2007 May | i.nconspicuo.us

Halo 3 Release Date – Official Halo 3 Release Date Announced

May 16th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Gaming - (0 Comments)

Wow, so the Halo 3 Beta was released today (to most people… sorry to you Crackdown folks) and I check my email and I have a message from Xbox Flash stating that Halo 3 will be Landing on Earth September 25th. So I guess that’s it folks… it looks like it’s not just a generic “Fall 2007″ date anymore. So you all know what that means…

it’s time to talk to your bosses, and request Tuesday, September 25th off of work, because that is the day Halo 3 will be in stores. Or if you’re a real Halo fanatic, go ahead and put in your 2 weeks notice on September 11th so that you can just start playing Halo 3 full time when it comes out.

Here’s a screenshot of the email that I received:

Which is a lot more pleasing on the eyes than this picture – you can barely make it out, but this older version of the Halo 3 teaser image says Fall 2007:

Credit Cards 101 – Don’t Spend What You Don’t Have

May 16th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Finance/Investment - (0 Comments)

Plastic. You’ve gotta love it. Never any reason to have to carry cash around. Ever since I turned 18 and got my first credit card, cash has become almost obsolete in my life. Why carry a wallet full of cash when you can just carry a credit card (or 6 if you’re like me). Credit cards have many pros, but there are obviously some cons as well. I use my credit card constantly, but I never charge anything that I won’t be able to pay off in full when the bill comes.

The Good

Credit cards help you establish credit
If your wallet gets stolen, many credit card companies protect you from fraudulent charges – your cash would be gone
Easy to carry, easy to use, accepted almost everywhere

The Bad

Debt – some people see credit cards as “free money” and continually max out
Late payments – if you pay everything with cash, you don’t have to worry about paying credit card bills
Interest rates and late fees

Credit cards obviously have a lot to offer, and there are positives and negatives that come with them, but if you’re a responsible person who typically pays bills on time, and is able to “don’t spend what you don’t have” then you’ll be fine.

PS – Always look for low interest rates like these ones Credit Card UK

Halo 3 Beta with Purchase of Crackdown – All-Time Blunder for Microsoft and Bungie

May 16th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Gaming - (0 Comments)

So Bungie thought that they’d be nice and extend the beta of Halo 3 to more than the 13,333 people who were lucky enough to get in by the rule of 3.

They decided to put a nice little inactive “Download Halo 3 Beta” button within the menus of Crackdown… the problem is that when the beta was officially released, that inactive button didn’t activate. This seems to be causing a major uproar int he Xbox forums and the Bungie forums… lots of pissed off geeks.

Crackdown Delay Discussion Thread

Halo 3 Beta forums on Bungie.net

Halo 3 Beta Download… Still Unavailable in Crackdown???

May 16th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Gaming - (10 Comments)

UPDATE :: Halo 3 Beta Fix for Crackdown Users

It seems like Bungie and/or Microsoft has done it again. Either the Halo 3 beta has been delayed (which wouldn’t surprise me, because it seems like all good game releases get delayed) or Microsoft and/or Bungie has just decided to screw over all of the people who paid for a copy of Crackdown… myself included. Apparently the beta comes out later for those users who bought Crackdown, which seems really lame and as of checking seems to have caused an uproar in many of the forums.

I read on bungie.net that the Halo 3 beta for Crackdown players will come out at 8:15am PDT, and right now as I’m writing this at 8:23am PDT, I have been unable to get my little grayed out box on the Crackdown menu to let me download a copy of the beta. Now don’t get me wrong, Crackdown is a fun game, but I think many people (myself included) bought it primarily to be part of the Halo 3 Beta – whether you missed out on getting in through the Rule of 3, didn’t get an invite or whatever other reason. As of right now, it seems very much like I am stuck with a copy of a game that I could actually do without… cause the on option on the menu that I want to click is currently unavailable…

And checkout this retard below… he claims that he’s able to download the Halo 3 beta through Crackdown… but this looks much like the menu I have that is not allowing the download.

AdultSwim815

Here’s a little note from bungie… not that it helps:
With any luck this will be a short delay. People enetering the Beta through other methods – Friends and Family, Rule of Three and so on, are unaffected. (5:22am PDT)

Update: According to the Bungie forums,the Xbox Live helpdesk is now quoting 24 hours before we can play Halo 3

WordPress 2.2 Now Available – You Gotta “Getz” It

May 15th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (1 Comments)

As always, once I decide to update my site from the previous version of WordPress, they shortly thereafter release a new version! I think I’ve been running 2.1.3 for less than a month, and now, I’ve got to update to version 2.2. Typically, I wait for a few days to a couple weeks before I update because I’ve noticed that sometimes a “fix” is released shortly after a large release. This time, I think I might actually just upgrade right away because this 2.2 release seems to have a ton of bug fixes and upgrades – 244 to be exact – check out the complete list here.

The WordPress developers have apparently added some really cool stuff, most importantly and significantly support for widgets; which used to only be possible through the installation of a 3rd party plugin. 2.2 is called “Getz” after tenor saxophonist Stan Getz.

Here are some of the notable additions as taken from the official WordPress blog:

WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.
Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.
A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.
Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

If interested, you can view the full WordPress 2.2 release here.

Add Your Blog to a ‘DoFollow’ List – Get Rid of the ‘NoFollow’ tag in Your Comments

May 14th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Make Money Online | Wordpress - (47 Comments)

While looking for ways to increase the popularity of my blog, I came across an article about having a nofollow tag in your blog comments. Basically, most blogs out there allow people who comment to input their name, email and website, however, when the website URL is displayed to the end user, it is actually hidden from search engines with the following bit of code:

rel="nofollow"

The way I see it, there are pros and cons to removing the “nofollow” tag. Pros are that it will help increase the pagerank of all of the people who comment on posts on your blog and/or it will increase your own blogs pagerank with increasing number of comments that you leave on other blogs that do not use the “nofollow” tag. Cons are that it can definitely increase the amount of spam that a blog gets. For instance, my blog currently gets between 200-500 spam comments per day (depending on how lucky I am that day), I expect this to increase significantly once the spammers realize that I have removed the “nofollow” tag from my comments.

If you’d like to get your WordPress blog onto a “dofollow” list, simply go into your /wp-includes folder and find the file called “comment-template.php”. On line 48, I had the following line of code:

$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external nofollow'>$author</a>";

Simply change it to:

$return = "<a href='$url' rel='external'>$author</a>";

I haven’t yet promoted the fact that my comments are no longer “nofollow” comments, but I’ve read quite a few articles of people raving about the success they’ve had by removing the “nofollow” attribute and changing their comments section to more of a “dofollow” type of layout. So if you’re blog has a list of other blogs that have a “dofollow” or a d-list, please add my site to the list.

Google Analytics – New Reporting Interface

May 14th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (1 Comments)

Google has upgraded the Google Analytics web statistics and reporting system to now have a new highly customizable interface. As always, Google is constantly tweaking, upgrading and providing better ways to use and interpret data, and this time, they’ve really hit the nail on the head. I have barely even touched the surface of what is available in the new analytics interface,

but here are just a few of the new features that are offered in the new and improved Google Analytics that I found to be extremely helpful. My only criticism is that they could definitely decrease the font size of the main pages and fit a lot more data onto each page, other than that, I think the new Google Analytics interface is going to be a large success.

Date Range Comparisons

You can now select two different date ranges and view reports that compare the two ranges. The dashboard will give you an overview of all data during the two date ranges. This can be very helpful when you’re looking to see if new changes to your site have helped to increase/decrease traffic, etc.

Statistics by Heat-Maps

Now you can look at a map of a region (USA for instance) and see where most of your traffic is coming from through the use of a heat-map. Heat maps show higher traffic through darker colors. Looking at the heatmap below, you can see that California has the highest number of visitors, followed by Texas, Florida, etc.

New Improved Navigation Menu

The new analytics navigation menu gives you simple and easy ways to break down the reports and you can get right down to the nitty-gritty. There are now 5 main categories, which are then broken down into sub-categories, but the main screens for each of the 5 categories are very helpful and give a quick overview of each site.

Dashboard – Gives a solid overview of the four following categories
Visitors – Let’s you look into your visitors, how long they spend on your site, where they’re coming from, etc.
Traffic Sources – Show’s you where your traffic is coming from, whether it be from search engines, direct, or referring sites.
Content – Show’s you how the content on your site is performing.
Goals – If you have setup any goals, this page lets you know each goal is doing.

Checkout the the overview of the new Google Analytics here: http://services.google.com/analytics/tour/index_en-US.html

Halo 3 Beta Release Date – Time and Date of Halo 3 Beta Release

May 14th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Gaming - (1 Comments)

The following was taken from halo3.com – please visit for more details.

UPDATE 5/16/2007

If you’re looking for the release time for the Crackdown Halo 3 Beta click here.

“Halo 3″ Multiplayer Beta Hits Xbox LIVE Worldwide on May 16

Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie Studios confirmed the multiplayer beta of “Halo® 3″ will debut to audiences worldwide via Xbox LIVE® on May 16 at 5 a.m. PDT and run through June 6 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Made possible through Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox LIVE gaming and entertainment network, which provides a robust online service for more than 6 million gamers worldwide, the multiplayer beta for “Halo 3″ will give anxious Xbox 360 gamers their first opportunity to get their hands on the new levels, weapons, vehicles and game types, as well as a chance to provide valuable data that Bungie will use in continued development. Starting May 16, gamers who secured their admission to the multiplayer beta either through the “Rule of Three” promotion or by purchasing a specially marked copy of “Crackdown™” for Xbox 360 will be able to don their Spartan armor, download the beta on Xbox LIVE, and jump online using their Xbox LIVE Gold account* to battle other gamers from around the world.

When gamers gather online to play the multiplayer beta via Xbox LIVE in May, they will be treated to three richly detailed, action-oriented maps: Snowbound, High Ground and Valhalla, which represent a mixture of large- and medium-scale combat environments and are brand-new to “Halo 3.” Each map will test gamers’ mettle as they are placed behind the controls of new “Halo 3″ vehicles such as the agile Mongoose all-terrain vehicle, and armed with deadly weapons such as the new and improved Assault Rifle, the ferocious Brute Spiker, the devastating Spartan Laser and the treacherous new Spike Grenades. This is just a taste of what gamers will experience later this fall when “Halo 3″ goes on sale.

Gamers worldwide who did not participate in the “Rule of Three” promotion but are interested in joining the multiplayer beta of “Halo 3″ can still participate through the purchase of the critically acclaimed Xbox 360 title “Crackdown,” which was launched in February. Each copy of “Crackdown” has been specially marked with a “Halo 3″ beta sticker prior to the beta period, and starting May 16 the game will act as a key for gamers to download and participate in the “Halo 3″ multiplayer beta.

In addition, gamers who can’t wait for the multiplayer beta this May can get an even earlier look at “Halo 3″ with a new, behind-the-scenes video feature available at http://www.bungie.net and in high definition over Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Starting today, viewers can go behind the scenes at Bungie Studios to learn about the people, technology and process that are making “Halo 3″ an unforgettable multiplayer experience, and to get a taste of what to expect from the upcoming “Halo 3″ multiplayer beta. The latest multiplayer video documentary, titled “Is Quisnam Protero Damno!,” will offer a glimpse at how “Halo 3″ multiplayer maps are being designed, built and architected, and how these amazing spaces are converted into fun places in which to play. Gamers can also catch the first-ever glimpse of brand-new “Halo 3″ multiplayer levels in their early stages of evolution and construction.

* The “Halo 3″ multiplayer beta will require gamers to have access to an Xbox 360 console equipped with a hard drive as well as an Xbox LIVE Gold Membership.

Media Center Extender – Cannot Play Video – The file type is not recognized and cannot be played

May 9th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (94 Comments)

I’ve been running Windows Vista Home Premium with Windows Media Center for awhile now with no problems. I have been streaming pictures and music to my Windows Media Center Extender (my Xbox 360) with no problems, but recently, I tried playing an AVI video file that I had on my Media Center PC through my Xbox 360.

The AVI video file plays fine on my Windows Media Center PC, which would lead me to believe that a Microsoft-based Media Center Extender (the Xbox 360) would be able to play the same type of video file that is being played on the Media Center PC, but when I try to stream it to my Media Center Extender, I get the following error:

Cannot Play Video
The file type is not recognized and cannot be played. Either the correct codec (a file that compresses/decompresses audio or video) is not installed or the file is corrupt.

Are their updates that need to be installed on the Xbox 360 if it is being used as a Windows Media Center Extender? I’d think that the video would be processed on the PC where it would then send a recognizable video stream to the Media Center Extender.

Has anyone had any problems with this? Are there any work arounds? I’ve read a couple articles that recommend converting all videos to MPEG2, however, I don’t want to spend the time or the effort to convert videos that I want to watch through my Media Center Extender… that seems like a waste of time.

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Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center – Video on Media Center Extenders

May 7th, 2007 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (6 Comments)

So I’ve had a Windows Media Center PC since the first version of Media Center for Windows XP came out. Now I’m running Windows Media Center for Windows Vista, and I use my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. The problem is that some of the TV shows and movies that I have on my computer will not play through the Media Center Extender (Xbox 360) even though they do play on the PC itself. I was under the impression that the Media Center Extender used all resources from the PC and just streamed the audio/video/picture feed from the PC over the network.

I’m able to play all of my MP3′s, some AVI and some MPG files, but DIVX files won’t play at all. Does anyone else out there run Windows Media Center? If so, do you know how to get around this problem?

i.nconspicuo.us

Uncovering the hidden treasures of the internet, tech toys… and life.