LCD vs Plasma: HDTV buying guide and other stuff I learned in the process of buying my first HDTV

What HDTV should I buy?  Its a question heard around the Internet every two seconds.  Quickly followed by LCD or Plasma?  Followed by more questions: screen size, refresh rate, resolution, etc.  Normally, a quick search on Google or Bing will quiet my concerns about any tech purchase.  In the case of buying an HDTV, Google was worthless, sending me repeatedly to adver-spam sites that do nothing more than duplicate Amazon.com's review listings.  Bing proved a little bit more fruitful, directing me to the helpful CNET Reviews.

What I learned was that I could not rely on a review or single source to direct me to the HDTV that was right for me.  The only way I was going to get a quality television was if I made the effort to research the options and understand from top to bottom everything there was to know before I walked into a store (and know that once I left that store, I was going home to order my HDTV online to save money).

Ocean Water Moved By The Moon

Someone has invited you to preview Google Wave!

Google Wave is a new online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Learn more at wave.google.com.

This is still an early preview of Google Wave, so you may run into some bumps along the way but we look forward to your feedback.

Makes me think of this article: Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D.

5 Years of Change

As a gaming geek, I can't imagine my day to day life without World of Warcraft or Firefox. A little over five years ago, neither one existed. This month, both celebrate five happy years of existence.

Five years ago today, Mozilla announced the official release of Firefox 1.0. The open source Web browser has come a very long way since then and has achieved a level of popularity that few would have imagined possible.

Its amazing how things come in twos on the Internet, this quote paralleling with WoW perfectly. Five years ago, NO ONE imagined the level of success that WoW has achieved. MMOGs went from communities of thousands, to millions in one giant leap.

With WoW's five year anniversary coming up later this month, The Escapist is running an interview with Rob Pardo:

World of Warcraft turns five this month, and we sat down with Blizzard VP of Game Design Rob Pardo to chat about the biggest triumphs and biggest mistakes of the mega-MMORPG, and why he's not worried that their new MMOG will kill it.

The full interview is worth the read. It covers the casual vs. hardcore debate, without pulling any punches, which is quite amazing coming straight from a game developers mouth. Its not often we see questions like this levied in an interview:

If you weren't a designer, but a hardcore WoW raider, do you think you would think the game was too "casual" these days?

Quite possibly. I have this theory that, when you're a really elite hardcore gamer, what you really want - what drives you - is that sense of competition; really having that gap between you and the less skilled, and more casual. That's what drives you, and that's not different no matter what game you're playing: WoW, Counterstrike, Warcraft III, games like that. You strive to make the gap as big as possible.

My commentary can't do the interview justice. Catch the full transcript here.

The Future, Now! Firefox 3.7 Theme

Firefox 3.5 just launched, but the Mozilla folks are hard at work showing off 3.7. I love the Firefox web browser and get a little giddy anytime there are future updates in the works. Thanks to Boneyardbrew, we have a mock-up of FIrefox 3.7 available for download. However, there are some extra steps involved:

Installing this theme isn't quite as simple as you are probably used to—you'll need to first enable the All-Glass Firefox extension for the Aero effects, the Personal Menu extension to hide the menubar and add the Tools button, the Stylish extension for a tweak that fixes the text, and then drag the mockup theme's *.jar file into the add-ons window to install it.

Once you've successfully completed all of the steps—which are detailed on the download page—you should have an impressive browser style that looks very similar to the screenshot.

Personally, I just downloaded the theme from Boneyardbrew's page and it looks fine to me, minus the tweaks that the other add-ons provide.

Enjoy.

Snap Links for Firefox 3.5

Snap Links is one of my favorite Firefox add ons. With a single click and drag, multiple links can be clicked at once. With Firefox 3.5 rolling out, it was time to find a new version of Snap Links.

After digging high and low, I finally found a compatible version in Snap Links Plus.

Enjoy!

Update: 3 Aug 2009 - This works with Firefox 3.5.1.
Update: 31 Oct 2009 - This works with Firefox 3.5.4.
Update: 11 Nov 2009 - This works with Firefox 3.5.5.
Update: 20 Dec 2009 - This works with Firefox 3.5.6.

How To Install Google Calendar Sync on XP 64

Since I'm knee deep in a project between my company and Google, I've started using Google Calendar Sync at work to sync my Outlook Calendar to my Google Calendar. It's turned out to be a neat little tool and I've been meaning to install at home. However, I use Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition at home and Google Calendar Sync does not support it. Fortunately, with a simple little "hack", I've got it up and running just fine.

Get the Google Calendar Sync installer.

1. Right-click on the installer file and select Properties.
2. Next, select the Compatibility tab.
3. Turn on "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and select
Windows XP from the drop down box.
4. Click OK.
5. This will run GoogleCalendarSync_Installer.exe in compatibility mode for XP 32-bit, allowing the program to run on an XP 64 system. There are no issues that I have found running it this way.

Now, this trick works surprisingly well for a lot of software that does not support XP 64. Give it a try and let me know if there are any questions.