Supergeekblog

A place called Millennium Music has one heck of a deal for you. They’ll trade you an iPod for your old CD’s. They even have a scale that will tell you how many CD’s you have to send them and which iPod you will get in return.

Sounds like a deal. Frankly, with iTunes, I can download most of the music I want to my brand spanking new iPod. What’s that you say? There’s a catch? NO!? Can’t be!

Yep, as with anything that sounds good anymore, there’s a catch. Take a look at the fine print. The CD’s that you send have to be in good physical condition. Not a problem you say? Ok. The CD’s also have to match in their “quality of title” database. So no sending in your old Whitney Houston CD’s. No Cher either. All you have is Metallica? Well try the next caveat on for size. The CD’s have to be complete with their jewel cases and original liner notes. I don’t know about you, but most of the people that I know who have over 80 CD’s have thrown these away years ago.

There really is no free meal anymore is there? If your lucky enough to have quality CD’s with their jewel cases and liner notes and they’re not scratched up, you gots yourself a brand spanking new iPod. If not, well… you gots yourself a whole lot of CD’s. Still.

Original story broken by Infinite Loop(best as we can tell) with follow ups and other posts at LifeHacker, Gizmodo, and ForeverGeek.

[tags]Millennium Music, iPod, CD trade[/tags]

I thought this was a nice concise list of DVDR media and their rated quality. I’ve seen many other lists that have lengthy reviews and tests but this is nice in that it arrives at a simple list for easy reference. Check it out.

There have been perma-rumors surrounding the Opera browser for several months if not several years. Those rumors have heated up quite a bit in the last few days. It seems that Google was interested(rumor) and now the big rumor of the last week has been that Microsoft is interested.

Today, Varun Dubey at CoolTechZone wrote an article entitled “Microsoft buys out Opera” and threw the proverbial log on the fire. It’s become the biggest story on tech.memeorandum and all of the big names are talking about it.

Jason Calcanis has a treatise on why Microsoft should buy Opera
Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch asks Why?
Michael Gartenberg says it would make sense.
Joe Wilcox Agrees.
Then Om Malik bursts our bubble and says it’s still just a rumor.

Buying Opera would indeed be a boon for Microsoft. Internet explorer has been called the slow, inept browser of the market and is steadily bleeding market share to Firefox. Opera was the front runner in many of the areas that make Firefox so popular and is said to be much more reliable than either.

I can only imagine that Microsoft would immediately begin operations to integrate the best of Opera and IE into something that would end up being Opera Explorer, or MS Opera, or maybe even just OperaIE.

One thing is true. If rumors begin to fly like they have around Opera, there is obviously some talk going on at the very least.

Something will happen. Soon.

[tags]Microsoft, Opera, Google, Firefox, Internet Explorer[/tags]

Been hankering to try out Live Messenger 8.0? (jake?) Well, unless your especially lucky enough to work for Uncle Bill, chances are you probably didn’t get an invite to the beta. Well, fret no more. Appearantly, there are quite a few people who want to profit from the situation. And what better place to do so than on Ebay!

The search is on.

As of right now, there are 65 hits on that search. Some are even for more than one invite. I have to wonder how legal it all is, but maybe worth the try. The average going price for completed auctions seems to be in the $10 to $20 range. Not sure if it really is worth all that, but if you’ve got the money to spend…

PC World.com Broke the story here.

[tags]MWL 8.0, Ebay, Microsoft, Live, Messenger 8.0[/tags]

Staples is apparently charging customers a $2.49 fee for ‘virus scanning’ on their files when they bring documents for printing on discs. This is purely ridiculous as we all know it doesn’t cost anything for their automated virus software to scan the files on open. A reader comment on the article states that it’s also called a ‘rip fee’ and is charged because it somehow takes longer to pull a file off a disc and print it. Check it out.

SeaMax? MaxGate? SeagateMaxtor?

As of this moment, Seagate is the #1 Hard Drive manufacturer in the world. Maxtor? #3. In the world of Hard drives, this is monumental. Western Digital is currently #2. Soon to become a very distant #2.

As more and more hard drives are being purchased for more and more applications, Seagate comes out the winner of this purchase. I’ve always thought Seagate was a superior hard drive anyways.

Original story from theinquirer.net

[tags]seagate,maxtor, western digital, hard drives[/tags]

There has been a lot of talk lately about whether Web 2.0 really exists or not.

Richard MacManus says it’s dead and it was all hype to begin with.
Dave Winer says we’re getting fleeced.
and Russell Shaw started it all.

Web 2.0 is bunk. [...] Or, as Wikipedia puts it:
“Skeptics argue that the term is essentially meaningless, or that it means whatever its proponents decide that they want it to mean in order to convince the media and investors that they are creating something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies.”

And then Michael Arrington called them all traitors.

These attacks come from the Web 2.0’s biggest champions, making them that much harder to bear. Dave Winer and Richard MacManus are members of the Web 2.0 Workgroup, and Richard also writes a ZDNet blog called Web 2.0 Explorer.

And frankly, he’s right. Web 2.0 may have begun as a term to market the “new” internet, but it has progressed to something much larger. Arrington calls it the

slogan of a people’s army. Our army.

The problem is this: MacManus and Winer are portraying that they never knew that Web 2.0 was a marketing slogan. I think to some extent we all knew it was, and just like the term podcast, we grabbed hold of it and ran. And now we have run so far with it and all of a sudden someone reminds us that it was a marketing slogan to begin with and now we are repulsed by the idea that we associated ourselves with it.

My answer: It was a marketing solution. It did it’s job. No harm, No foul. The other thing is that it really isn’t a new version of the web. We still access it with the same protocols and with the same equipment. Oh and by the way, I don’t call it ARPAnet anymore either. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are both terms that were used to market what we now call Web 2.0.

We are experiencing a change in the way that we put content to the web and in some ways the way that content is found and accessed. If for no other reason, we use the term Web 2.0 to identify that change. To put a placemark on a boom in self-published and social-published content. We have sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Riya, Flikr, and memeorandum that have revolutionized how we find and access and publish our content. Web 2.0 is just the spoon that we use to signify our bending of the world around us. And there is no spoon, neo.

**Author’s Note***
Originally posted here on thatedeguy. We don’t generally post items to two blogs, but thought this was newsworthy enough to try and cover both readerships.

[tags]Web 2.0, Dave Winer, Michael Arrington, Russell Shaw, Richard MacManus, Wikipedia, Riya,Digg,Delicious,Flikr, Memeorandum[/tags]

Radioshack has the Sandisk Cruzer Micro 512mb USB 2.0 thumdrives on sale for $29.99 through Christmas. Stock up for those stocking stuffers and gifts now (Don’t forget one for yourself!). I love mine and plan to buy another one this week again for this price. Available in most stores and online.

Well if it isn’t already apparent… it’s been a slow couple of weeks for SGB. I’d imagine we can use the hectic nature of this time of year as an excuse. I plan to get back into the habit of regular postings to SGB as well as some new developments in the way of unique content for our readers (I know you guys are out there somewhere).

While I work on some of above mentioned content why don’t you guys checkout a couple of things I’ve found useful/cool as of late.
TightVNC (Another free VNC remote desktop application similar to openVNC)
MythTV (Setup your own free PVR using an old computer and a tuner card)
Portable CE 2.0 (The man over at Furry Goat gets a nice Windows CE virtual machine running off a USB thumbdrive. I did this on mine at it works great!)

I’d also like to remind everyone to checkout Digital Life TV every Tuesday and Thursday for a good free tech videocast. I also highly recomment “Security Now” and “In the Trenches” podcasts for those of you who aren’t doing anything at work (You know who you are you slackers.. . Stream them if you don’t have an mp3 player you won’t be disappointed. Maybe someday I can con Jake and Shane into helping me do an SGB podcast. In the meantime enjoy these shows and dream about how much better and SGB podcast would be (Just Kidding of course…).

That about wraps it for now keep checking back!

LG announced the release of the worlds first Water-Proof phone Thursday in Korea.

If dropped in a pool, tub or sink, this phone will survive in roughly thirty minutes since we sealed its tiny crevices with rubber packing,’’ LG Telecom spokesman Kang Shin-koo said.

Compared to the .00030 seconds for the cell phones we are used to, 30 seconds is forever. The phone is also extremely shock resistant and even comes with a little attachable rubber bumper doo-dad to add to the phone.

Users will be offered a replaceable protector that can be inserted at the end of the phone as an additional safety catch. It is just like a bumper for a car

Heck of an idea from an up and comer Cell Phone manufacturer. They also manufacture just about everything else as well, but thats beside the point.

Pictures and comments are also available on Gizmodo and Ubergizmo.

Original News story: Korea Times

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[tags]LG, Canu-5025, Waterproof Cell, Phone[/tags]