Lets say you need some money, You visit Prosper.com and sign up. You create a profile with a picture if you like and you put in all of your income/credit information. Prosper will then pull your credit report and assign you a letter grade. You can then post an ad for a loan. In that add, it will show your letter grade, the loan amount, why you need the loan, and general information about your income. Enough so lenders can determine if they want to loan you some money. It also assign a recommended interest rate for your loan based on the info you filled out when you signed up for your account.

Lenders can then look through the list of people needing loans and decide to help them. The cool thing is that you don’t have to lend the whole amount the borrower is asking. What you actually do is “bid”. You pick an amount and an interest rate and place your bid. the borrower will then accept your bid and you send the money to Prosper. You can bid the whole amount, or partial amounts. The loan will stay open until enough people has made bids to cover the loan.

After the bidding is complete, the borrower will get the money transferred to him/her and will be put on the prearranged payment plan. As monthly payments are being made, the money is then split between all of the lenders and added to their Prosper account. Those payments will be made to you until the amount you loaned and the interest rate has been paid up.

Sounds like a good idea if you are looking for that sort of thing, but I would say read the site carefully before you go lending or borrowing money. I didn’t see anything alarming and everything looked straight forward but its up to you to be comfortable with any website like this.

• What is BlogRush and Why do I care?
• Head to head sponsored review service comparison. Reviewme.com vs Sponsoredreviews.com
• Google Analytics…Acceptable and necessary SPYWARE?
• Should you buy a “niche website” package, or just create your own?
• Blogging as a business. Where do we stand? is it still viable?

It was about lunch time and I decided to go out to get something to eat. Wasn’t sure what I wanted so I remembered a little iPhone app that I downloaded called Streetflow. Streetflow is really a cool little app. I loaded it up and it used the iPhone’s fake built in gps to find out my location then it list all the restaurants that are near me.

Even though Ive been living in this area all of my adult life and was familiar with most places, I did find a restaurant that I had never been too. It also had reviews from other restaurant goers about that restaurant. Yes you can also submit your review of places that you visit to help others that may be in your area looking for somewhere to eat.

Once you find a place to eat, you can click on that place and it will give you more information about that place, including a phone number and street address (all these pics were taken later not the same places I went to earlier)

After getting something to eat, I decided to look at other places that are in my area. I found a place listed that recently closed, that did have a good review so I quickly decided to add a review to let others know that the place has closed.

All in all, this is the first app I found that I would say is clearly worth jailbreaking the iPhone. Maybe this will get added to iTunes when third party app support is finally added. If you have jailbroke your iphone and want more info, you probably already know where to get it. (through the installer). For more information about using Winpwn, you can check out this website.

• Will the iPhone’s touch screen keyboard drive me nuts?
• The Travel Girl takes you with her.
• Search engine wars and guess what, Yahoo is beating Google (according to Alexa)…who wouldve thought?
• Reviews written about your website can build links with lasting benefits
• Are you listed on the Alive directory?

Crytek, I’m here to tell you…

Crysis has (had) low sales numbers because of Crysis.

Ive played a little bit of Crysis, and while I liked what I played, and I thought it was an excellent game when it comes to some of whats being done in the game. It is not the “Big game” you guys think it is.

• Its generic and forgetful
• Its buggy (at launch anyway)
• It runs bad
• It was marketed as the game no one can run.

That’s why it has low sale numbers. How dare you create a game where the graphics is the biggest draw but target systems no one has. Especially in today’s gaming age when gamers are over games in a month. There are perfectly decent looking games on the 2 major gaming consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3). If you make a game with future gamers in mind as far as technical specs, then current gamers aren’t going to by the game. You know why? Cause they cant play it.

Yea you can tone the graphics down, but I’m sorry Crytek, the visuals are THE best quality of that game. If you don’t have the visuals, COD4 is good enough and gamers don’t need Crysis. Before looking at piracy, or blaming gamers take a look at your game. Out of all my personal friends that are gamers, none of them has played Crysis. They all think of Crysis as the game they cant run on their system and none of them knows how to pirate games. Those are customers Crytek doesn’t have, that didn’t pirate the game, that they missed out on because of Crysis itself.

Id even go so far as to say those pirated numbers are inflated because of how you chose to market the game, not how well the game is or the interest.  Most of the pirates that downloaded the game did so not because they want to play the game and get it for free, they want to see what all the hubbub is about but don’t want to pay money for a game they know they cant run. Many probably never even installed the game once it was downloaded, and the ones that did probably never even played more than an hour.

To me, bragging about a games graphics is silly if you cant get those graphics on the standard hardware. What achievement is it to pack in graphical features no one can take advantage of? That would be like selling an HDTV with no HD content anywhere to be found…what a minute, that was done. But you get the picture.

Try making a good game that can run on standard PCs and if it gets pirated, then complain. Dont blame your mediocre game on gamers

• Is PC gaming dead?
• What dictates if a game’s graphics are next gen
• What effect will PC game makers have on PC hardware if they all start making console games?
• PC gaming needs a “Games for Windows”-like initiative
• Was PC gaming ever alive? (Cont…)

Since then, I have watched every episode that aired. I love Hells kitchen. My thoughts about Chef Ramsay hasn’t changed, but there is more to him than my initial impressions. But I was curious, has anyone ever tried to punch him in the face? So I went to Google, and looked to see if there was anything like that online. I didn’t find anything, but I did find out about another Gordon Ramsay show called Kitchen Nightmares. Happen to catch an episode or 2 (actually I bought the DVD) and watched them. He was still all of what I said above, but he does really care about what he does. everyone that has ever been on his show has probably left with some very valuable experience. Anyway, I know this is a little off topic of this blog, but figured you might want to check him out, so heres an episode (from Hulu.com)

• Hulu.com features: Create and embed a custom clip. Also watch a few TV shows here.
• Hmmm….The Totally Rad Show
• Which of these fall 2007 TV shows will get canceled?
• Old fashion method of making money online…OOh Lala!!!
• Watch the Lisa Lopes documentary and other TV show episodes for free online…legally

That was the end of it? Nope, Microsoft got back in the picture, not to make an outright buy but to collaborate. Yahoo were open to those talks then started talking with Google, Microsoft offered to buy a portion of Yahoo (8%) then Yahoo burned the bridge and made a deal with Google.

Microsoft finally said they were through and have no interest in Yahoo. Case closed!!!

uhh, not quite. I just happen to check out Techmeme and what do I see at the first headline?

Sources: Microsoft And Yahoo Talks Back On

The article was posted over at Tech crunch and in short, the story now is conflicted. Some say talks are back on for a full buyout others say its search only. All I know is my excitement about a possible “Microhoo” has turned into a solid “not this again!!“

• Search engine wars and guess what, Yahoo is beating Google (according to Alexa)…who wouldve thought?
• Woohoo!!! I so hope this happens. Microsoft + Yahoo
• Is Yahoo really the number one search engine?
• The Yahoo toolbar gets no respect. Does it deserve any?
• Is it time to start promoting other search engines along with Google?

What do you do with those old computer parts?

Your not going to ever put them in a computer that you use anymore, they are old, which is why you replaced them. At the same time, they a in perfect working order, and you spent money on them, so you hate to throw them away. Here are a few ideas to keep that clutter down

Sell them on eBay, or Craigslist!

Put those old parts up for sale. How you do it depends on which method you decide to use to sell. If you use eBay, post the parts individually. Post the old CPU, post the ram as a set, post the old video card. People sometimes look to eBay when they need parts that they cant find anymore at other stores.

Craigslist on the other hand, people are looking for deals or good buys. On Craigslist is where you piece together packages to sell. Take the old motherboard, processor, video card and stick of ram, put it together as one package. Give it a good price

Create a media server.

Sometimes those old PC parts were replaced because they are old technology and just dont cut it for what you want to do anymore. Example: I once had a pentium 133 processor, the motherboard and ram that was used with it just sitting in my closet. I cant play Crysis or even run Vista with those components. I can however piece those together in an old PC case with a old 20 gig HDD and connect it to my network and store music on it. Now I have a music server that can be accessed from every computer in my house. Take those old parts and piece together a Music/Media server that everyone in your home can make use of.

Build a starter PC for a beginner or the less fortunate.

Do you know what I did with that Pentium 133 cpu and other parts I talked about above? I built a starter computer. This was many years ago, but at the time, my parents didn’t have a PC and had never used one. They had no interest in PC’s at all, but in this day and age, everyone should have some PC experience. I gathered all those parts, built a starter PC and gave it to them. It jump started their love for PC’s and gave them an easy cost effective way to get familiar with using a PC. Builting a PC like that out of old parts is also good for kids.

Donate your PC to your local schools?

A lot of schools now have classes that teach kids about PCs and working on PCs. Donate your old computers, or PC parts to your local school so the kids will have something to work with instead of just listing to a teacher talk about it. The best thing is (other than for the kids) many times, donating a PC to a school or some organization like that can be claimed on your taxes.

Trash it, but do it the right way

If you don’t want the hassle of anything Ive mentioned so far, you could just trash it. There is a correct way to trash your old PC components though. If you check around, many places like Office Depot will accept old PC parts so they can dispose of them properly. Check around.

• Always shred your important documents
• Kids today have it made, thanks to tech
• Microsoft and Yahoo? Heres 4 other tech companies I would like to see merge
• Harddrive crash? Important data lost? never fear, there are ways to recover it.
• We all probably could do a little better at backing up important files

Her daughter  was working on a school project she and couldn’t finish it up because the PC kept giving her problems. After that night, I decided to stop procrastinating and do the upgrade. All I needed was a motherboard, processor and maybe a stick of ram.

After checking Newegg, Pricewatch, and a few local stores, I remembered that I still had the P4 3.0 ghz processor from the laptop that I spilled soda on a while ago. I was thinking all I need to do is get a motherboard and a stick of ram, that should cut about 40 or 50 bucks off the price I was looking at paying. After looking for a while, I decided to check craigslist to see if there was someone in my area selling a mobo that would work with that P4 processor.

I didn’t find that but I found a guy selling an AMD Athlon 64 chip, Motherboard, a low end geforce card and 1 stick of 512 ram for just 10 buck more than I was looking to pay for the P4 compatible motherboard.

RIght then I thought “that is a good deal, but I don’t want to buy a slower CPU when I have a nice speedy one here” (Speedy is relative to what is in my wife’s current PC). I put it out of my mind and went back to looking at Motherboards for the P4 processor.

For some reason, I decided to check performances comparisons and found out that the Athlon 64 cpu I was looking at is actually faster than the P4 that I had. Then I remembered…. AMD was performance king for a while!!!

Intel was lagging behind for Id say a couple years and it wasn’t until the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo released did they get back on top. That wasn’t too long ago, but I forgot all about it.

• Some people can really take the joy out of your favorite experiences
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• What do you do with your computer parts? Here are a few suggestions
• Windows Vista notoriously eludes me…..
• Cox Highspeed Internet tech support woes. How common is this?

I asked him did he use the scan wizard that was built into Windows, and he said there is no scan wizard and he had looked.

As you all know, in Windows XP, all you have to do is go to control panel and there is a handy “scan your pictures” wizard that takes away the need to use the scanners proprietary software. He was right, it isn’t in the same spot in Vista. There is a “scanners” selection in the control panel but thats basically for the properties and settings, not the same scan wizard that I’m use to.

I eventually found it, and its easy. Its now called “Windows fax and scan”. For you impatient people, all you have to do is type the word “scan” into the start bar and the link to it will display. If you want to just click away at icons, heres how you would get to it without typing.

Click START

Click ALL PROGRAMS

Then scroll down a little bit and you’ll see it

Simple huh? Yea but some of us don’t know

• Going Sicko over Vista’s User Acount Control (UAC)? Well turn it off…
• Got a new Vista PC for Christmas? Heres a few tips to get you started
• Have you heard anything about Vista’s viruses?
• Am I lucky? Or is there really a reason to hate Vista
• Windows Vista notoriously eludes me…..

One easy way to get your Pics the size you want is to use a simple web based pic resizer. Picresize.com does just that. You just upload the picture, pick a size you want, and download the finished resized version of that picture.

Simple

Yea I thought so, Ive actually used the site and recommended it to people that I thought would get too confused if I tried to explain the new free Photoshop express, Paint.net or Microsoft’s picresizer (which are all excellent choices if you choose to use them.

• Sometimes when it comes to tech support, the simple things can be hard to explain
• So you want to start a blog and dont know where to start? Part 2
• May be time to give Vista another try, SP1 releases tomorrow. Promises better performance
• Bioshock looks like it may just be this holiday’s winner….Get your copy free at Jonespc.com (giveaway)
• Lets get familiar with Podcast

One of the comments Ive found to be pretty common is that the game had relatively high system requirements. I started to wonder if I could even play this game on my laptop. After doing a little more research I ran across a little website that will till you if you can run your favorite games.

Can I run AOC on my PC?

That is what I wanted to find out. If you head to systemrequirements.com, there is a little web app called “Can you run it?” Its quite simple but worth a bookmark.

To start there is a list of games that you can pick from, every game isnt listed but enough are there that you could find something that would give you a good idea of what the game you want to play will fare on your PC.

After you pick the game, you get a message asking for your permission to run the app on your PC, Click yes and it will run a test on your computer and spit out the results.

So, if you are curious if your PC can handle Crysis, Age of Conan or any other game, just head over to Can You RUN it?

• Will we ever see an MMORPG on a console?
• PC gaming needs a “Games for Windows”-like initiative
• So much console gaming news…What about PC gaming?
• What dictates if a game’s graphics are next gen
• WOW is the most successful MMO but is it the best?

My allotted mysql database space was full.

What do I do now?

Well thanks to a little post I remember reading over at Johncow.com, I decided to transfer my blogs over to a different host, that doesn’t have database size limits. so I spent the last day prepping, backing up, and signing up for a new host. Had a few problems transferring everything over but I finally got the blog back up and running on tophostingcenter.com’s servers. I only got this blog transfered over, still have to do the others but so far things are looking good.

My message to you is make sure you know what you are getting when you sign up for that hosting plan, I truly didn’t foresee this happening.

• You got a host yet? Heres how to set up wordpress.
• Who host your blog?
• So you want to start a blog and dont know where to start? Part 2
• Beware, some of those forum avatars could be quite embarrasing
• What do you do when a good blog post may offend someone?

I have my iPhone set to retrieve the 25 latest emails in each account. I sit and wait and then I hear the lovely sound the phone makes when I have new mail. The wierd thing is I had 25 pieces of spam email. All sent at the same time. 15 of those emails were all the same exact email, sent by the same person. This is when I wish the iPhone had a spam button.

Now Im not going to make the Dvorak claim and say "I gets no spam", but my personal email account, which I have through Yahoo, have the spam pretty much controlled. Only a few peices get through the spam filters. But like I said, its my personal email account. I ussually dont use it for anything except to email friends and family members. That email address just doesnt get out to spammers as often as say my website email (which I use gmail). So to get 25 peices of spam in a row like that was kindof odd.

Is Gmail the new favorite of Spammers?

That wasnt all. Once I got home to my computer, I went to get rid of all the spam (and block the email address that sent it) and notice there were a lot more than 25 pieces of email. Infact every email on the front page of my inbox was spam, all sent within minutes of eachother, most were the same spam and a lot were from the same email address. A Gmail address, which Im finding is being used more and more by spammers. Starting to remind me of how Hotmail use to be.

• Stop Spamming me…Please?
• You know, there is one thing I hate about Facebook…
• There are other places to get email, who wouldve known?
• Save iPhone storage space by storing files and photos online.
• Will the iPhone’s touch screen keyboard drive me nuts?

Seems like these days its a 2 software job. One software to strip the copy protection and another to do tha actual copying. AnyDVD works great but if you want that same functionality without the cost, you should direct your google search to DVD43.

How does DVD43 work?

Once you install DVD43, you’ll see a little icon in your taskbar. It runs in the backround and when you insert a DVD movie or a protected audio CD, DVD43 attaches itself to that media and removes any region code or copy protection that is on that media. After DVD43 does it job (which takes a few seconds) you can then open up your favorite DVD copying program and make that backup. For this, I would still use DVDShrink, but there are others out there that are popular, such as cloneDVD.

• Who wants to be a bootleg DVD movie peddler?
• Get rid of Microsoft’s sneaky DRM when ripping CD’s in WMP
• Got a new Vista PC for Christmas? Heres a few tips to get you started
• Next time someone needs help with photo resizing, point them here.
• The Yahoo toolbar gets no respect. Does it deserve any?

do follow is like some prize that commenter’s deserve to get after leaving a good comment

Commenters should get a "prize" for commenting???

Every since I made that change to my blog, my comment spam rate skyrocketed. Most dont make it through askimet, but some that do, arent that valueble. Some you can obviously tell that they didnt read anything Ive written, and some are even random and completely off topic.

Reading through my blog I came across these set of comments when I was talking about GFW magazine, tell me if you see anything wrong? (click image to enlarge if needed)

The commenter copied and pasted my comment as his comment.

He didnt even try to come up with anything of his own mind. Thats just lazy. When I first saw this, I just laughed. When I see things like this, I ussually go in and delete it but this one I didnt cause it was just too funny. Pretty much supports my thoughts that "Do Follow" blog comments maybe not such a good idea anymore.

• Stop Spamming me…Please?
• Is it still a good idea to “Do Follow” links in your blog’s comments?
• Follow….No Follow?
• Is everyone that read your blog a blogger? If so, Whats the point?
• I am on someones list…..The D-List

Sunday, I decided "what the heck" and I downloaded the service pack. installed it, which took a while but I left the room so I don’t really know how long. Later on, I came in and rebooted the computer, don’t know what I was expecting, but loaded Vista like normal. Used the computer like normal and really didn’t notice any differences. Mind you, I have had a fairly good experience with Vista so far so saying I didn’t notice anything isn’t a bad thing.

There is one thing that really caught my attention. I transfered some music from another computer on my home network to my player that was connected to my Vista machine and the transfer was very noticeably faster. ( I did notice slower network transfers every since Ive been using Vista). I really haven’t had much time to test everything out but Not having the update really bothered me. Now Im happy

• Am I lucky? Or is there really a reason to hate Vista
• Get rid of Microsoft’s sneaky DRM when ripping CD’s in WMP
• What do you do with your computer parts? Here are a few suggestions
• 3 safe ways to sneak around internet filters at work
• Cox Highspeed Internet tech support woes. How common is this?