The Tecker

Well Technically still 2 more hours here... but heck it's 2009 somewhere!

Here's to a great 2009!

Viacom told Time Warner Cable that if the cable provider would not pay the company more money for its programming, then the company would stop allowing Time Warner Cable to show Viacom Channels such as MTV and Comedy Central.

In response Time Warner said they had no intention of paying more because they did not want to charge their customers more.

I said bravo at that, but it gets better.

Time Warner then said that if Viacom actually did pull the feed, Time Warner would start showing its customers how to attach their computers to their TVs to view free Viacom programming over the internet via sites like Hulu.com.

This is amazing because just recently, Time Warner said they dislike Hulu because it took customers away.

I applaud Time Warner!

UPDATE: Ok it's been settled! And Time Warner still has Viacom programming!

[Via Gizmodo]

Along with the Supersized iPod rumor comes the rumor that a aluminum Mac Mini will be unveiled with some pretty good specs.

Here's to hoping that the rumors are true!

There is much speculation that next fall Apple will introduce a large screen iPod Touch.
Rumor has been around for a while that Apple has been developing a tablet, but until now, they have been unsure if it would sell well. I think that they have decided it will, and many sources confirm that the iPod project does exist.

I can't wait...

Not sure if this is true or not because I do not own a Zune, but it seems as if all 30gb HDD Zunes have frozen up at around 2:00 this morning or so, and have not been able to be reset or anything.

Everyone's seems to be frozen up at the loading screen, the loading bar fills up and then it just stops.

Tell me if it has happened to anybody.

UPDATE: Microsoft does know about the problem and they are working hard to fix it... Just be patient people!

We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).” - Zune spokesperson

UPDATE 2: Microsoft said that this problem is to be blamed on a bug in the software due to 2008 being a leap year, and your Zunes should work next year (yes, tomorrow.) Let's hope that M$ fixes this by 2012 though!

[via... the World.... and Wall Street Journal]

In an attempt to bring up auto sales, American automaker, Ford, announced its plan to release two self-parking cars at the autoshow in Detroit.

The automaker also says that they will release a fuel efficient Hybrid Fusion.

[via the Wall Street Journal]

Even though Playstation home was a complete flop, and so were PS3's Chritsmas sales, at least Sony has something going for it!

A group of hackers rigged up a cluster of 200 PS3s and used a bug in them to make a fake Certification Authority (CA), which in turn allows them to make their own SSL certificates. This means that you might visit a site you believe to be real and enter your information into it all because some hackers liked to play video games!

Just always check the URL of the site you are on before entering anything, and make sure you never click on any link in an email, always type it into the address bar.

[via ZDNet]

The Ultimate Nerd tool.

It's a wireless keypad with a 1000DPI trackball, and 13 hotkeys.

I've got to buy one of these.
--USB.brando.com.hk--

Facebook is a social networking website that by definition, "is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade" (wikipedia.org). It has become an extremely "hot" site and as of June 2008, pulled 50.6 billion page views worldwide.

The website allows users to contact friends and family. There are many a story about long-lost friends reuniting and co-workers meeting up again by using the site. But it also includes features that enable users to share pictures, videos, and play games with each other.

Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard University. He intended it to become a site for college students. However as it grew, Facebook, Inc opened its service up to anyone over the age of 13.

Facebook is a free service that runs on revenue from advertising.

Facebook allows users to do many things besides sharing media with other too. Users can post "notes" which are like small blog entries, but they are not meant to be as regularly updated as a blog. Friends can post comments on each others walls about anything including photos and friend status' (a small regularly updated comment that the person posts to let others know what is happening or how they feel at the time). Also the site allows developers to create apps that can range anywhere from games to quizzes to picture editing.

Also Facebook Connect was just created that lets external sites access your profile, friend list, info, etc as a way to build contacts and simplify login procedures.

Some problems with Facebook include; recently a number of people had their friends list deleted on accident, some apps produced by external developers are buggy and cause web browsers to crash, and page loads can be extremely slow at peek times of the day .

Sometimes people also worry that by using Facebook they can have their privacy compromised, but Facebook has measures to prevent this, such as requiring users to accept that they know each other in order to add them as a friend on the service.

Overall Facebook is a wonderful service, but it just has a few minor quirks that need to be ironed out.

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Here is the list of Reviews and Previews that we have on the site.

--Game Systems--
Nintendo DSi Preview

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