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TehPrivates GenCon coverage was amazing and you should start seeing some new articles and video posted within the next month. The DVD will also be released in about two months. The DVD will be a three to four hour feature film along with five to ten hours of bonus footage!

DragonCon was mentioned as being covered, but we have determined that it's not needed. For the nerds and geeks, we have San Deigo Comic Con, New York Comic Con and GenCon coming within the next 12 months. We will decide mid next year if DragonCon is worth the time and money to cover.

For the other non-nerds, we will be covering many events including WWDC, possibly CES and MacWorld. Please use the contact form to suggest any other events that you would like covered.

The last bit of news here...new front page in two weeks! I have been working on a new layout to allow a better flow of content. I'll be posting a preview of it next week as well as allowing certain users access to it. Also, keep your eyes out for the new TehPrivates iPhone app to be released once Apple approves!

That's about it for updates!

(Source: CNN)

Sauce: Gizmodo


OH MY FUCKING GOD.


Dear Facebook,

Please go die in a fire with some terrorists.

This is the kind of thing I do at work when I'm not actually working.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/25/a...l-be-there-li/

So, let the rumors fly! What do you think will happen?

I think we're all pretty certain, since the even is music related and the free iPod offer ends the 7th, that Apple will introduce or announce some new iPod models. A safe bet is probably an iPod Touch with a FaceTime-capable camera. I'm hoping for a cheap new iTV or whatever they end up calling it. Whatever happens I'm sure there will be some new gadgets for us to look at.

This is less boring than crunches, and therefore better. It's even better to draw an explanation for an exercise in response to a request than it is to do that exercise.

If you had to choose between Facebook and Google who would you choose? Both have enormious amounts of our personal data, and they are both necessary evils of the Internet today. If you communicate with anyone there is a good chance that data goes through either or both of these companies. So if your life depended on it what one would you trust more?

Having analytics on everyone, Google remains king of the search engine. Plus Gmail is their highly successful e-mail client. Nobody thinks twice about the way they use it. While Google doesn’t publish its users data out in public, they still use it to tailor ads and who knows who has access to it.

By default, Facebook is a public site. Personal data is right out in the open. You have the ability to adjust the privacy settings but many don’t and willing or unknowingly publish their personal lives for the world to see. Their business model is to connect as many people as possible to reach a broader audience. In Facebook's eyes the more open the better. More people equals more ads which generates more money in their pockets so your privacy is not of their highest concern.

Both companies’ main objectives are to make the most amount of money possible and they are both competing against each other to be the dominant force of the social network. Google’s failed attempt at Buzz was their way to try to take momentum away from Facebook’s 500 million users. They now have a new strategy to compete and that is to buy existing companies and piece meal a Facebook clone to over take the giant. Facebook however is not budging and has once again proven that they are not going to back down as they recently announced Places. A new take on the popular FourSquare check in service.

Facebook and Google are playing an interesting game with one another now in that they both want to be king of social networks. Facebook is taking a page out of the Google playbook and wants a closed network where all data runs through it. Their goal is to have social media rule the world and right now they are succeeding. More and more websites have like buttons that link right back to Facebook were other users can see your interests. It makes money for both Facebook and outside companies while keeping Google out in the cold. Google knows this and is trying hard to break into the social media pie, but they might be to little to late as Facebook's dominance continues to grow.

I recently came up with an idea. To create a video experiment of using a 10 year old computer for modern tasks. I will probably use an iMac G3 desktop compared to a 1999-era Windows laptop. I'll try browsing around the web visiting sites like Engadget, Twitter, TehPrivates.com, etc and see how they hold up today. I'll see how well heavy-CSS sites work (like MobileMe or Engadget) and see if sites like YouTube function at all. A lot of today's websites use modern languages and coding, older machines don't take to this too easily. I'll see how easy it is to download a photo from a digital camera to the computer and upload it someplace like Flickr or Facebook. I'll try to copy a file to a USB flash drive. I'll perform a lot of basic tasks in addition to web browsing to see how things work. So I think this will be fun to see what works and what doesn't, it'll probably also be frustrating.

I'll try my best to stick with software that was used in that era - if possible I'll download a new browser to aid it's efforts in an additional test... currently debating if I should torture myself with Mac OS 9 - although Max OS X 10.1 would be just as bad. Windows may have the advantage in the web browser space with more updated browsers such as FireFox that are supported as far back as Windows 98.

Some of the machines I have available to me are the following:

Various G3 iMacs, up to 333MHz, OS 9 or OS X
PowerBook G3 500MHz OS 9 or OS X
Dell Pentium II Laptop Windows 98 (gasp!)
Compaq AMD Laptop (2000) Windows XP

When I get some free time I'll start off this project properly and post a video updated.