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Help! The future of our comment system is in your hands!

Jul 28th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in Global Geek News

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like we are in need of a new comment system.

As I am sure most of you are aware, we use JS-Kit’s Echo comment system. I have always liked it and think it is one of the best, if not the best commenting system available. I am particularly fond of the feature where it grabs comments about posts on all kinds of social media platforms like Twitter and friendfeed and you can log in with all of the major login providers from Twitter and Facebook to OpenID. Unfortunately, they have upped their prices so much that I can no longer afford to keep them as a comment system.

I learned about them shortly after they were launched and signed up after seeing how great the service was. At the time, the cost was $12/yr for the service, which was a good value for what I got. Unfortunately, sometime in the past year, they decided to change their pricing structure and even the cheapest option which is for sites with under 100k views a month, the cost has gone up 10x. Going from $12/yr to $120 is a tad on the insane side. If we had lots more comments on posts than we currently get, it might be worth it but when I haven’t made a penny on this site in a couple of months, I can’t justify the expense. Global Geek News has always been a money pit anyway between hosting, domains, comment systems and everything else, I have spent hundreds of dollars more on the site than I have ever made. So here is where I need you help.

I have 28 days to come up with a solution. At this point, I see two options, I can either go with another comment system or if we get enough donations, I will keep Echo. Ideally, I would like to see us get some donations to keep it but if history has shown me anything, that isn’t going to happen. It would be a great surprise if it did though! Assuming that doesn’t happen, what I am looking for is suggestions for what comment system to go with. I really don’t want to go back to the normal WordPress comment system but I can if I need to. I have seen a number of other really nice comment systems that bring in comments from other services such as Twitter but I am not sure which one to go with. I am leaning toward DISQUS but I would love to hear YOUR thoughts on what I should do. Do you have suggestions for another service? I want to hear about it!

If you would like to see the Echo comment system stay, please consider donating either through our Donation page or by signing up for a $5/mo subscription with the PayPal button below.

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Motorola i1 Android phone rooted

Jul 27th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in gadgets

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As somebody who plans on getting the Android based Motorola i1 next week, I found this news exciting enough that I thought I would pass it along. Since I don’t have my i1 yet, I can’t verify this for myself, but the Motorola i1 has supposedly been rooted.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Birdman, the Android user over at the AllDroid forums that was responsible for rooting the Droid X has modified his Droid X root work to be able to root the Motorola i1. At this point, rooting the i1 or even the Droid X isn’t going to get you too much. As of right now, you will only have su (super user) access and be able to do wifi tethering. You aren’t able to run mods or anything at this time so unless you really need either of those two things, I don’t recommend rooting.

Rooting also comes with a fair bit of risk. I have yet to see any way to unroot the Droid X or the i1 so once you root it, you might be stuck with a rooted device. I am also uncertain whether this will void your warranty. The biggest issue in my mind is that with the device rooted, you may not be able to update to officially released updates down the road. So unless you are looking for geek cred, now is probably not a good time to root either device until we have answers to these questions. Also, from the looks of the forum responses, many people are having issues rooting the Droid X which I assume will be the case with the i1 since the instructions are a slight modification of the Droid X instructions.

If you are still interested in rooting your i1, here are the instructions for how to do it (warning: command line skills required)

Here are the instructions for the Droid X.

Root at your own risk! If you do root your phone, tell us about it in the comments!

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Global Geek News Podcast #75 with special guest Adam Curry

Jul 27th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in podcast

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Here are the shownotes for episode #75 for the Global Geek News Podcast.

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Stories:

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Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner

Special Guest: Adam Curry (The Big App Show, No Agenda)

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Global Geek News will be streamed live tonight!

Jul 26th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in podcast

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I just wanted to give everybody a heads up that tonight is going to be a huge night for the Global Geek News Podcast. Not only are we going to have Adam Curry on the show, but the show is also going to be live streamed at www.noagendastream.com! This will be our first live stream so it would be an understatement to say that I am a bit nervous.

For those that want to tune in, we should start around 10pm EST (7pm PST). We also invite you to hang out in the chat at www.noagendachat.com.

If you are unable to make the live stream of the show, it will be posted in the morning tomorrow as usual.

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Google announces Google Apps for Government

Jul 26th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in Google

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Google has announced a branch of its Google Apps platform made specifically for the government.

In effort to attract all levels of government to move into the cloud, Google has upped the security and policy settings on Google Apps so that it is as good or better than what is currently in use. The government version of Google Apps will be segmented from the rest of the Google Apps universe which helps security considerably. To start, only Gmail and Calendar will be segmented with the other services to follow shortly after. Google Apps for Government is also the first to get Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. government. Apparently Google worked with the cities of Los Angeles and Orlando as well as the federal government to make the version of Google Apps suite their needs. It will also be flexible for any changes the government agencies need.

I am really interested in this move as I would love to see the government move to a cloud based system with the reliability of Google. Presumably this would also be cheaper than if government agencies had these services done in-house. As a lover of all Google services, I think it is great that the government is looking to enjoy the same services I do but with even better security. Cloud computing is the future!

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Global Geek News Podcast format change

Jul 26th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in Site News

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Just thought I would give all of the Global Geek News Podcast listeners a quick heads up about a major change to the Global Geek News Podcast. The Tips of the Week portion of the show is being removed.

Don’t panic! You will still get your tips of the week, but now it will come in the form of a weekly blog post, most likely to be posted every Friday. After numerous people have voiced complaints that the show has been getting too long (and I agree), I have decided the easiest change to make at this time would be to take the Tips of the Week out and make it something separate.

This should push the show back to around the 1 hour mark where I want the show to be while still keeping the same number of stories while at the same time allow me more freedom to share more helpful links. I will continue to evaluate the show for other changes for both time and better quality.

Thanks for your support and if you have any thoughts on this matter or anything else as it relates to the podcast, please share them with us in the comments!

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Microsoft kills 1 vs 100 Live for the Xbox 360

Jul 25th

Posted by Jeremy Bray in Microsoft

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I hate being the one to bring bad news, but Microsoft has killed its popular 1 vs 100 Live trivia game show for Xbox Live.

For the past few weeks, I had been starting to wonder whether 1 vs 100 Live would return as I hadn’t heard anything about it for a while and last I knew, there was still some effort going into a 3rd season. The last post on the 1 vs 100 Live blog was from back in April when they were looking for some community created questions so it had been a while since any updates have been given. Last week, I was greeted with the heart breaking news that 1 vs 100 Live was done and the team had moved on to other projects.

It is sad to see the game end as it was about the only reason I turned on my Xbox 360 for a number of months. I’m not sure how many people played the extended editions of the game, the live versions typically attracted tens of thousands of trivia loving gamers. I’ve played a lot of trivia games in my life but 1 vs 100 Live was by far the most compelling, even if there was more commercials than I care for.

I am likely more heart broken than most as many of you now, when I was up at Microsoft for Student Insider Training, I was lucky enough to be in the studio and on the show. You can find a bunch of the photos from inside the studio on Flickr.

I want to thank everybody on the 1 vs 100 Live team for their hard work and giving a great experience to countless thousands of people. I want to thank them personally for letting me see how the show gets put together and for allowing me to make an appearance on the show. It was one of the great highlights of my life that I will never forget. Finally, I want to thank Chris Cashman especially for allowing us to spend time in the recording booth and for recording the awesome into for the Global Geek News Podcast.

RIP 1 vs 100 Live.

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FCC changes broadband definition to 4mbps down and 1mbps up

Jul 23rd

Posted by Jeremy Bray in internet

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The FCC has decided to redefine the term broadband. Previously, broadband was defined as 200 kbps in each direction but to keep pace with the ever changing world of technology, they have upped the minimum speeds to 4mbps down and 1mbps up.

FCC Logo from Wikimedia Commons

This seems like a rather large jump that might cause more problems than it is worth. While many are unlikely to notice a difference as many of the largest ISPs in the US offer even their lowest tiers above 4mbps, this is likely to cause issues in areas where 1.5mbps service, typically from DSL providers is the norm (This is the speed we have at work). For years, ISPs have been proudly advertising 1.5 mbps as high speed and broadband and now now that is going to have to change. This definitely throws a monkey wrench in the marketing departments of my ISPs. While this change is likely to make ISPs more interested in upgrading their service, in the time before they do, this is likely to be confusing to customers, especially to the average joe who went from having broadband yesterday to not having it today. Hopefully this won’t be too painful of a transition.

You can read all the details in the FCC’s broadband deployment report. [PDF warning!]

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