SOMEWHERE IN CALIFORNIA — In a stunning series of revelations that turned the tech world on its head, a trio of tech giants announced plans for a smart toaster. Apple, Microsoft, and Google held launch parties this weekend for a series of new devices. This brave reporter attended all three.
Let’s take a look.
It’s that time of year. Lush green grass, clay-red warning track and infield, pristine white bases, sizzling hot dogs, icy slushies, the crack of wood. Baseball season.
And today’s opening day. Granted, there’s only one game today, but it counts. (Most teams’ first game of the season is tomorrow, April 1st.) Regardless, today is a great day for all baseball fans, including me.
Background info: there are 30 teams in the MLB (major league baseball), and each plays 162 games in the regular season. The teams are split into 6 divisions of 5 teams each. The teams in each division with the most wins, plus 4 wild-card teams, move on to the playoffs.
Many baseball fans and experts – including me – take this time to predict how many games each team will win this season, as well as which team will “win” their division. There are 2,430 games in the regular season, so we just concern ourselves with that for now. Playoff stuff comes later.
I’m a big baseball fan, so I figure this year I’ll chime in with my predictions and picks for who wins the division. I’m just a humble fan – not even close to an expert – so take my predictions with a grain of salt.
I’ve written down how I think each team will do (wins/losses), plus some analysis that’s loaded with baseball jargon. Avoid the analysis if you don’t know too much about baseball. Remember that the top team in every division (rank 1) gets to move on to the playoffs, so everyone is fighting for that spot.
And, without further ado, my predictions & picks.
hathix.com is finishing up its 2nd year of existence. As has become tradition, I’m making a blog post highlighting everything I’ve done in the last year and taking a look at what’s in store for next year.
Check out last year’s recap – the first ever – and follow me into some stats and news from hathix.com’s sophomore year.
Here’s an interesting tidbit from the life of a web developer.
You’d think that people would go on the internet with that shiny new phone/tablet/toaster they got for the holiday season.
Apparently, no one does that. Here’s a look at my latest hits (not the band type, I mean the number of visitors to hathix.com):
From what I’ve seen, this seems to be the case with pretty much every website and app: visits or downloads sharply decrease during holiday season. For what it’s worth, things return right back to normal once the new year begins.
This is a review of VLC, a free multimedia player for movies and music. Download it here.
Happy holidays! To go along with that DVD of your favorite movie, that CD of your favorite band, and that ugly sweater from your favorite aunt, here’s a present of a program: VLC!
VLC is a free, open-source multimedia program for any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, even Android) that can play movies, music, the whole nine yards. Did I mention it’s free?
Right now, if you want to buy a smartphone you have two main options: iPhone and Android. If you’re feeling brave, there’s Windows Phone. Not much variety.
All that is about to change.
This coming year is going to see the release of new, free smartphone operating systems that seem poised to change the world of smartphones – for the better. Let’s take a look.
Ubuntu, the wildly-popular open-source operating system for computers has been spreading rumors that they’re going to release a version of the operating system for smartphones. The phones aren’t out yet but folks around the internet say they’re definitely in the works.
The young man had finished his arduous training period of ten years. The grizzled old man next to him, his tutor, had devoted himself to teaching his pupil the arcane art, an art known only to a select few. Ten years of intense physical labor, deep within the mysterious dungeons and high atop the silver mountains, had finally prepared the battle-scarred young man. He was prepared to unleash his mastery of the dangerous art few knew even existed.
Computer science.