As mentioned in one of my blog posts about a month ago, Comcast has been planning on doing some upgrades to the system here around Pittsburgh.

Well, I checked this morning before work and they actually did it. Not only did they actually give us what they said they would, but they did it on the date they said the whole time also. This is big news here. Comcast never does what they say they are planning to do in any timely fashion. I”m still waiting on the new guide that they told us was being launched back in February.

But anyways, for once Comcast came through. Enjoy the new channels everyone.

You should see some lineup changes along with about 5 or 6 new HD channels.

Sorry for the lack of blog posts in the last few days. I’ve been really busy. In the last 2 weeks I have worked over 100 hours and I don’t see it letting up anytime soon. I have work I need to do tomorrow (Saturday) and I will be in Harrisburg next week from Thursday to Sunday. It would be nice to have an entire weekend to just relax, but what can you do? I might as well work a long as possible now while I can still handle it.

I’ll try my best to update the blog soon. I got some new things that I can review or at least write about when I get some time.

Currently Powweb is doing a promo. The price of hosting there is very cheap to begin with ($7.77 a month) but currently they are running a 50% off promotion. Sign up for 1 year and pay only $3.88 a month and you also get a free domain name.

If I already didn’t have multiple hosting accounts I would definitely jump on this deal.

Just follow this link to be a part of the special promotion.

I normally don’t post about this, but I figured I would this month. Probably about 4 years ago, my site peaked. At that time, according to Alexa, my site ranking was in the top 400,000 sites on the entire internet. That is when I used to do a lot of Windows XP customizing…making visual styles, wallpapers, program skins, etc. That year the site got over 6 million hits. I was pretty happy about it at the time.

A few years later I got tired of doing all of that. I stopped and the site stats dropped drastically. By that point the forums had become completely empty. By the way, the forums still exist and could at any point be resurrected. But anyways, while looking at the stats I have noticed an increase lately in activity again here. It’s high enough to surprise me so I figured, why not post it?

So here they are…and thank you to everyone who continues to visit the site.

June 2008 Statistics
Unique Visitors: 17,364
Number of Visits: 20,691
Pages: 74,625
Hits: 451,122

Dropbox: online storage that just works

Simply put your files into your Dropbox folder
Get to them from anywhere
Collaborate and share photos, documents, music

View: GetDropbox.com

I was sitting here thinking about the iPhone/Touch and thought of a good question. I wonder if Apple is going to charge for the 2.0 update like they did the others?

The reason I am questioning this is quite simple… The main new feature is the app store. The app store by design is made so that Apple can make as much money as possible without doing any actual work. The app store will primarily be filled with apps and games by other developers.

So, with that in mind, is Apple stupid enough to charge $20 (or maybe even more) for this firmware update considering the main draw would be the app store which has unlimited profitability?

About a month ago I started hearing about changes Comcast planned on making in the Pittsburgh area. At the time I was all for it, because any time I hear about HD channels it tends to make me happy. But now that it is apparently happening officially I have some mixed feelings.

As stated in the article linked above, yeah we will be receiving more HD programming. But they are really screwing over some people by switching some of those other stations to digital plans only. I mean, MSNBC? Come on….

I wonder if any of those changes have anything to do with the summer Olympics? Is Comcast really crazy enough to purposely move a station such as MSNBC to purely digital just to get some people to switch so they can watch Olympic programming? Or do they just totally want to screw over MSNBC for other reasons?

Anyways, what brought up the whole idea of me posting this blog was my telephone conversation with Comcast this morning. I called them regarding getting another HD cable box because currently I only have one at my house. I saw in that Post Gazette article that they had some special deals on the different cable boxes so I figured I’d ask about the HD boxes. I couldn’t believe it when she told me that a digital box would only be $1.99 a month but the HD ones are $10.99 a month. Seriously, what the hell is up with that? $10.99 a month for all additional boxes? I asked her, how is that even possible? All she said was “there aren’t any promotions right now on the HD boxes”. It took me a second to comprehend that the Comcast bill for my house would now be about $140 a month, and somehow I said alright fine I’ll take another one.

At that point I didn’t really have anything else to say to the woman because all I could think to myself was,  how the hell do the majority of people afford this? So yeah, after all of that I will have another box installed here within the next few days. And yes, I know I could have gone and picked it up. But, that really wasn’t much of an option for me because I would go totally crazy if I went into any sort of Comcast Service Center. Paying the $17 will definitely save me a lot of aggravation. And when you’re already paying them $140 a month what’s another $17, right?

For a while now there was some major hype surrounding Hulu. My question is, why? I don’t think it’s very special…at all.

It’s been out of beta for a good bit of time now and I have seen absolutely no improvement at all in terms of content. I mean, who doesn’t love being able to watch Family Guy anytime you want? I definitely love the thought of it, but why would I want to sit at my computer on a regular basis and watch televisions shows that are only high enough quality to fill less than 1/10 of my screen? Maybe I’m to blame? Maybe I shouldn’t have a 24″ iMac with a resolution of 1920×1200, right? Is it wrong for me to expect something more from such a high profile site? Hell, even the massive header at the top of the main page is higher quality than the videos themselves. Am I the only person who thinks there is something wrong with that?

Instead of listing a bunch of low res clips of shows that no one wants to watch maybe they should concentrate on a few higher quality videos.

I loved the concept originally, but I just don’t see the site turning into the huge enterprise that they envisioned. I don’t see many people following and trying to make one large site for ad based video. Under no circumstances would I pick to watch shows on Hulu over the streams on ABC.com for example. At least on the individual network sites they attempt to maintain some quality in their streams.

That’s about all for this rant. Feel free to comment and tell me how wrong you think I am if you’d like.

Visit Hulu.com and decide for yourself.

The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008.

Set a Guinness World Record
Enjoy a Better Web

Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy. They’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.

Download Firefox during Download Day and enjoy increased security, blinding speed and cool new features that will change the way you use the Web.

View: Information on Firefox 3

I never really got into the whole Twitter type blogging, but recently Plurk was opened. It seems pretty cool. It shows your “plurks” in a timeline which is pretty nice. As you can see to the right I added a section to show my recent posts at Plurk.

Taken from the Plurk FAQ:

What is Plurk?
A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks.

How does Plurk work?
It’s easy. First, sign up. It takes 10 seconds. Then, just post new plurks which tell us what you’re doing, or how you feel, or what you’re thinking or anything else for that matter and it’ll appear on your timeline. You can tell us on the site, through instant messaging (stuff like MSN or AIM) or by text messaging us an update. Be sure to invite all your friends and see what they are up to throughout the day, it will make Plurk that much more fun for you.

Anyways here is my Plurk invite link. Join, and let us know what you’re up to.