Jak’s Life 2.0

see-thru laptops!, originally uploaded by kap4001.

This is pretty cool, I’ve gotta admit when I clicked the link I was expecting something else but this is still really sweet!

Today I brought my Mighty Mouse with me to the Apple store because despite the tons of suggested remedies to solve the problem with dirt in the track ball on the Mighty Mouse I gave up just short of taking the mouse apart to clean out the sensors. After the genius OKed it with his manager he was able to go ahead and give me a brand new mouse! I must say it’s weird to be able to scroll down after months of not being able to. All I’ve got to say is that today was another great experience with an Apple genius - The End.

Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 Keynote in 60 Seconds

An awesome fast forward through Steve Job’s latest keynote. It gets to all the important stuff nice and fast. It’s absolutely worth a look.

Is Apple really that evil company that throws caution to the wind while doing everything it can to turn an even bigger profit? Some think so. And that’s why Apple may become the next generation’s evil empire. Just don’t expect me to agree.
I’m really hoping that this isn’t true but now that I’m thinking about it I certainly can see how Apple is becoming Micro$oft, at least you can’t use the dollar sign in Apple ;). The link is a good read, I recommend it.

read more | digg story

Nobody’s perfect and that includes Steve Jobs. This clip I found on Digg highlight some of the bloopers in Macworld.

Wanna see the stupidest thing I’ve seen tonight?

The users of sites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit and StumbleUpon openly endorse Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites, and are well known for providing no value to the sites they visit. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads, Digg users who don’t click on these ads are stealing bandwidth without paying for it and website owners deserve a method to block this unauthorized bandwith theft.

Since social media sites do not allow website owners a method for excluding content and do not obey robots.txt law, abiding webmasters are forced to block all users from social media sites. Demographics have shown that not only are Digg and other social media users a somewhat small and insignificant percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending, therefore blocking these users seems to have only minimal financial drawbacks, whereas ending resource theft has tremendous financial rewards for honest, hard-working website owners and developers..

If you wish to view the site you came from we suggest stopping using social media sites and finding the resources through Google instead.

Found on http://whydiggisblocked.com/

So first off social networking is bad? Users can’t talk to each other and share websites with each other as well as visit these shared websites, you must find websites even start ups from Google which can be quite difficult. So apparently visitors are bad whether or not they use Adblock Plus or something else. So I have some news for the developers of this site, first off blocking ads is not a bad thing necessarily.

I have news for all these people that think ads are oh so great and those of us that block the ads are the devil. If I see an ad I on a website I STILL DON’T CLICK IT so why not stop these animated ads from wasting CPU power with Adblock plus. The next question I guarantee will come up to counter my argument is what if it interests you? I STILL DON’T CLICK IT I google the item and follow a link from there to avoid tracking cookies, spyware, and other crap that you can get from ads. So why should I even look at these ads, I’ve clicked on two that I can ever remember and sites like Myspace…you NEED to block those ads, they’re amazingly obstructive and they’re everywhere. I’d be perfectly fine if everyone used non-obnoxious ads such as Google’s Adsense ads where they’re non-obtrusive and fairly flexible.

So now off of my anti-ad rant and now back to this stupid website. There’s no reason to block these sites because

1. You’re discouraging networking and visitors. I’d love the creators of this site to tell us how much traffic (traffic is bad?) they’ve gotten from this being Dugg to the front page
2. What’s it matter, people that are generally using these sites know what some ads can do to your computer as well as how wasteful they are, because who wants to buy cheap Viagra or actually claim their “free” laptop for being the 1 billionth visitor?

Oh and two more things, why can’t you just block people using Adblock Plus? I’m sure it’s possible. Also what about these people that find your site using “alternative means” and are still using Adblock Plus? What’s this a hole in your infallible plan? So this brings me back to my last point, just block Adblock Plus or use unobtrusive text based ads.

I swear this site was designed just to set me off on an angry rampage, I just noticed, they’ve got this stupid little quote at the bottom of the page that still proves me nothing.

Digg users don’t click on ads like traditional visitors do and especially not as much as traffic from search engines. As we all know users are becoming more and more banner/ad blind and no one more so than the tech/geek crowd which is the primary audience of Digg.

So if we are “ad blind” why not just let us block them and delete the space they occupy if we’re not gonna click them anyways? Also this still brings me back to point 1 (above), YOU’RE DRIVING AWAY TRAFFIC BY BLOCKING DIGG. I’d really hate to burst these peoples bubble but even though your site may not draw a lot of Diggs it may still get lots of visitors, return visitors, and positive buzz about your site. By blocking Digg users you’re only destroying yourself. For example of how Digg changed what sites I use I’ll give you a small sample.

• Facebook
• Flickr
• Mashable
• Engadget
• Lifehacker
• W3Schools
• Apple
• Arstechnia
• Google Labs
• Pownce
• and so many more

Blocking Digg is stupid and will not help, it drives visitors away and may keep your site from becoming wildly successful.

If you hate these people as much as I do Digg it and let the whole community see this. As well as make some more angry posts or link to mine if you’d like.

Apparently Apple came out with an awesome new web only ad that only appears in ad form on websites. Also this is the best use of two ad spots I’ve seen in a long time, it uses both the normal ad on the top of a page as well as the ads on the right of the page together. Take a look at it, it’s worth it.

Over at PlaneBuzz one of the subscribers sent the writer an email about a story of a passenger on a plane that was delayed due to weather that he couldn’t see on his iPhone. From the announcement that the pilot you can tell both why people hate the airlines and why you should NEVER question the pilot, ATC, or the F/As (flight attendants) because they really do know what they’re doing.

If the passenger with the IPhone would be kind enough to use it to check the weather at our alternate, calculate our fuel burn due to being rerouted around the storms, call the dispatcher to arrange our release, and then make a phone call to the nearest Air Traffic Control center to arrange our timely departure amongst the other aircraft carrying passengers with IPhones, then we will be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the Flight Attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multi-million dollar aircraft and its passengers to safely leave.

This just goes to show you, pilots have a sense of humor too.

For the full story check out http://www.planebuzz.com/2007/11/we_knew_this_was_going_to_happ.html 

Weighing in at 109MB, this looks to be a fairly significant update. Wow, it didn’t take long for the first update but I suppose that’s a good thing, Apple cares!

read more | digg story

An amazing idea from Billy Chasen, he decided that he wanted to make a real life exploded model, but the catch is…he still wanted it to function. He decided that the victim for his awesome idea should be his iPod (I’m guessing 5.5 gen). He then encased the whole exploded model in resin but to make it functional moved the docking port and other integral components to the bottom of the cube, thus the reason for Legos. You can check out more of his reasoning and more pictures at http://anerroroccurredwhileprocessingthisdirective.com/2007/11/10/exploded-ipod-still-works/

BTW best iPod mod I’ve seen to date.