Free Baseball Text Message Alerts for your Cell Phone March 31, 2008
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Cell Phones , 2commentsAs we all know (or should know) the 2008 MLB season is underway. Of course with most of the opening games taking place early during the day, it may be hard for some of us to keep up. I have recently discovered a site which can help Fantasy fanatics and sports fans everywhere (like me, I’m a big Yankees fan and found this site while trying to get scores for opening day game). This is a site provided by 4INFO.net that basically sends free baseball and sports text messages to your phone regarding score changes, inning-by-inning updates, player stats etc. (it also has other features like weather, news and other sports updates like March Madness, NBA). What makes this so great though is that unlike mlb.com’s text message updates (which are also free from the TeamTXT page), the user has more options to pick what they want—instead of just score and team news, a person can also choose lead changes, inning by inning etc. To sign up for this service from 4INFO all you need to do is create a free account with your email, cell phone number and carrier and phone type (RAZR, iPhone etc.), and then set up the updates you want. Mlb.com’s offer is similar but there you’ll need to only enter your cell phone number and team.
Just something to keep in mind: while these services are free from their respective companies, they do send text messages which cost money. This means that if you want something like score changes, then you should get a big texting plan because you never know how many runs will score in a game (remember last year’s 30-3 Texas vs Baltimore game), also if you want to stop the messages, at any time you could reply stop or stop all to a message sent to you. To get a texting plan may cost more money based on your wireless carrier, and you should check to make sure it is what you want before you buy it and sign up.
Enjoy and Go Yankees 
Example of 4Info from Yesnetwork.com
Game of the Month: March 2008 – Super Smash Brothers Brawl March 19, 2008
Posted by Chaim Gartenberg in : Video Games , 1 comment so farThis month’s game of the month is the highly anticipated Super Smash Brothers Brawl. After several months of delays, the game was finally released earlier this month, and it was definitely worth the wait. If you’re looking for the most game for you buck, then Brawl is for you. Although at first it looks like a simplistic fighting game with Nintendo characters, fans of the series will know that it manages to do much more, and does it well. I managed to convert my skeptic friend in just a few short Brawls.
Pretty much every major Nintendo character, such as Mario, Link, and Kirby, and quite a few minor ones, like newcomer Pit, Lucas, or R.O.B., appear in the game, almost all as playable characters. Also a series first is the inclusion of 3rd party (non Nintendo) characters Snake (from the Metal Gear Solid games), and Sonic the Hedgehog, (Pretty obvious series here…), much to the delight of fans.
Also included is the Subspace Emissary story mode, which, in my humble opinion, is quite irritating. The gameplay is slow, the moves not well designed for the large amount of platforming required, and the only point of it is to unlock the otherwise irrationally gettable characters, who now can either be gotten by playing through SSE, or by ridiculous requirements like playing 450 Brawls. It however, does keep you entertained with creative story, character matchups, and cutscenes.
Regular Brawls are pretty much the same as previous games, with fast paced action, and frantic gameplay, but with Wii-Remote controls and the new characters, levels, and items (like the extremely powerful Smash Balls, which unleash over-the-top crazily powerful attacks unique to each characters). Control wise, I only played with the Gamecube (why mess with perfection, at least as far as this game is concerned) and Classic (too small and cramped for my liking, but it may just be because of my huge hands) controllers. Wi-Fi with Friend Codes works well, with little delay and lag. Overall, the game is excellent, achieving what it strives to do in a fun and entertaining way. My only remaining complaint is the lack of more 3rd party characters like Mega-Man, Shadow the Hedgehog, Knuckles, Tails, Silver the Hedgehog (Ok, so I like the Sonic games a lot.) in Brawl.
Make Your Windows Computer look like a Mac March 13, 2008
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Computers , 5commentsI, probably like some other people, see some of those cool, new, Macs and want to know how I can make my Windows look like it. Well here are some programs that are cool, easy, useful and free make your computer look and run like a Mac.
1. Safari. This is the ever popular Apple internet browser that is found on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and all Macs. It is a browser similar to the other popular Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 browsers, but adds some cool features of its own. The first of those features are a good RSS reader. RSS are either short quick versions of articles on websites or full versions of articles on websites that can be viewed without necessarily going to the exact website itself. This happens through what is called RSS feeds which are in web browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer), email applications like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, as well as other places and devices. What is good about Safari’s RSS reader however, is that it offers a very quick, simple, and easy way to view the feeds. Another nice feature in Safari is ability to load regular pages quicker. While this feature is only a second or two of difference in most cases, it still is cool and useful. Safari also does something else that I noticed when I used it, it displays websites cleaner with text and pictures appearing much nicer. I’m not sure why this is, but I still find it to be something that will be helpful, especially to people who are viewing the internet very often, or are using it for searching for news articles or pictures. Safari is now out of testing phase (aka Beta) and is available for free at Apple’s website here.
Apple’s Safari browser running on Windows XP (it also runs fine on Windows Vista).
Hulu- A new way to watch TV March 13, 2008
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Computers , add a commentToday a new internet service was launched called Hulu. This service is a joint program made by TV companies Fox and NBC. The goal of this new service is to broadcast TV shows online for free legally (not on YouTube or other sites where people sometimes post them illegally). This doesn’t only include TV shows from those two companies, it also has shows from other networks they own (NBC Universal, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, FX etc.), as well as the NBA, NHL, and other sites. It also has movie clips from their 2 movie companies (20th Century Fox, Universal Studios) as well as other movie companies, and they actually have some of those clips up now from movies like Dodgeball, Napoleon Dynamite etc., free to view on the site. The site is up today and if you want to check it out than just go to www.hulu.com
UPDATE: Hulu now has full movies available for viewing for free.
iPod Touch/iPhone News March 6, 2008
Posted by Chaim Gartenberg in : Cell Phones, Mp3 players and iPods, Video Games , add a commentIt’s no secret I like my iPod Touch. And against the very strong urge to do so, I managed to refrain from jail-breaking to to enjoy 3rd party (other companies other then Apple) applications, such as games, IMing, and other applications. And today, this paid off as Apple announced their iPhone/iPod Touch SDK. (Say what!?)… Ok to backtrack. An SDK (or Software Developer Kit) is a program or set of programs for developer (the companies and people who make software) to make the software of a specific product. Computers have SDKs, video game consoles have SDKs, etc. So Apple announced today an SDK for the iPhone/iPod Touch. This means that games, IM programs, and all that other stuff can now be put on you iPod or iPhone without jail-braking it. Some things that Apple demonstrated the SDK cabable of making is high level 3D games like Spore or Super Monkey Ball. The applications can be downloaded from a new program for the iPhone/iPod Touch called the Application Store, which works pretty much the same as the iTunes WiFi music store: You can buy things directly on the device, and then sync it to your computer as a backup, or you can buy on iTunes and move it to the device.
Applications will be priced by whatever the developer wants (like computer software: some is free, some cost money) but can also be free. The 2 things I didn’t like of these announcements is that the SDK, while being available for developers to start making programs from today, the programs themselves won’t be available until the software update in June.The second thing is that while the update will be free for iPhone users, it will, like the January Application Package, cost an unannounced fee for iPod Touch users.