Savings.com Blog - derek70x7

Herding Cats: Verizon iPhone, Best of CES 2011 and Ferris Bueller

derek70x7 — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:56:00 GMT

^{Image Courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger}
This is my last week filling in for the iHuppp, who has been busy binge drinking Guinness every day and night for over a week on the Emerald Isle. That would concern most people, but he's in law school so that kind of astronomical alcohol consumption is essential for sanity retention and survival.

Gizmodo: The Verizon iPhone Will Be Announced on January 11 - Welp, it's an HC faux pas, but we're starting off with double Giz posts because this sucker just broke less than fifteen minutes ago and already has over 10,000 hits. I'm locked into Android for the next year-and-a-half so I'm pretty indifferent towards this news, but I'm glad it's finally coming to fruition for no other reason than the fact that the tiresome Brett-Favre-retirement-esque era of swirling, baseless Verizon iPhone rumors will actually end. Ironically, AT&T's fake 4G network is going to be blazing fast a few months from now, because tens of millions of their customers are about to peace out.

Gizmodo: Some Of Tomorrow's Best Gadgets - A glut of new 3D TV models constitutes most of the cutting-edge electronics on display at this year's CES, but the coolest thing I've seen has to be this eCoupled Wireless Power charging surface that instantly cooks soup to your desired heating level in an instant. I would very much like to have one of those, both for culinary and pyrotechnic usage.

National Geographic: Land On "Goldilocks" Planet For Sale On eBay - Leave it to a couple of Americans to lay claim to something that in no way belongs to them and try to profit off it. Yeah, I know they're giving a "portion" of their fake alien land sales to "Students for the Exploration and Development of Space," but it's still an annoying thing to do. Hopefully Gliese 581g is really Omicron Persei 8, and Lrrr is already on his way to Earth to consume these two foolhardy entrepreneurs.

Born Rich: The Streets Of Monaco Luxury Yacht Has Its Own Go-Kart Circuit - I don't think I could possibly hate a domain name more than I hate "bornrich.org." I'll have to admit, however, pretty much every product they feature is awesome beyond belief. Anyone who actually purchases a $600,000 weeklong megayacht cruise or a Swarovski Crystal Rubber Duck should be shot in the face and their estate given to charity.

Small World News Service: James Bond 'Golden Gun' Replica Expected To Fetch £1,500 - In a related things-you-can't-afford story, how awesome would it be to hire an Asian midget to be your very own Nicknack and threaten people with an actual Golden Gun? This is making me all nostalgic... there was no truer test professional marksmanship than Golden Gun multi-player mode in Goldeneye 64, which, by the way, is unequivocally and incontrovertibly the greatest video game ever made.

Consumerist: You Should Definitely Buy Cameron's House From 'Ferris Bueller' - Real estate prices in other parts of the country are so adorable. Only $1.65 million for one of the most legendary residences in American cinematic history? If you airlifted it to Southern California you'd be lucky to get it for twice that price. Have I mentioned that my rent is too damn high?

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Diaspora, ICANN and the Rest of the Best of 2010

derek70x7 — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:56:00 GMT

^{Image Courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger}
I thought 2009 passed quickly, but 2010 was my first full year as a college-graduated, job-having adult--and it blazed by even faster. I feel old. But enough of my melancholy observations on temporal speed--it's time for your end-of-the-year Best of Herding Cats post!

Gizmodo: Say Goodbye to Unlimited Wireless Data Plans (March 12) - The inevitable extinction of all-you-can-eat data plans will not be pleasant for anybody but America's ruling wireless oligopoly (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile). Personally, I think this is a huge consumer story, because it will render us totally unable to enjoy the wonders of the coming 4G revolution over the next few years. Verizon's LTE network is especially exciting in theory, but be prepared to pay through the nose if you want to stream large amounts of music and video through that nifty little broadband USB dongle.

Consumerist: See The Fortune 500 Magazine Cover That Was Too Brutally Honest To Run (April 28) - This wasn't a big story or trend by any means, but I absolutely loved this rejected piece of artwork. If you haven't read a lot of my Herding Cats posts and are thus unfamiliar with my feelings toward Wall Street and Big Business, let's just say I would probably have been a guillotine operator during the French Revolution. *SLICE!* *ROLL*

WalletPop: Inside L.A.'s Food Truck Phenomenon (May 12) - Nothing has transformed life in the City of Traffic this year quite like the roaming armadas or gourmet food trucks that camp out at key spots during the workday. From Santa Monica to downtown, you can be sure you're not too far from awesome mobile food. I think I can speak for most, if not all, Savings.com employees when I say that I don't know what we'd do without the lineup of delicious trucks that await us at Olympic and Bundy when lunchtime rolls around.

StreetGiant: Leroy Stick - The Man Behind @BPGlobalPR (June 2) - The BP oil spill was undoubtedly the biggest American news story of the year, and "Leroy Stick" was one of the best things that resulted from it. His notorious BP Twitter feed isn't as relevant as it was during the actual spill, but you can tell from the 181K+ follower count that Leroy was a big deal in 2010. In this coming-out rant, he offers some great lasting advice to a country of consumers battered and bruised by greedy corporations: "Don't let people forget what has happened here. Don't let the prolonged nature of this tragedy numb you to its severity. Re-branding doesn't work if we don't let it, so let's hold BP's feet to the fire. Let's make them own up to and fix their mistakes NOW and most importantly, let's make sure we don't let them do this again."

Engadget: Seven Physical Keys Serve As The Internet's Horcrux (July 28) - I picked this article not just because it's really weird to think that seven mysterious people spread across the globe control the internet's entire rebooting process, but because ICANN is soon to become a key player in our government's war of futility against online piracy. With the recent passing of the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," our Justice Department is essentially planning to mobilize Marina Del Ray, CA based ICANN as the de facto executioner of any domestic or international domain that the RIAA or MPAA complains about. Frightening, indeed...we'll see how that goes over the next year or two.

Wired: Open-Facebook Competitor Diaspora Sets Sept. 15 Launch Date (August 26) - This pro-privacy Facebook rival raised a ton of donation money in 2010, and their developers are still hard at work bringing a public Alpha release to the masses (it's already over three months late, so I'm hoping it's going to be that much better when it finally goes live). Facebook has done a decent job of improving user privacy settings over the past few months, but I'm still excited to give Diaspora a try.

They've banned Sn00ki from Times Square, so let's just hope that someone volunteers to put her inside that crystal hamster ball and drop her out of an airplane without a parachute or something. Have a healthy and happy 2011, everyone!Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Wikileaks Mastercard Conundrum, Google Vs. Facebook and Cheap Rolexes

derek70x7 — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 22:56:00 GMT

^{Image Courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger}

It's been awhile since my last herding duties, but since iHuppp spent this morning being beaten and flogged (metaphorically) by his law school final, I'm temporarily taking back the reins. MUSH!

WalletPop: Rent Your Christmas Tree This Season - My family is having a bit of a tree crisis this year. Half of our artificial tree's lights are burnt out, so it's getting tossed -- at an original purchase price of about $550 six years ago, we barely got our money's worth. The new artificial has some defective lighting as well, so it almost has us considering a return to the real thing, if only our kitten wouldn't make herself sick by gnawing at pine needles all day.

Consumerism Commentary: Frugality Is Bad For The Economy - I, for one, am doing my part to help the listless economy: On Black Friday, Dell put up a deal for a Mitsubishi 60" 120hz DLP for $590 and I pulled the trigger on it, despite my fairly broke bank account. It is comically oversized for my living room (shows look terrible even in 720p because the pixels are so large), but I'm keeping it out of principle that it is bigger, and therefore better.

Forbes: Google's Android Attack - The Google-Facebook Display Ad War really amuses me because internet ads in general have been dead to me since I discovered the life-changing Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox. But more pertinently, NFC ("Near Field Communications," not the "National Football Conference") is going to be a huge deal once Gingerbread (OS 2.3) gets rolled out to Android phones. Can't wait to pay for stuff by busting out my Droid X instead of digging around my wallet for cards and cash.

Ars Technica: First Arrest Made In Wikileaks Revenge Attacks - As if the inherent evils of any credit card company aren't enough to make you want to go Tyler Durden on them, Visa and Mastercard have decided to cut off all fund transfers to Wikileaks--even though it's still totally cool if you want to use Visa or Mastercard to donate to the Ku Klux Klan. So, if you're keeping score, money to support freedom of information = bad, money to support violent racism = okay. Thanks for the lesson in corporate morality, guys!

Gizmodo: Guy Tries To Sell Watch For $9.95, Gets $66,100 - How could someone possibly come to the conclusion that their half-century-old Rolex is worth only $10? IT'S THE ORIGINAL JAMES BOND'S EXACT WATCH MODEL! Sigh. But still, you've gotta love stories of oblivious old people getting rich off stuff they've had lying around forever.

That's it for my brief return to the Herding Cat. Smell you later!Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Best Android Apps, Diaspora vs. Facebook and Fried Beer

derek70x7 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:34:00 GMT

A week after iHuppp was named the inheritor of my Friday Herding Cats post here on the Savings weblog, he flaked out on it to do his law school homework. So I'm back. For now. To be fair though, he did just redeem himself a bit by returning to our apartment with a 30-rack of Natty Light. Good man!

The Daily Mail: Anything To Declare? Shocked Airport Officials Find Drugged Tiger Cub In Passenger's Suitcase Among Soft Toys - SMUGGLING FAIL. X-rays generally reveal when something is filled with bones and organs, so I don't think hiding the poor guy amongst stuffed animals was all that helpful. It's too bad for the Thai woman who tried to get him through security, though, because it turns out that domesticated tigers make awesome housepets. In other international miraculous animal discovery news: Lola the British trash bin cat is a national hero and Fudge the British kitten survived a 5-minute spin in her owner's tumble dryer after sneaking inside it for an ill-advised nap on a freshly-cleaned duvet cover.

MainStreet: $578 Million Public School Opens in LA - I'm pretty sure you could build a decent university campus with this much money. The Los Angeles Unified School District spending it on a public K-12 school, however, is kind of like a homeless person financing the construction of their own sprawling mansion. Good thing LA's school children will still have solid-gold desks and leather armchairs when all their teachers get laid off!

Lifehacker: Our List Of The Best Android Apps - Here's a solid list of essentials for your Droid. I strongly agree with the need for PDAnet (free tethering), Google Voice (get all your messages within the app without the stupid audio menus of default voicemail), and Astro File Manager (find, move, and copy files, re-organize your folder structures, etc.). What Android really needs, though, is a decent music player. After much experimentation I've found that the stock music app is currently the best, cleanest all-around choice, but it doesn't even let you sort albums by track number yet. Unforgivable. I can has Android iTunes?

Wired: Open-Facebook Competitor Diaspora Sets Sept. 15 Launch Date - Any of us who belonged to the real Facebook of 2004-2006, when it was restricted to students with a valid university email address, would give anything to rid the now-default social network of adults, spammers and those creepy kids from high school who never went to college or even left town. That's obviously impossible, so the best we can hope for is a fresh start on Diaspora, the aptly-named challenger to Mark Zuckerberg's personal-data-mining, targeted-ad-spewing monstrosity. If you're a fellow modern Facebook hater, get excited for September 15th!

Consumerist: Fried Beer... The Name Says It All - Many of us have longed for the effects of alcohol in food form...and now our prayers have been answered. What I don't appreciate is this guy patenting and hogging the recipe all to himself. You better mass produce, buddy, or you're going to have an angry American populace on your hands.

That does it for this week's five-pack of not-really-at-all-finance-related newsbits. Time to enjoy that 30-rack of Natty!Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Droid 2, Trekkie iPads and the Sex Appeal of iPhone Users

derek70x7 — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:51:00 GMT

Did you know that in addition to inventing the cell phone, Star Trek invented the iPad? It's true. The fascinating story, including another one about sandwiches, after these messages.

Gizmodo: iPhone Users Have Twice As Much Sex As Android Users (Plus! Sexiest Cameras) - I'm sad to admit that we now have scientific proof that iPhones are indeed twice as sexy as Android phones. You'd have to pry my monstrous Droid X and its excellent Verizon signal coverage from my cold dead hands, so it looks like I'm doomed to near-celibacy relative to that of my slutty iPhone-having friends. Most of this article, though, is a guide to increasing your photogenic-ness with the right camera and optimum settings/environment. Gizmodo's conclusive advice for attracting a mate? "Use a decent camera. Go easy on the flash. Own the foreground. Take your picture in the afternoon. Then visit the nearest Apple store. Done."

MainStreet: Droid 2: Just Like Droid X, But Different - Be my aforementioned "Droid X honeymoon period" as it may, I definitely miss the physical keyboards of my previous two Verizon brickphones. For those of you who feel the same, the Droid 2 is probably for you. The specs of its guts are comparable to the Droid X, but it has the smaller standard 3.7" touchscreen with advanced slide-out QWERTY awesomeness, and ships with Froyo (Android OS 2.2) already installed. The DX and the D2 look poised to continue pummeling the iPhone in market share until their lovechild, the 4" Droid Pro, takes over near the end of 2010.

Ars Technica: How Star Trek Artists Imagined The iPad...23 Years Ago - Star Trek: The Next Generation is without a doubt one of the greatest television shows ever, having pioneered special effects and theoretical ideas for futuristic technology that were revolutionary for its era--all on a modest straight-to-syndication budget. It also bequeathed to us a phenomenal drinking game, which even has its own Facebook group with a thousand fans (some of the more liver-unfriendly events: crew gets trapped in the Holodeck = 3 drinks, shuttle crashes = 5 drinks, an Enterprise saucer separation = entire beverage, a Battle Bridge scene = finish the rest of the keg). And now, to honor the morally flawless Captain Jean Luc Picard, I give you quite possibly the most amazing video in existence. You're welcome.

Lifehacker: Battle Of The Streaming Music Services - In my opinion, Spotify and Last.fm are the best free music streaming sites, but their downfall--for audiophiles like me--is inherent to streaming itself. My digital music bitrate of choice is V0 VBR, which usually averages around 245kbps (once they make iPods with bigger hard drives that play FLAC files, which averages around 900kbps, I'll probably switch to that). Free streaming service bitrates, however, are much lower: Spotify streams at a semi-decent 160kbps, Last.fm comes in at a mediocre 128kbps, and I completely avoid Pandora because of its pathetic 64kbps rate. Until somebody upgrades to at least a V2 VBR stream (which averages around 190kbps), I'll stick to my underground digital music sources.

Consumerist: Mets Fan Sues Team, League, Players & Bat Maker After Getting Hit By Broken Bat - If the last decade of self-deprecating jokes from David Letterman and Jon Stewart are any indication, it's really tough being a Mets fan. The Amazins tore the hearts of their faithful to shreds with three straight years of gut-wrenching, season-ending, choke jobs from 2006-2008 and are currently hovering around .500 this year. None of that is any excuse, though, for suing every single human being involved because you got hit in the face by a shattered maple bat. My great uncle lost his sight in one eye to a shattered baseball bat, but he didn't sue anybody! Anyway, I'm pretty sure that just by purchasing a field-level ticket you agree to a built-in laundry list of injury waivers, so best of luck to this ambitiously-litigious Mets fan.

MSN Money: The 10 Most Economical Sandwiches - This dude went to some painstaking detail in his chart of exact sandwich costs, but it's kind of a moot point because you're probably going to eat a lot more than the standard serving size according to the nutritional info on all of the ingredients. So, if a standard PB&J costs just $0.31, how much do you think Double Wide costs? Or the monstrous Schnitzels and things? My guess is around $75,000 each--once you factor in your coronary bypass and other assorted medical care/expenses.

Better get to work on some sexy photography of yourself. Use a DSLR!Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Google & Verizon Plot Cold-Blooded Murder of Internet, Android Gobbles Up Market Share and Billionaires Make it Rain for Charity

derek70x7 — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:04:00 GMT

I don't know if our system can even handle the length of my title this week. Get ready for news on net neutrality, homeless people, and even more reasons to hate LeBron James!

The Wall Street Journal: More Billionaires Sign The Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge - As our nation edges closer to becoming a flat-out plutonomy, it's extremely heartening to see the ultra-rich digging into their bottomless pockets for charity. Whether or not it's a vague PR stunt designed to mitigate my contempt for the American aristocracy doesn't really matter, skrilla is skrilla.

Gizmodo: Google Just Killed Net Neutrality - Well, they haven't just yet, but they're apparently working on it. Giz updated this post a bajillion times with token denials and confirmations from everyone involved, so we'll just have to wait and see if Google finalizes this purported agreement with Verizon to completely ruin the internet for hundreds of millions of Americans. Why? Because when you hijack the internet's egalitarian tubes with a corporate truck, everybody loses.

The New York Times: Android Beats iPhone With New Subscribers - With the recent release of two cutting-edge smartphones (the HTC Incredible and the Motorola Droid X) to the overheating, shatter-prone, death-grip-signal-dropping iPhone 4, it's no surprise that Android has skyrocketed past Apple in mobile OS popularity. I'd blame it mostly on AT&T decision to cripple America's "most coveted" phone with their new tiered data plans. I barely ever stream media, but I've almost hit 3GB of data consumption since I activated my Droid X three weeks ago. If I were on AT&T, they'd be giddily molesting me with overages. Cherish your unlimited data while you can, VZW customers!

MainStreet: Obama Sets Deadline To End Homelessness - Gotta hand it to my man Barry O.: this is about as ballsy and ambitious as executive branch domestic policy gets. He wants to TOTALLY ELIMINATE the American transient population in under 10 years (find them permanent shelter, not exterminate them). I'll admit, I had no idea Dubya even lifted a finger to help the homeless, but apparently he made some impressive strides that Obama plans to build on. I just hope they can find somewhere nice for these guys to live!

Consumerist: LeBron's Miami Move Gets 30 People Fired - I think the next step in America's collective personal growth will be realizing that Kanye West and LeBron James are the same person. If you doubt the truthiness of my theory, just read this axed ESPN feature on a party LeBron threw for himself in Vegas (so axed because ESPN didn't want to tarnish his Brand by revealing what an absurdly douche-tastic manchild he is). It's enough to make you want to hit Miami with a tactical nuclear strike before the NBA season starts. I mean, it's gonna be underwater in a few decades anyway, right?

Okay, clear out. I'm going to spend the rest of my afternoon looking into where I can purchase a battery of micro-cannons with which I will terrorize, conquer, and enslave my enemies. Also, if you happen to live in Savannah, please, PLEASE go see this guy.Add a Comment

Herding Cats: British Supervillain Hoards Chocolate Supply, Dutch Guy Brews 120-Proof Beer and Some Very Disgusting Ice Cream Flavors

derek70x7 — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:16:00 GMT

For some reason all the articles I found for this week's roundup are food-and-drink-related, so I decided to have our village idiot iHuppp help me out and sandwich my gastronews between two fresh-baked technology buns. So thanks iHuppp!

Although apologies in advance for his many gratuitous Lord of the Rings references...

Engadget: Seven Physical Keys Serve As The Internet's Horcrux - (iHuppp) An estimated 8% of Internet activity is fraudulent, directing you to look-a-like websites designed to steal critical personal information. Although I've never myself been a victim of online fraud, I am immensely relieved to know my beloved Internet has neither a master kill switch nor a dark lord capable of puppeteering it behind the scenes. It seems super-secret ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) cast the idea of one ring to rule them all into the fires of Mt. Doom, and instead opted for a slightly less ridiculous seven-ring scheme involving Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago. This new system allows the internet to reboot its authentication key--essentially a cryptographic string of characters designed to make sure a website is who they say they are. Five of seven members must meet in Rivendell and share their part of the master key to reboot the DNSSEC (Domain Name Security System). It will probably never be clear as to why Burkina Faso and Trinidad & Tobago were selected to safeguard something becoming increasingly important, so let's just hope T&T's Jet-Ski Navy and Burkina Faso's…rocks…are enough to ward off cyberterrorists.

Consumerist: High Alcohol Content Beer War Continues With 60% ABV Brew - (derek70x7) You can always depend on me to bring you the latest breaking news in Europe's procession of gasoline-strength brews. This week's heavyweight champ, some Dutch guy, had to hit the 120-proof mark to secure the title belt, so I guess next week another insane brewer will concoct something even more absurd to beat him. But really, unless they're going to put it in a keg and stuff the keg inside a dead grizzly bear, they're not going to top last week's $760-bottle-of-beer-in-a-rodent-carcass.

ESPN: The Complete List Of Stadium Health Inspection Summaries, Sorted By State - (derek70x7) Browse through this compendium if you've been to a North American pro sporting event in the past year and want to totally gross yourself out! It's hard to establish a pattern to determine what regions generally have the most "critical violations," but I'd say that you should stick to stadiums in California, the upper Midwest, or Canada if you don't want your $8.50 hot dog and $6.50 small soda teeming with microorganisms.

The Gloss: The 10 Weirdest Ice Cream Flavors - (derek70x7) You be the judge on how many of these delicacies would immediately induce vomiting in the average person: haggis ice cream, collagen lemon ice cream, sardines & brandy ice cream, squid ink ice cream, caviar ice cream, candied bacon ice cream, Dracula cool garlic mint ice cream, Viagra ice cream, salad ice cream, and foie gras ice cream. The good news is that this post is now ultra-SEO-friendly for masochistic ice cream fetishists, but the bad news is I (almost) puked all over my keyboard while typing that list.

The New York Times: Trader's Cocoa Binge Wraps Up Chocolate Market - (derek70x7) Anthony Ward, hated by his competitors in the cocoa industry, has been dubbed "Chocolatefinger" by the British media for buying up 7% of the world's cocoa supply and then betting $1 billion on cocoa futures in the London market. He's clearly trying to create a shortage to increase the value of his own cocoa cache--but is he planning on contaminating everyone else's cocoa with nuclear radiation? Is there a Fort Knox for chocolate? I hope so.

Gizmodo: A Humble Russian Man Presents His CPU Collection - (iHuppp) After witnessing the astounding 500+ CPU collection of this humble Russian hoarder I was only able to think two things: first, that the Proletariat is back; second, that with an identically sweeping grandiose and smug gesture his only possible words could be "CPU's, I has them." It's fairly obvious I'm simply consumed with jealousy, so I'm going to point out that his so-called "collection" lacks ARM, National Semiconductor, SPARC and AMD Bitslice CPUs--as well as a mini giraffe. Still, if he were to have bought these when first released, you'd figure he'd have spent about $250,000 modern USD (assuming each processor costs roughly $300-$500 after some fuzzy economic adjustment). Props to you, comrade--you make me feel better about my OCD aluminum fetish.

Thanks for bearing with our tag-team this week. And remember, if you happen to run into iHuppp "IRL," as they say, just walk in the opposite direction.Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Beer-soaked Rats, Baseball Fans Spend Beaucoup Bucks and Copyright Lawsuits as New Business Plan for Newspapers

derek70x7 — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:59:00 GMT

Now that the honeymoon phase with my new Droid X has subsided (it gobbled up 350MB of data in under a week, and I barely streamed any music or videos...), I guess I can return my attention to the task at hand. Keep reading for your ridiculous roundup of Friday finance stories!

Consumerist: Combine Your Loves For Alcohol & Taxidermy With Beer Packed In Rodent Carcass - That is a hell of a headline. How could I possibly not have clicked on it? Anyways, Ratty Light (pun very much intended) comes from the same demented Scottish brewers who released Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32% alcohol by volume) and Sink The Bismarck! (41% ABV) earlier this year. But this time they've outdone themselves. "End Of History," named as such because it will be BrewDog's last foray into "extreme brewing," is a whopping 55% ABV and sold for $760 per bottle (I mean carcass) before their supply ran out. So if you're still looking for something ridiculous to drink, maybe you can try a delicious microwaveable milkshake instead!

Forbes: The World's Most Valuable Teams And Athletes - I don't actually have the patience to go through the slideshow of the 50 most valuable sports franchises (mainly because the idiots at Forbes made each slide its own slowly-loading page), but maybe you do. Amazingly, all 32 NFL teams made the Top 50, which also includes five MLB teams, two NBA teams, two "motorsports" teams (I'm assuming that means NASCAR) and nine soccer teams. The NFL's dominance is largely due to the fact that every franchise shares national TV revenue equally, meaning teams like Buffalo and Jacksonville still rake in tons of broadcast cash despite being in relatively tiny markets. That's right--the planet's most powerful sport is...wait for it...SOCIALIST. Oh, the beautiful irony. As Stephen Colbert would say, "the free market has spoken." Marx 1, Smith 0.

MainStreet: The Priciest Baseball Parks In America - Speaking of sports dollars, it costs two Red Sox fans $287 to see a game at Fenway (two left field tickets, two hot dogs, two sodas, and parking on a Saturday), while a fan in Pittsburgh could do the same thing seven Saturdays in a row at PNC Park for less money. Granted, going to a Pirates game will probably make your eyes bleed and leave you in a catatonic state of existential confusion, but that's some pretty insane pricing disparity. I would instead recommend taking in an Angels home game for just $41 (they've been perennial contenders for almost a decade), or maybe visiting brand-new Target Field in the Twin Cities, where you have 5:1 odds of witnessing a very rare specimen in its natural habitat: Carl Pavano's mustache (it has its own Facebook fanpage!).

Wired: Newspaper Chain's New Business Plan: Copyright Suits - Daily Show reporter: "What's black and white and red all over?" New York Times employee: "A newspaper?" Daily Show reporter: "No, your balance sheets!!" Naturally, the Broadsheets are looking for a new way to not-go-bankrupt, but given that they're a totally dead medium, suing the pants off of everyone who re-posts their articles on personal blogs probably isn't a long-term way to cling to life. We all know how well this strategy worked out for the RIAA (just kidding, they spent $64 million on legal costs to recover $1.3 million back from illegal file sharers, a -98% ROI) and it totally doesn't engender any resentment at all, from anyone. I guess this will be the print media equivalent of executing all the hostages even though the cops are going to pump you full of lead regardless.

Lifehacker: Buy Cheap Sunglasses Without Sacrificing Quality - I lost numerous pairs of expensive sunglasses back in the day, and eventually swore I would never again waste money on such fragile and misplace-able luxuries. I've subsisted on knock-off Ray-Bans for several years now, but WiscoVixen recently gave me an informative ocular health lecture on the importance of opting for the real thing for the 100% ultraviolet protection and polarization they offer. I don't know though... I think I'd rather have the sun rot my retinas than me lose or break another pair of $75 Spys.

Gizmodo: Some German Tech Companies Know Their Target Market Too Well - If you've ever been to the Old World, you know that there are two awesome things about European television: the first is that all their commercials are shown in big blocks at the end of the program. This means you can get up and spend 7-8 minutes making yourself a sandwich or something--but you might not want to because the second awesome thing about Euro TV is the gratuitous, explicit and often graphic sexual overtones of their ads. This German ad for a VPN/WAN access router is a perfect example. If we could find a way to loosen the FCC's icy puritanical grip, maybe we could have nice things in America too!

Have a killer weekend, kids. Your local grocery store knows what you'll be up to and is more than happy to help out.Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Electric Beer Pong, Automatic Nerf Guns and Digital Drug Addiction (The Kids Are NOT Alright)

derek70x7 — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:45:00 GMT

As of a few hours ago, I am the proud owner of a brand new Droid X. The screen is more absurdly large than you can possibly imagine. Let's get through this quickly, I have dozens of apps to install!

Consumerist: Start Your Child's Beer Pong Training Early - I don't know what I love more, the fact that Cuponk introduces underage kids to the highly-competitive hallmark of collegiate party athletics, or that they dug Bam Margera out of obscurity to be their spokesdude. So what's next for Hasbro--a kids' version of Landmines? Thumper with fruit punch and root beer? It's a slippery and delicious slope down to adolescent alcoholism.

Gizmodo: So This Is What Nerf Guns Are Like Now, Huh? - Speaking of poor ways to introduce your child to facets of adult life, automatic weapons are probably something you should hold off on until they're a little older. Back in my day, it was a big deal when they added suction cup technology to our pathetic one-shot Nerf bullets, but these spoiled kids nowadays get to live out their violent fantasies by emptying banana clips of foam missiles from a pretend machine gun.

Wired: Report: Teens Using Digital Drugs To Get High - Impressionable parents will believe absolutely anything about a disturbing new "drug" their kid's school administration freaks out over and warns them about. Case in point: the fact that these poor fools in Oklahoma actually think their kids are "i-dosing", which means getting high from listening to digital music files. We all know that cheesing is a dire threat to the welfare of our nation's youth, but i-dosing probably falls into the same category as the debunked "rainbow party" scare several years back (WARNING: Googling "rainbow party" will produce VERY NSFW results).

MainStreet: Behold: The Footlong Burger - This article touches on a phenomenon occurring in the fast food industry these days--let us call it, "The Tasty Schism" (not to be confused with the Great Schism, concerning the separation of Christianity into the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1054). On one hand you've got fast food places striving to pack their menus with pseudo-healthy fare, and on the other you've got mega-calorie monstrosities like the KFC Double Down and Friendly Grilled Cheese Burger Melt. You can't help but admire these ironic caricatures of unhealthy American food, and I, for one, welcome our new footlong burger overlords.

WalletPop: Steinbrenner's Final Win -- Over Estate Taxes - I'm not about to lament the death of the man responsible for the ruination of my dreams as a young baseball fan (the Yankees eliminated one of my favorite teams from the playoffs five out of seven years between 1998 and 2004), but I'll admit that it takes guts to empty your own pockets over and over in search of another World Series trophy. The Yankees totally lucked out on the timing of this particular myocardial infarction, because it saved the Steinbrenner estate $632 million in avoided estate tax. It's kind of like if Halliburton uncovered a giant unobtainium deposit in the middle of one of their giant oil fields.

Okay, we're done. Get out of here. I need several hours of uninterrupted alone time with my Droid X. One more thing though: Check out our WOWee ONE blog contest sometime in the next six days if you want a chance to win the dankest portable speaker out there!Add a Comment

Making Music News: WOWee One iPod Speakers

derek70x7 — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:43:53 GMT

We all know that phones and iPods can't offer anything but weak, low-quality external audio due to their small size, but I recently got my hands on a portable super-speaker called the WOWee One--which is about to totally revolutionize mobile music listening.

As you can tell from the picture above the WOWee One is roughly the size of an iPhone, but thicker, heavier and a little more elongated. It comes with a mini-USB port and cable that connects to your computer for charging the internal battery, and a standard 3.5mm stereo audio cable that connects to pretty much any mobile device.

This little monster can reach 90 decibels at full volume, but it's the ridiculously deep, rich bass that will astound you. I was blown away the first time I heard what this thing can do when plugged into an iPod. I showed it to two of my friends recently. "How does it do that?" one of them asked incredulously, and the other just flatly stated, "That is the coolest thing I've ever seen."

So how does it pack such a fierce punch? "A down-firing speaker uses patented Gel Audio™ technology to project low-frequency sound waves that turn adjoining objects or surfaces into a subwoofer." That's right: If you press the sticky rubberized base of the WOWee One to a desk, a wall, a window, or any other hard, flat surface, the result is thudding bass that sounds like it's coming from a real sub.

The WOWee One offers 20 hours of playtime after a full charge--which makes it perfect for mobile partying. It's definitely optimized for hip hop and other bass-heavy genres of music, but if you mess with the equalizer settings on your source device, you should be able to find a suitable pre-set for optimum sound quality of whatever type of music you want to listen to. If you're looking for something to make up for the antenna issues plaguing your new iPhone 4, the WOWee One would certainly enhance your experience.

You can buy one of these bad boys from Amazon or Buy.com (it retails for $80 on both sites), but if you check out the Savings.com personal finance blog tomorrow, we will be running a contest to win a FREE, brand-new WOWee One!Add a Comment

Herding Cats: The Candwich, the Secret to In-N-Out Burgers and a Barbecued iPhone 4

derek70x7 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:07:00 GMT

The short week threw me off from the beginning. I'm still convinced this is really Thursday, but the rest of the company doesn't agree--so here is your weekly Friday financial stuffs roundup.

Wowowow: Wake Up And Smell The Recession - God only knows why the New York Times chose to profile this spoiled entitlement case as the face of down-on-their-luck recession college grads. Really, Scott Nicholson from suburban Massachusetts? You turned down $40K a year at an insurance company because it's "dead-end work"? Majoring in Poli-Sci at Colgate and cracking a 3.3 GPA one semester to make the Dean's List doesn't quite qualify you for a corner office in a Boston skyscraper. Not only are you narcissistic and delusional, but you're a perfect example of why our grandparents' generation, the toughest guts-and-glory S.O.Bs in American history, rightly thinks we're a bunch of pansies (I can't call you what P-word you really are, Scott, because this is a family-friendly blog). Have fun drinking your own Kool-Aid and holding out for that $75K corporate post!

Gizmodo: Candwich Scandal Eats Millions - If you watched Colbert at all this week, you already know about the new rallying cry sweeping the nation: YES WE CANDWICH! Too busy to spend the 30 seconds it takes to make a fresh PB&J before school or work? Wish you could just pop open an aluminum can and deliver a savory preservative-enriched sandwich straight to your food-hole on-the-go? Then the Candwich would have been the MVP of your pantry...if its creator hadn't fraudulently stolen $145 million from real-estate investors to develop it. But hey, there's always the canned cheeseburger! And yes, that's this week's featured Lolcat investigating one of these Swiss delicacies. Wow. BRB--I have to go throw up...

Consumerist: Secret Of The In-N-Out Burger Revealed? - On the polar opposite end of the cheeseburger deliciousness spectrum we have the fabled Double-Double, available only to inhabitants of California, Arizona, and Nevada--and now apparently Utah and Texas as well. Some fancy big city chef from the Least Coast thinks he knows the secret to why it's the best fast food burger on the planet. Well, he's wrong. Want to know the real reason In-N-Out burger is so amazing? Because every bite is filled with Jesus' love. It's science.

WalletPop: Walmart Offering College Credit, Tuition Assistance To Workers - I could be a poor sport and just riddle this paragraph with ridiculous links to People of Walmart, but I'm gonna take the high road. I actually think it's a swell move to offer their hundreds of thousands of underpaid workers a way to advance their education and fight their way above the poverty line. Just a quick tip for Corporate though: make sure to order all your textbooks from Texas. We sure don't want anybody accidentally learning about the evils of unionization or employment benefits!

MainStreet: iPhone 4 Catches Fire (Literally) - Apple's new cellular telephone is hot, hot, hot! I'm really loving how every day brings another reason why my decision to not switch to AT&T for the iPhone 4 was the right one. I'm pretty jealous that my future Droid X won't be mobile-Chatroulette-capable, but I think I'll manage without it. Don't think I'm an Apple hater though: my original Video iPod that I got for Christmas in 2005 is still fully-functional, and for that I will always be grateful to Herr Jobs.

CNN: Cavs Owner's Letter Mocked For Comic Sans Font - Like tens of millions of you across the country, I was part of the problem last night at 6pm PDT--and I hate myself for it. Watching "The Decision" on ESPN felt dirty. It felt wrong. It felt like I was a passive party to the clubbing of a baby seal. Former Deadspin chief Will Leitch has an excellent, albeit rather emo, take on the whole LeBron ordeal. One awesome outcome, though, was the epic breakup letter penned by Dan Gilbert, betrayed majority owner of Lebron's old team, and published to the internets in COMIC FREAKING SANS, a font choice almost as ridiculous as writing a ransom note in Curlz MT.

Here's hoping that the good people of Cleveland have a safe and positive weekend, mostly so that we can take all 2.3 million of them in the Metro area off suicide watch (it's really expensive). Cheer up, Rust Belters--you've still got the Indians and the Browns! Oh--right...sorry! Well, count your blessings anyway, because your week definitely could have been worse.Add a Comment

Herding Cats: Blimps, Bees, Bad Commutes, and Vuvuzelas for BP

derek70x7 — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:45:00 GMT

Good news, everyone! Not only is Futurama back on the air, but I have for you an oven fresh crop of random stories in this week's financial roundup dealie!

CNN: Chinese Companies 'Rent' White Foreigners - China: the perfect place for a fake wealthy American industrialist to reap the benefits of his caucasianality! Business practices over there are truly the stuff of legend, but this is essentially no different than how the GOP will sometimes surround the podium with token minorities during stump speeches. It's too bad this strategy only works in "second- or third-tier cities," but at least we know that pasty white unemployed college grads will always have a job option if they can make it out to rural Manchuria.

Consumerist: BP Offices To Be Serenaded By Orchestra Of Vuvuzelas - It didn't take long for the highly irritating nature of vuvuzelas to become cliche, but that doesn't mean systematically utilizing them as buzzing trumpets of moral outrage is any less awesome. BP's headquarters definitely deserve far worse (probably to be vandalized, burned, sacked, raped, and pillaged), but that's not to say that hundreds of these terrifying contraptions won't make for one particularly hellish workday for the people who destroyed the Gulf of Mexico.

MainStreet: The Sad Side Effects Of A Bad Commute - Any Southern California resident will tell you that cars should come with three gas mileage metrics: city, highway, and Los Angeles (my new Hyundai gets about 30/20/10). If you've seen Office Space, I definitely had a Samir-attacking-his-steering-wheel moment the other day when it took me 45 minutes to go less than 2 miles on Santa Monica Boulevard. Maybe if we send them enough white people, China will lend the city $20 billion to build a subway or some other public transportation network that we'd actually use!

Gizmodo: Finland's Broadband-As-Legal-Right Available From Today For Everyone - It's hard for us urban/suburban folk to imagine what life is like having no alternative to a dial-up internet connection. My family got our first broadband cable modem almost a decade ago, and the FioS speeds I enjoy at my current apartment are over 400 times faster than what you poor souls in rural broadband-free areas have to endure. Ironically, Finnish reindeer herders in the frozen tundra of Lapland are now guaranteed better internet than you! I guess we can add this to the list of reasons why you don't see many Scandinavians immigrating to the US of A these days.

The Guardian: Blimps Could Replace Aircraft In Freight Transport, Say Scientists - Blimps are awesome. I'm totally willing to accept their airspeed deficiency if it means I get to spend a relaxing few days floating across the ocean in spacious luxury instead of being crammed into a coach seat on an overbooked AA flight for 12 hours surrounded by hundreds of coughing and sneezing strangers. Also, as many Gizmodo commenters pointed out, blimp proliferation would lead to something even more awesome: SKY PIRATES. Hopefully the freight blimp pilots will be smart enough to avoid Somalian airspace.

io9: 20 Careers That Will Make The Future Less Dystopian - Speaking of pirates, futuristic Gawker blog io9 says we'll need an army of "pharmaceutical pirates" to smuggle cheap versions of new drugs into Third-World countries once the global economy collapses for reals and Earth turns into a dystopian hellscape. Or I could be a beekeeper! Wait... never mind. My money's on a huge boom in "environmental cleanup technicians" - a few million of them would have really come in handy starting about 74 days ago.

Have a beertastic 4th of July weekend, folks! And remember - there's nothing dumber, or more American, than mixing alcohol with fireworks.Add a Comment