between $49.95 and $200. Easy to set up, they say, and then you have low-to-nonexistent Skype rates at home and away.

"You see it coming? Wireless voice via the Internet - no, even better, low-cost voice via the Internet, free, in fact, if you call other Skype users, no matter where they are in the world."

That intrigued me.

So, I went over to Skype's page and saw that you can have up to ten local area code numbers, at $38.00 for twelve months. For the individual, this means you could have local numbers for family or friends to call, if they refuse to try Skype, and no long distance charges.

For a business, this means the ability to have a national presence, and local numbers, in up to ten cities (I would guess per phone). You could have two phones. Without paying thousands per year for land lines.

All of these numbers can be forwarded to another number, one line where you take all your calls and messages. For new businesses, this is kind of staggering in the implication of expanding your customer base. Nothing like this was, reliably or affordably, available ten years ago.

Now, you can buy a phone and just take your Skype with you anywhere there is a wireless network that doesn't require a password, or some kind of authentication for hook up. Think mostly hotels, because several of the coffee chains that have wi-fi require a subscription. But, then again, if you use that carrier, then you have free wi-fi, because Skype can memorize the codes inside the phone.

I looked at Netgear's phones (there are others) to see how their phone rated, and the prices.

Amazon had the lowest price, in fact, you had to specially click on it because, they said, the manufacturer asked them not to put it right on the page. It was $159. 52, about $20.00 less than Buy.com, and others (who factored in a rebate to arrive at $179.00)

I looked around the net for comments on Skype's call quality, and customer service.

Generally, call quality was well recieved, and folks really liked saving money. But, when customers switched from free plans to pay plans they ran into customer service issues.

A Cnet
review basically confirms the eopinion, and other forums, satisfaction range: the general consensus is that free Skype is very good. Pay Skype - well, just don't need customer service, you might have a problem reaching them, and getting resolution (sounds a bit like ebay, plus, several other telephone companies I could, but won't mention).

Still, the opportunities to save money are really interesting here. You might want to take a look

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Posted By: Theresa - Category: Blogger Digest

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MIcrosoft To Pay For LiveSearch Users

March 19th 2007 16:09

According to China NewChina News, which quotes a blog as it's source, reports that Microsoft's Live Search is paying corporate clients to use it's services....here's the blog link. The blog cites a Wall Street Journal article. Battellemedia

Media Week reports on the success of Mobitv,

"Other series that will be made available for fans to purchase on the MobiTV platform include USA’s Monk, Bravo’s Work Out, NBC’s Heroes and Telemundo’s Pasion de Gavilanes and Decisiones. In addition, episodes of the teen drama Friday Night Lights will be offered to users free of charge."

I've tried signing up for Mobitv, to try the service, for PC content delivery, however, there seems to be a requirement that a subscriber receive broadband service from AT&T...sigh... they really will own all the world someday...watchout GE, Starbucks, and Halliburton....(there was a movie, a wry comedy, decades ago, about MaBell (as we used to call the telephone company), The President's Analyst,...haven't seen it in years, but it seems to apply...)

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Posted By: Theresa - Category: Blogger Digest

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Online Gears Up For '08 in the States

March 17th 2007 18:22

The Internet is ready for the next Presidential race in the United States.

The Washington Post reports today that people representing more than 500 Internet brands, individual political consultants, and folks associated with the campaigns met last week to talk politics and the internet.

Follow the money.

PQ Media, in the story, says $5 million dollars was spent in 2002. In 2004, it was $29 million. In 2006, it was $40 million.

BrandGames wants to create video games around the candidates.
Yahoo wants to use its Yahoo Groups and Answers, it's home pages and its news feeds' to work for the candidates.

Google wants to use YouTube, google ads, and analysis tools for the candidates.

You didn't think the election was just about the issues, did you??

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Posted By: Theresa - Category: Blogger Digest

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Crashing Computers and Internet Addiction

March 13th 2007 18:37

The International Herald Tribune reports "The Internet Addiction Treatment Center in Daxing County uses a blend of therapy and military drills to treat the children of China's nouveau riche addicted to online games, Internet pornography, cybersex and chats.

"I gradually became obsessed," said Li Yanlin, a university student whose grades plunged after he became addicted to Internet games. But after several weeks at the Daxing facility, the 18- year-old said he "recognized the falseness of online gaming."

The article ends with an official stating that the main cause for internet addiction, at least among the young, is parental expectations in a highly competitive society of 1.3 billion people. "... [s]ome lock their children up to study and ask teachers to assign extra homework. The pressure can be too much for some children, Xu said, especially if they fail.
"Then they escape to the virtual world to seek achievements, importance and satisfaction, or a sense of belonging." ...

This dovetails with a report from tech dirt yesterday, about a curfew imposed by a school in India, on the internet..."[a]dministrators at a top Indian engineering school are blaming this internet isolation for having depressed anti-social students even if there's no real evidence that it's the internet that's at fault. Still, the school has decided as a solution that it will be turning off internet access in dorm rooms from 11pm to 12:30pm each day, hoping that this will (a) cause students to get more sleep and (b) force them to socialize with each other.

Meanwhile, the IHTalso reports that a "...[s]tudy was done by a year-old research organization, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, whose work is supported by companies like IBM, Cisco Systems and eBay, as well as by the Communications Workers of America and foundation grants. It will be available at www.itif.org. "

The report confirms that we are all much more efficient because we use computers.

There is no reference in the article about Mac vs. PC. I'm looking into that issue myself, being about ready to trade my old Dell for, possibly, a Mac....

In North Carolina

"Using eight Sony Playstation 3 units, Dr. Frank Mueller built a supercomputing cluster capable of high-performance computing and running the latest in computer gaming.

The Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), Xbox and Nintendo Wii have captivated a generation of computer gamers with bold graphics and rapid-fire animation. But these high-tech toys can do a lot more than just play games. At North Carolina State University, Dr. Frank Mueller imagined using the power of the new PS3 to create a high-powered computing environment for a fraction of the cost of the supercomputers on the market."

I can't resist, as one student said (paraphrased), "Does this make anyone a WII bit jealous?"

Slashdot has a nice blurb about an intereting article from Computerworld on surfing anonymously...Given how many constitutional rights guaranteeing some level of privacy have been, allegedly, violated lately, it makes for interesting reading. Why care if you aren't doing anything wrong. Because it's no one else's business what you do....

And, ecommerce timeshas a about open platforms (including Microsoft, opening up the X-box for game developers) which starts with:

"Amazon's cloud is one of many new low-cost collaborative infrastructures -- such as free Internet telephony, open source software and global outsourcing -- that allow individuals and small producers to harness world-class capabilities, access markets, and serve customers in ways that only large corporations could in the past. "

As for me, since both Wordperfect and Word are freezing my computer when I try to copy and paste my articles and links to my blog, I've written this on googles document program. if this doesn't work I'll be looking further into other freeware, like zoho.com, which looks pretty interesting, and the price is right

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Posted By: Theresa - Category: Blogger Digest

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Personal Gravity, Erasing Sex Sites And The News

March 10th 2007 20:15

Trying to find my own personal gravity at this blog, hope you’ll come back to see how this works out.

I’m not a natural techie. I sat in a basement in San Francisco, more than a decade ago, trying to work out “gophers” to get where I needed to go on the net. A lot of others were mostly interested in deleting evidence of visits to triple x sex sites. They moaned when I raised a question about finding law for research on the net.
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