Tech Decade

Two years ago Nadeo released a wonderful free racing game called TrackMania Nations. I became quite addicted to the game as it was one of the most unique and creative concepts for a game I had ever seen. The point of the game was to race thousands of other players around the world for the best time on a course. A cource could be easy or very, very difficult. Today Nadeo released a new version of the game called TrackMania Nations Forever. The new version is very different as there are many new features and I swear that the game looks even better than it did in the first version, but that’s for you to decide. Grab the game here for free!

Hey all. I have decided to move all of my Twitter updates off of my main blog. I never got around to actually utilizing Twitter like I wanted to. You can access all of my old Twitter posts at http://twitter.com/techdecade.

This one is easy. Just hold down the menu button on your iPod for about 3 seconds, and (poof) your menu pops up!*

*Works great on my 1st Gen. iPod Nano, don’t know if it works on others.

When you want great icons on the internet, where do you go? I used to use places like DeviantART because the icons there were actually quite good. I recently stumbled upon a new website called Iconfinder that allows you to search for icons in the way would search for a web page on Google. The interface is sleek and minimalistic, and finds what your looking for quite well. Iconfinder is probably the easiest way of customizing your desktop with new and pretty icons.

[via Download Squad]

I’m not getting one of the slim, shiny, metallic, touch-activated, one-button, awesome, err, iPhone. It is iPhone launch day though, and if you feel bad that your not getting one of the shiny $500 devices, don’t be iDespaired.

Dream about the slim, little device by checking out these websites (I can not be held liable for all the iPhone related iDrool on your keyboard when you get done ).

1. Be the best non-iPhone-buying-iPhone-buyer around, and read about the iPhone at Apple.com/iphone.
2. Get complete iPhone coverage at Gizmodo.
3. Find a few related iPhone related video’s on CNET TV.
4. Check out iPhone Application List to see a list of web apps for the iPhone.
5. Buy an iPhone on eBay for an outrageously high price.
6. Check out some iPhone lookalikes at Engaget Mobile.
7. Watch David Pogue’s hilarious iPhone review here.
8. Dream that you can get a free iPhone (but don’t try).

I’ve been looking around for a while, and I have decided to post my favorite places to get free music. These are my top five favorite ways to get music from the internet.

Amie Street - has music by emerging artists. The price of a song goes from the good price of free, to 98 cents as more people buy\download the songs. To get free songs, choose the genre of music you like, and click ‘Newest Songs’ on the menu. Hint: get a dollar worth of free songs and 5 RECs (A way of earning more free money for songs), with this coupon code: forteller (and no I’m not getting paid when you use this code).

iRate Radio - this one downloads songs that are released for free by the artist. I like this software, but it tends to be a bit random with its song choices. The software has also been abandoned by the author, so any bugs may not be fixed (unless the software is adopted by the rest of the community).

Free Music Project - Though, there is a limited choice of music, its growing and some will be on the OLPC ($100) Laptop!

Download.com Music - Many free MP3’s to download. This site has over 75,000 free MP3’s. That should be enough to keep your ears ringing. Songs are sorted and categorized by genre. Some songs are stream only, but you still can get a good idea if you like a song.

I was able to find free mp3’s from artists such as Bright Eyes, Andrew Bird, Fall Out Boy, and Fort Minor. I also found streams from Ozzy Osborne, Modest Mouse, The Fray, Paul McCartney, and many others.

The band’s\labels website - If you check a specific bands website or their parent label website, you may be in for a pleasant surprise. Many of the smaller labels give away free tracks from some of their artists. I found tracks from Nickelback, The Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Andrew Bird, and others.

Track of the day\week - iTunes has 3 free songs every week. Napster has got one free song a day. Amazon also has free songs, though I don’t know how often they are replaced. This search from Google also turns up many results for Free Song of the Day\Week\Month.

I love Google! What a sense of humor (just kidding).

Floppy Office is a portable Office Suite that you guessed it, fits on a floppy disk.

Floppy Office is comprised of (very) small program replacements that have mixed into one suite. It is made up of these programs:

“[a] standalone email client, ftp client, graphics editor,
word processor, text editor, PDF creation software, web server for hosting
files via http, encryption software, zip utility, file renaming utility and
last but not least, a spreadsheet program — all which fit on one
floppy disk easily!”

-From the Floppy Office Readme

What each application does, is explained in the readme file. There are some really great applications in this suite. These applications could be put onto a floppy flash drive and you wouldn’t have to worry about taking up too much space.

Floppy Office

I have spent my whole weekend making a CD Clock. You too, can make a CD clock for about $7.00.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have found two very interesting phone related websites while surfing around.

You can make free long distance phone calls at Gizmo Call . Gizmo call gives you 5 minutes a day (10 if you register), to call most anyone in the world. After 5 (or 10) minutes, you can purchase additional minutes, in portions of $10.00. Your account depletes by only 1.5 cents per minute.

BrainCast lets you leave yourself messages, by calling a toll free number. Online, all you do is set up 1 to 3 phone numbers that you will be able to leave messages from. I added my cellphone number. Then you can call that toll free number from one of the phone numbers you have added to the BrainCast list. When you log back into BrainCast on your computer, you will see you most recent messages. The most effective way of sending yourself messages through BrainCast, is adding BrainCast’s toll free number to your address book, and assigning it a number on your cellphones keypad as a shortcut.