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Category: Just For Fun

Top Ten “How To’s” Your IT Department Doesn’t Want You to Know

Posted on July 30, 2007July 13, 2008 By Bob Caswell No Comments on Top Ten “How To’s” Your IT Department Doesn’t Want You to Know

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has compiled a top ten list of “How To’s” that IT Departments want to keep a secret. Along with the article is a video interview with a “security expert” from PricewaterhouseCoopers’s. The issue at hand (in a nutshell): should companies be able to monitor and/or limit your non-work activity in the office?

This seems to be a complicated issue that will never go away. I’m usually one to stand up for privacy and flexibility in the workplace. But then, it only takes one bad experience (spyware / virus / porn) for an employer to tighten up for a legitimate reason (even if often in an over-reacting way). In any event, see below for the video interview and the top ten workarounds:

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Do-It-Yourself Tech, Just For Fun, Privacy

Can an iPhone improve your social life?

Posted on July 26, 2007 By Bob Caswell No Comments on Can an iPhone improve your social life?

While some are celebrating Apple’s profits and Steve Jobs is saying things like, “We’re thrilled to report the highest June quarter revenue and profit in Apple’s history, along with the highest quarterly Mac sales ever,” others are digging deeper and asking the tough questions. Check it out:

Apple, Gadgets, Just For Fun

How to Punk an Apple Fanboy the Week of the iPhone Release

Posted on June 29, 2007July 14, 2008 By Bob Caswell 45 Comments on How to Punk an Apple Fanboy the Week of the iPhone Release

iPhone*Update* We’ve updated the fake articles with today’s date and have made it easy for anyone to use this as a prank on office workers. “How to” at the end of the article.

__________________

I work in Indianapolis and have a coworker who is obsessed with all things Apple, especially the iPhone. He’s ready. He’s got Indy Apple stores and AT&T locations on speed dial and is set for the biggest release since the iPod itself. This Friday at 6:00 p.m. was to be the beginning of his best weekend ever…. until…

A group of us at work decided to spoof an article in Indy’s most prominent local paper: the Indianapolis Star. What we did was scrape the website, pasted some of our own content into it, and changed DNS settings such that any browsing on our local network at work would reroute IndyStar.com to our fake site that was made to look exactly like the real thing. We even did the same thing for Apple.com so that we could mock up Apple’s site “crashing” due to heavy traffic in response to the unfortunate news of the iPhone being delayed.

Click on the images below to see how it looked. The first is the actual fake article that was displayed when the front page story was clicked on, and the second is the homepage with the title story about the iPhone delay. We could only let the joke run for so long (a couple hours). This guy was/is determined to get an iPhone and was considering purchasing a ticket to New York to avoid the supposed disaster of the iPhone being delayed for Indianapolis. And we’re not that mean.

See below for the text of our fake press release:

Read More “How to Punk an Apple Fanboy the Week of the iPhone Release” »

Apple, Gadgets, Just For Fun

Why Do Hotels Still Charge for Internet?

Posted on May 7, 2007August 20, 2008 By Bob Caswell 10 Comments on Why Do Hotels Still Charge for Internet?

So this week I’m on vacation in Orlando (never been to Disney World until now). The hotel is called the Buena Vista Palace and is located right outside the theme parks. I found the hotel via Priceline.com and thought it was a good deal until I got nickel and dimed to death upon arrival. I’m not sure who to be annoyed at more: Priceline for not including specific, applicable information that any visitor would want to know beforehand, or the hotel, which has a backwards approach to the term “convenience.”

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Do-It-Yourself Tech, Just For Fun, Shopping, Web 2.0

Wii-mote Hacks: New Uses by DJs, Doctors, Musicians, and Engineers

Posted on April 28, 2007August 20, 2008 By Bob Caswell No Comments on Wii-mote Hacks: New Uses by DJs, Doctors, Musicians, and Engineers

Wii2A DJ in the Netherlands uses his Wii-mote (what fans call the Nintendo Wii’s remote control) to mix techno music at dance parties while a medical student in Italy has reconfigured his to analyze results from CT scans. More uses? You bet. A software engineer in Los Angeles controls a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner with his, and a formally trained conductor in Connecticut is showing classical musicians how to conduct a Beethoven symphony. The musicians use Wii-motes to control a digital section of an orchestra.

Read More “Wii-mote Hacks: New Uses by DJs, Doctors, Musicians, and Engineers” »

Do-It-Yourself Tech, Gadgets, Gaming, Just For Fun, Tech News

My Two Months without Internet

Posted on April 6, 2007August 20, 2008 By Bob Caswell 1 Comment on My Two Months without Internet

Internet2The apartment complex I live in forces me to use whatever Internet connection the whole complex is on. Since I moved here last year, it’s been a local provider until that company went bankrupt. Service stopped on January 25. Not to worry, the apartment complex switched to using Verizon DSL. But that service went live on March 22.

I’m back in school getting my MBA while running TechConsumer. Here’s my story of doing both without Internet at home:

Read More “My Two Months without Internet” »

Do-It-Yourself Tech, Just For Fun, Web 2.0

Is Wikipedia the Webster for the 21st Century?

Posted on April 4, 2007August 20, 2008 By Bob Caswell 1 Comment on Is Wikipedia the Webster for the 21st Century?

WikipediaI grew up with the Webster dictionary as my guide to defining words. I remember homework assignments that started with “Webster defines…” followed by the definition of some term and a follow up question on which I would need to write a paper. Another classic use of Webster was at church. Someone preaching on love? The easiest way to begin is by stating “Webster defines love as…” and then moving on to a more eloquent expansion on the basic definition.

During this past month, both of these examples came back to me, except this time Webster was replaced by Wikipedia.

Read More “Is Wikipedia the Webster for the 21st Century?” »

Internet, Just For Fun, Tech News, Web 2.0

Why I Switched to iTunes from Musicmatch 5 Years & 5,000 Songs Later

Posted on April 3, 2007August 20, 2008 By Bob Caswell 4 Comments on Why I Switched to iTunes from Musicmatch 5 Years & 5,000 Songs Later

AppleitunesI’ve always been one to root for the underdog. In this case, I picked Musicmatch five years ago and even skipped out on the iPod craze by using another brand of digital music player. But for all my time spent with Musicmatch, I was somewhat disconnected from that group of friends big into using iTunes. So I decided to give iTunes a test run, and now I don’t think I can go back. Here’s why:

Read More “Why I Switched to iTunes from Musicmatch 5 Years & 5,000 Songs Later” »

Apple, Gadgets, Just For Fun, Music, Tech News

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