Archive for January, 2007
eBay Blocks "Virtual Goods”
CNet’s news.com.com.com.com has an article today where they point out eBay’s recent decision to block the sale of virtual goods like platinum pieces in Everquest, and swords in World of Warcraft…but surprisingly, not land in Second Life.
Initially, I was floored. Hell, I’ll admit to selling pp back in my Evercrack days (grad school). It seems crazy to me that eBay would turn money away…after all, they’re in the business of helping people sell stuff.
Apparently, eBay is concerned about swindlers taking your money, then not meeting up with you in Greater Faydark; if you’re not selling anything tangible, you might have no recourse.
I suppose that’s logical. But still - what about selling services for webdesign, or other non-tangible, dificult-to-verify transactions? How about Second Life? What’s up with the Second Lifers? While the residents of Second Lifeonia (or whatever the hell it’s called) will argue, there is absolutely NOTHING tangible there.
It’s done, regardless. You n00bs are going to have to buy your characters at IGE instead.
technorati tags:ebay, wow, everquest
Wii Impressions: Number 1
We got a Wii.
Yes, for all of you who have been lusting after Nintendo’s most recent addition to the console market, you’ll understand our excitement.
There’s a lot to this little box, and most of it’s been covered elsewhere (here, and here, for instance)…but I’d like to highlight a few of the things that we find particularly cool - and that might take a few different posts.
First, the controllers work like magic. As a long-time fan of video games, I was initially very skeptical about the much-hyped control system of the Wii. I envisioned a somewhat spotty arrangement, with the controls working responsively maybe 80% of the time, depending on your location. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The controls work. Seriously. Play a couple of rounds of Wii Boxing, and you’ll see what I mean. They’re responsive, sensitive, consistent, easy to use, and intuitive. Bravo.
Second, the system is easy to get the hang of (please don’t email me about the dangling participle in that sentence; I’m taking creative license). My wife - who is as much of a gamer as the fruit bowl on our kitchen counter - had no trouble digging into a bowling round. She just grabbed the controller, and started bowling. Just like she was in the bowling alley down the street (but without the shoe spray).
Third, and thank goodness for this one, the system connects to the network wirelessly. This is such a great addition, I can’t even begin to explain my excitement. One of the first things we did after unboxing was start figuring out how to split the CAT-5 signal to the 360 so that it could also feed the Wii. After we’d cleared that hurdle, it became clear that there was nowhere to plug the CAT-5 in…and that’s when we opened the manual. Wireless! Woohoo!
There’s much more to this console, and we’re still forming opinions (read: playing until we’re too sore to play anymore)…so we’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, consider getting your family a Wii. If this short article hasn’t convinced you, stay tuned for the rest of the series. You’ll want one.
Trailfire.com
I’ve managed to recover from the Chargers’ loss long enough to take this quick snapshot of Trailfire’s social “tagging” program on Turnipville.
Trailfire is actually very cool, in that it allows you to make “trails” about certain topics across the web. In many ways, it reminds me of Flickr photo comments…except they can span multiple sites.
The idea here is simple. Download their client (for Firefox or IE), create an account, and then insert your trail comments wherever you deem appropriate on whatever site you’d like. This service (which is free, for now) reminds me of del.icio.us on steriods. I’ve created a “Turnip Network” trail outlining the sites that we’re currently running, but it doesn’t need to be that logical, I’m guessing.
I could see myself creating a trail for every tech-related problem that I solve online. Think about how that works for you. You search Google for “nvidia video card ubuntu,” and you find your total solution after piecing together the text of three or four different pages. Instead of just bookmarking them in del.icio.us (which you’ll probably still do), you also create a trail called “nvidia on ubuntu.” This trail takes you - and your fellow trailfire users - through the path (path, trail, whatever) you’ve just been down, and adds a sequential element to bookmark tagging.
I’ve installed the client, and can definitely get some goodness from it. Go check it out. I think we’ve got a winner here…
technorati tags:trailfire.com, trailfire, tagging, web2
Apple Roundup
Today was a big day for Apple fans, with the MacWorld announcments of the iPhone and AppleTV. Here’s a roundup of those sites that are doing a far more thorough job of coverage than we are:
AppleInsider
MacRumors
Engadget
Apple.com
We are super pumped about the iPhone; and if you spend a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ intro for the iPhone, you’ll probably share our excitement. Cheers.
technorati tags:apple, iphone, ipod, appletv
Our Ubuntu Linux Project
If you’ve spent any time talking tech in the last several years, you’ve no doubt heard mention of Linux. For years, it’s been kind of the geek alternative to modern operating systems (MacOS, Windows); hell, while at MIT, I ran an early version of SUSE next to my Windows box and iBook…just because I thought it was the right thing to do.
The truth is, Linux really is cool. It’s based on Unix (like OSX), but it’s much more about being a Unix OS than OSX. Because Linux is open source, there has always been development challenges that result in limited driver support, a high knowledge barrier to entry, and a host of benefits that never quite outweighed the drawbacks for the average computer user.
Ubuntu may have finally figured a way around all that.
We’ve had “build a Linux server box” on our list of things to do here at the Geek Ranch for almost a year, and it wasn’t until one grandfather’s garage yielded an abandoned Celeron machine that we actually snapped to it. With a sub 2.0GHz machine, packed with 1GB of RAM and a toasted HDD, we went to work (yeah, we replaced the hard drive with a 300GB Maxtor discount from CompUSA).
Since this post focuses on how great Ubuntu is, I need to take a sidebar and talk about how we got our installation discs. You can download all sorts of versions of Ubuntu from their website, but we ordered installation discs FOR FREE (as in beer), also available on their website. The shipment took several weeks, but the package included versions for Apple machines, 32-bit PCs, and 64-bit PCs. This is one of the coolest features I’ve seen in a LInux distro to date; so cool that I’ve added this paragraph, in lieu of the original paranthetical note that this post originally had. Given that the discs come with a “Live CD” version, you can throw them in any machine and run Ubuntu without installing a thing. Cool. Seriously, cool.
This is where the post starts to wind to a close, unfortunately. We pulled the install/live boot discs from the shelf; Ubuntu installed in 23 minutes (after the live boot), and within 25 minutes we were looking at a clean GNOME interface on a freshly installed copy of Ubuntu. Automatically detected was our sound card, our ethernet card (internet…woohoo!), and our external hard drives. Everything was smooth…except for that terribly annoying 640×480 resolution, which couldn’t be modified from the preferences.
As it turns out, older NVidia GeForce cards are not supported out of the box (no NVidia cards are supported out of the box), and we had to install the additional drivers to fully use our video card’s capability. Three Google searches pointed us in the right direction there, however, and we were running at crisp screen resolutions in about five minutes.
We’ve since combined all of the household music on the file server (via Samba and OSX), set up a mt-daapd music server that shares all of our music to active iTunes installations on our network, created Samba logins and home directories for all members of the house…all in the span of two or three sporadically relevant days.
If one of the goals of the Ubuntu is to provide a Linux distribution that is usable for the massess, they’re right there. Trust me.
technorati tags:ubuntu, linux, fileserver, osx