On iRacing

Over the past few weeks, I've been enjoying my delve into iRacing.com, an incredibly realistic driving simulator that has quite the physics engine backing it.



If you're at all interested in motorsports or fancied being a racecar driver at some point, I highly recommend you give it a go.

Now testing - Lively

Just a quick note for you guys to remind me to review Lively. Lively, is Google's response to Second Life, though it seems a lot campier. I downloaded the Beta last night and will give it a week or two before I post a full review.

Here's the promo video



I've actually never tried second life, so I'll need to get into that as well. What has me wanting to try Lively? To be honest, I like to try EVERYTHING Google puts out into the general market. I really enjoy the openness of their platforms and love the idea of adapting all of these free Web tools and services into a business and marketing environment.

Can't wait to get started on this. Do you have experience with Lively? E-mail me your thoughts.

Thumb drives

Damn the man.

At work, our IT team is a bit stringent on what we have on our Macs. As an associate editorial director, it's deemed that I wouldn't need something like Audacity or Handbrake. They have administrative locks on our machines so I can't go download these gems, but I've managed to get around it using my trusty thumb drive.

The nice thing about running apps off a thumb drive is that you never have to worry about installing things onto the work desktop and getting flagged. Generally, I carry Portable Firefox preferences, the above mentioned Audacity, a few little games and the ohh so helpful KillBox on my drive (a Scandisk Micro Cruiser).

In all, I've learned that I'd much rather just take a thumb drive with me than a laptop. I don't have to pull the thumb drive out of my bag at airport security checks, don't get hassled by Campbell-Ewald's IT team and I still get to be the annoying tech geek at the office.

What about you guys? Any portable apps you're fond of? Do you use your portable drive? Oh, this particular post was inspired by a comment string for a poll on thumb drives over at Lifehacker. Click the link to check it out. As a side note, probably no blog tomorrow until late. I'm in Chicago all day for a creative presentation to Chevy .

I wish...

Google Maps would have done my Google Streetview on a day when the corner of my lawn wasn't dead.


View Larger Map

That is all.

On iPod Shuffle

On the iPod: "Grave's Disease" - Matt Pond PA

I'm testing two products today, first is the "Turbo" blend from Burger King. Despite it's claim to be turbo charged with caffeine, I'm not entirely convinced it's all that different from their "regular" blend. Now don't get me wrong, it's not terrible coffee, but I don't get the turbo factor, nor do I find it to be particularly eye opening. I've always been more of a Tim Horton's coffee guy.

The second, and more exciting, is the iPod Suffle. I got one with a gift card that was about to expire. It took two days to get here. I got the orange to match with my Firefox laptop bag. So far, I love it. I put about 190 songs on it last night. My only real gripe is with how long it takes to "sync" the iPod with iTunes. It's frustrating that it takes so long to move the songs from the library to the iPod and that it seems to hang the software.


What I really love is the size of the thing. It's really light, clips to clothing, etc. It eliminates the annoying scratches that are on my older and larger iPod and it's incredibly portable. I normally run my iPod on shuffle anyway, so it's perfect. I can see myself working out, shoveling snow and walking around the office with this iPod. I think my big dog will be used more for organizing and long flights at this point. I'm really happy with the quick $78 purchase.

On iPhone

On the iPod - "Sound As Ever" - Track A Tiger
Below is one of my recent columns. Drooling for the iPhone.

Contrary to some of my readers' beliefs, I'm actually quite fond of a lot of Apple products.

I've been an iPod user for years, have long been a fan of the iLife suite's flexibility for audio, video and image management and have been using a MacMini for some personal projects in recent months.

All that is aside from the fact that I'm of the belief that Mac offers much more stable operating systems in comparison to Microsoft's Windows platform.

Still, nothing has gotten me more giddy than iPhone. Everything is still spec, but the geeks at Apple have managed to cram a computer, phone and an iPod all into one deliciously small device.

Visit the site above. I can almost guarantee that you'll want to toss your Blackberry, Blackjack or your Treo out the window.

It senses when you flip it over, organizes your phone book like you organize iTunes. It's not in production yet, but the possibilities are more than exciting for a geek like me.
Apple iPhone will be available in the state this June for $499 or $599 for the 4GB and 8GB models respectively with a two-year service agreement from Cingular. You can bet I'll be waiting outside my local Cingular store for a trade-in.

And if you're curious about what other metro Detroiters like in the way of their phones, Crain's Detroit Business did a nice addition to our wireless section this week. Click here to read the main section story, and here for the skinny on your peers phone habits.

And if you still can't find something you like from the links above, you can always check out Mobiledia.com. The site reviews just about every available cell phone on the market and offers numerous links to plans and outlets to buy the next driving distraction of your affections.