Posts Tagged ‘internet’

The spoiled under 30 crowd

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Space InvadersThose old people are always complaining, here they go again:

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes (look it up) about how hard things were when they were growing up. What with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill, both ways.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay nonsense like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the internet. If we wanted to know
something, we had to go to the stupid library and look it up ourselves, in the
card catalogue! There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3′s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up!

We didn’t have fancy assistance like call waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it! And we didn’t have fancy caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you
just didn’t know. You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600, with games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination. And there were no multiple levels or screens it was just one screen forever! You could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only M-Net and there was no on screen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV guide to find out what was on! You had no chance when it came to channel surfing, you had to get off your behind and walk over to the TV to change the Channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little
brats!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove, imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid jiffy pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

American iTunes Store Account

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

iTunes StoreFor those countries which have iTunes Stores, setting up and purchasing items from the store is simple and easy. You just click sign in, create account, and off you go. But for countries without iTunes Stores, or iTunes Stores which only have certain content, getting the content you want is not so easy.

I doubt there will be anybody who will deny that out of all the iTunes Stores in the world, America has the best selection. So everybody wants an American account, even those that have iTunes stores in their country. For millions of people around the world, piracy is their main music and movie distributor. iTunes provides a simple paying alternative and because of the great content and ease of use many people prefer it to pirating their music. Unfortunately the studios, record labels and governments of the countries around the world don’t seem to see the benefit of making iTunes access a priority when it comes to fighting piracy. So some countries end up with no stores, and others have very little in their stores.

We found a way for anybody, from anywhere, to get an American iTunes store account and buy their music from the best music store in the world. Although what is being done does seem to be a loop hole in law and Apple’s policies, it still feels a little underhanded.

The best acceptable way to get an account is to get an American friend to create one for you with their address and details. If your credit card is not from an American bank you will not be able to register. So the way to get around this is to purchase gift vouchers for the iTunes store account and use those to pay for your music.

It sounds simple enough, but not everybody has a friend in the states, and getting gift cards on the internet can lead to scams. So what do you do? Step in tunecard.biz. A legitimate company that you can buy iTunes gift vouchers from. If you want, they will even set up an account for you.

UPDATE: tunecars.biz has closed down. This may or may not be due to Apple or dodge behavior, or maybe both. The only other way to get the vouchers is to buy them from ebay.com. If you do this, we recommend only buying from Top sellers. Look out for the Top Seller logo next to their name.

iPhoneAll you need is a paypal account and you’re on your way. We decided to give them a test run and see if this was all real. We had to set up a paypal account and get our credit card confirmed which took two days. After that we went through to their site, clicked on the amount we wanted and paid them through paypal. We were then directed to a page which asks for your details so that they could either set up your new account or put money into your existing account. After completion we received a confirmation e-mail from the site, thanking us for our payment. In just two hours we had an e-mail with our new account details. After logging on, our account had already been credited with the amount requested and we were free to download music.

It was simple, easy and the service was fantastic. If you want to pay for your music and have quality albums for great prices this service is your golden ticket. But I can’t stop wondering how legal this process is. After looking into Apple’s policy you can’t begin to deny that this process is not accepted by Apple. Their very first clause is that you must be in the United States to use the service. Here is the excerpt:

U.S. SALES ONLY

Purchases or rentals (as applicable) from the iTunes Store are available to you only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes Store from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.

After further investigation it seems there are very different and confusing tax laws in the different countries. This reason alone is probably good enough to stop outside buyers. So, unfortunately those of us who want to obey the rules have hit another brick wall. Although I think Apple is simply covering themselves from law suits, they can block your access if they catch you. It’s back to the drawing board for those of us who are too impatient to wait for our own great stores.

Safari – Reviewed

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Safari for WindowsApple launched the Windows version of their web browser, Safari, to the public just a few months ago. After all this hands on time with the program I think, pro Apple bias aside, that Safari blows Internet Explorer out of the water.

To begin, Safari has the same look and feel as iTunes. It feels clean cut, polished and advanced beyond Internet Explorer’s years. The top bar is clean and has a minimalist feel to it.

Apple claims that Safari is the fastest web browser, and they are correct. You will see a noticeable difference in page load times, and site functionality.

It comes with everything you’ll ever need including bookmarks, RSS feeds, tabs, a search bar and more.

Additional extras over Internet Explorer include Forms AutoFill – something Explorer sort of has but it doesn’t work like this. Pop up blocking that doesn’t have this huge ugly bar across your screen. It just works; you never even know pop ups are there. Sites that are supposed to work just do and sites that have pop ups will work perfectly without you knowing a pop up was even there. Other nice features include find, where you can search the text on the page, and a spell check as you write.

Safari did have one problem when it first launched but that was taken care of quickly. I believe them when they claim Safari is very secure.

When using Internet Explorer it would slow down when I opened more tabs and often crashed if I had too many open. Safari works with the tabs effortlessly, making internet browsing exactly what it should be, quick, easy, and fun.

You haven’t surfed the internet until you’ve used Safari, and you will never go back.