Find the perfect recipe
Whether you’re handy in the kitchen or not, online recipes can not only save the day when you have no idea where to start, but they can also give you new ideas to try out. If you make a good pumpkin pie, why not find new ways to edge closer to a great pumpkin pie? There’s a ton of recipes online, but here’s a few key starting points:
- http://allrecipes.com/
- Food Network
- Epicurious
Keep contact information handy
It happens every year. Most people are at the host house, catching up, helping set the table, etc., when someone asks where Uncle Bill is. Inevitably, someone ends up calling him to make sure he’s safely on his way and not lost. You can help out by just having everyone’s number handy in your phone. It’ll help if you’re the one lost or running late, as well.
Don’t starve your family
While preparing for this post, I came across something I hadn’t even thought about. It’s a Turkey Calculator provided by thanksgiving-corner.com. After punching in a little information about how many children and adults you’ll be feeding, it helps you plan your meal. Based on the information I entered, I would need 16.5 pounds of turkey and 33 cups of stuffing if I were going to host T-day at my place for my family. It also says I should have started defrosting (in the fridge) my bird this past Saturday morning. Good thing I’m not cooking this year.
Say “Happy Thanksgiving” face-to-face from far away
If your loved ones are far away, you can still give your “Happy Thanksgiving” message a personal touch by delivering it with streaming video. There’s a few ways to do this. The most rewarding is to have a web cam at both locations and connect live. This usually requires some forethought and a little experience (or luck), but if you and someone on the other end are comfortable enough with computers, it shouldn’t be too hard to set up ahead of time. If either of you don’t have a web cam, you can pick one up from Best Buy or a similar electronics store. Just about any web cam should work with many of the instant messaging client programs to stream video. Even if only one side can have a camera set up, it’s much warmer than just a phone call. If your family member isn’t very computer savvy, you could always record a small video and post it on YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, or any number of sites that allow you to post a video and easily send a link to that video to your family member.
Find your camera and juice it up
I have a Flip video camera, a DSLR, and a point-and-shoot digital camera, and I’ll have at least the smaller ones with me. You never know when someone will fling a turkey leg across the table or do something equally camera-worthy. The only thing worse than forgetting your camera is bringing it and then running out of batteries on the first shot. Make sure this doesn’t happen. If you have rechargeable batteries, recharge them the night before. If not, have fresh batteries on hand. Personally, I’ve always liked Energizers, but that’s me. Whatever your brand preference, it’s best to have at least one set of new batteries per device.
How is technology going to make Thanksgiving better or easier for you and your family?
Last night, YouTube officially announced the change from 4:3 video to 16:9 wide screen video.
Some are saying YouTube waited far too long to make it happen while others hate it and even more feel it should be optional. Personally, I think they should display all existing videos in 4:3 as they were uploaded and new videos should be marked by the uploader as 16:9 where appropriate. I think they should also implement a search option to find only one format or the other if desired.
However you slice it, it’s definitely a noticeable change and says more about our changing technology than it does about YouTube. I’m sure we’ll see a lot more video cameras prepared to output 16:9 video now.
Last week was incredibly busy. So busy, in fact, that I didn’t get to this update on schedule, but that did allow a couple extra days for sponsors to sneak into this update.
The contest launched just over a week ago, and we’re still getting sponsorship requests, which is great. November is all about growing our prize pool, so I’m still working with potential sponsors for even bigger prizes. If you want to sponsor, it’s never too late.
This week, I would like to also point out that Bl.ogology.com has thrown a Palm Treo 650 (slightly used – Sprint only) into the prize pool. Thanks, Bl.ogology.com, for adding to the excitement!
The New Media Super Contest has 81 prizes from over 50 sponsors worth over $4,200! Take a look at the prize and sponsor list below.
Premium Sponsors
While we link out to all sponsors as a way of thanking them for adding to our prize pool, we also wanted to thank the premium sponsors, who went the extra mile to add larger prizes to the contest.
Pinky Arcade [UPDATE: PinkyArcade gave us the run around for months until I finally just bought the PS3 myself for the winner]
The 5 member team at Pinky Arcade contacted us early on to ask if we’d like to have a 160GB Sony PS3 to give away in the contest. If you are a gamer, you would notice that this system isn’t released yet and it’s going to be the latest model for the widely popular, PS3. No strangers to giving away tons of free prizes, Pinky Arcade has already given away huge gift cards, consoles, and mp3 players. All these given away for simply playing some free games on the site.
BadEvan’s Gay Blog
Evan also joined up as a sponsor early on, not only by helping promote via Twitter, and other “new media”, but also by throwing in around $1,500 in advertising, reviews, and cash.
EcoPower and EcoVista
The other day, the sales team at EcoPower sent me an exciting email. They had heard about the contest and wanted to sponsor it with some unexpected, but cool, prizes. Their EcoPower and EcoVista products help you save fuel in your automobile and electricity in your home or office. The products are pretty inexpensive, too, so they offered up three of each!
Platinum Sponsor Prizes ($100 and up)
Sony PS3 from Pinky Arcade [UPDATE: PinkyArcade gave us the run around for months until I finally just bought the PS3 myself for the winner]
$100 cash from JoeTech.com
Citrus theme license from Unique Blog Designs
Palm Treo 650 (slightly used – Sprint only) from Bl.ogology.com
1 Year of hosting on DreamHost from afrogtokiss.net
125×125 banner ad for one year from afrogtokiss.net
125×125 banner ad for one year from JoeTech.com
Text link AND 125×125 banner ad for one month from Anshul Affiliates
125×125 banner ad for one year from BadEvan.com
one month of pimping from BadEvan.com
one month of pimping from BadEvan.com
Site review on BadEvan.com from BadEvan.com
How to enter
There are a lot of ways to enter. If you do any of the following, you get entries into the drawing. Even though we have over 70 prizes already, making it easy for everyone to win, your odds of nabbing the Platinum prizes increase with each entry you earn. Most of the ways mentioned below are very easy and take very little time, so try a few or all of them and good luck! Entries must be earned before January 1, 2009 to be eligible.
- Tweet the contest at Twitter.com (must include “#joetech”) (5 entries/once per day)
- Tweet “@joetech I hope I win” at Twitter.com (5 entries/once per day)
- Follow joetech on Twitter.com (10 entries) (all current followers already entered)
- Blog about the contest (must include the pre-formmated contest html, unedited, with working links and images) (100 entries)
- Stumble the contest at StumbleUpon.com(10 entries)
- Comment on the contest post (1 entry)
- Subscribe to JoeTech.com via email (existing subscribers will be entered automatically) (20 entries)
- Subscribe to sponsors via email (20 entries each/participating sponsors only)
- Email me (joe@joetech.com) a blog post title or other detail proving you visited a sponsor’s site. (Subject must include “NMSC ENTRY” and you should include the url of the sponsor site.) (10 entries/once per day)
Badges, Buttons, Banners, and HTML
This contest is about spreading the word about new media and by new media. That said, it’s important for you to have the tools to help you promote it. It’ll earn you more entries, too. Below are some blocks of HTML to make it very easy for you to post about the contest or add a badge or button to your site or blog. Please note that it is important for the images to come from JoeTech.com (as they do in the codes below) so they will automatically update with new prize total information.
How to sponsor
Although the contest is already under way, we’ll accept sponsors and prizes until the very end. Currently we’re looking for more cash and electronics like laptops, iPods, etc., but feel free to be creative. Remember to think big. The better your prize, the more attention you’ll get in the contest. Premium sponsors will receive special mentions in contest posts, in addition to all the name recognition and traffic the contest will bring naturally.
To sponsor, just email joe@joetech.com with the subject “NEW MEDIA SUPER CONTEST”. Each prize should be worth at least $10 U.S. Include the details about the prize or prizes you are offering, the U.S. dollar value of each prize, your site or company name and the URL to link to. All sponsors will be added to the list as seen above and updates will be posted on every Thursday.
A lot of bloggers are doing weekly and monthly regular posts like ShoeMoney’s Free Shirt Friday and John Chow’s Dot Com Pho. It’s a great idea, too. Not only does it give my readers something more regular to look forward to, but it also gives me regular posts that just come pretty easy. So I’m jumping right in with Bookmark Friday.
Bookmark Friday will be a weekly post (starting today), in which I offer up some of the sites, articles, etc. I’ve bookmarked in the past week. Today’s is a bit larger since it’s the first one. If you know a link I might like to share, email it to joe@joetech.com. Don’t just point me to a (your) blog, though. Point me to a specific product or article you think is worth mention. If it is, I’ll mention it in the following Bookmark Friday post. Here’s my bookmarks for today’s Bookmark Friday:
FeedAnalysis from BlogPerfume (more tools)
This is a bit old, but if you have a blog and haven’t seen this, take a look. It gives a pretty good run down of how your feed numbers are coming along.
FusionCharts
This is some pretty cool graphical charting software to make good-looking online charts easy.
Geek images
I had forgotten all about this one. Which one do you think I am?
BaseSites
I haven’t used them because I’m a web developer and don’t need them, really, but it looks like a great starting place for anyone wanting to get a site up quickly.
Crowdspirit
If you have an awesome product idea but no resources to implement it, head to this site. You lose most of the revenue if it goes big, but if you don’t have the capital to make it happen, a small cut is better than nothing.
Palms Out Sundays
Great source of some good music. I specifically bookmarked this link, but you should see more recent posts, too, since this one’s two years old. Check out the Brice Lee track, first.
Zombo.com
Way old, but still funny. Turn on your speakers.
Nexuiz
Free, open source, First Person Shooter. I have bookmarked another one that you actually play in a browser. I’ll share that when I find it again.
MyVu
Head mounted displays. They should send me some product to review and play with.
It seems like so long ago that the iPhone hit the market with a bang and it’s still considered by many to be the best cell phone you can get. Over the last year or two, many speculated about various concept phones and if any of them would be an “iPhone killer”, including me. One of those hopefuls was Google’s promise of a Google phone, which people quickly dubbed the “Gphone”. A few months after Apple brought us the second generation iPhone, T-Mobile announced the release of their Android-running G1 and people started to get excited about owning one.
I’ve seen a lot of other phones come out that seem to follow the iPhone’s lead in many of their features, but none have swayed me from my opinion that the iPhone is far superior. The only one that comes close so far is the HTC T-Mobile G1, so when I had a chance to compare the two side by side, I jumped on it. I played with the G1 for hours, taking pictures along the way before creating a comparison video and finally putting together my conclusions.
First, the technical comparison
(image from Wired)
(Note that the G1 also plays video)
One of the things I think the G1 really could have used is a multi-touch screen, but I guess I’m just spoiled by my iPhone. There have been rumors, but nothing solid yet. A standard headphone jack would be nice, too. You can always listen with USB headphones, but that limits your options. One area the G1 technically surpassed the iPhone was the built in camera. Delivering 3.2 mega pixels, it offers a much better picture than the iPhone’s 2.0 mega pixel camera.
Getting hands on
Part 1:
Part 2:
The videos above cover most of what I’ve played with, but here’s some of what I found that’s worth noting:
- The iPhone offers a sliding software lock and optional password protection, while the G1 employs the old method of hitting any button and then hit “Menu” to unlock the phone, but it also offers another cool option where you store a gesture pattern like a happy face or a cursive G and you repeat that gesture to unlock the phone.
- Both phones allow for multiple pages to display icons for key features and applications. The G1 sets itself apart here, though, allowing its owner to also display search boxes and widgets like the big clock we keep seeing in G1 photos. Better still, these can all be moved anywhere. The iPhone makes you stack your icons neatly, gravitating to the top left of the screen, but G1 is a wild child, letting you throw those suckers wherever you want. Rebel. To accommodate all this freedom, G1 tucks most of its icons in a little slide-out panel, so you can hide the stuff you use rarely and keep your key items on the main screens.
- Both platforms offer Google Maps. My iPhone has Google Earth. I’m not sure if the G1 offers Google Earth, but it includes Street View and Compass Mode, which is very cool. Just watch the video to see what I mean.
- Oddly, the Google Search app on the G1 didn’t work nearly as well as on my iPhone.
- It doesn’t appear that I can create picture folders in the g1 like I can in the iPhone, but that may just require more testing.
- Setting up email was incredibly easy on the g1. The iPhone requres me to go to the phone’s settings area to add or remove an email account which is a little annoying.
- Both phones offer easy access to a wealth of third-party applications, both paid, and free. They’re both, hands down, vastly better than the alternatives I’d become used to with Windows Mobile phones.
- Adding music with the g1 is as easy as dropping MP3s from my computer into the phone’s shared storage, but the sound quality pales compared to the iPhone. The iPhone’s music play back is loud and clear, while the G1’s is a bit muffled and tinny.
- G1’s roller ball can easily switch away from the text box in focus on accident if bumped, but is very handy in Street View. The integrated keyboard is tiny, but useful. My main problem here is that I have to physically slide it out every time I need to type something, which can be hard one-handed, unlike the iPhone, where the software keyboard just appears as needed. The mix of a hardware keyboard and an optional software keyboard that could be accessed with a quick tap would be a great improvement.
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