I found a complete engineering diagram of the millennium falcon on the ole’ itnerwebz!  You can click that sucker and make it bigger.  You can also leave comments and tell me how much you love me for posting this.  If you have a nerdgazm, keep it to yourself.

Corellian Engineering Corporation made the craft, and customized it to Han Solo’s specifications as you can see his signature at the bottom of the spec.

Man, I feel 5 again, which is exactly how old I was when Star Wars came out.  I feel so grown up now!

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The AR.DRONE is a 4 blade helicopter with two remote cameras.  If that weren’t cool enough? it is controlled by an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, and the remote camera’s are transmitted to your device!

This is geek heaven my friends!

In fact, the only downside I’ve found is that the AR.DRONE’s batteries only last 12 minutes.  The good news is unlike your cool remote control (iPhone), the AR.DRONE will have replaceable batteries so you can keep going all day.  Recharge time is said to be 1.5 hours for the AR.DRONE battery pack.

The AR.DRONE comes in three colors: orange with either green, blur or yellow accents. Each model comes with two hulls: An indoor use hull, with protective loops around the rotors, and an outdoor hull without the loops.  The AR.DRONE creates its own Wi-Fi network, which your iPhone, iPod or iPad can connect to.  For now you need an Apple device, but Parrot has committed to allowing others to create remote controls using Android and other types of devices.

The AR.DRONE goes on sale September 9th and will cost aprox. $300 USD. Watch the video(s) below!

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The most popular selling computer in the world in 1985 was the Commodore 64.  Launched in 1982 by Commodore Business Machines (CBM), the C64 quickly become the computer to own and made computer and gaming history. The 8-bit Commodore 64 had some gems inside it.  It had a 1Mhz 6510 MOS processor (a close relative of the 6502) and the amazing for it’s time SID sound chip.  But what made the complete package was the price.  For the first time in computing history a high powered system with excellent graphics capability and amazing sound capabilities was available for less than USD $600!  It was an instant success.

Many of the games live on today through emulation, or revisions for the PC, Nintendo or other hardware.  Well it appears now that the hardware, at least in style, will live on as well.  Commodore USA has announced the Commodore PC64, a classic C64 with modern day components on the inside!

According to Commodore USA’s press release the PC64 will contain an Intel Atom 525 CPU, an NVidia Ion2 video card (with HDMI out), 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1TB hard drive.  If that weren’t enough, the PC64 will also contain a DVD/Blu-ray optical drive, a 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 6 USB ports and a 6-in-1 card reader.

You’ll probably think to yourself “But this is easy.  People have been doing this forever.”  That’s true, but this will be the first fully licensed and Commodore sanctioned machine.

I can’t wait to buy mine!

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(Click Image for Full-size Version)

1. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE ON TIME
Listen to the radio in the morning?  Stop! Use your iPod to play the same playlist every morning.  Go from relaxing songs to more energetic songs.  You will be able to tell how much longer you have by the song currently playing, and the more energetic songs get you moving faster!

2. REVERSE YOUR CLOTHES HANGERS
Once a year, reverse the hangers in your closet. As you pull clothes out throughout the year, turn them around.  At the end of the year, right before you reverse them again, give all the clothes you didn’t wear with the hanger still reversed away to a charity.

3. OPEN A BANANA THE RIGHT WAY
Ever watch a chimp open a banana?  If you have then you’ve also likely noticed they don’t open it they same way we do.  Flip the banana over and pinch the bottom of it.  There’s a reason monkeys do it this way.

4. USE ALUMINUM FOIL CORRECTLY
Just about every box of aluminum foil on the planet comes with a handy little feature built right in (that almost no one uses).  Push the
tabs on the end of the box in.  These tabs keep the roll of foil from popping out of the box when you pull it.  This works the same for most cling film boxes.

5. REMEMBER TO BRING THINGS TO WORK
When you need to remember to bring something important to work, place your car keys on it right before you go to bed.  If that doesn’t work, you can always place it in your shoes.

6. UNLOCK A CHAIN LOCK FROM OUTSIDE
Find  rubber band.  Attach the rubber band to the chain lock, then to the inside of the door handle. As you close the door from the outside, the rubber band will pull the chain and dislodge the lock.

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Why you ask?  Well it depends on whether or not you classify the iPad as a PC or something entirely different.  “But it’s not a PC!” you say.  Does it cause a decrease in Netbook sales?  “Why yes it does.”  Does it compete with the same dollars people are spending on a netbook? “Why yes it does…”  Then by all means, we should at least consider that the iPad is related to Apple’s market share of desktop and notebook computers!

In July, Apple reported that it has sold 3.47 million Macintosh Computers in its second quarter.  Comparatively HP, the number one PC maker worldwide shipped 4.6 million computers.  However, Apple also shipped 3.27 million iPads.  If you combine those numbers together, Apple is the number one by volume at 6.75 million units shipped.

While many will continue to deny that Apple s likely the number one computer manufacturer in the United States, the numbers don’t lie.  Apple is moving up in a big way, regardless of what Acer’s CEO thinks.

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So what gives?  Why would a software developer be OK with users stealing his software?  It turns our Jeff has discovered there are some benefits to people pirating his software.  In fact many software companies know that piracy is key to why they are #1, even though they would never admit it (right Bill?).

I admit to being a little bit nervous about writing this. The sad truth is that, these days, it is so easy to pirate single-player PC games that most gamers only have to pay for them if they want to pay for them.

You see, when people pirate a game, more people get to play it.  And when more people get to play it, that would never have purchased it (or played it) if they had to buy it, you sell more copies.

Now interestingly enough, that’s not why Jeff Vogul thinks its sometimes OK to pirate his games, even though I assure you he knows this is true.  Jeff talks a while in his blog about children in third world countries who can not afford to pay him the $25 US Dollars that his game costs.  He even get’s emails from these children begging for a free key.

When I get one of these message, what I want to respond is, “PIRATE MY STUPID GAME!!!” I mean, seriously, the time used drafting that e-mail would have been much more profitably spent figuring out how BitTorrent works.

But Jeff says the piracy by these children in these foreign countries helps him by helping to give his life meaning.  He wants to bring joy to the people who experience and play his games and feel like ultimately he made a difference in people’s lives.  Even if they stole from him.  Head over and check out Jeff’s blog for the rest of the story.

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How to get out of the Google Sandbox from TheGeekPub on Vimeo.

Mike at TheGeekPub.com explains the effects of a phenomenon known as the Google Sandbox, and what to do to get out of it if you find your site in it.

For many years now, a hot topic amongst bloggers and SEO experts has been around a phenomenon in which new sites are put into a “probation period”. This results in pages for highly relevant content and keywords on your site ranking very low to not at all in the Google SERPs for some period of time. Usually that probationary period is believed to last between one month and one year. During this unfortunate time period no amount of quality, well optimized content will rank high in the SERPs listings (with few exceptions)..

Watch the video and then read the rest over at GeekCamp.org: How to get out of the Google Sandbox

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“Dear Microsoft,

I really appreciate that your technology has fed my family and given me a great career over the past 13 years. However, lately our relationship has been lackluster at best. Let me explain:

• Windows Vista sucked. Enough said.
• The X-Box 360 sucked. I have to pay a monthly fee for online service unlike ps3 and Wii, and I got Red Ring of Death twice.
• Your Zune software sucks. The device is fine, but the software is incredibly slow, bugs are never fixed and i can’t use any other software to synch my Zune. It goes and renames files without my permission.
• Windows 7 is better, but not near as innovative as Mac OS X. The control panel is a freaking maze compared to XP or Mac.
• Your development tools such as Visual Studio are slow and kludgy and not nearly as innovative as Ruby on Rails. That sucks.
• Your licensing sucks. I spent 2 hours on the phone yesterday talking to your employees about licensing which SUCKED because they seemed as clueless as the rest of us. We’re having to do a $2000+ upgrade to serve one client. If were were not already MSDN subscribers, it would have cost us $7000+

Thanks for the memories, but I fear our relationship is almost over.

-Craig”

Let me explain.  For the over 25 years that I have known Craig, the last 15 or so he has been a developer for a living.  Specifically a pro-Microsoft developer.  During those last 15 years, I shared many of Craig’s beliefs about Microsoft “just getting it,” and Microsoft being better.  About 6 years ago… I started to question.  I started becoming interested in Linux, Macintosh and other alternative platforms such as BeOS.  And then I did it.  I switched to Mac.

Craig liked my Mac, but still found Microsoft to be the superior platform.  We talked all the time and slowly I started seeing Craig’s opinion change… until today when I saw this on FaceBook.  His transition from the DarkSide is almost complete!

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Many of us depend on our wireless networks to function.  Freedom from cables and locations have made our world truly mobile, in a way that’s hard to return to wired, tethered data access.  However, with that freedom also comes frustration.  There’s nothing more frustrating than a wireless connection that intermittently drops, or grinds to a crawl.

Most of the time, you just wind up rebooting your laptop or unplugging and replugging the power to your wireless router.  Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn’t.

Many manufactures make wireless devices.  Linksys/Cisco, Apple, D-Link and many others.  Most of the tools, especially troubleshooting tools, that come with these routers and access points are very lacking.  The good news is, there are some excellent open-source solutions to help you, and you might be surprised by just how good and feature rich they are.

Introducing DD-WRT

DD-WRT is probably my favorite release of an open source firmware replacement.  DD-WRT is based on the Open-WRT firmware kernel with its own feature sets. DD-WRT was originally designed for use with just Linksys routers, but now is available for many others too.  With DD-WRT you get many options and choices, along with some very nice tools, that don’t come built in to your router by default.

DD-WRT will allow you to change the signal strength, output wattage, processor clock speed, define numerous access methods, and a lot more.  DD-WRT even allows you to create a Wireless Distribution System by linking many access points together to create a massive wireless network without the need for cabling!

Even if the hardware of your router turns our to be flaky, and its not the software that came with DD-WRT will let you schedule your router to reboot on a nightly basis, or even more or less often.  DD-WRT comes with many information screens that show client connectivity, signal strength and more.

Fig 1: DD-WRT Informational Screen

You can get DD-WRT for your router at: http://www.dd-wrt-com/

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On Thursday, June 24th I woke up at 5:45AM.  If you know me, then you know that is insane for me.  I’m lucky to wake up before 10:30 AM on weekends, and no earlier that 7:45AM during the week – and I’m not one bit happy about it!  I told myself I would only be willing to wait for one hour in line.  Any longer than that, and I would just go home.  I get to the Apple Store in Southlake, TX and start counting how far back I am.  The Apple store people come tell us they have 30 people ringing sales at about 7 minutes each.  Awesome, that should be about 1 hour!  4 and a half hours later… I get two new iPhone 4s (32 GB models).  Ugh.

So let’s begin…

The Design of the iPhone 4

It’s beautiful!  The glass front and back, solid black, with an aluminum band around the outside.  The buttons are metal and all recesses (speaker, microphones) are protected with a silver wire mesh.  This thing is gorgeous.  In fact, who couldn’t look at this thing and fall in love with it?  But Apple failed at elegant design with this thing, because elegant design is supposed to look nice and function well.  More on that later.

FaceTime

Apple is touting FaceTime as the biggest new feature of iPhone 4.  I have to disagree.  For me, the screen resolution and processor speed enhancements are by far the best new features – but FaceTime is a big deal – and it will change the way we communicate, but not today.  FaceTime is Apple’s video conferencing solution for mobile phones.  It’s incredible, but has two major flaws:

1) Right now, only iPhone 4s can video call with each other. FaceTime is based on open standards, and Apple said they are going to open the entire protocol to other vendors.  We’ll see over time if the adoption of other vendors takes off.

2) Wi-Fi only.  Leave it to AT&T to take something so life changing, and F#$K it up!  Can you imagine sitting at a store, calling your spouse and showing them a product or article of clothing before you buy it?  Yes, that’s awesome.  But you can’t do it today unless the store has free Wi-Fi and doesn’t block the FaceTime ports!  AT&T manages to fail at every opportunity you give those geniuses.

However, with all that said, I’ve used FaceTime a lot.  I love it!  It’s smooth, fluid, and high quality.  The audio and video are synced well, and it all around just works.  Great job on this Apple.

Facetime Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Retina Display

With iPhone 4, Apple also introduced the Retina display.  The Retina display touts four times the number of pixels on previous generation iPhones, resulting in a 326 pixels per inch screen.

What can I say?  The Retina display is a home run!  The quality of the text, accuracy of the colors, and the wide viewing angle makes this screen brilliant!  Before I actually laid my eyes on this screen I thought to myself “the screen resolution won’t make much difference.”  Was I ever wrong…

When reading iBooks, or Kindle, or when browsing the web the increased resolution and sharpness of the fonts really takes away the eye strain and makes reading on this device a pleasure.  The small screen size becomes less of an irritant when the text is easy to read at any font size.

Big win here Apple!

Retina Display Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Antenna in the Frame

When I first heard about the antenna in the frame I really thought this was genius.  On the iPhone 4, the frame of the phone doubles as the antenna and a structural backbone of the phone itself.  This allowed Apple to make the iPhone thinner, while packing it with yet more features .

It turns out, there is a bug in this design.  What’s not known is whether Apple knew about this or not before they shipped it.  What’s also not known is if they didn’t know about it, how is that possible?

The Antenna in the frame is in three distinct segments.  The left frame section is for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.  The right frame section is for UMTS and GSM.  The bottom most frame section is not antenna, but completes the frame.  The problem is that when you ground the left antenna with the bottom base portion of the frame with your hand, your signal strength goes from 5 bars to one or none in a matter of a second.  Or does it?

When I first heard about this problem I couldn’t duplicate it.  I tried and tried to no avail.  I simply could not recreate it on either of my phones.  Finally I stumbled onto the problem.  My hands needed to be slightly moist.  I had just finished swimming in the pool.  I could easily recreate the problem on both phones.  Slide the phone into any case, and the problem disappears.

Steve Jobs’ Answer: “This is a non-issue.  Don’t hold it like that.”  My response: “Are you kidding me?”

Antenna in the Frame Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to iPhone 4 than these three things.  In fact, there’s over a hundred new features in iPhone 4.

• Front Camera
• Rear 720p Video Camera with LED Flash
• Multi-tasking
• Folders
• Apple A4 Processor
• Noise Cancellation Microphone
• and a lot more!

So how do I rate the new iPhone 4?  I certainly think based on my personal usage and experience, that iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market – hands down.  It’s better than Droid.  It’s better than Microsoft.  But this phone is the 4th generation iPhone.  It shouldn’t have issues with the antenna.  Dropped calls and AT&T’s terrible network should have put this at the top of Apples quality control list.

So where does that leave us.  If Apple hadn’t messed up this antenna design I would have given the phone a solid 4.5 stars.  If Apple had dropped AT&T and moved to Verizon, even with the bad antenna design I would have found a way to make a six star rating.  But as it stands, I can only give the iPhone 4 a 4 star rating.  That’s a shame.  Because this is the best phone I’ve ever had.  Hands down.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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