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Giants & Kina Win

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

In case you live under a rock the Giants won the Superbowl tonight in what could be called the greatest Superbowl of all time. An 83 yard drive to win it in the last 3 minutes of the fourth quarter. A few (12) Phenomenal plays by Eli Manning brought him home to mamma as the second brother in as many years with the trophy and the MVP award. Mamma must be proud, the Giants fans sure are. Final Score 17 to 14 Giants. Way to ruin a perfect 18 in 0 season Patriots.

If you tuned out during the commercials this year, or were hitting the keg, don’t worry you didn’t miss much. Well, except this little gem by Doritos:

http://www.hulu.com/embed/u-JoydCJbqS8Uuh2WnDxyQ

For those of you who have been following Kina Grannis (or any of the other contestants) in the Crash The SuperBowl contest, She Won! I’m happy for her. From unknown to household name in only a few weeks thanks to her Two Weeks for Kina campaign. Her Superbowl spot is below:

http://www.hulu.com/embed/nRA_YqhwrSEPB-Rp_G_wCA

The Mercedes Maybach

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

My friend Emily E-mailed this to me and I figured I’d share it here.

The car pictured in this note is a Mercedes Maybach. Notice the ‘recliner’ rear seats and the ‘electrostatic’ sunroof. The sunroof turns from opaque to crystal clear depending on the passengers preference.

Maybach 1

Maybach 2

Maybach 3

Maybach 4

Maybach 5

Maybach 6

NOW, STOP DREAMING AND GET BACK TO WORK! (BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT)!

Maybach 7

Save Money Flying With Yapta

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Yapta LogoPlanning a trip? Yapta can in two big ways.

  1. While you’re looking for flights. Yapta has a Firefox plug-in which allows you to tag flights across multiple websites in order to compare prices and track their price changes before purchase.
  2. After you’ve purchased your tickets. This is the best feature in my mind. Much like what PriceProtectr does for common online retail stores, Yapta allows you to list tickets you’ve purchased and at what prices so that it can monitor price drops.

Something you probably didn’t know about most airlines is many offer reimbursements for price drops on air flights. The old saying that everyone on your flight paid a different price no longer applies. Everyone can pay the same price if you’re using Yapta!

Direct from Yapta’s FAQ here’s a list of some of the vouchers and refunds available:

Each airline has a different set of rules and regulations. However, here is a quick look at the policies for each airline. Click each of the airlines for the specifics.
Airline How much it will cost to get a travel voucher? How much it will cost to get a “cash refund” for a non-refundable ticket?
AirTran $75.00 Not Offered
Alaska Free $50.00
American $100.00 Not Offered
ATA $60.00 Domestic
$100.00 Hawaii		 Not Offered
Continental $100.00 Not Offered
Delta $75.00 Not Offered
Frontier $100.00 Not Offered
JetBlue $40.00 Not Offered
Midwest Free within 7 days of purchase
$100.00 after 7 days		 Not Offered
United Free $100.00
US Airways / America West $100.00 Not Offered

The Cloverfield Case

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Rachel and I saw Cloverfield on Friday. It wasn’t planned, in fact I didn’t have a whole lot of desire to see it at least not until I heard everyone’s reaction. That being said my friend Brian called and begged us to go (read: asked if I want to see it) so naturally I didn’t want to disappoint.

Cloverfield was awesome. I thought the hand held cameras would distract you from the storyline and takeaway from the overall movie. It had the exact opposite effect. The movie simply couldn’t have worked as a regularly filmed movie, at least not successfully. The reason it worked so well is the home movie added a very personal touch. In the beginning you laughed with the characters and in the end you cried with them all because you felt you were watching your best friend’s Youtube video. The movie also portrays our current generations desire to document everything and J. J. Abrams doesn’t hide that this was part of his motivation for the movie style.

I haven’t been a fan of a movie’s ending in quite a while but Cloverfield’s ending is the only way I can imagine it. That’s not to say it doesn’t leave you with a sense of ‘WTF’ and ‘damn I hope they don’t make a sequal’ but it works regardless.

If you haven’t seen the trailer I’ve embedded it for your viewing pleasure below.

[ifilm]2913955[/ifilm]

Old and Busted, Meet New Hotness (Apple TV Take 2)

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

AppleIt’s been said before but I’ll say it again. Blueray and HD-DVD have lost and the media wars don’t matter. I thought it was going to take a lot longer than this but Streaming HD content is here. Enter the new and improved (and cheaper) Apple TV. Every Tech Blog in the world is making announcements from MacWorld 2008 and the most important announcement isn’t really the new streaming rentals, iPhone update, Time Capsule or even the new MacBook Air. The most important announcement is their Apple TV Take 2. They even admitted their first version was a failure. That’s a big step for a company like apple.

Rent High Definition Movies Directly from Your Widescreen…rent movies from a catalog of over 1,000 titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, with no computer required.

That’s it. Move over Blueray and HD-DVD, Your days are numbered. With the new ability to forgo the computer and rent or buy directly from your living room at a price point lower than most Blueray or HD-DVD players out at the moment why would you do anything else?

Apple is definitely a forward looking company and I’m glad they’re making the push for streaming media. My only wish is that they’d realize that some people would rather pay for a subscription service than pay per use.

Fix Those Pesky Unread Shared Items

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

I’m a fan of Google Reader. I’ve written here before about their new improvements and how great it is to work in an iterative development area where improvements happen daily.

Even a great team has a failure once and a while. They recently added the ability to see your Google Talk Friend’s shared items within Google Reader. While this shows that Google has great plans for integrating their services, I’ve had problems with this feature right off the bat and from what I understand I’m not the only one.

My biggest problem was that the counter of unread items would go up but my ability to read said items was gone. I could no longer get updates of my friend’s shared items essentially rendering the feature useless. If you’re like me you’ve been plagued by the following screen since they introduced the feature:

Shared Item - Wrong Count

Thanks to Graham the helpful Google Reader Guide we now have a solution and it’s easier than you think.

  1. Make sure you’re logged into Google Reader and goto Settings -> Friends.
  2. Scroll down until you see the user who’s items won’t update correctly.
  3. Click Hide. You should see a picture like so:

    Hidden Google Reader User

  4. Go back to the main page by either clicking ‘<< Back to Google Reader’ or the Google Reader logo.
  5. Your friend should no longer appear at all in the ‘Friends Shared Items’ list.
  6. Go back to Settings >> Friends.
  7. Find Him/Her again.
  8. Click ‘Show.’
  9. Go back to the main page again.
  10. It might take a second but they will appear in the list again. Once they do they’ll have a small red ‘new!’ next to their name. Click their username.

At this point you will have their new shared items displayed. From now on things will act normally and you can mark the items as read as you see fit.

These instructions are a complete interpretation of Graham the helpful Google Reader Guide’s original post.