Changing Over

After keeping this blog in an "inactive" status for the last few months, I have decided to "reopen" Full Nerd as a Sci-Fi/Nerd blog where I will dredge on and on about nerdy things that I am into. Yeah, probably not anyones cup of tea, but hey that's how it goes sometimes. 

Anyway, I'm not too sure how often I will be updating, but I will try to keep up with my other blogs. Thanks for sticking around or forgetting to remove your "follower'ship". 

Closing this blog down

Hey everyone, I'll be closing this site down due to severe time constraints and rehash issues. I hope to be able to keep up Increasing My Blogs Traffic, which you can check out via this link. Things have been a bit hectic and cuts had to be made here and there. I want to thank all of you for checking out this site as often as you do/did, but I owe it to you to deliver some kind of closure. As for the site to which I am directing you, I hope to update weekly in February.

Thanks again for your patronage!

I Like Google

After reading a couple of comments via my last post and my Yahoo email, I realized that many folks out there thought that I was criticizing Google in regards to the recent addition of advertisements on YouTube. Honestly, if I disliked Google so furvently, I would likely no be utilizing Blogspot as well as Adsense, Webmaster Tools and Analytics (all Google) in order to blog both professionally and recreationally. 

Having said that, I still stand by my words that I don't particularly care for all of the Adsense advertisements plastered on YouTube (both channels and videos alike), but understand that it is a wonderful medium to earn some decent revenue. My biggest qualm is having to close an advertisement that is over-layed onto a video, mainly due to the fact that the "X" is miniscule. Sometimes, I will miss the "X" by a hair and wind up opening the advertisement into another full window which is kind of annoying when you hoped to see a video instead. Other than that, spam away Adsensically (I just made that one up, feel free to use it).

I also wanted to say that comments are always welcome as well as email, I am fascinated with what my readers opinions are, so yeah, feedback is always appreciated. 

For those of you following the ongoing BlogMad saga, you can learn more about the ultimate fate of BlogMad as a traffic generator over on Increasing My Blogs Traffic. 

Thanks again everyone, Happy Holidays! 

YouTube and Google

Whether you were aware of this or not, Google has purchased YouTube. Regularly this type of transaction wouldn't raise any eyebrows, but I wanted to share a couple of things that I have noticed straight-away with this transaction. First, I've noticed that nearly all video pages are now displaying Google Adsense images as well as Google Search capabilities. Personally, I don't think that is such a bad thing, but I am concerned that when advertisers are brought into the mix that creative license (in the form of freedom of speech) may possibly be infringed upon. Granted, we American's take these things ridiculously seriously, but I would hate to see creative license silenced in the form of political correctness.

Another thing that I have noticed is that many of the popular YouTube channels are now "partners". This is a pretty cool thing for the channel directors and whatnot, but it is annoying to anyone viewing the channels for a simple reason. hen you begin a video you are greeted by an advertisement that you must close in order to watch the video on the player. This isn't that big of a deal, but when you are used to clicking and watching, it can be annoying trying to close out an ad and accidentally clicking slightly to the left or right of the "x" and then loading an ad that closes the page you wanted to load originally. This gets pretty annoying. 

Having said that, I hope that people who are partnering up with Google and YouTube are aware that their content will be subjected to approval in order to run advertisements. In addition, I heard that the rating system and search system will be refined similar to "clean" and "dirty"searches. It would seem to me that this would bury some channels that tend to be more controversial and less "mainstream". I will be interested to see if YouTube becomes more sterile in lieu of this new venture. I suspect that a lot of great/tongue in cheek content will be replaced with, as I mentioned earlier, bland material. 

I suspect that YouTube as we know it, is going to be a thing of the past. I guess we should have expected this as soon as it went mainstream during the election cycle. All god things must come to an end. Granted, this isn't the "end", as YouTube will still be around, it just will be a bit more censored than many would prefer.

Circuit City Goin Out of Business

I know I don't spend a heck of a lot of time discussing the economy on this blog, but I wanted to bring some old news to your attention so that you may be able to buy some pretty cool gadgets at a reduced price. As you may already know, Circuit City has announced that they will be closing down a vast number of stores around the world. Well, after visiting one of their locations, I was absolutely amazed to see some of the prices for laptops, software and accessories. If you have one of the locations that is going out of business near you, check it out!

There are some great bargains out there right now due to retailers trying to move excess merchandise as well as retailers feeling the pinch of recession. As I said, I don't usually cover this type of thing on this blog, but since we are all "techies", I thought you might want a quick heads u and reminder. I plan on heading back next week to pick up some photoshop and video editing software. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Wireless Apple Mighty Mouse

I wanted to take a minute today to talk about a recurring issue with Apple's Wireless Mighty Mouse. The issue I am talking about today is the lack of tracking responsiveness after a prolonged period of inactiveness. Oftentimes, when I am working across my numerous blogs (sometimes I have too many sites to update, but I am grateful for the readership) I have long periods of mouse inactivity which can sometimes cause my wireless mouse to have tracking, scrolling and overall responsiveness issues. This problem isn't one that is confined to my rat, but to many owners of the product.

Having said that, I want to give you a quick tip to keep you from running out to the store to buy a new rat, replace your batteries or shake the rat until it breaks on its own. The quick tip is simply to flip the power switch underneath the mouse to the off position for about 5 seconds then flip it back on. By doing this you will reset the mouse and in about 15-20 seconds you will have a normal functioning Apple Wireless Mouse once again.

This issue has jumped up and bit me a few times, so I thought that some of my readers out in the Blogosphere might have had a similar issue and might be able to use the quick tip. I also recommend the same technique with the Wireless Keyboard as well. Usually with the keyboard the issue is wifi connectivity and merely needs a push of the upper right button to re-align the connection.

Overall, I am quite happy with the wireless accessories of the iMac, but wouldn't recommend buying them unless you have a handful of rechargeable batteries and chargers. Anyway, just wanted to drop a quick tip for all of you if you have been having a similar issue. 

WordPress 2.6.5 Released

Being a Blogspot blogger, I tend to ignore most of the WordPress releases, but today I wanted to bring you the information for the latest update for WordPress, 2.6.5. Apparently this new version tightens up security and a couple of applications by fixing a few bugs and the aforementioned security issue.

Granted, I don't know too much about WordPress even though I utilize it as a guest content producer on a few sites, but I do enjoy the simplicity of their software. Anyway, I had been considering moving 8-Big Memoirs to a privately hosted WordPress "format", but haven't had the desire to follow through yet. I am happy where that blog is and don't want to push it too much toward advertising yet, but we aren't here to talk about that today.

Back to the purpose of this post, the new WordPress update fixes the following three bugs;

1) prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision.

2) prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types.

3) adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests.

You can download the update from the following link if you are interested.

The New MacBook

While I was watching the news tonight, I saw the new commercial for the MacBook and have to say that I am impressed with the marketing campaign. Apparently the goal is to convince consumers that the MacBook is green technology that is environmentally friendly. I don't know how much of the hype I am buying into. To be honest, I don't look for an environmentally friendly notebook. If I was, I would just buy a spiral bound notebook made from recycled paper. Having said that, I don't want to diminish some of the great facts about the new MacBook. I just think they should stick with its features as well as specs in order to differentiate their new product from the competition. 

With that said, I was intrigued to learn that the new MacBook uses only a quarter of the energy of a standard light bulb, that is pretty cool. In addition, the new sleek design compliments the iMac and lends toward the use of recyclables in mass production. I really think that the campaign would be better suited to focus on the differences between Mac and PC, but then again it isn't my job to sell the darn thing. 

If you are interested in picking up the new MacBook, the most basic model will run you around $1,300 US dollars. If you want a "beefier" unit you could be looking at upwards of $2,000. In these rough economic times that is a lot of cash to dole out on a laptop. Honestly, I was considering picking one of these up, but not if I'm going to have to take on a second job to afford the thing.

BlogMad For Sale

I just got word today via the BlogMad shout box that BlogMad is going up for sale or out to pasture on Dec. 12, 2008. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this whole sale vs stale thing. I mean, under a new administration, BlogMad might become a better traffic generator. On the other hand, maybe these traffic exchanges should go out due to the lack of targeted traffic and Adsense issues that arise via the usage of said exchanges. 

Having said that, I understand that there has been quite a bit of frustration out there with people who have submitted issue tickets and blogs for approval. Administration has been out to pasture lately and been generally unresponsive to answering questions/issues as well as approving new blogs into the system. In addition, spam blogs, spam advertising and frame breakers haven't been addressed either leading many to believe that someone somewhere was asleep at the switch.

Regardless, the administrators of BlogMad have placed the site for sale and (I assume) are entertaining offers. It appears that this whole transfer or potential sale is still in its early stages, so little is known at this point regarding terms etc. Below is a copy of Blogetiq's post regarding the sale.

Screencast and Jing Project

I had mentioned a little while ago about a really cool and easy to use free screen capture application as well as image hosting service called Jing Project and Screencast respectively. I have been using them primarily for my blog "Increasing My Blogs Traffic" and have to say that I feel it has assisted me in bringing FAQ's to life as well as tutorials for a number of other applications a reality.

I have to say that I have a soft spot for free applications and downloads and am always pleased when I am able to utilize one on a blog or website. As I mentioned, I have been placing answers to FAQ's and posting tutorials on my other blog, and am looking forward to posting more as time goes by. I can't stress enough how great these two services are and highly recommend downloading them and utilizing them on your blogs today! 

The downloads of Jing Project are available for both PC and Mac and are free as well as Screencast which is merely a image host like Photobucket. These are pretty cool and you should definitely check them out.