Today i have another Ipod Touch Application to share with you guys called Ibowl. What it does is use the power of the accelerometer to control how you bowl a bowling ball on your Ipod. It’s a free application that you can download right from the App Store, and in my opinion is definitely worth the trip.
Here’s how that game play works. Once you start the actual game you will see a bowling lane, 10 pins, and a button that says bowl. What you do is hold that bowl button and swing the Ipod as if you were bowling. Once you’re at your final release point you can release the bowl button. This will cause the bowling ball to role down the lane and hopefully crash into the pins. Now there are ways in which you can manipulate the accuracy of your ball toss by either moving the ball with your finger in a diagonal type fashion, and/or using the power of the accelerometer to twist and turn the ball as it steam roles into the pin.
There are only a couple options in which you can customize on Ibowl including changing the color of the ball you are using, or turning the sound on or off. The bowling balls come in all sorts of different colors including blue, orange, yellow, green, black, pink, purple, sky blue, and tan. There is also an option on this application that allow you to challenge a friend with their high score. By clicking this link allows you to send emails to your friends using the Iphone/Ipod Touch’s email application.
That’s basically all there is to it. Once again it’s a very fun game and is great for playing with friends and familly. You can get this game from the App Store for free, allong with some other great applications such as FS5 Hockey. If you have any free applications that you would like to share with the community please feel free to comment below or send me and email.
Today I opened the Ipod Touch 2nd Generation. It went quite smoothly after the first minute of just trying to get the package open. The way Apple packaged the product was very unique in a sense of protection, simplicity, and design.
You will also notice that you can see the product this time around. In previous generations of the Ipod touch, you were not able to see the actual Ipod itself inside the packaging.
The Manuals come in several languages, and the package comes with that, the standard Ipod Earbuds, USB Connector, and of course the Apple Logo Stickers.
Tips:
When opening the Ipod Touch, be aware that it is very protected, and when unwrapped it may jerk away. For example: There is a clear plastic bendy peice on the back that is very difficult to disembark from the Ipod itself. This gives it a certain springy action when separating the two pieces.
Charge for as long as possible. It is important that before you first use the ipod to charge it for a certain amount of time. I charged mine for over 12 hours. Once you have finished charging for the first time, make sure you drain it all the way down before you go onto the second round.
On the internet, a glimmer of success can go along way either through popularity or money. The Internets power has brought people to fame, and has brought businesses to the ground. Some people have learned to deal with the internet and it’s strength, while others have crumbled beneath it’s force. This leads us to today, where I’m going to point out the Top 5 most successful websites in 2008 in my opinion. This doesn’t include 2007, 2006, or any time before that. It’s just my opinion on what websites have influenced the internet community whether it be video streaming, news making, or blogging. So let’s get started with the top 5 most successful websites in 2008 from my point of view. By the way, these are in no particular order.
1- Ustream.tv- I remember about a year ago, Ustream.tv was lucky to get just about 100 channels going, which at the time seemed like a great amount. I’ve been with Ustream for about a year now, and have just adored the service that they have provided me. They bring a professional user interface to the table unlike Stickam etc. Stickam has brought a more teenage population to online streaming, which i find to be very boring and unprofessional. Ustream has brought enthusiasm, trust, and incredible attitude to their profession, so much that they have over 700 video channels at any one time. They have also attracted influential people to the internet including Presidential hopeful John Mccain, and Barack Obama. Musicians, and Actor wannabe’s are bringing their talents to Ustream and advertising their product. Nasa has involved their NASA Television with Ustream bringing the Space Missions right to peoples screens. People Like Chris Pirillo, Cali Lewis, Leo Laporte, and much more have used Ustreams services. All of this and much more is why Ustream.tv is one of the top 5 most successful websites on the internet today.
2-Twitter- Earlier in it’s time Twitter was known as an unreliable service that allowed you to post what you were doing in 140 characters or less. From server crashes, to IM failures which unfortunately is still down today, Twitter has become one of the most influential websites in the world. With politicians such as Barack Obama using it’s services to CNN and their up-to date news feeds. Twitter has spread news throughout the world in just 1 line. It was Twitter that brought information on Barack Obama’s running mate, it was Twitter that has potentially saved hostages in the middle east, it was Twitter that has brought other websites to fame. The road for Twitter hasn’t been easy though. As I’ve mentioned earlier, it had plenty of server crashes coming out of nowhere, so much that now Twitter has added limitations to how many “Tweets” you may send, and how many people you may follow. As I’ve expressed earlier, these limitations have disappointed me due to my needs of reaching you (the community). The New York Times have called Twitter one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet. Twitter has also influenced other companies to make products that create an ease of access to your Twitter account. Examples of this would be Twhirl, Ping.Fm, Twitter Feed. Iphone Applications have also be developed to access Twitter. Although it still has a few bugs to work out, Twitter is definately one of the top 5 most successful websites of 2008.
3-TechCrunch-
TechCrunch, founded on June 11, 2005, is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.
That is just a little information from their website. Techcrunch has influenced the technology community with no end since it’s first post in 2005. But 2008 is when Techcrunch really came out and brought opinion, information, and authority to profiling new, and interesting companies. Techcrunch has been featured in hundreds of online news articles, magazines, and much more. Tech Crunch has also brought more interest to the popular blogging Software Wordpress as this is the software that they use in providing their service to the online community. Now Wordpress is used by major news organizations like the CBC and Cnn. These are all just a few reasons why Tech Crunch is 1 of the top 5 most successful websites of 2008.
4-Google- I know i said that this post was going to be the top 5 most successful websites of 2008, but i couldn’t resist. Google even today is “taking the over the internet” From their Search engine first being created over 10 years ago, to the reality today where they have become an internet powerhouse. With present projects like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and much more. Google has accomplished more than anyone else in plenty of different adversities. Google has also brought money to other people using their Google Adwords and Adsense Programs where people put relative ad units to their content and make money every time someone clicks on an add. This is otherwise known as PPC. Adsense has become so popular that Googles rival Yahoo has wanted in. Yahoo is now embedding Googles Adsense into their search results. This is bringing millions if not billions of dollars to both companies. Below i’ve taken a little history from their Wikipedia Page to give you guys a little more information on what Google has done throughout the years.
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford.[1] In search for a dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph.[2] His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pick this idea (which Page later recalled as “the best advice I ever got”[3]) and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind).[2] In his research project, nicknamed “BackRub”, he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend, whom he had first met in the summer of 1995 in a group of potential new students which Brin had volunteered to show around the campus.[2] Page’s web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page’s own Stanford home page as its only starting point.[2] To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm.[2] Analyzing BackRub’s output—which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance—it occurred to them that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).[2][4] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[5]
Google In 1998
Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.
The name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol,”[6][7] which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, “google,” was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.”[8][9]
By the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages.[10] The home page was still marked “BETA“, but an article in Salon.com already argued that Google’s search results were better than those of competitors like Hotbot or Excite.com, and praised it for being more technologically innovative than the overloaded portal sites (like Yahoo!, Excite.com, Lycos, Netscape’s Netcenter, AOL.com, Go.com and MSN.com) which at that time, during the growing dot-com bubble, were seen as “the future of the Web”, especially by stock market investors.[10]
In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[11] After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999.[12] The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.[13]
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[14] In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[1] The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.[1] Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and click-throughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click.[1] This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing).[15][16][17] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.[1]
Google’s declared code of conduct is “Don’t be evil“, a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka “red herring” or “S-1″) for their IPO, noting, “We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”
The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries.[18] Known as “Google Doodles”, most have been drawn by Google’s international webmaster, Dennis Hwang.[19] Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek Klingon and Leet.[20] The logo is also notorious among web users for April Fool’s Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.
5-Apple- Although it in itself is not a company, Apple has influenced the website through it’s products such as the Iphone, Macbook Pro, Macbook, Ipod Touch, Ipod Nano, and much more. It has also influenced the internet with it’s unique web design, and simplicity it brings to the internet. The Apple website is one of the most vibrantly designs website I’ve seen, and the speed, and support is just remarkable. Apple has also been the cause for new websites such as Mac Rumors which is a website that brings information all related to Apple. Apple has also brought competition into their hemisphere. With Google now releasing their Android Phone, Apple now has competition with their Iphone, further forcing them to create revolutionary products. Apple has also brought controversy about the health of their CEO Steve Jobs. Although this isn’t directly related to their website it has brought attention to the company. Apple has also been a supporter of product Red. Product Red is a charity dedicated to saving lives in unfortunate companies such as Africa and Madagascar. All of this is why Apple has become one of the major powerhouse within the Internet community.
Well I hope i’ve made my point about all these companies. There are plenty more influential websites throughout the internet, but these 5 just seemed to stick out in my mind. All of these companies have generated millions of dollars not just to themselves but to others as well. They have brought the world together through communication, news, search, and their products.
If you have any more influential websites that you think have influenced the internet whether in a positive way, or a negative way please feel free to email me by clicking here. Or leave a comment below. I love hearing what you guys think the latest and greatest is within the technology community whether it’s hardware, software, or even the internet. I also have a Twitter account, and i follow all people that follow me.
There are many great, advanced, and exciting products available to us on the market now including computers, iPods, and GPS devices with the smartest people in the world creating them. Engineers, and Scientists work on these new products constantly which leaves the question… Have we reached our limit? In my opinion the extreme laziness of teenagers in this modern age is reaching a once thought undiscovered high. Students are dropping out of high school more than ever, It is becoming increasingly rare to see students making their way to some sort of post secondary education, and spell check on computers are making it easier for people to fix their spelling with just a click of a button. By the soundings of this English will never be the same.
Entertainment is in my opinion considered to be a resource to life in most of our youth today. In some cases not even a resource, a strict part of their daily lives. Statistics are showing that entertainment is used by a majority if not all youth today and rapidly growing. This is good for the vendors, but in my opinion horrible for the youth.
OK i don’t think i started this off very well, so I’ll make my exhausting attempt to get the point. Are we going to be able to keep these amazing new products up with laziness expanding through our youth? Will the future of the world be smart enough to handle hard work rather than products being made for them? Will the Youth of today be able to create, manage, and run large corporations like Apple, or Microsoft?
As I have pointed out earlier, the spelling of todays youth is just plain outrageous. Furthermore it bashes the use of propper english with shorter acronums like ttyl or lol. Is this our new way of communication? I myself am a teen and i hate seing or hearing those shortened phrases. To me it shows a lack of respect and i think it’s just plain rude. This attaches to school, and now a great amount of them are seeing lower than average English spelling marks, along with a handful of other marks.
You can blame technology, yourself, or others but anyway you slice it there seems to be less students graduating, and more “sales jobs” available. That means less are going to university to get the brains. I would really be interested to see or hear what you guys think on this topic. Feel free to comment below or send me an email at bradley@bradwelltv.com.
Email has been advancing in every possible way throughout the internet, and has been on the desktop using programs like Outlook, Thunderbird, and now WindowMail for a substantial amount of time. The only question is which one should you use? Well it really depends on how you like to view your email. In most cases you can’t really differentiate which one is dominant over the other, but there are a few tweaks here and there that make each one unique.
Outlook really makes your mail look fancy, and has allot of different costimizable options available. Outlook also comes with allot of organizational features like a calender and other interactive products while Thunderbird is basic mail. Now if you wanted to include Window Mail into this comparison, it would be a complete knockout and in my opinion WindowMail shouldn’t be around period.
Outlook has really advanced since 2002 and 2003 with the easier ability to organize your contacts and email on your desktop, while Thunderbird sticks to the basics and leaves you with a list of your email which i have nothing against. It all depends which way you want your email sorted either by date, or by arrival.
So as I’ve been hinting throughout this post, the choice really depends on what your needs are. I find that using IMAP on Thunderbird is an easier process than IMAP on other Desktop Clients so therefor I’ve stuck with Thunderbird. Some people find it easier to work with Outlook and their more of a glossy feel.
I’ve used both Outlook and Thunderbird, and in my opinion it’s really difficult to differenciate which one is the best. Both of them are very well bilt in a similar fasion, and both work mirraculasly. So try them both out and see what gets you going, or consult a friend or a family memeber and question their experience with either one of these products. As for WindowMail, i don’t even want to talk about it any longer.
Gnomedex hosted by Chris and Ponzi Pirillo, has been yet one of the biggest successes ever performed by the couple. They had very powerful and thought oriented people that clashed together with positive thoughts to make technology more recognized throughout North America, and the world.
Whether it was Sarah Lacy or Mark Bao each presenter had something positive to say and contributed to the tech community around them in some cases involving the community. Ben Huh came in and showed the soft, funny side of the technology community around us, while Scott Maxwell came and showed us what the technology can do to help us advance and linger in the outer limits of our world.
Chris Pirillo dazzled the audience and the chat room with insight, thought, professionalism, creativity, and acceptance. Highlights of the conference included a youth from Chris’s chat room hugging his role model with respect and praise. Chris involved anyone and everyone whether it was a buddy from Ireland, or a local
Chris Pirillo’s (Un-moderated) chatroom also made a spectacular appearance being one of the most respectful television audiences I’ve seen in my entire life. With detailed and intelligent questions, this chatroom could be the brain of technology future alike. Credit for that goes to Kat Armstrong, and Chris Pirillo.
The Pirillo couple also amazed the technology world with his amazing team working the cameras on his live feed. He created it so that the viewers of the tech community felt like they were present and apart of this conference.
Chris also mentioned at the end of this 3 day conference that him and his wife Ponzi are considering moving around the country delivering this technology influenced content to different states, and cities of America.
As this is over, Chris will move back into his office at home in Seattle , and still stream himself plucking away at his keyboard with a trusting community that will follow and respect him for the road ahead whether there is a Gnomedex or not.
