According to this article in the New York Times, Tower Records is no more. They have thrown in the towel. I see this as a big result of the popularity of online distribution of music. With iTunes making such a splash and the availability of CDs from so many sources online, the need for the traditional “record store” is all but over. People used to goto record stores to discover new musics and sample tunes, but now you can do all that on myspace or purevolume or practically all over the web. Just a sample of things to come in the world of purchasing media.

Looks like I don’t have to worry about sending in my battery OR having it blow up while on my lap. Turns out that I missed the recall by one digit! Woohoo! It is definitely making the news that over 4 million other batteries need to be send back to Dell according to the top story on news.com. It is reportedly the largest recall in consumer electronics history. Article here.

Now it’s off to bed. All this worrying I’ve been doing about my battery blowing up (which turned out to be for nothing) has really taken a toll on my sleep schedule =)

It appears that these stories I keep hearing about batteries randomly catching on fire on Dell laptops is not completely bull like I thought. This article states that Dell has issued a recall on all laptop batteries sold from October 2004 - October 2005.

The batteries, which were bundled with Dell notebooks and also sold as add-ons via the company’s Web site and catalogs, can overheat and thus pose a fire risk, Dell said in a statement.

I fear my laptop may fall into this category and I may have to go ahead and send in my battery before it blows up on me!

Well anybody who has been paying attention to any news whatsoever related to technology or gaming has probably caught wind of the major intiative launched by Microsoft to promote the indie video game developer. As providing top-tier tools to independent game developers has been the mission and goal of the GarageGames team since the company’s inception at the beginning of this decade, a strong partnership has formed between the two entities. (kudos to Nate for the awesome art in the second screenshot)

Pat Wilson writes a little into depth with what exactly this means and provides a great quote from one of the press releases circulating.

Congratulations to the GarageGames XNA team, you guys rock!

This morning marked the major keynote speech [listen here] at Microsoft’s Gamefest, located in Seattle, Washington– an exposition geared toward the game development industry. Taking the stage front and center at the keynote was GarageGames President Mark Frohnmayer. Mark provided an excellent synopsis on the mission and goals of GarageGames and the excitement level of our company to bring the Torque family of tools to the XNA platform, ripping down major barriers to entry previously keeping indies from the video game console market.

Along with hammering out code and development decisions today, I did a lot of scanning the blogsphere and forums to see the excitement level video game enthusiasts were expressing for the announcement.

Mark speaking and Adam marbling it up during the keynote!

When I moved out here to Oregon, I had to find a new bank at which I could conduct transactions locally. I was referred to Key Bank, which happens to be a fairly large institution (not one I was familiar with before moving out West). If you’ll notice, the trend with most banks these days is to provide a free gift to you when you sign up for a new checking account. Good practice and something to brighten up your day. Now as with most banks, Key also provides an online banking solution, which is indeed very useful because I like to be able to check my balance at any time of day if need be.

Where this all comes together is when I signed up for my new checking account I received no gift, yes a handshake and a smile, which would usually suffice. However, now everytime I goto their website to login to my account to do a little online banking I get taunted by this huge banner stating “Open a checking account. Get a free Ipod nano!“. I signed up for my account at the end of May, (two and a half months ago) I’m not sure how long they’ve been running this promotion, but do you think the right thing to do would be to give me a nice little Ipod nano to say thanks for your patronage?

I will beg the question, how should a business handle a customer such as myself who raises this question? The only reason I bring the subject up is I have seen companies/businesses handle a customer’s request such as this differently in the past. I emailed them and we’ll see what they say…

[edit: This post was originally published 8/13/06 at 12:00 PM PST]

My buddy Casey hooked me up with a Detroit Bros. Custom Cycles hat for my birthday so now I can properly represent Detroit and that Midwest muscle out here on the West Coast! Had to post a picture! Of course I’m kickin’ it to the side cause that’s how you do it =) I don’t really know a whole lot about Detroit Bros. but they do make pretty smokin’ choppers!

This weekend has been pretty intense. I have been doing a lot of reading and researching on some things I’ve been looking at implementing on some projects. I also now officially have my first LinkedIn connection! I haven’t really spent much time on that site, but I plan to spend a little more time there in the future cause it looks to be a really good way to link up with people professionally. If you haven’t been to the site or signed up for an account there, go ahead and check it out and once you get a profile up, connect to me!

I also discovered this cool little site on MSN called Sympatico Music. It seems to be a Canadian themed portal. However, that band The Trews that I wrote about a few posts back happens to be Canadian and you can watch an entire concert of theirs here for free (Internet Explorer only folks). Definitely worth checking out!

Big Gig Productions has released a new audio track available for download to site visitors. This tune marks the first of the R&B genre that has been made available on the Big Gig site. Like all of the audio samples on the site it really shows off the talents of head sound engineer Scott Bozack. The artist’s name is Ashton Moore and the track is “2 Fifths”. It’s a pretty jammin’ tune so make sure you head over to Big Gig Productions and download it!

First of all, what is Web 2.0? What is this crazy buzzword “Web 2.0″ that people keep throwing around. Well, to be honest with you, it really depends on with whom it is that you are talking that determines your definition. Probably the most famous of this Web 2.0 age are sites with heavy social networking aspects such as myspace and thefacebook. However, the concept of Web 2.0 goes a little bit further than just a glorified title behind sites that provide the ability to set up a profile and link it to other users. What we are seeing happen in this age of Internet technology concerning sites is a revolution in the sense of content delivery.

On the Internet, content is always king. It is the hardest piece of the puzzle when designing or putting together a website. How do I optimize my content for my prospective customers? What are the most important pieces of my business that should be displayed on my front page, where my traffic lands and dictates the length of their stay? On true Web 2.0 sites, you as the site owner don’t necessarily make those decisions anymore. The most popular sites on the Internet currently– YouTube, del.icio.us, digg.com– all of these sites have a major factor in common. That commonality between these sites is the ideal of what sifts to the top is the content that users choose to place there through rating, views, etc…

I am going to raise an interesting question. Can this content model adapted by major Internet sites be applied to traditional business sites? To enter this realm really requires innovative thinking but provides an excellent opportunity to break the mold. The issue that I think you see brewing throughout the Internet is that users have been infected with this disease of active involvement in dictating the presentation of a site’s content. We like to provide our input. We like to rate things. We like to give quick little blurbs and our two cents on products we have purchased or services that we have used. How many business owners will take the risk of giving their site visitors a completely open channel to actively involve them in their business site’s content and deliverance of that content? It may be a radical thought or concept because these traditional business sites have a very standardized way of spelling out what it is they sell/do. However it is something I am looking to investigate/experiment with further because this interactivity disease that Internet users have developed is only going to get worst and there’s no cure in sight. I would be curious to see what readers input / ideas are on this particular topic.

I’ve added a cool little piece to my sidebar on the left here below “pure syndication” where I now have a quick link to hook up with me on the del.ici.ous network. Having people in your network is pretty rad cause you can see the types of things they are tagging. Social bookmarking is definitely a hip way to find new interesting things on the net. So check it out and I hope to see my network grow a little bit!

/emo incoming

You know you’re starting to grow up when many of the girls you used to date, wanted to date, or decided not to date are all getting married. It’s pretty wild, but everytime I turn around it seems that I hear about another friend from the past getting hitched.

This post isn’t emo in the sense of OMG I am lonely and want to get married, because I don’t [not right now]. But rather this post is emo in the sense that I am recognizing how many milestones and phases in life I have already hit. Of course I still have millions more on the list that I’m working toward everyday!