12/23/2008 @ 8:18 am by Daniel Eisner
Six months ago I took my iPhone into a hot tub with me. It wasn’t on purpose – I had it in my bathing suit pocket (because, where else would you carry it?).
I immediately realized my mistake, and rushed to dry it off. If you search the Internet, you’ll find that the beat thing [...]
8/16/2008 @ 12:00 pm by Daniel Eisner
The VOX External Hard Drive (v1) is a solid is a great and near-silent external hard drive for almost any purpose. Like other external hard drives, it will work with all the major operating systems: Linux, OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista without any problems. It comes pre-formatted as a single NTFS partition. Read on for the full review.
7/30/2008 @ 6:13 am by Daniel Eisner
A Telnet client for your iPhone or iPod Touch! This client can be used for interactive communication with another host using the TELNET protocol.
It implements a simple terminal emulator, and can be used to connect to any standard telnet server including Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X, Cisco, or even Windows as long as telnet services [...]
7/10/2008 @ 8:08 am by Daniel Eisner
Space Wormy is now available for iPhone and iPod Touch!
You can play a free demo online. The online version has simpler graphics and gameplay than the full version. It works both on a PC web browser and from the iPhone.
You can get the full version through the iTunes Store. It has much better graphics, sound effects, and more!
6/24/2008 @ 5:07 pm by Daniel Eisner
I’ll admit it. When I was younger I used to pirate music, movies, games, and software. I was a poor high school and later college student. I had no money. I couldn’t afford to buy those things. If I didn’t find a way to get it for free, I just couldn’t get it, period. It wasn’t a question of wanting to pay or what the market thought was fair. I just didn’t have any.
That was a while ago. Now I have a job. And I don’t pirate any more. Partially, this is because I’ve been a software developer, and I see things more “from the other side.” But mostly, its because I can. I have $50 to my name so that I can go out and buy that game I wanted, or the box set dvd’s, or whatever (not to say I don’t think they are overpriced).
That’s why I’ve always thought that the piracy numbers given out by the movie (MPAA), music (RIAA), and software (BSA) industry groups have been complete garbage. I mean, Billions of dollars? Common, that’s rediculous. Just because someone has pirated your software/song/movie doesn’t mean they are willing to pay for it. That’s always been my assertion, but of course I could never prove it.
Luckily, Russel Carrol, Director of Marketing at Reflexive (a PC game company) has done it for me. In an article posted at Gamasutra, he lays out a very data-driven and scientific analysis of the company’s piracy rates both before and after taking steps which reduced piracy. Read the article. Really.
His conclusion: Only 1 in 1,000 pirates are actually willing to purchase the product.
Does it still seem worth suing college kids, guys?
6/2/2008 @ 1:39 pm by Daniel Eisner
For the past few years, I’ve been using a Mac Mini as my main HTPC. This has worked out really great, as the Mini is a small, quiet piece of hardware, and generally Apple’s iTunes/Frontrow is simple, intuitive, and impressive as a content management system.
As my collection of media grew, I started to run out [...]
