Archive for Miscellaneous
October 1, 2008 at 11:24 AM · Filed under Miscellaneous
There you are rushing around juggling meetings and confrence calls and all of sudden a number pops up that’s not in your Address Book. Maybe it’s the Boss calling from his new iPhone. Who knows! All you know is that you picked it up without thinking and now you’re un a heated conversation with a bill collector or your ex-girlfriend. Whoa! Wouldn’t you like to silence or block these annoying calls?
I spent $20 on a program called Black & Whitelist for my BlackBerry to block numbers I don’t want to talk to but on some phones, especially “regular” phones, this isn’t an option. Sometimes you can call your wireless provider and have them block the number but most of the time they aren’t going to waste their time with doing this often. I noticed a lot of phones have the ability to hide Address Book entries and then I had a stroke of genius — The Silent Ringtone.
Simply add the numbers you don’t want to hear from in your Address Book and assign them this unique, completely silent ringer and say goodbye to interruptions. If your phone supports advanced profiles, you can turn off vibrate and notifications as well. This is probably the easiest (and cheapest) way to keep some callers at bay. I’m including this silent ringtone in both MP3 and WAV format.
Got a better solution? Let me know! Love this article? Feel free to leave your feedback.
June 29, 2008 at 9:55 PM · Filed under Apple / Mac, Miscellaneous
Back in the days of Windows 95 and “MMX” technology, you could purchase music from your favorite store that came on a disc (or tape). These mediums allowed you to play them in just about any device. From Sony to RCA, you could enjoy your music anywhere. It was, after all, your music. Play it anywhere!
Forward 13 years and enter a different kind of store: The iTunes Store. Now you can purchase music from your computer and play it on, well… that’s the thing. You can’t play your music anywhere you want. You might have purchased it, but that doesn’t mean you “own” it. It’s encrypted and only works on select devices.
While iTunes offers the ability to buy every song as a “single” for a discounted rate, and also has some rather low prices on full albums, you just don’t get the kind of control you do with buying a CD or DVD from the real “Store.” Me? I’ll never buy a song from iTunes. I still support the artists, not the recording industry.
June 26, 2008 at 10:12 AM · Filed under Miscellaneous
We’re slowly updating this blog for 2009. I know, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Over the next week you’re going to start seeing slight to major changes in how we present this incoherency we call The Espresso Report. One of a few changes you might’ve noticed is that I’ve shortened the pages to 5 posts each and added a page number navigation to the bottom, replacing the old “Previous Post” and “Next Post” thing you see on everyone else’s blog.
Oh, whtat’s that up there? That’s our ninja code name. It translates loosely in Japanese as “Report of Espresso” which is about as close to my blog’s name as I can get without making up my own kung-fu language. Don’t ask.
June 9, 2008 at 12:00 AM · Filed under Miscellaneous
You know what really makes me laugh? When people, sometimes classified as “advanced noobs” try to steal money from poor antivirus companies by downloading “full version” working retail copies of their antivirus software to protect their personal computer. If you knew that 99% of the people downloading your file had absolutely no antivirus protection, wouldn’t you be tempted to sneak in a trojan or two on their pirating ass? Damn right.
Come on, guys. If there’s one thing I’d pay for it’s decent antivirus software. Let’s face it, if you run Windows or are forced in some way to keep a Windows machine around, whether it’s for Exchange, gaming, work, etc., virus software is just a good idea. It’s like that extra car warranty you might never use, but you know in the back of your mind if you floor it and mow down that old lady taking too long to cross the street — you’re in good hands.
Three simple words: Pay The Man. What’s $30 or $40 for some good software that’ll protect your illegal pirating leeching ass from falling victim to another man’s scam? While we’re on the subject, let me throw a plug out to AVG Technologies, formerly Grisoft, makers of the AVG Anti-Virus. They’re so sweet they even give away a bulk of their hard working software for free in a minimal lag release of, what else, but “AVG Free.” If you’re going to pay anyone for anything, and I don’t recommend this often, go buy AVG for your Windows-based computer.
February 2, 2008 at 11:53 AM · Filed under Miscellaneous
I’ve realized over the years that on all these fancy and expensive mobile devices, the “alarm” tones are more of an annoying melody rather than just plain annoying. Easily incorporated into my dreams, I often find myself snoozing without hitting the “Snooze” button and sleeping straight through an army of repeat sessions with the common phone alarm.
I started to search around looking for an end-all loud and annoying tone to replace my handful of default alarms which sound more like an old Nokia ringtone than something that’ll wake the dead. I ended up creating my own 10-second tune. Feel free to download it as a large WAV or a small MP3.
