British Snap Up Nintendo’s Wii Fit Video Game from news.yahoo.com by Frederick Lane

“For a nation perhaps better known for a fitness regimen of darts and a pint, the news from Elspa Ltd.’s Chart-Track was particularly startling. The data-compilation service, which among other things tallies the sale of software titles, announced that last week Nintendo’s Wii Fit was the top-selling title in the United Kingdom. The company’s Mario Kart Wii dropped to the number-two position.”

“Chart-Track said Wii Fit had the sixth-fastest-selling launch of any software title, recording more than $32 million in sales in its first seven days. Approximately one in 10 Wii owners in the United Kingdom purchased Wii Fit, the company said. Only games from the industry’s major franchises — Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto and Halo — did better than Wii Fit in their opening weeks.”

Read the entire article at the link above.

More about the game from Nintendo.com: (more…)

I’ll admit it. I just jumped on the Atlanta Hawks bandwagon. Even if they can’t win another game against the Celtics I was impressed enough with the way they played in games 3 and 4 to jump aboard. Part of the reason is that my team, the Dallas Mavericks, is already disappointingly finished again.

Grit, determination, resolve. Maybe the best way to describe the Hawks attitude was seeing Zaza Pachulia get in Kevin Garnett’s face after an elbow from the NBA Allstar. The Celtics may be the best team in the East, but not this week. Definitely not the best team in the A-T-L! (when was the last time you could say that with confidence?)

I’ll be realistic. Joe Johnson needs to continue to be superhuman. Just like Dwayne Wade was vs Dallas in the 2007 finals, just like Baron Davis was vs Dallas in last year’s first round series, and just like Chris Paul was vs Dallas in this year’s first round. (hmmm, is there a pattern here?) Too bad the Hawks couldn’t play the Mavericks in the first round.

Some good home town reading from the AJC.com to get pumped for tonight’s game: (more…)

iBand makes music with two fingers… and iPhone from news.yahoo.com by Luc Andre:

“Six fingers and three iPhones are enough to create a band, and Austria’s iBand is living proof, having scored a hit on the Internet by converting the little gadgets into a guitar, a keyboard and a set of drums.

The Viennese trio first gained attention in February on the video-sharing website YouTube with its music video “Life is greater than the Internet.”

Here’s the video from YouTube: (more…)

I could not agree more with the consensus to uninstall Norton in the thread at Norton stinks | Ask Metafilter. It seems all new home desktops and notebooks come with Norton pre-installed with a 1 year license subscription for updates (I’m not sure of the exact time period because I uninstall it asap). Do yourself a favor and uninstall Norton immediately. Especially before you renew the license.

I recommend either ClamWin or AVG. Both are free, protect your email, have real time and scheduled scans, and have (more…)

Whenever family and friends come to me and say my PC is running slow the first thing I do is install and run the free utility CCleaner for them. The features page on ccleaner.com explain why:

Program Summary:

CCleaner is a freeware PC optimization tool.
It combines a system cleaner that removes unused and temporary files from your system and also a fully featured registry cleaner!
CCleaner allows Windows to run faster, more efficiently and gives you more hard disk space.
The best part is that it’s Small, Fast and Free!

Cleans the following Windows components: (more…)

Winamp Remote, powered by Orb, is a new beta service that allows you to stream your music and videos to any device that has an Internet connection. Specifically, if you connect your Wii to your home wireless network, spend $5 and buy the Internet channel and the Opera Browser, and install Winamp Remote on any Windows computer running Winamp you can stream any files in the Winamp library to your Wii.

From Winamp.com:

“Access and Share Your Music and Videos On the Go

Winamp Remote turns your home computer into a streaming server and play your music and videos on the go from any PC web browser, compatible cell phones, and TVs with a connected Wii, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3. Also, share and discover (more…)

Converting videos to the correct format for my iPod Nano has been frustrating to say the least. The Videora tool has made it much more simple, however.

From videora.com:

“Videora iPod Converter is a free iPod video converter that converts video files, YouTube videos, movies and DVD’s so you can play them on your iPod. The software, developed by the creators of Videora, can convert all types of video files (avi, divx, xvid, flv, x264, vob, mpeg, DVD’s, YouTube, etc.) into the proper video formats (MPEG-4, H.264) that play on the iPod.

With Videora iPod Converter you can convert videos for any (more…)

Quotes from the 2 first round picks taken from First-round picks embrace Atlanta:

From Matt Ryan:

“I’m really excited about being here in Atlanta,” Ryan said less than 12 hours after the Falcons plucked him off the draft board and transported him from New York to a downtown hotel. “I’d like to thank Mr. Blank and his family, Thomas Dimitroff, Coach Smith and everyone associated with the Falcons for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to becoming part of the Atlanta community, getting involved and getting to know everyone here. Yesterday was a whirlwind and I couldn’t be happier with where I ended up.”

From Sam Baker:

“I wasn’t too worried about where I was going to go,” said the massive tackle, who started 49 of 52 career games at USC. “As long as I got my shot, that’s what I wanted. I really anticipated going to Atlanta second round, and that’s what I was hoping for. But to go first round, and to be in Atlanta, is great.”

Read the whole article at the link above.

Notable quotes from General Manager Thomas Dimitroff on the other picks copied from Quotable: Falcons Draft Wrap Up : (more…)

OpenDNS is a free Dynamic Name Resolution Server (DNS) replacement service that has some very cool internet protection and web site filtering controls for your family. I’ve been using the DNS replacement service for several years now, but I have recently discovered the features that help make the home network more secure. I am pleasantly surprised and very impressed by the reporting, control, and the protection I now have from this completely free service.

From the OpenDNS web site:

“OpenDNS protects millions of people a day across hundreds of thousands of schools, businesses and homes. We block phishing sites, give you the power to filter out adult sites and proxies among more than 50 categories, and provide the precision to block individual domains.”

To start controlling your family’s internet usage you must (more…)

Innotek VirtualBox is a free, open-source alternative to VMware workstation. Aquired by Sun Microsystems earlier this year, VirtualBox has quickly become one of the leading developer platforms for the desktop with current features that rival even VMware’s latest version 6.5 currently in beta testing. I have used VirtualBox in the past, but because I had not used it in over almost over a year I was not aware of the latest features in the most recent releases. The feature that specifically caught my attention was the seamless window integration of Microsoft Windows virtual machines. Like VMware Workstation and Fusion’s Unity feature, VirtualBox allows Windows applications in the VM to pop out of the VM session making it available from the host operating system’s desktop.

I originally published this post on VM /ETC. Read the entire article at vmetc.com (more…)