Archive for the 'Links' Category

Have you ever been to the Rodeo? I can remember being in Vernal, Utah as a kid during summers and being close enough to the Rodeo to hear the crowd. I never thought about it much then, but we never decided to go. I never hear anything about rodeos here in Southern California. I’m sure there are a number of smaller ones in Valley Center or other areas. After looking around I found what looks like the most interesting rodeo around. The Huston Rodeo looks like they have real cowboys that know what they’re doing. I could never pull off the kinds of things that they are doing. Not top of all of this they have some of the biggest names in country music coming to perform nightly. If that sounds interesting you can take a look at who is performing and get Houston Rodeo concert tickets. It makes me wish I had some friends in the area that I could go visit so I would have an excuse to check it out. I bet my mom would like this. Maybe I’ll see if she wants to go!

The desk I’m using right now for my computer is interesting looking, but I bought it on clearance. I think it was on clearance because it is so unstable. The design really isn’t sound and the slightest nudge makes the while thing creak and wobble. When I graduate I’d like to set up a nice work room with a real desk and a counter with power outlets and everything I would need to do electrical and computer projects. When it comes to office furniture though it’s sometimes difficult to know where to go to get the best quality for your money. Starving students take what they can get, but once you’ve left that phase of your life it’s time to get something a little bit nicer. Mayline is the brand of choice for me when it comes to quality office furniture. The way their stuff is put together means you don’t have to worry about a computer monitor falling on your two year old’s head. I wouldn’t trust my current desk around small children.

The place to go for Mayline Furniture is BizChair.com. Not only do they have great prices, but they have a wide selection to match. As their name suggests, they started out with office chairs, but that’s only the beginning. They have expanded their business and have recently started offering Mayline office furniture. Most items they carry they offer a full 60 day money back guarantee and returned items are never shipped out again to other customers so you are sure to get exactly what you are looking for. Check them out if you are in the market for new office furniture.

According to a blog post a new airless tire with spokes may soon be released for use on consumer automobiles. No more flats? Easier home replacement? I say lemme at em! Thanks to Randy for pointing this story out to me.

The Internet and television has been gearing up for convergence for a long time. Some people thought it was going to happen a long time ago. Only recently have we seen IPTV start to take off. These IPTV shows, with the exception of DLTV, are usually pre-recorded and not intended to be watched live. ACCSelect.com is one company that seeks to change that. If you want to watch ACC Sports, there aren’t too many choices other than going to the school and watching it as it happens. But now you can get, for example, Georgia Tech Sports on ACCSelect.com. There is certainly a market for college sports other than Football. The market may not be big enough for cable companies to carry them, but that’s the beauty of the Internet. The delivery mechanism cuts out the middle-man and allows niche programming to be sold and delivered directly from the producers to the viewers. This is an exciting step in the right direction. Let’s hope that more live content like this becomes available. Finally there is an alternative to the Lowest Common Denominator!

We’re not moving any time soon, I hope. But we sure do seem to have a lot more stuff than our apartment can hold. We have an extra storage closet on our balcony, and the thing is filled up to the ceiling with boxes of books, computer equipment, holiday decorations, and all sorts of things we just don’t want to get rid of, but really can’t use very often. When the time comes I’m glad that I found the Self Storage Directory – Moving.bz to help me find the best deals. I almost never pay full price for anything if I can avoid it. Moving.bz lets you compare prices and get quotes from different storage companies in your area. They also have links to deals on moving supplies and moving companies for when you decide to take your things out of storage and just get a bigger place instead.

I have worked on some websites and tried to make those pages show up close to the top spot on Google before. This can be very difficult to achieve because the exact algorithms that Google uses are not public knowledge. It is sometimes baffling why a less relevant site comes up above yours. SEO in Austin, help Texas is the specialty of Apogee Search. They are the largest Search Engine Optimization firm in Austin and the fastest growing in all of Texas. It is amazing to me that search engine placement has become so important to companies that they are willing to pay others to help them rise to the top.

Blog advertising website PayPerPost.com received $3 Million in venture capital according to a story by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. PayPerPost has polarized the blogging community. Many bloggers see nothing wrong with making a little extra cash on their blogs. After all, many bloggers have to pay for hosting and the proceeds from most forms of advertising is abysmal at best. PayPerPost users can make a few hundred dollars each month if they advertise as much as possible. Some people are just looking to cover their hosting and bandwidth costs.

I think PayPerPost is an excellent idea whose time has come. Small and new companies can get their name out there fast for just a few thousand dollars, and bloggers get the maximum benefit possible. It promoted blogging just as much as it promotes advertisers products. Some people think it’s deceptive, but that’s only if the bloggers make it so. I think most bloggers know which opportunities they will take based on whether they believe in the products being shown. I enjoy showcasing new exciting technologies on this blog, and I don’t mind making a little bit of money while doing it. If I had found out about these people on my own I would probably blog about them anyway, so I’m just getting paid to do what I would have done for free otherwise. Click the second link at the beginning of this post to read about the company and listen to an interview with PayPerPost founder Ted Murphy.

I was not aware of this before now, but apparently the Wii might run a version of the Linux kernel. It will also be updatable remotely. From an interview on Nintendo’s website:

Wii is the first system from Nintendo that we can continue to be involved in (via operating system updates) after the customer buys it. This means that Wii will greatly expand and diversify the ways in which people will enjoy games in the future.

This could be exciting. I just hope they don’t use this as a way to ruin everyone’s fun with regards to homebrew games, etc.

FineTooth is the fastest and easiest solution for converting paper documents into easily searchable digital information. With their Contract Management Software you have instant access to information no matter where and how the hard-copies are stored. The really interesting part is that their software can read through narrative contracts and automatically index bullet-points, milestones, and dates. This is in the same field of computational linguistics that I’m interested in. It’s amazing that their software can understand these complex documents well enough to pull out this information. We’re getting closer and closer to a robot that can interact with you like C-3PO can. This is exciting stuff!

There is a new blog for those who want to advertise on blogs or wish to have advertising added to their blogs. It is by a company mentioned in a previous post called PayPerPost.com. They allow blogs with lighter traffic to make money the way the big blogs do while getting the word out on some brand new things from smaller companies. Check it out if you are interested.