Technology deal of the day

Today's technology deal that you should know about is at Cisco Press.  Every day they select one book and sell the electronic edition of it for $9.99.  Lately they've been rotating between the certification books needed to earn your CCNP (ROUTE, SWITCH, and TSHOOT).  Today is a bit of a changeup.  Enterprise Network Testing is the deal of the day right now.

When they first started the promotion, some of the books had some DRM bullshit, but now they're just watermarked PDF's, perfect for copying to your Kindle or smartphone.

Bin Laden reported killed

It's some kind of irony that Bin Laden hated us fat, lazy Americans, so we killed him with a remote controlled weapon.

-- Edit, early reports were wrong, it wasn't missiles from drones, it was 4 helicopters and a bunch of guys with guns.  Go team!

Geocaching!

I went Geocaching today for the first time in a looooong time.  The last time I went, standard operating procedure was a printout of the caches to check out, and coordinates punched into a standalone GPS like a Garmin.  Now, there are several Android apps that can do all of that.  Yet another example of technology that we have at our fingertips now that wasn't available (or was a pain in the butt to use) only a few years ago.

Sucks to be Sony right now. Or a PSN subscriber.

So, Playstation Network has been down for a week now, since the 19th.  Now, they've come to the conclusion that personal information has (probably) been compromised.

The tl;dr of the story is that if you've provided them your credit card number, it might have been leaked.  Also, if you use the same username and password elsewhere, then change them.

THIS IS A GOOD REASON NOT TO USE THE SAME PASSWORD EVERYWHERE.  So was the engadget hack.  I love password expiration day at work, expecially the arguement, 'but i've had this password for years, and i use the same one for everything!'.

Anyhow.  My rant for the night.

Today's free app of the day (for another 3 hours) is Medeor Brick Breaker.  Basically an Arkanoid or Breakout clone that gets meh reviews.  Whatever, it's free instead of $4, but I don't expect to have it installed for long.

What I have been playing a lot of is Game Dev Story, an addicting little game where you run a company that develops video games.  There's a lite version also to try out, to see if you like it first.

I really need a phone upgrade.  Anyone have an HTC Evo or an HTC Evo Shift for cheap?

TuneIn Radio Pro

Today's free app of the day for Android is TuneIn Radio Pro, which allows you to listen to local radio or radio anywhere in the world.  This morning, I was listening to BBC One, and then switched it to a local radio station instead.  It also has NOAA radio to listen to the weather alerts, and lets you record also.  No ads inside the app to accidentally click on either.  Check it out!

Stuff that is wonderful that we encounter every day.

Continuing the theme of stuff that we take for granted and underappreciate, I made a purchase from x10.com a while back that I'm really happy with.  The x10 powermid remote control extender.  I can have my Tivo and DVD player tucked away in the closet behind my TV, and this little pyramid thingie in front of the TV, and it transmits remote control signals through the closed closet door, so I can have everything tucked away and looking neat.  Also, there are fewer exposed cables and stuff for my son to get into.