Posts from 1 2010

• January 25, 2010
  Melody Gardot

  If you haven't checked out Melody Gardot yet, you owe it to yourself to take a few minutes and give her music a listen. Her voice and style is absolutely amazing — so smooth and effortless...

  Normally, I'd let the music stand on its own, but in Gardot's case, I'd be remiss not to mention her story. I won't go into all the details, but after a horrific accident in 2003, she turned to music as therapy. Singing and writing songs helped Gardot to rebuild the damaged neural pathways in her brain, and eventually led her to release three albums.

  Do yourself a favor, and buy all of them.

• January 18, 2010
  Giving: Prints for Haiti

  Last week's earthquake in Haiti left me feeling a bit helpless at first. So many people suffering, so far away... Of course, there were a lot of organizations that could use my money to help the people of Haiti: Red Cross, UNICEF, CARE, Mercy Corps, etc. Some are even using SMS (in the US) to make it easier:

  • SMS text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
  • SMS text "YELE" to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti's Earthquake Relief efforts
  • SMS text "GIVE10" to 20222 to donate $10 to Direct Relief

  I personally jumped on the Google bandwagon, since they made it trivial to donate to UNICEF and CARE.

  Continue reading "Giving: Prints for Haiti"...
• January 13, 2010
  I'm With Coco

  

  I'm with Coco by Mike Mitchell

• January 05, 2010
  Consumerist investigates Best Buy's "pre-optimization" scam

  Consumerist investigates Best Buy’s “pre-optimization” scam (via Gruber):

  Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to "pre-optimization" of computers, it's difficult -- sometimes impossible -- to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer's advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three "optimized" computers to ones with default factory settings, there was no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually performed 32% worse than the factory model.

  This is why I buy Macs. It’s also why I never buy anything except PS3 games at Best Buy. Give me a break.