Well, I just had my first encounter with Apple customer support, and I have to say I’m impressed.

After my hard drive failure a few weeks back, I had to put my iPod Touch apps back on the system, which I had luckily backed up.  Well, last night I had some issues with the Touch, so I did a reset, and went to sync the apps back onto it and… no luck.

I tried everything under the sun, and today I finally gave up and called them.  The first rep walked me through all the basics, staying with me on the phone the entire time.  After about 30-minutes he knew it was beyond him, and passed me up to a senior tech, Rick.  Rick spent about 15-minutes working on it before he determined he was also stumped.

This is where I got impressed.  Instead of just giving up, he said he was going to pass this up to an engineer, and that they would be calling sometime over the weekend, and if they didn’t, I was to call him directly.

What the…

All the way to an engineer?  A call back… on a weekend?

I had always heard how good their customer support is, and considering I bought this Touch used from someone else, I am even more impressed.  It may be that it can’t even be fixed due to the hard drive crash, and Rick was very blunt about that, but you can’t fault them for their effort and concern in this manner.  Major kudos to them.

I’ve said it before, but I am not big on building posts around YouTube videos, but JL over at Little Lost Robot posted this today, and I had to share. Reasons after the video.

Back when I had my retail store front, we ended up in a never-ending Nerf war. We had Nerf guns hidden behind racks, under the desks, on top of top shelves… we had Nerf weapons everywhere. When we had an exceptionally bad day, someone would scream “NERF WAR!” and we would all dive for the closest weapon and open up on each other. Yes… sometimes with customers in the store.

While we never had anything at the store to quite rival this video, there was the time I get set loose in the Nerf showroom in New York City. I was attending Toy Fair for one of my magazine jobs, and though Nerf wasn’t something I wrote about, Hasbro was giving me the complete tour anyway.  In the Nerf room they had target ranges set up, every imaginable weapon set out, and buckets of spare ammo strewn around the room.  You were encouraged to just pick up guns and start shooting as you toured the room… I did… so did my tour guide… and my mother.  Nothing like a Nerf fight with unlimited ammo.

All that said… I love this video.

Well, it’s just been settled and I will be attending my first, and possibly only,  Mashable party.  For those of you in the tech world, make sure to mark your calendars for July 12th for Summer Mash Seattle.

Besides myself, boss man Pete Cashmore and Karen Hartline will be in attendance, so no need to worry about just talking to “the list guy” all night with nothing else going on.  “This one time, I wrote a list, and it had over 120 items on it!  Why are you falling asleep?”

When: July 12th, Saturday, 7:00 – 10:00 PM
Where: Showbox SoDo, 1700 1st Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134
What else?:DJ El Toro, Light Appetizers, Drink Tickets, Door Prizes and more…
RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only
Socialize: Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and Upcoming

I swear the American Film Institute has become obsessed with lists.  This is all well and good, but the newest ones are just a bit much as they are broken down by the tops in genres.

Called, “AFI’s 10 Top 10“, the lists are generally well balanced.  I’m not going to get nitpicky with them, there are several I would reshuffle, a few movies would be eliminated, but two lists in particular annoyed me: Animation and Fantasy.

The Fantasy list is easy in that I can’t believe Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring came in above classics like It’s A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.  True, these are sentimental favorites, but I also feel they are stronger films, but I guess it is all “in the eye-of-the-beholder” kind of thing, but still seems wrong to me.

The Animation list is where my ire really got up.  Let’s forget that 8 of the 10 spots are Disney films, fine, they are are mostly classics, but it’s the fact that Ralph Bakshi is completely overlooked.  Mr. Bakshi may not be a household name, but he has influenced countless animators with his works such as Fritz the Cat and American Pop.

Yes, his work is decidely for a mature audience, but he is such an important part of the animation history of the United States, and fluff such as Shrek makes the list of a group who is supposed to honor the best of American filmmaking… it’s a travesty.  Yes, it is a strong word, and it is just a stupid list, but it is saddening to see him not on the list when he worked so hard to show the world that animation didn’t have to be cute and full of talking animals.

Mr. Bakshi is still alive, but he is effectively retired due to the debacle that was Cool World, where he lost all faith in the studio system.  Maybe someday he will finally be recognized for his contributions to animation.

I’ve never been horribly comfortable with self-promotion, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do it. With that being said, I would like to introduce you to my newest time consuming project, StarterTech.com.

This is a new blog which, as the tag line implies, tries to simplify technology so that anyone can understand it. The new project was born out of my own mother’s problems with trying to educate my 60-year-old father about technology, and her constant exasperations with him. She finally asked me one day if there was a blog that did nothing but explain various aspects of technology as simply as possible, I said I didn’t think so, and thus StarterTech was born.

Technology is something I have always been passionate about, but I don’t think it is nearly as all inclusive as it could be, and those of us who live with it everyday sometimes forget that people don’t just “know” all of the ins-and-outs of it. I learned several years ago to try to take a much more patient approach to teaching people about technology when I taught an adult education night course in computer basics. I had agreed to do it because a friend asked me, and it really opened my eyes to the fact that -gasp- not every one is computer savvy or a tech geek! After a few false steps, it really gave me a sense of satisfaction to convey my love of tech, and what it can do for us, to people that were just learning, no matter what their age.

I am hoping to do the same with StarterTech, just with a broader audience. And, no, it is not lost on me that people have to know how to use a search engine to find me, but there is not much I can do to teach them before they even find me. This is part of the reason I am trying to write the simplest headlines and phrases I can in the hopes it will aid them in locating the site.

While it is done in a blog format, I am trying to make it so people who go to a search engine and look for an answer to their problem won’t have any trouble finding it. Yes, it is being written in a normal chronological fashion, but it is much more about being a reference site and trying to explain how to do things on the web, as well as explaining basic concepts.

The first article went up on April 12th, so I am still trying to get the body of work up to speed, and right now I am trying to cover very basic ideas that will be referred back to numerous times, such as What Is Social Networking?, How To Pick A Password and even things like Web 101 Guide To Acronyms.

I am actually fairly excited about this project, and I plan on getting guest bloggers in to do articles about fields I don’t understand myself, such as capturing video from your TV. This is very much not just online tech, but all technology.

So, please stop by the site, or sign up for the RSS feed, and join me as I lose my mind as I add yet another project to the 5,000 things I already do! And to all my tech-guru type friends out there who will probably laugh at me, why not drop me an email or comment about guest blogging on a subject near and dear to your heart?

Stan Winston, a true master of special effects, has passed away.

While not a household name like some directors, actors and writers, many of the world’s favorite movies would not have been possible without his technical genius. Even as recent as this summer’s Iron Man, his studio was the force behind the suits of armor. He was the person who brought the menace to Predator, and he was the designer who brought the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to life. This is but a taste of his enormous resume of contributions to the cinema.

Mr. Winston had been battling multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells, for seven years. He passed away in his home on Sunday the 15th at the age of 62. There is no word on what will happen with his studio, but you have to assume that it was continue. The question is will we see the same level of quality work as we’ve expected over the years.

He will be deeply missed by movie fans the world over.

I noticed that as much as I talk about music, I rarely mention who I listen to. There’s the odd piece here or there that mentions it, but never anything concentrated. So I thought in an odd change of pace, I would share with all of you the latest bands I’ve found that I’m listening to on a regular basis.

I first caught Vampire Weekend on Saturday Night Live this season, and I honestly can’t tell you why I like them. Their name certainly doesn’t speak to their sound, and they aren’t the normal style for me, but their self-titled debut album is infectious. You can also check out their song A-Punk for another sample of their work.

I would have liked to have embedded the original video for That’s Not My Name by The Ting Tings, but for some reason they won’t let you. Either way, I first found out about this band from one of their songs being featured in an iPod commercial, and I was hooked on Katie White’s vocals. She doesn’t so much sing as talk the lyrics, but there is a raw, just-about-to-lose-control, primal feel to her. You can feel a real underlying set of punk roots in their music, especially towards the end of That’s Not My Name. You can also check out Great DJ for another sample.

I just found out about The Pipettes last night, and unfortunately I’ve learned they already have rotated most of the members due to being a managed band. (i.e. someone came up with the idea and hired singers) Nothing horribly original here, but is fun to harken back to the girl bands of the 1950′s and 60′s. You can also check out Because It’s Not Love(But It’s Still A Feeling), ABC, Judy and Dirty Mind.

Don’t forget, whenever possible, avoid supporting the RIAA by buying used CDs, trading on LaLa, or trying one of the sources I mentioned for free music.

There is no doubt that suicides are tragic occurrences, and those left behind are always left to wonder, “why?” However, for as far back as I can remember, people have always tried to blame some current popular trend that the person was involved in for the tragedy. Well, it’s the 21st century, so it has to be social networks.

Over at Mashable, fellow writer Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins has been following a rash of suicides that people are trying to blame on the people all having accounts on the Bebo network. The story first began in January and, tragically, another death has been linked to the “chain” of suicides this month.

When this news first came to our attention back in January, it was due to the suicide of 17-year-old Natasha Randall. (Mind you that six men had committed suicide over the past year, but it takes the death of a girl to make the police finally have to come up with a “common thread”?) Within 24-hours of her death, two 15-year-old female friends of Ms. Randall also attempted suicide, but luckily both of them failed. After each death, there were memorial walls set up online for the victims, which led to Bridgend MP Madeleine Moon to claim that this may have been the motivation for the people to take their own lives. Of course, Ms. Moon also contradicts herself by saying:

“I have long wondered about all of these websites. People will post information, post photographs, they will post contact details that they would never have walked into a local pub and done themselves, but they will post them online to total strangers. That is crazy,” she said.

“What worries me is that we have got a problem that we have had for some time in Bridgend, which is a problem with young male suicides. Friends of those people are, as a result, being confronted with a huge range of emotions of grief and loss for the first time.

So, which is it? A long time problem of young male suicides, or the fact that people are going on social networks desiring memorial walls? Ah, who knows, never let sense get in the way of a politician trying to act concerned.

All of the victims in the “Bebo chain” through January lived in the same area of the UK, and some knew each other in person, as shown to the right. Luckily some people, non-politicians, realize that the social networks probably play no real factor in the deaths. Darren Matthews, director of the Bridgend Samaritans, a group dedicated to helping people considering suicide in the UK & Ireland, said in the same The Times piece:

“We are in real danger of creating this negative effect where people who are loners feel: ‘I can go out with a bang – everyone will know that I have gone.’ That is not just the internet. That is in many different types of the media,” he said.

He also went on to say that the social networks themselves are not to blame. What a concept.

There is a well known psychology syndrome known as the Werther effect, or more commonly known as “copycat suicide”, and with the first group all being in the same area, it is easy to believe that the Werther effect would have applied. With the latest suicide, considering the new region, and the length of time, it is probably completely unrelated to the previous cases, but never let that stop a politician from jumping in. Oh… hello again, Ms. Moon.

Bridgend’s Labour MP Madeleine Moon said memorial pages on Bebo and other websites showed “some sort of romanticism of death”.

“What is concerning is that you’re getting internet bereavement walls. That’s not going to help anyone,” she told The Times.

Well, my theory is it has nothing to do with a “romanticism of death”, it is merely how people are dealing with a death of someone they knew.  As for her saying that it doesn’t help anyone, my question would be, “Why?  Why doesn’t it help anyone?”  Is this any different than a high school putting up a banner for people to sign their name to when a fellow student dies?  This is merely the 21st century version of that, but because its modern, it must be wrong.

This has been going on for decades, if not longer.  Remember when seeing Elvis’ gyrating hips would cause young girls to have pre-marital sex?  Remember when Dungeons & Dragons was only played by Satan worshipers?  How about when the heavy metal band Judas Priest was put in trial for “subliminal messages” leading to two of their fans committing suicide?

In the case of Mr. Lesson, it was learned after his death that he had been bullied via Bebo, leading to people calling for more controls on social networking to curb bullies.  Well, let me get a little personal for a moment, when I was a small child I was bullied endlessly for being “the fat kid”.  I was called names, I was punched, I was held down and whipped with desert plant leaves until I had welts on my back… where were the politicians to help stop this?  (before anyone asks, the moment my parents would find out, they got involved, they never did not try their best to end it)  When I got harassed by phone for being “the fat kid”, where were the politicians to blame it on the phone company?

This is almost like the problems with music piracy: it has always existed, there is just a way for more people to know about it now.  I went through bullying for being fat, for playing D&D, for reading comic books, for being a punk, for being a headbanger, for walking down the street… there will always be a reason for people to bully someone, and there will always be the bullies to do it.  Considering that Bebo is one of the most popular social networks in the UK, so saying that Bebo was the connecting thread is almost like saying that the connecting thread was having a cell phone.

Again, I am sorry all of these people saw this as a solution to their problems, and maybe Ms. Moon is sincere, but somehow I think this is another case of a politician trying to latch on to a hot button topic and making themselves look modern.  Bebo , and social networks in general, are no more of a thread here than just about every young person has a profile on them.    How about instead of trying something, anything, to blame, why don’t we take the time to just hug our kids, sit down with them and ask them how their day was?  How about moving the computer to a common room where you can watch over their shoulder, and keep a better grasp on what they are doing?

I know, there I go being crazy again suggesting that parents should be involved in their children’s lives… I’m crazy like that.

According to The NPD Group, Grand Theft Auto IV from Rockstar Games, sold 6 million copies in its first week of release.  At a retail price of $59.99, that puts the gross sales of $359,000,000 in one week.

I decided it would be interesting to take a look at the top grossing domestic films to see where this would be on the list if it was a movie.  According to the list on Box Office Mojo, this would place it just $2 million ahead of 12th place, Jurassic Park.  For all of 2007, the movie industry grossed $9.6 billion, and so far this year, the video game industry has grossed $6.6 billion, on track to top somewhere between $21 and $23 billion.

So, are we looking at the gaming industry doing nothing but growing?  The film industry has been suffering from diminishing ticket sales, and as readers of this blog know, I feel it’s from a severe lack of fresh material.  True, video games do get the bonus of being virtual, so they can create the most fantastical settings they want with no extra cost in “building”, but their stories are also fresher.  I’m not a fan of the GTA series, but from what I know of them, people do enjoy the storylines of building your way to being a top criminal.

You also have to look at a value for money when it comes to what is going on with films.  According to the National Association of Theater Owners, the average price for a movie ticket in the USA in 2007 was $6.88.  A movie averages 90-minutes in length, meaning you spend approximately $.08 a minute for the movie.  GTA IV costs $59.99 for a reported 40-hours of game play, which works out to around $.02 a minute.  I know this is a highly simplistic way to look at it, but you also add in the cost of gas to go to the theater, snacks, wasted time in a theater, popping in a video game starts to look a lot more appealing.

Several years ago I went to a conference of video retailers, and I heard something that stuck with me like nothing else I had ever heard at a conference: “We aren’t in just a battle for their entertainment dollar, we’re in a battle for their disposable time.”  If someone is spending 40 hours playing GTA IV, that is 40 hours not watching TV or going to movies.  If anyone in the entertainment field starts to wonder about diminishing funds, I think we’ve found your culprit.

My much beloved Firefox web browser will finally be getting a new version on June 17th!  Hopefully with slightly less memory leakage, and a bit more stability, but a new version all the same.

In celebration of this release, Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, is going to try to set a record for the number of downloads in a single day for a piece of software.  You can click on the image to the left to sign up for a reminder email to be sent (they promise no more after that), or I imagine every blog on Earth will be mentioning this next week to remind all of you.

Some of the things you can look for include OS-themed appearance, new download manager, new password manager, new bookmark system with tags and a whole lot more.  I am so all over this on Tuesday!

Due to some recent changes in my work, I need to keep up with pop culture more than ever, and quite honestly it is a scary, scary place. Most of it is very run-of-the-mill stuff about who has gained weight, who is currently having a baby and so on, but the recent obsession with Lindsay Lohan and DJ Samantha Ronson is just odd.

Yes, Ms. Ronson is an out lesbian, and Ms. Lohan has only ever been seen with men, but she is now spending copious amounts of time with Ms. Ronson. So? They may very well be in a relationship, but they may also be nothing more than good friends. I know, what a concept that an out homosexual might just be friends with someone of the gender the prefer… that NEVER happens with hetrosexuals.

What kills me is why this should, or any other number of trivial matters, matter to the world at large? If Ms. Lohan has found that she is interested in women, so be it, more power to her. However, when you have an army of paparazzi following her everywhere she goes, even making it difficult for her to get in and out of her car, don’t you think that is going a bit far? Yes, she is a public figure, but does that mean she gives up the privacy that every other person in the world enjoys? Could you possibly imagine not being able to just run out to buy some shoes without a throng of people shoving cameras in your face? Somehow I don’t think the majority of people would put up with it very well.

This situation has been around as long as there have been cameras and publications willing to print the pictures, but I think the Internet has made it that much worse. Just as the Net made it easy for anyone to enjoy porn in the privacy of their home without the embarrassment of having to go somewhere to buy it, people can fulfill their voyeuristic tendencies by following celebrities in virtual anonymity. Why do you think sites like Perez Hilton are among the most trafficked pages on the Web? People enjoy looking into these people’s lives, and the Internet allows them to do it without anyone knowing about it.

Ms. Lohan and Ms. Ronson are just the latest in a long line of people to be hounded in the manner they are currently experiencing, and I feel for them. Friends, lovers, it doesn’t really matter, it has to be hard on anyone to go through this, and I feel for them.  I think people need to ask themselves why this interests them.  Do you care about these people being happy?  Do you just like it for the salacious idea of knowing what they are doing to fulfill some fantasy you have?  Why should it matter to you who someone is dating?  I just don’t get it.

(before someone leaves a comment such as, “Sean, you just said you have to keep up on pop culture, doesn’t this mean you’re doing the same thing?”… no. I am keeping up with the trend of studying the celebs, I am not writing about the celebs, nor would I want to)

We’ve lived in my current house for 23 years. Also on my property is my maternal grandmother’s house and my company warehouse. All three buildings are serviced by the same county water account, so when we pay the bill, it covers all three buildings at once.

The water meter is about 500 feet from my front door, deep in the woods, buried in a ground canister.  To read it, you have to lift the lid, kneel down, reach in to wipe muck and dirt off the glass, and then cover it back up.  Well, several years ago my father went to check it out, and sure enough there was a large snake in the hole.  From then on out, we got the water district to agree to allow us to do an annual reading where we paid them a large sum up front, we would read the meter before the next annual payment, and at that time we would settle up any difference.

All of this was done strictly for safety as none of us wanted to be reaching in to a ground hole with potential snakes more than we absolutely had to.  I know… we’re crazy like that.

This all has worked out without any hiccups for several years now, but at some point the water district has decided to suspend this sort of payment plan without telling us.  As we have been waiting on our annual “go read your meter” letter, we didn’t get anything, so we thought we had the date wrong.  Today I had to run to town to meet a semi truck bringing us a large shipment, and they couldn’t get down our road to deliver it, when done, I called the folks to check in with them since they are on the road, only to learn the property had no water.

It seems my grandmother, who turned 88 today, had called her and informed her that she had no water.  Well, it turned out we had no water at all, and the reason was that we hadn’t received a letter telling us we have to return to reading the meter, and we have to pay by check.

Now, here are my problems with this:

1) In 23 years, we have never missed a payment, but you miss one payment by a week or so when you aren’t even aware the system has changed, and they turn you off?  I am all for paying bills, but seeing as water is essential for life, and there are states passing laws saying you can’t turn off electricity to the elderly in the winter no matter what, there has to be a different system than turning off water.

2) It’s the 21st century and I can’t set up an automatic bank draw or put a credit/debit card on file?  No, I had to run back to town with a check and pay it in person to get the water turned back on by this evening.  It has been so long since I wrote a check, I had to actually think about it as I did it.

3) Supposedly we will be getting wireless meters which will allow them to read the meter remotely, great concept, but why not just let us finally move the stupid meter out of the hole?  It’s been there since before we bought the property, so it pre-dates us, but they’ve never allowed us to move it to someplace more sensible, like the side of a building.

So, yes, I only lost water for a few hours, but considering I have an 88-year-old grandmother to watch over, it’s annoying and worrisome.  What annoys the most is how many companies insist on not updating their system.  We have the same problem with our trash collection in that they only take checks.  I know this sounds incredibely whiny, but… I don’t have time to write checks.  As of today I am the only one home for three weeks solid, I’m working two jobs, and I adore companies that just allow me to use a debit card to pay so I don’t have to think about it.  It’s off my mind, they get their money and everyone gets to go home happy.

Come on folks, its 2008, catch the heck up with the rest of us would ya?