DuckDuckGo.com
I stumbled upon a new search site which offers pretty clean search results. It also returns results in a less cluttered fashion with no ads or non-related links.
And DuckDuckGo apparently does not track and use your browser or other info. According to their privacy policy they do not store, share or show any personal data. DuckDuckGo will go out of its way to delete that data according to it’s privacy policy.
Check out one of their privacy pages: http://donttrack.us/
Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple is ”planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life” for employees to attend at a later date.
Rest in Peace Steve, Your soul shines on though your inventions.
Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson cover, 10/24/2011
Steve Jobs forthcoming biography titled simply “Steve Jobs” release date has been pushed up to Oct. 24, 2011, (about two-weeks from now). The book was penned with Jobs permission/interviews and written by notable biographer Walter Isaacson.
The biography is said to include Steve’s brutal honesty of his life and his work. Steve also included the book was written for his children and I quote from Steve: “I wanted my kids to know me,” he said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
If you admire Steve and want to know what drove and made this tech/culture titan of our times order your copy, I have. (Barnes and Noble Book Link).
Rest in peace, you have innovated us all.
Steve Jobs
Modded iPhone glowing apple logo reminiscent of MacBook mods
Cult of Mac reports on a cool iPhone mod which resembles all the older MacBook hack/mods where you could make the Apple logo illuminated.
Have a look see here Modded iPhone Apple logo.
Original Apple logo drawn by co-founder Ron Wayne.
35 year ago today Apple Computer was created to sell “personal computers.” Three people formed apple, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. Thanks guys have been enjoying Apple’s creations for 17 years now myself.
For more Apple History check out The Apple Museum
(Image: Original Apple logo drawn by then co-founder Ron Wayne.)
Rift game defiants logo
After the beta 7 of Rift I decided to pull the trigger and pre-order Rift and jump right into playing headstart before the official March 1st release of the game.
When I first tried to login to Rift after the initial server list was up for seven hours it took about 30 min. This was of course trying Wolfbane shard first which supposedly had a eight hour que, nah think i’ll hit up another Shard lol. I then tried my second choice Shard named Greybriar and it had a two hour que so I gave it a whirl which turn out good cause I was able to login within 30 min.
After logging I and creating my Defiant Cleric it was pretty much smooth sailing from there, only a few 2 or 3 second lag/latency spikes at first but once I finally got out of the starting area it was smooth sailing from then on.
My initial impressions from beta 7 is it looks like Trion may have tweaking the graphics and performance capabilities of the game slightly, I seemed to notice better frame rates from 30-40 in beta 7 to 40 to 50 in the headstart release with my current graphics/video setup and overall smoothness of the game and playability seemed pretty much on par.
So thats pretty much it, nothing but fun from here on out looks like, just plain “Technomagic”. See you in the Rift…
Play Rift on your Mac
K, just a headsup for all you Mac users out there asking about possibly playing Rift. Yes there does seem to be a fair amount of interest at least from what I see on the gaming forums about this. Trion makers of the MMO Rift currently do not have a Mac OS version planned but I remember reading somewhere they will reconsider sometime in the future maybe.
So what’s the best way to enjoy Rift on your Mac. Very simple, install Boot Camp which comes with every Intel/Leopard Mac system. Here are my quick steps to get Rift playing within an hour or two on yer Mac. You’ll also need a install disk of Windows, Windows 7 should offer you the best compatible experience.
Step 1. Go into your utilities folder and fire up Boot Camp Assistant.
Step 2. Go through the steps to partition your drive, I would recommend maybe a couple of hundred gigs, come’on everyone has terabyte drives now and you know yer gonna install tons more games anyway 
Step 3. Boot Camp will partition your disk and ask for a Windows install disk, I used Win. 7 Ultimate.
Step 4. You’ll go through the whole Win. 7 system install process, installing drivers etc. and probably will need to do a few restarts too. If you accidentally boot into Mac OS just do a shutdown and boot up with your option key which lets you select which OS you want to use.
Step 5. If all goes well you should be running Windows flavored OS on your Mac now. If you have any problems this page will probably help you: http://klauskjeldsen.dk/boot-camp-imac-error-fix-black-screen/
Step 6. Now that you’re all good, go to Trion’s site to grab a copy of Rift, riftgame.com, set up an account, install Rift and splatter dah cybermatter 
My overall experience playing Rift on my iMac via Boot Camp and Win. 7 is pretty damn sweet. I’m running Rift on an iMac 27″, i5, 4GB RAM, 4850/512MB ATi, via Boot Camp and Win. 7 Ultimate. I grinded through beta 7 with no problems to speak of. I have built my share of “Gaming PCs” too boot and this is pretty much the same. On the plus side I don’t have to have two puter rigs hogging up my desk now. I was getting around 40fps with various medium video settings and around 100ms latency coming from the So. Cal. area.
If your looking for a more in-depth Boot Camp install guide take a gander at: http://gizmodo.com/#!5387353/how-to-survive-boot-camp-and-run-win-7-on-a-mac
So there you go, hope to see all you MacHeads turning into RiftHeads
I was totally hooked in Burning Crusade. Excelled in Wrath and for some reason slowly came to a slow steady halt in Cata. Why? Not sure. Don’t think it was one major issue I had with the game, really wanted the warm fuzzy feelings of fun and accomplishment to continue. Rather I think it was many very small things I started to experience in game like dungeon grieving, re-specing my toons playstyle every patch since 4.0.xx and just plain old boring stuff to do.
The overall fun was starting to become a dull lifeless grind, more specifically, a boring, stale, frustrating mess. I don’t blame Blizzard as much as I may blame myself for possibly not adapting fast enough, then again, maybe there was no blame at all. Maybe the TIME had come to just… move on. Thank you Blizz and Warcrafters for all the fun we have shared, I may visit from time to time but thinks it’s about time to hit that dusty road…
And what will my cyber-grubby hands do to satisfy my next gaming addiction? (In Tony Montana’s voice) “Say hello to my little Rift!” Err, I mean Big, Bad-Ass Rift with tons of evil goodness spewing forth in my direction. I won’t go on and on and on about all the delights I have discovered in this wonderful new MMO, i’ll just reiterate… Rift is one Bad-Ass game… period and exclamation point! To drive the point home, It just f-in feels right man.
Not to bore you with more of my salivating drivel… Here are some Vids. and resource links regarding all things Rift. If you have some kewl and otherwise informative links please feel free to share
Video host and MMO reviewer Mike B. aka Fony, or the more humorous demeanor “Ball On Point!” does a humorous/fast paced overview of topics related to Tripping the new Rift MMO, they are worth a view and nice quality too boot, (Also checkout some of his UI arrangements in some of the videos
(The Zam Video links are on blip.tv/games if you have Netflix
Video: Rift Overview, 7 min. video
http://www.zam.com/bffreport.html?bffreport=52
Video: RIFT (Dungeon Guide) 9 min. video
http://www.zam.com/bffreport.html?bffreport=56
Video: Rift PVP Warfronts overview, 6.5 min.
http://www.zam.com/bffreport.html?bffreport=54
Site: Rift Server status
(Note: Not sure if this will update correctly with the new live servers but hopefully the site will.)
http://www.riftstatus.com/
Site: Rift slash commands
http://rift.incgamers.com/guides/Rift_slash_commands
Site: Rift IncGamers
http://rift.incgamers.com/
Site: Rift Network
http://riftnetwork.com/
Site: Zam’s Rift portal
http://rift.zam.com/
I’ve played the Beta, pre-ordered some Collector’s Edition goodness and waiting with bated breath for the head-start to kick in. How bout you? Got Rift?
Low Mac FPS issues with WoW 4.01 update and possible fix
I have been out of playing WoW for close to 4 months and heard recently of Warcraft being updated to 4.01 which includes new graphics, talent trees and other pre Cataclysm goodness.
So I renewed my WoW account, installed the huge 4.01 update and jumped back into the World of Warcraft. When I first logged in I was very disappointed to find my frame rates on my i5Mac dropped from upwards of 150fps to anywhere from 5 to 30fps. Certain areas like major towns and Dalaran were almost unplayable due to graphics lag and low frame rates. I dumped all my addons, trashed the config/WTF files etc. all to no avail.
Apparently this has affected a wide variety of Mac WoW gamers.
What worked for me…
I basically did two things.
1. Launch WoW and go into ingame video settings and disable Sunshafts and set Liquid Detail to Low.
2. While in game type “/console SET gxAPI OpenGL” and hit return, exit WOW, login again and the fix will be in effect, or you can open the Config.wtf file with TextEdit and add a new line at the end of the file, type: SET gxAPI “OpenGL”
By making the above simple changes I went from 20-ish fps to upwards of 60 to 160 fps! My set-up is an iMac 27-inch i5, 4GB RAM and ATi 4850 512MB graphics card.
So i’m back to normal with regards to very playable frame rates, now, anyone have a good rotation for an Arcane Mage and Frost DK? Lol, playing WoW with the new update and overhauled talent trees feels like I’m kinda staring all over again. At least I hope this helps anyone who might be having crappy frame rates.
Say what?