If you own a Nintendo Wii Console and would like to place your Wii console somewhere away from the TV, then you might be interested in this deal from Amazon.com
Amazon has a one-day deal for the sensor bar at $8.99 & free shipping (usual price is $19.99) today.
I did a review of this wireless sensor bar a while back and recommend it for those of you who need one.
I don't spend much time on this blog talking about blogging because I know that's not why you're here. Still, I wanted to mention a milestone reached today for the blog.
Today, we achieved over 100,000 views in just over one year. In addition we're getting about 200 links in just the past six months from other sites. This may not seem like much to some of you, but to me it's pretty special as I remember the early months of being excited to have 100 hits in a day & now reaching about 1,000 hits a day certainly is a step in the right direction...
Both of these are significant milestones to me as I run this blog as mostly a hobby. I have my day job and keep pretty busy with other stuff, but take time out of each evening and morning to post tech how-to's, technology news and other related content that I think you might find interesting. I do this because I enjoy it and like to share the things I'm learning.
I do have limited advertising on the site, but it's really just there to cover my overhead and just a little more. Here's a special thanks to all of the readers for your continued support. Keep coming back and I'll do my best to make this site useful and interesting for you.
I also wanted to mention that I've updated my "What I'm Reading" list with more of the websites and blogs I read frequently. You can always find this list updated at the right side-bar of this blog near the bottom of the page. Here's the latest list with a selection of blogs & sites I'm reading:
Thanks to everyone who is reading (and hopefully enjoying) the site and to all of you who are linking to stories on this Geek Tonic Blog I really appreciate you!
Some HTPC Recent News Links:
Has Dave Zatz discovered the Replay TV PC Hardware Edition Tuner?
Gizmodo's Story on The Release of Beyond TV 4.7.1 with focus on the new iTunes Integration - Link is to Digg
Chris Lanier Reports: Sony Is Not Out of the Media Center Market
Floppyhead.com asks: Can Vista Media Center Extenders Save You Money?
Ccarlin - a Beyond TV user has added RSS Feed Functionality to BeyondTV 4.7!
DVR Bulletin has a story on Cable & Satellite Providers Subsidizing DVRs. I'm really enjoying the DVR Bulletin and will be adding it to my recommended blogs list today.
HTPC KEYBOARD CHEAT SHEET SERIES
I've completed four of the six Home Theater PC (HTPC) Keyboard Cheat Sheets so far and hope to finish the last two by early next week. If you use one of these HTPC software programs, check out your keyboard cheat sheet. I have them organized into categories for easy use and also included a PDF download for convenience.
Windows Vista Media Center and XP MCE Cheat Sheet
Beyond TV & Beyond Media Cheat Sheet
Mac Front Row Cheat Sheet: Coming Soon
MythTV Cheat Sheet: Coming Soon
In honor of the upcoming College Football Weekend I'm bringing you a compilation of great College Football Tools for the Techie Fans - you know like me. These are all useful and pretty cool as well. I plan to be in attendance when Missouri beats Nebraska this weekend (I hope at least...) and writing this post is good therapy for me as I try to hold back my excitement. If you're a LSU, USC, California, Ohio State, Kansas State, Wisconsin, South Florida, Boston College, Florida, Oklahoma
or any other College Football Fan this is the post for you.
College Football Recruiting Map
First up is the College Football Recruiting Map which showcases college football recruits by town and University. Select a State, University or College Football Conference by using the selectors in the bottom left panel. Blue dots represent the players towns (hometown, prep school town, or community college town), while red dots represent the Universities selected. You can switch between towns and universities using the button selector in the top right panel. If you would like to view players within a 100 mile radius, enter the desired zip code in the zip code box in the bottom left panel.
This is an example using my personal favorite, the Missouri Tigers. The map flags all cities from which 2007 Missouri Tigers College Football Recruits hometowns are located.
Check out the College Football Recruiting Map HERE
MAPGAMEDAY
Heading to a College Game and want to get the details of the stadium and surrounding amenities? There's no better place then MapGameDay.com. Here you'll be able to find any Div1 College, see a Google Map of the stadium and surrounding area and search for hotels, restaurants and other amenities in the area.
COLLEGE FIGHT SONG DATABASE
For a place to refresh your memory of your schools fight songs there is only one place you need to go. FightMusic.com has a very comprehensive database with all of the top schools fight songs as well as many other school songs you might want to get a refresher on and hear that schools band play the song.
COLLEGE FIGHT SONG LYRICS
You can look up the lyrics to those College Fight Songs at THIS SITE
GOOGLE MAPS OVERLAY OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL STADIUMS
You can check out the Google Mapplet from mapgameday.com. The new Google Mapplet lets you overlay College Football Stadiums over your travels on Google's My Maps. Headed on Vacation. Enter your itinerary into Google's Maps, then the mapplet to see stadiums close to your trip.
MapGameDay's Google Maplet overlay of DivI College Football Stadiums
COLLEGE FOOTBALL HELMET MAP
How about a map with The Team's Helmets marking their stadium. Check it out below
To see the College Football Map in full-screen, CLICK HERE
COLLEGE FOOTBALL SCHEDULE MAKER
Next is a tool that lets you create your own College Football Schedule - display the football schedule customized by team, conference, time-zone and week.
Read more about the College Schedule Maker HERE
COLLEGE FOOTBAL NEWS AGGREGATOR
Last up is a Yahoo Pipe that aggregates ESPN, Fox, CBS and CNN RSS feeds for College Football and sorts by the most recent stories
Check out the College Football News Aggregator HERE
COLLEGE FOOTBALL BLOGS AND SITES TO CHECK OUT
Fanblogs.com - Covers all major college football teams
College Football Blog - Another good blog with coverage of all the Div 1 teams
College Football Resource - All things college football
In The Bleachers - Another excellent college football blog
Every Day Should Be a Saturday - Can't not like this one. Great content and great name!
That should do it for now. Now go cheer for your team! And if you don't have a team, cheer for the Missouri Tigers vs. Nebraska on ESPN Saturday Night!!!
If you know of any I'm missing here, be sure to let me know in the comments.
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CBC News Ran This Expose Story on Getting Gouged By Geeks. It highlights the quality (or lack thereof) of the various in-home geek services such as Geek Squad, Firedog and others and how they can take advantage of those less-then-tech-savvy people who call on them to help them with tech help at home.
My wife and daughter joke that we should put in a 900 number for my family and friends who often call or e-mail me with pleas for help with their computer, internet or some other tech device (yea even the VCR's & Car clocks can be included in this category.) I think they do this not only for the cheap rate (I don't charge them of course) & the convenience, but also the fact that there aren't a lot of reliable places for them to go for tech help.
Watch the 3 minute video preview below. It shows you the point of the story with some pretty bad screw-ups masquerading as tech helpers.
If you want to see the entire video, head over the CBC News.
My local library has an online site where I can search for books, CD's, DVD's etc. It's a decent way of finding materials, but sometimes they don't have what I'm looking for. So then I have to go to another library's site (there are more then one library networks in my City) and search on their site. To make matters worse, on both of those sites, I'm required to have a membership to search. What I want is one place to search for any type of library materials that will tell me which library's have that book (or whatever content) ranked by how close they are to me. Enter WorldCat.
WorldCat is a publicly accessible, online web search that delves into the holdings of all types of libraries throughout the world. It includes over 57,000 libraries in 112 countries! Tell it what book, magazine, journal, video etc. you're looking for along with your zip code or city, and lists the nearest library's that have the book. A nonprofit organization called the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) created the database and site.
What other things can WorldCat do? It also includes services such as citation exporting, list making, & text samples. You can even use it to create a private or public index of titles. Also has the ability to search public lists created by others. There's a place to read & write reviews of materials right in their catalog. Also included are Amazon & Worldcat purchase links if you just want to purchase the book or other media you were searching for.
HOW IT WORKS:
First, head over to worldcat.org and type in a search term. If you don't specify your zip code, it will go based on your internet service's zip.
Next, you'll see a list of results for your search. In this case I searched for Harry Potter so it will bring up all of the different Harry Potter books, audiotapes, DVD's etc.
Next after you select one of the books etc, you'll see a list of results ranked in order of the closest libraries. All types of libraries are included such as local community libraries, university libraries etc.)
At the top of the results page, you can see there are many different things you can do from here including further searches by category, purchase from Amazon.com, add it to your personal favorite list, review the item, view other peoples notes/reviews on the item etc.
Bottom line, WorldCat is a great service that I'll be bookmarking for future reference.
Hopefully you are enjoying your time reading this blog. If you are and you would like to keep up with the posts I have many great ways to do that.
SUBSCRIBE 
2. Subscribe to the E-mail Feed - This is simple to do. Just enter your e-mail address in the "subscribe to e-mail" box (it's located at the top right of this blog). When you subscribe by e-mail, you'll receive an e-mail each morning (only when there are new posts) there are new posts on this Blog. NOTE: You can always unsubscribe at any time and I will NEVER spam you or give out or sell your e-mail address.
COMMENT
I encourage everyone to comment on the posts at this blog.
At the bottom of each of my posts, you'll see this: 
Click on those words (at the bottom of the post of course) and enter your comment. You can post anonymously or use your blogger login to post a comment.
I work hard to answer comments and it's fun to talk to the people who visit. I will delete any posts that are outright spam or could be viewed as offensive.
E-MAIL ME
Wan't to send me a note? Have a question and don't want to make it a public comment? Just send me an e-mail. I use contactify for receiving e-mails so my e-mail doesn't get harvested by those pesky spammers, but I will respond to any e-mails I receive from my readers (except for those spammers of course.)
Other ways to keep up with me?
StumbleUpon - This is one of my favorite ways of finding new, interesting stuff on the web.
Digg - Another great way of finding fresh, interesting stuff on the web. Add me as a contact/friend and I'll see what stories you dug and you'll see what I dugg. In the end we'll likely digg many of the same stories because of similar interests.
MyBlogLog - For those of you bloggers out there, add me to your network and I'll add your blog to mine.
Technorati - Doesn't work the greatest for me, but still a decent source of blog data and feeds
Do You own a Nintendo Wii Game Machine? Nintendo is giving away free Wii Remote Jackets for anyone who owns a wii remote. Why you might ask? Well I'm thinking it has something to do with lawyers worrying about people being still not attaching the wrist strap to their arm and not holding the remote securely in their hand and then having it slip out of hand into tv, friend dog etc. and then causing a lawsuit. Silly? Yes. Still, I'll be ordering one for each remote I own just because.... well because it's free and hey, my WiiMote probably needs a jacket for the winter.
Head over to Nintendo's site to order your Free Remote Jacket
Related Stories:
Convert Classic Nintendo Controllers to work with Wii
Just last week I highlighted a bunch of great games using flickr, a photo sharing site. Well today I bring you another neat flickr game - this one is a photo slider game. The game created by noviKorisnik is simple yet fun and works by taking any photo on flickr and then scrambling the photo into multiple puzzle pieces (# of pieces depends on the dimensions of the photo.) An extra box is left blank and you "slide" the pieces around to unscramble the photo.
Here's what you need to install the game:
Now that the greasemonkey script is installed, head over to any photo page on flickr and at the top right of the photo you should see %puzzle. Click on %puzzle and the game will begin. To stop the game, use your mouse to click anywhere outside the game area of the puzzle.
Here's a screencast video demo of the game in action:
As you can see, I'm not that great at solving puzzles (they do require patience you know) so I didn't solve the one in the video above, but I have solved a few using this game and its fun - great timewaster!
For more flickr games click here
For the complete, ultimate flickr add-ons, hacks and scripts database, click HERE
If you haven't subscribed to this blog yet do so by Clicking HERE
A new, lesser-publicized feature of the most recent Beyond TV 4.7 that was just released is RSS Feeds. With this latest version of BeyondTV, the webadmin provides access to RSS feeds of your upcoming recordings, recent recordings, disk space remaining and recent showsqueezed (compressed) recordings. These feeds can include the hyperlink to open up a show or the hyperlink can be turned off.
I should note that this feature was added by none other than Ccarlin the same BTV user who developed another feature on the BeyondTV Webadmin - the ability to placeshift any record BeyondTV shows across the internet. For more on how to placeshift Beyond TV shows across the internet, check out this post.
There are several applications to this feature including:
HOW TO SET UP RSS FEEDS FOR BEYOND TV:
First, you'll need to have your Beyond TV Webadmin set up. Also if you want to access your feeds across the internet, you'll want to be sure and set up your firewall for that kind of access (here's how)
The RSS feed is as follows:
Note: Insert your BTV Server IP address or name in the place of "LOCALHOST"
The options for the different RSS feeds are as follows:
D - Disk space, R - Recent recordings, U - Upcoming Recordings, B - Blocked Recordings, S - Show Squeeze and Links is Y or N.
For example, if you wanted a feed with only the upcoming and recent recordings, the RSS address would be as follows:
Note that if will be using the rss feeds on a publicly accessible place such as a blog, you will want to be sure you have the Links=N set so that others viewing the feed won't have access to your server ip address or name.
Read more about the latest version of Beyond TV 4.7.1 HERE
ZipSkinny is a site where you enter a zip code and it presents you with detailed data from the 2000 census report as well as a map of the area.
It's another good way to scope out a neighborhood or even check out things you might not have known about your neighborhood.
On Tuesday, October 2nd, Season One of the excellent, Jericho Television show will be released to DVD.
When it became known that Jericho was going to be canceled last Spring, Fans of Jericho sent in piles of peanuts to the network to send them a message.
Anyone who saw the season finale would recognize the peanuts reference to a wartime gesture of defiance. It probably wasn't just the nuts, but CBS finally broke down and renewed the show for Season 2 if only for seven episodes. For it to continue, the ratings will have to be good so I'm doing my part and make sure everyone knows to give the show a try. It's a great show and you won't be disappointed.
BASIC STORYLINE OF JERICHO:
After a nuclear disaster caused by several terrorist attacks destroys most of America, residents of a small Kansas town (Jericho) must come to terms with a new and very different reality. Think Red Dawn but much more of the story is about the people and how they deal with their new reality. They don't know who attacked America or why. There is some espionage and some action, but a good part of the storyline is about some great, compelling characters in a great story.
DID YOU MISS SEASON 1 AND WANT TO SEE WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT?
Here's a few ways to get caught up on the first season of Jericho:
OPTION 1: Apple iTunes Click the button to the right to view Jericho on iTunes: 
OPTION 2: Amazon Unbox: Click the link to the right to view Jericho on Amazon Unbox: Jericho Season 1
OPTION 3: Amazon DVD Purchase: Click the link to the right to purchase the DVD:Jericho Season 1
OPTION 4: Rent Jericho Season 1 at Netflix add it to your queue now for delivery Tuesday, Oct 2nd.
OPTION 5: Watch the shows streamed on NBC.com - NBC has all episodes available to watch online for free.
WHEN WILL JERICHO SEASON 2 PREMIER?
Jericho will return as a mid-season replacement sometime late this Fall or Early 2008. I for one will be watching and hoping the show is successful enough for a third season to be picked up.
The New York Daily News had a few interesting tidbits about the coming 2nd season
"Now that the show is back on the map, said Carol Barbee (executive producer), hard-core fans and newcomers alike should be able to enjoy, and understand, what's happening when the show returns. (No start date has been set for the seven-episode run.) The town of Jericho "has taken a step forward," since the finale, she said, "so it's going to be new information for everybody. And I think we do a pretty good job setting up what this new world is and understanding who the players are."
Barbee said the second-season premiere will begin with last season's cliffhanger battle, then jump a couple of weeks to show the town as it rebuilds."
Want some more Jericho inside info? ign.com has a bunch of information about the coming season including excerpts from an interview with the producers. Some of the more interesting information from the article is this on the second season:
"A big question on everybody's mind was when we would actually see the seven episode Jericho: Season Two. Zreik told us that unfortunately, they had no set answer for that yet, with anywhere between November until January a possibility, depending on CBS's schedule, how their new fall series do, and when they decide to run some of their mid-season slate, including Jericho."
Whatever you do, give Jericho a chance and check out Season 1 with one of the links above. It's a quality show that deserves to continue.
Related Posts:
CBS to Fans: Watch Jericho Live
Listing of all Fall TV Season Premiers w/ PDF Download
DVR TV Watcher will be Counted With New Nielsen Rating Method
Hard to believe, but there are still plenty of new TV premiers starting this week. Anything I'll be watching? I'm not so sure, but if you have any suggestions of good ones in this list let me know.
| 9/30/2007 | Sunday | Brothers & Sisters | (ABC) | |
| 9/30/2007 | Sunday | Desperate Housewives | (ABC) | |
| 9/30/2007 | Sunday | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition | (ABC) | |
| 9/30/2007 | Sunday | American Dad | (FOX) | |
| 9/30/2007 | Sunday | Brotherhood | (SHOWTIME) | |
| 9/30/2007 | Sunday | Dexter | (SHOWTIME) | |
| 10/1/2007 | Monday | ** Aliens In America | NEW | (CW) |
| 10/1/2007 | Monday | Everybody Hates Chris | (CW) | |
| 10/1/2007 | Monday | Girlfriends | (CW) | |
| 10/1/2007 | Monday | The Game | (CW) | |
| 10/1/2007 | Monday | ** Dr. Steve-O | NEW | (USA) |
| 10/1/2007 | Monday | ** Wizards of Waverly Place | NEW | (Disney) |
| 10/2/2007 | Tuesday | ** Carpoolers | NEW | (ABC) |
| 10/2/2007 | Tuesday | ** Cavemen | NEW | (ABC) |
| 10/2/2007 | Tuesday | Exalted! | (BET) | |
| 10/2/2007 | Tuesday | Sunday Best | (BET) | |
| 10/2/2007 | Tuesday | Queer Eye for the Straight Guy | (Bravo) | |
| 10/3/2007 | Wednesday | ** Better Half | NEW | (Bravo) |
| 10/3/2007 | Wednesday | ** Pushing Daisies | NEW | (ABC) |
| 10/3/2007 | Wednesday | Sarah Silverman Program | (Comedy) | |
| 10/3/2007 | Wednesday | South Park | (Comedy) | |
| 10/4/2007 | Thursday | American Gangster | (BET) | |
| 10/4/2007 | Thursday | Drawn Together | (Comedy) | |
| 10/4/2007 | Thursday | Supernatural | (CW) | |
| 10/4/2007 | Thursday | 30 Rock | (NBC) | |
| 10/4/2007 | Thursday | Law & Order: Criminal Intent | (NBC) | |
| 10/5/2007 | Friday | Friday Night Lights | (NBC) | |
| 10/7/2007 | Sunday | America’s Funniest Home Videos | (ABC) | |
| 10/7/2007 | Sunday | ** Life is Wild | NEW | (CW) |
For the full listing check out the original post on the new, Fall 2007 Television Season
And if you missed any from last week, you might want to check out this post: More Free Downloads for Network TV Shows
It's almost Monday & Time to Review the past weeks posts. If you missed any of the blog posts from the past week here's a quick summary:
I was browsing digg this morning and ran across what I think might be the most amazing, free web tool available today for photo editing. This web application is called Rsizr and is very similar to the "seam carving" tool I saw demo'd at Robert Scoble's blog (you can see the…
Snapstream officially released the latest version of their flagship Home Theater PC software, Beyond TV today - now out of beta. There are several improvements and some very nice feature upgrades in this version. Here's a list of some of the bigger ones: Faster HDHomeRun Tuner - QAM…
Its not talked about all that much, but for a while now there have been a pretty significant number of full-length feature movies available for you to watch streamed online for free with little or no fear of getting in trouble (like you can with torrents for example.) Where are these movies you…
Today we have an interesting hack that involves taking your standard WiFi antenna and for five cents converts it into something like those $30 range extender antennas you can buy. It involves the following tools & supplies: small gauge solid copper wire, a drywall screw a little soldering…
We've just barely begun the Fall 2007 TV Season and there is already a likely casualty: Country Music Reality Show, Nashville has been pulled by Fox for the time being after only two shows. Don't expect to see that one come back anytime soon. In other TV news, the Eureka Fans will be…
It's Wednesday and I'm buried with work so I'll share some of the good reads I've stumbled upon over the past few days. Enjoy! DirecTV rolling out new HD channels - I'm growing ever so envious of those with more HD channels New V2 Vista Media Center Extenders…
Do you own a portable media player? Possibly an iPod, Zune, Zen or whatever MP3 player? This week Amazon came out of the gates running with a very strong start in the digital tunes store war that pits Amazon vs. iTunes. Amazon announced their AmazonMP3 beta Tuesday morning and proudly called it…
When I heard that Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, founder of Audionet ( that company that became Broadcast.com and sold to Yahoo and made him $5.9B ) Chairman of HDNet and writer of one of the more intelligent and interesting blogs ( Blog Maverick ) was going to be a contestant on…
Lets say you're planning to move to a new neighborhood and want to know about the bad neighbors before you commit to renting or buying that house. Or you already live in a neighborhood and want to know about the "bad seeds" nearby. There are two different maps mashups that give you…
I learned from Dave Zatz that Echostar Communications Company, the company know for its Dish Network Satellite TV will acquire Sling Media for approximately $380 Million. Sling Media is the maker of the Slingbox and Slingplayer which allow you to placeshift your TV programming from your home…
Just last month I told you about the tetris game for geography. Well they are continuing to expand the game into new locations. Now in addition to the US States version; there are also the following versions: Europe, France, UK, Japan, Africa, Netherlands and even a South Carolina-pick-the-county version.....
Flickr is one of the most popular online photo sites on the web. One of the reasons for that is the incredible amount of free, 3rd party tools that use or run using flickr.
I was browsing digg this morning and ran across what I think might be the most amazing, free web tool available today for photo editing. This web application is called Rsizr and is very similar to the "seam carving" tool I saw demo'd at Robert Scoble's blog (you can see the original demo of that tool here.
Rsizr is a free, online, flash application that lets you resize JPG, PNG, and GIF images. With rsizr, you can process normal, image rescaling and cropping as well as resizing images using a new image resizing algorithm called seam carving (a method of image retargeting) that tries to keep intact areas in your image that are richer in detail.
VIDEO SCREENCAST OF RSIZR IN ACTION
To get the full "picture" of how cool this is, check out the screencast video I made this morning. In this screencast I'll first stretch a photo from a normal 4x6 shape to a more panoramic size. Then in the second part of the video I'll take a standard sized photo of a schooner ship and stretch the photo to a panoramic-shaped photo while keeping the ship in it's original proportions (i.e. just stretch everything around the ship without stretching the ship itself).
Part 1 of this video screen-cast shows just stretching a photo in width.
Part 2 of the video shows me highlighting the ship in the picture (the part I want to maintain dimensions) and then stretching the rest of the photo.
These are just two examples of what you can do with this application on-the-fly.
EXAMPLE BEFORE & AFTER PHOTOS OF RESIZR
Here's an example of taking a photo with several people and removing one person from the picture and then stitching the end result with little effort:
Notice there are only two kids in the picture to the right.
This is the first release of Rsizr so it likely will have trouble keeping up with the traffic it will undoubtedly receive this week (it's that cool). I'll be excited to see what they do with their next few versions. One thing I would like to see for this site is a little demo of how to use each of the tools. I'm slowly figuring them out, but it would certainly help new users out.
Read more about Rsizr at their site here
See more example photos in their gallery
Check out the Complete Flickr Hacks, Applications & Scripts Database
