They will be rolling this service out to Chicago hopefully by the end of 2009. I don’t think for the suspected $30 extra dollars on top of our triple play this would even entice me at all. I have a Blackberry that I can tether. Not to mention I leave Chicago more than I am here. This service serves no purpose for me. Let us know if you are excited about WiMax at all?
I signed up for a Google Voice invite about 3 or 4 months ago when they first announced the service. On Friday Google announced that they would be sending out those invites to people who have signed up. I constantly checked my email on Friday hoping I would get my invite. Well, it’s Monday and still no invite. Why do I want Google Voice so bad? Watch the following video and you can also read about Voice’s features here.
Google, please send me the invite and also enable Number Portability. Now. Thanks.
In honor of Michael Jackson’s passing I’m going to start today’s blog post with a video of one of his best moonwalks. Have a good weekend and listen to the King of Pop this weekend.
Links:
I’ve been thinking about this lawsuit involving the RIAA and Jammie Thomas-Rasset. She was ordered to pay $80,000 per song that she downloaded or $1.92 million dollars. $1.92 million for 24 songs? This is absurd and luckily I’m not the only one who thinks so. I’ve been reading many articles on the topic and there seems to be some hope for this woman.
This ruling could actually be unconstitutional according to this PC World article. The constitution has rules against “grossly excessive” punitive damages and I think most people would agree that $80,000 per song is grossly excessive. There have even been some music artists that have been critical of the RIAA and Moby has even said the RIAA should be disbanded.
The music industry is really in a bad situation with this. They are punishing their customers and there have even been studies that say people who download music illegally end up buying more music. They will eventually come around but this lawsuit needs to be appealed and they need to start embracing new technologies.
On a side note, the same PC World article from before stated that this case started five years ago and the RIAA has changed some of their practices. They said that anybody doing today what Jammie Thomas-Rasset did five years ago, they wouldn’t even get charged with anything.
Thoughts on all of this?
Happy Friday! Enjoy the weekend. Here are the links:
If you are using Mozilla Firefox it’s likely because someone Nerdy like myself or Praz has told you to. But you may not know why exactly you are using Firefox over Internet Explorer. The big difference between the two is the customizing that you can do with Firefox. There are themes, add-ons, or extensions. Most people browsing the web with Firefox are not using any of these and it’s a shame. I am here to try and make it as simple as possible to jump in and make the web browsing experience much more fulfilling.
I want to focus on add-on’s and extensions. The problem with the add-on’s to date is that their are so many and its hard to figure out which ones are actually useful. Now the Student Nerds have created a collection so you can use the same ones we do. To see the addons that we recommend you can visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/studentnerds
We’re going to start a new feature for the blog where we will rewrite posts about awesome websites, programs or tips that we use on a daily basis.
Today’s repost is about Dropbox. Our original post on Dropbox can be found here. I recently shared some files with a friend of mine and he asked me how I was able to quickly share the files with him without using email. I couldn’t use email because the file was too big so I used Dropbox. I figured I should write another post about Dropbox because I think everyone should be using it (if only to backup your important files).
Let me first explain what Dropbox’s primary feature is. Dropbox will backup your files to their servers quickly and easily. You can then install Dropbox on any of your computers and Dropbox program will keep the folder in sync on all of those computers. I use Dropbox in a few different ways. Here’s what I do with it:
Sign up for Dropbox today and let us know if it has helped you. Anybody else have any cool uses for Dropbox?
Here is some of the coolest stuff for the week. Check it out and have a good weekend.
I installed the newest version of the iPhone OS (operating system) a couple of days ago and I’ve been very happy with it. There are a few topics that make this upgrade worthwhile and I’ll talk a little bit about each one. These are in no particular order.
Horizontal Typing – They have finally enabled you to use the wide keyboard with the iPhone in the Mail, Messages and Notes applications. This should have been in the very first iteration of the iPhone but as they say, better late than never. 
CalDAV Support – This is kind of a nerdy feature but this will help me stay very organized. I use Google Calendar for all of my scheduling (I have about 5 Google Calendars in there for different purposes) and the new iPhone software can subscribe to each of the calendars and keep them in sync with my iPhone’s calendar. They even use the same color scheme I have set up in my Google Calendar. *Note – Apple has not released the new software for everyone yet. I obtained my version via Bittorrent.
I enjoy traveling and want a camera to document the places, but I also want to remember where I took each picture. I am going to make a prediction that geotagged photos will be the wave of the future, and I bet the new iPhone 3G S is going to have the built in ability to do this. I think much of what Fotopedia is doing might be copied and done better by Facebook considering they are leading photo site on the web. However, Facebook will need to step up their game with some new features if they want to compete.
I’ve been out of town for the past few days so today’s post is some of the stuff that I have missed while I was gone. There was also a new iPhone announced yesterday that I will not be upgrading to. There are a few reasons for this. One, the price is too high to justify and I don’t think the new features will be worth the upgrade. I also read an interesting article about how AT&T; might lose their agreement with Apple next year and that is also when my contract with AT&T; would be up. I have had AT&T; (or Cingular) for nearly 10 years. I’ve seen how their service has buckled since the iPhone has been out and their service is just getting worse. I would have no problem switching companies if the iPhone came out. Any of you upgrading or have any thoughts on that?
Here are the links:
If you thought the Nintendo Wii was cool with its magic wand then this Microsoft project will blow your mind. It is based on voice recognition and movement recognition. It interacts with you as if it were another human being. It’s a very cool technology but border line psychotic because soon all the very anti-social people out there will have no need to leave their house at all now. But I am still getting excited for this new project, for this could change the way we play video games for good, no more couch potatoes losing muscle definition and getting fat! Maybe this will be the best thing for America!
Head over to Gizmodo for more details: Project Natal and check out the video below. If it works as good as advertised this truly will be a gamechanger for Microsoft.
Tonight will be Hulu’s first attempt to do a live simulcast of a concert. They decided to broadcast a Dave Matthews Band show the night before their new album is released. The show starts at 9pm ET and you can watch at Hulu or you can watch it right here on StudentNerds.com.
I must say that I was very skeptical of Hulu when it was first announced. I thought Youtube was going to win out, but after Disney’s investment and the release of the Hulu Desktop software I think Hulu is going to hit a grand slam for the media companies. They are doing a much better job than the music industry. Thoughts?
