Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > December > 08 > Entry
Busted iPods, older gamers, Road Runner speed boost and charity
From around the Web today:
The Wall Street Journal reports today that about five percent of the sextiquintaquadrillion iPods out there are likely to fail, making the number of failed iPods large, yet these aren’t Shaq-at-the-free-throw-line causes for despair.
As some of you may remember, my iPod died a few months ago, and after some brief hoping that iPodResQ.com would fix my beloved OmiePod1, I had to send my dead friend to be recycled and buy a new one.
Sure, I wasn’t thrilled. And the 10 percent discount on a new iPod was more aggravating than welcome. But as I type this, listening to Nine Inch Nails on my new video iPod, I’ve gotta say that my old one did put up with an awful lot of abuse in its two-year lifespan.
Behind me, Joe Gross has an iPod that looks older than Moses (and probably plays the same number of songs), but his seems to be chugging away just fine, so as usual with consumer electronics for the masses, your mileage may vary.
On my list of story ideas for my new beat is one about older gamers and a study that the University of Texas at Dallas is doing on the effect on elder brains of videogames.
NPR did a story today and I’m wondering if they also saw it on Joystiq or if they read the original Yahoo story (no longer online).
Fascinating subject. I hope to do something on this in the near future.
Time Warner is apparently doubling its download speeds for Road Runner for customers, which is good news for people like me (yay!), but is probably not much help to people who run Web servers and want similar speed increases for uploads (boo!).
Suddenly, downloading HDTV movies over an online pay service doesn’t seem so crazy anymore.
Your laugh of the day: more (and hilarious) safety precautions for the strap-breaking Nintendo Wii. (Link courtesy Penny Arcade).
Speaking of Penny Arcade, the boys behind arguably the Web’s best gaming comic, are again working on the Child’s Play charity.
This is a charity set up to provide games and game systems to kids in hospitals, including two in Texas, which is as worthy a cause as I can think of for warm-hearted gamers.
Check out the Child’s Play Web site and donate, or if you’re cash-strapped, check out how you can help at GameTrailers.com.
As Gabe and Tycho have pointed out many times over the years, gamers get generally a bad rap. Let’s give it up for gamers who are working on something undeniably good and doing a phenomenal job of it.
Permalink | | Categories: Gadgets, Internet, Videogames
