Tag Archives: digg

Killing Time 025: Nontraditional Entertainment

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Episode 24 is delayed, so here’s 25 instead — Nintendo Wii, Stream media to your TV from your computer, Websites worth your time
Direct Download: Killing Time 025
Trouble downloading? Go to KillingTime.TV

Congratulations to J.B. on his engagement to Playboy Playmate Jennifer Walcott.

Okay, we’ve both had Nintendo Wii for a couple of weeks now — how about a review?
MVix – Stream your content (unprotected content, anyway) to your TV. A quick review.

What websites do you waste your time on? I.A. and J.B. pick a bunch of sites and argue about them.

File Size: 9.48MB
Duration: 20 minutes and 40 seconds

Links to everything we talked about: del.icio.us/KillingTimeShow/025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Digg and Time

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The quality of stories on Digg has eroded from cutting edge news to “newly found” old video footage of Family Guy or an old story about how Apple should change from 1997.

However, it does still have great news and links. It all depends on the time of day. In the afternoon (Eastern Time in the US) there’s pretty much garbage on the front page. By 8 or 9PM Eastern actual news stories make their way to the front page.

Thanks to Digg, I’ve found a way to see all the news I could ever want with OriginalSignal.com and Spotback.com. They are news aggregator sites which display the news from various sites in a grid. Original Signal is good for lots of different sources – however it lacks customizability.

For customizability, I go to Spotback. I threw on the feeds that OriginalSignal.com lack. No need to recreate what has been done well on other sites. My schedule is pretty tight these days, and to get all my news in one or two sites is excellent. I’ve never really liked RSS Readers because they look like e-mail programs. The grid format is excellent for people who want their info on one page like me.

If you’re tired of Digg having lousy stories in the afternoon, go over to OriginalSignal and Spotback. Plus they load quickly.

Whining MacBook Pro Repaired

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Over 150 days ago I bought my MacBook Pro. I know this because I looked up my serial number with Apple. I had gotten one of those MacBook Pros with the whining noise. I had gotten used to it, so I accepted the fact that I paid a high price for a computer with an annoying defect. Then I read on digg that Apple had acknowledged this noise and instructed owners to contact AppleCare.

I called up AppleCare and told them of the problem. They asked me if the whining was present at start up. I said I didn’t know because I rarely start up my laptop. I usually only restart my MacBook Pro after Software Update requires a restart. (That’s one of the reasons I switched from PCs to Macs). Then they asked me if it was making the noise now. I told them I didn’t know. The guy at AppleCare tried to understand the situation “You don’t know if you hear the noise your complaining about?” I told him the room was noisy and the noise is much more noticable when the notebook is plugged in. After a couple of minutes, I was given a couple of numbers and was told that a box was on its way. I asked if I needed to backup my hard drive. The AppleCare guy told me to do so since there were no guarantees.

I received my box from Apple the next day and packaged up my notebook (it’s not a laptop) after backing up my hard drive twice. After about two or three business day, I received my repaired MacBook Pro. It had two stickers on it that I assume were for identification while it was at the repair place.

They replaced the Main Logic Board (MLB) at no cost to me. I haven’t heard the noise again (but then again, I haven’t used my MBP that much in the past two days). So, if your MacBook Pro buzzes or emits a high pitched noise, contact Apple and get that logic board replaced. It actually worked out pretty well. My MBP’s speakers sound louder – that might be my own perception – as well.

Overall, a good experience with AppleCare.

Digg for Viruses

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Several weeks ago, a piece of software was on the front page of digg.com. It was the Secondary Click installer – it would allow a MacBook Pro users to “right-click” or “control-click” using two fingers on the trackpad. I installed it on my MBP and it kind of works. It had an installer, it asked for my password and I had no problem installing it on my laptop.

That got me thinking about how digg or sites like digg could be used to spread viruses very easily. Digg allows the users to act as editors and the most popular stories get promoted to the front page. One of the great features of digg is how quickly a story can move from obscurity to the front page. The more interesting the story, the quicker it gets dugg. Since the users are the ones promoting the stories, there isn’t anyone really doing long-term checks and experiments on the software that gets promoted to the front page.

If someone wanted, they could put together a piece of malware that acted as a ticking time bomb. The Secondary Click installer could have easily installed the first real Mac virus by adding some terminal commands to format your hard drive a couple of days later using the password you typed in when you agreed to install Secondary Click. Now, I’m not a virus-writer so I don’t even know if this is possible, but it seems plausible to me.

People would be quite happy with the piece of software for a couple of days and it would have been promoted to the front page of digg. No one would know that anything malicious was involved until days later when the virus gets full blown. By the time anyone felt the effect of the malware it would be too late. A couple of thousand would be infected and the thing that makes sites like digg so great, pushing stories with an immediacy not found in traditional news sites, could cause plenty of problems.

As an aside: I am a big fan of digg and I check the site out several times a day. I am eagerly awaiting Digg version 3 with its new features.