My son and I decided we needed to start producing more mindless podcast shenanigans, so we sat down and talked, at great length mind you, about what we see now in the gaming console world and where we think it will be heading. 

Now to say we are "industry experts" is absurd. David and I are like the rest of you. We have THIS much money and we can buy THIS or THAT... not BOTH, so we truly tried to make sense of what we can get now and what we plan on spending our hard earned money on in the future. 

Oh, and if you are a representive from Sony.. sorry... I'm pissed at you! PERIOD! Listen and find out why you... leeches. 

Anyway, listen here or go and get drunk. Hey... it's almost Friday! 

This is pretty cool.

Package Overview:

The Media Player Codec Pack supports almost every compression and file type used by modern video and audio files.

The package is simple to install, while also offering advanced settings to the high end user:

For simple installation select "Easy Installation".

For advanced installation options select "Expert Installation".

Codec's Explained:
A codec is a piece of software on either a device or computer capable of encoding and/or decoding video and/or audio data from files, streams and broadcasts. The word Codec is a portmanteau of 'compressor-decompressor'

Compression types that you will be able to decode include:
10bit x264 | x264| h.264 | AVC | DivX | XviD | MP4 | MPEG4 | MPEG2 and many more.

File types you will be able to play include:
.mkv | .avi | .flv | .mp4 | .ts | .m4v | .m4a | .ogm | .ac3 | .dts | .flac | .ape | .aac
.ogg | .ofr | .mpc | .3gp and many more.

- Download from here. It's free.

Damn! Microsoft seems to be in the mood to REALLY go after Google. 

Many folks reading this blog are active users of SkyDrive and Mesh, both part of the broad set of Windows Live services (like Hotmail), and the Windows Live Essentials programs (Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, and more). With their introduction and with Windows 7, we have talked about how these services really complete the Windows experience. As we developed Windows 8, we thought deeply about how these services can take an even more active role in completing the experience—offering a cloud service for each and every Windows 8 customer and all their PCs (and phones), should you choose to use it. In previous posts (Signing in to Windows 8 with a Windows Live ID and Extending "Windows 8" apps to the cloud with SkyDrive) we kicked off talking about cloud services, how you can automatically roam your settings to multiple PCs, and how applications can take advantage of this roaming. In this post, we will show you three cool things that you will get by choosing to sign up and use SkyDrive with Windows 8.

This post was written by Mike Torres and Omar Shahine, Group Program Managers for SkyDrive.

--Steven 

Here is a link to the entire article.

No shit... 

Universal USB Installer is a Live Linux USB Creator that allows you to choose from a selection of Linux Distributions to put on your USB Flash Drive. The Universal USB Installer is easy to use.

Simply choose a Live Linux Distribution, the ISO file, your Flash Drive and, Click Install.

Other features include; Persistence (if available), and the ability to format the flash drive (recommended) to ensure a clean install.

When the process is completed, you will have a ready-to-run bootable USB Flash Drive that has your chosen Linux version installed on it. 

Here is the link to the page to get this.

Grab it fro the famous Majorgeeks.com! 

- Download from this link.

I use one of them and I try and only use one extra besides what Google offers. If I use more, I get all kinds of weird issues with one app trying to install over another installed (and updated app) because its service was not the one that installed the original application. I run into this a lot with Amazon apps I have installed. 

Google’s Android Market isn’t the only place you can get Android apps. Whether you’re looking for free paid apps, social recommendations or an app store to replace a missing Android Market, you have a lot of choice.

Each app store is completely legit — the ones that offer free apps pay the developer for the privilege. You may even have an alternative app store on your device already if you’re an Opera user. 

Read the entrie article....

Just the pure 45% increase in frame rates for Skyrim should have everyone downloading these drivers and installing them! 

This is the first WHQL-certified driver from the R295 family of drivers. It is the recommended upgrade for all GeForce users, especially those playing the latest hot PC games like Battlefield 3, Diablo III, Mass Effect 3, or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. These drivers come packed with GeForce-exclusive performance and quality enhancements and are now Microsoft WHQL-certified. Read the full GeForce 295.73 driver article on GeForce.com.

R295 Highlight Summary
New features and performance since last WHQL-certified driver

Game-changing performance boost of up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, “the fastest selling title in Steam’s history”
Up to 2x performance Mass Effect 3 with SLI technology.
GeForce-exclusive quality enhancements with ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo III, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
New 3D Vision and SLI profiles for over 50 titles.
New PhysX software for the best experience in top PhysX titles like Alice: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.

R295 Highlight Details

Performance

Increases performance by up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 1080p Ultra settings in indoor scenes vs. 285.62).
Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
Boosts Mass Effect 3 SLI performance to up to 2x.

Microsoft coming out swinging! 

My email is now going to look like Facebook? Screw that... 

Email has "stagnated" and three Australians who quit Google say they have built a product that will change the way we interact with email and allow us to get through our bulging inboxes "20 per cent faster".

Cameron Adams, 32, and Dhanji Prasanna, 31, began work on Fluent full-time about six months ago, after becoming frustrated at Google's work culture and leaving the company about the middle of last year. The third co-founder, Jochen Bekmann, left Google to join them in November. 

Read the entire article and see some shots of what they are working on.