Recently, a reader commented on my post about Open Source gaming, and continued to defend my post to another commenter. He then continued to link to my post from his blog (quite interesting read). So to bug/Salmar/Questionmark/fortyseventeen (and any other aliases you might retain), thanks.

The point of that paragraph rant was to explain how I began my day researching these user bars…. fortyseventeen wrote about them. He explained them best:

“[They] are an interesting idea; you make a bunch of shiny 350×19px PNGs each showing off something interesting or unique about you and put them in a neat little stack in your forum sig for all to see. It’s not an entirely bad idea, and their aesthetic is quite chic, but the vast majority of them are basically product endorsements—empty expressions of fanboi-ness.”

(Show me more…)

Hate DRM (Digital Rights Management, the shit that keeps you from having free use of your music)? Yeah, me too; that’s why I wrote this.

hair vitamins for women Essentially I am about to walk you through how to download DRM protected music from Ruckus’s 1.7 million song library (the popular FREE music service for college students) that usually expires in 30 days and can’t be used in iTunes or any .mp3 player; and convert it to an .mp3 (or unprotected .wma) that can be used universally with any media player and put on an iPod (or other not so cool .mp3 player). -For pirating educational purposes, of course-
This is lengthy, you may want to print it off to follow along; though, don’t be intimidated by its length, after you do it once, it’s wicked easy the second (third, fourth, fifth… thousandth) time.

(Show me more…)

Before I even attempt this post I want to get a couple things out of the way:

1. Full disclosure: I work in higher-ed sales for Apple Inc.
2. This is a HUGE topic and cannot be covered by one person in one post. A lengthy anthology should be written by 1000’s of experts.
3. This is at the request of a dedicated reader.

Read more after the jump.
(Show me more…)