Something broke the site
Something between the theme I was using and the Wordpress update broke the whole blog. I switched to a different theme to get it working again.
I’m not so concerned about it, now that I won’t be posting here much (see below). Just thought I’d post a note letting you know why it looks different.
The New Job
Posted by jasoncross in Media, PC Tech, Work on December 21, 2009
I know I haven’t updated this blog in awhile…and I probably won’t update very much from here on out. Fair warning.
I got a new job as a Senior Editor at PC World. Just started last week, and I’m still getting my feet wet. Jumping in right before the Christmas holiday break and then CES is a hell of a time to start. Lots of meetings, lots of learning the product database system and publishing system and gearing up new coverage for next year and so on and so forth.
Right now, I’m getting up to speed by taking the reins of the laptop/notebook beat. But I’ll be heading up a “system group” that covers notebooks, desktops, some parts and peripherals, how-tos and stuff, things like that. It’s a goal to re-boot the graphics card coverage over there early in 2010.
So that’s all for now.
Foxit eSlick Reader Review
Posted by jasoncross in Media on November 2, 2009
You may be familiar with Foxit Software’s PDF viewing app, which is a pretty good alternative to Adobe’s PDF viewer. Did you know they make an ebook reader as well? I recently reviewed it for PC World. The long and short of it is this: it’s not that great. The interface is sort of clunky, and it really only reads PDF and plain text documents. It’s got no wireless capability at all, and it’s priced the same as other, better ebook readers. It’s no Kindle, and not the sharp competitor the new Barnes and Noble new Nook reader is. Check out the review at PC World.
I’m not sure how the review ended up with a score of 72 (good). They come up with that number as a composite of various sub-scores and stuff I give them when I submit it, but my scores were pretty low. I think the text of the review makes it pretty clear that I don’t think it’s a “good” ebook reader.
Let’s get Press Pause on the Zune Marketplace
Posted by jasoncross in PC Tech, Software on October 30, 2009
Okay gang, I have a quick task for you. Don’t worry, this will take about 10 seconds and you don’t have to get up from your computer.
For some reason, Press Pause, the weekly video game web show I co-host with Carlos Rodela, is not listed in the Zune Marketplace. You can get it on iTunes here. You can subscribe to it in the Zune software by adding the RSS feed. But we want to be listed in the excellent Zune Marketplace, and for some reason it’s not there.
So, I need your help to submit it. If they get enough submissions, they’ll add it. Just follow these three steps.
1. Go to the Zune podcast page on the web. Any browser should work fine.
2. Click the bright “Submit a Podcast” button on the left-hand side.
3. In the dialog box that pops up, enter the following URL and click “Submit”: http://mevio.com/feeds/presspause.xml
That’s it! Thanks for all your help! And to show you that this wasn’t just a complete waste of your time…hey, you’re already at this neat Zune podcast directory thing on the web. Did you check it out a bit? You might want to. You can stream any podcast in the Zune marketplace (which is really big) right on the web page. Free. That includes audio and video podcasts. And you don’t need to have a Zune account, or to sign up for anything, or enter in some arcane RSS feed, or any of that stuff. It’s just a big, totally free podcast playback machine on the web. Neat, huh?
Update: Looks like we’re listed now. Thanks to everyone who submitted.
Ninite: A life-saver for new PCs and fresh Windows installs
Posted by jasoncross in PC Tech, Software on October 28, 2009
Upgrading to Windows 7? Sure, a lot of noise has been made about whether or not you can do an “in-place upgrade” or not, depending on which version of Windows you’re going from and which version of Win7 you’re going to. My advice – never do an in-place upgrade. If it’s a major new operating system, wipe your drive and start fresh. It’s nothing if not a good excuse to back up all your precious data.
Maybe you’re not doing an upgrade. Maybe you’re shopping around for a new PC. Either way, the biggest pain in the butt with getting a new PC or wiping your drive and starting fresh with a new OS is re-downloading and installing all those indispensable apps you use every day. (Well, the biggest pain is actually backing up all your photos and music and stuff – but you really should be doing that anyway.)
Enter one of the greatest websites in all creation, Ninite.com (no, that’s not hyberbole). It’s an idea so brilliant, so simple, and so useful that I wonder why it hasn’t been done years ago.
I’m Co-Hosting Press Pause
Posted by jasoncross in Gaming, Media, Work on October 7, 2009
Good news, everyone! It looks like I’m going to be the permanent co-host of Mevio’s video game show Press Pause. I’ll be talking games every week with the main host Carlos Rodela. Now, Press Pause is a fairly small operation right now, but we have some ideas to expand it. Still, you should tune in. It’s a fairly quick and painless show, and we try to keep it sort of lively. Yeah, I still have a lot of learning to do about being on camera, I’m working on it. So if you’re here, you probably have at least a passing interest in what the hell I’m up to. If you want to check out the show or help the show get better and more popular, follow the action items after the jump.
It’s Time For a New MobileMark
Posted by jasoncross in Media, PC Tech on October 6, 2009
Battery life ratings on laptops are a lie. Okay, that’s melodramatic: they’re not a lie, they’re just not telling you the truth you think they are. You read some review or look at some spec sheet or label on the shelf in a store and it says “5 hours battery life” and you think you’re going to be able to use your notebook for 5 hours. Then the battery dies in 2 1/2 hours or less. In fact, that “half of what they claim” rule of thumb turns out to be a pretty good one.
As they point out in a pretty neat article about the issue at Icrontic, the problem is that the industry standard for measuring battery life is a program called MobileMark 2007. This program basically runs your computer through some productivity apps, which are pretty easily cached into RAM on modern notebooks so you don’t get much hard disk usage. These run until the battery dies, and that’s your battery life benchmark. Wi-Fi is almost always disabled, the laptop is almost always in its most power-saving and low performance profile, screen brightness is usually at 50% or less, etc.
How Awesome is Hubble? (Answer: So Awesome)
Posted by jasoncross in Science on October 1, 2009
Back in May, NASA sent a crew of astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. STS-125 was an amazingly complex and risky mission, but also a smashing success. The crew fixed what wasn’t working and installed a bunch of new sensors and cameras and whoozits and whatchma-bobs. It took some months to test and calibrate and make sure everything was working, but we’re now getting back some new images from the greatest telescope ever built. And they’re awesome.
A Few Thoughts on Nvidia’s Fermi
Posted by jasoncross in Gaming, PC Tech on September 30, 2009
Today was the start of Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference. It’s really still just the NVISION conference, because it’s not much of a “industry-wide” conference if ATI and Intel aren’t there. The biggest announcement of the show is undoubtedly the unveiling of Nvidia’s next-generation GPU, code-named Fermi. I’m not sure why they named the chip after Enrico Fermi, who is best known for his work with radioactive substances and controlled nuclear reactions and stuff. But as code-names go, physicists are cool, so I’ll let it slide.
I won’t bother to summarize all the individual features that were revealed today. Tech Report has a excellent article on it, so does AnandTech. I’m just going to editorialize a bit with some of my thoughts based on what we know (and don’t know) so far.
Microsoft Security Essentials – Thumbs Up
Posted by jasoncross in PC Tech, Software on September 29, 2009
Today, Microsoft launches its anti-malware software package, Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s honest-to-goodness anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-bad-stuff software that offers real-time protection. It would be pretty easy to make some sort of joke about Microsoft making business for itself, producing operating systems that are open to malicious attack with one hand and selling software to protect yourself from it with the other. But MSE is free, as in no dollars and zero cents free. Free to download, free to use, free updates, free free.
This, of course, means jack-all if the software is crap. Fortunately, it is not crap. In fact, it’s quite good. The fine folks at Ars Technica have a first-look that is favorable, but I’ve been using the beta myself for a couple months on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista PCs so I thought I would offer my two cents.