I meant to post this sooner but I kept forgetting to bookmark the YouTube link. So, instead I am just going to post it right from the iPad here in Barnes and Noble.

I love this video because it inspires me a user of Apple technology about how to think bigger bout how I might use their apps. Hopefully this video, shown at Apple’s 2012 WWDC conference, will inspire IOS developers to think BIG when they make an app, and not just settle for another fart machine.

I’ll post links to the apps when I get a little time.

The post Apple WWDC 2012 Autism Video appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, AND play FarmVille, then you should get on over to the iTunes Store!

Because Oregon Trail for iPhone is only .99 – regular price is $4.99! Click here for the deal.

And to give you taste, here is a video of the game in action!

The post Cool Apps: Oregon Trail .99 (reg. $4.99) appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

A comment from a reader alerted me to the fact that I never updated my e-machine Tale o’ Woe.

So, the good news is yes, I did get my dead e-machine working again. But not without a lot of work. I will post the story in case it is helpful to anyone else. I must warn you, this is a long post….

My e-Machine (T-2040, a Best Buy exclusive) was making a horrible clicking noise one day, and would not boot up. No CMOS. No Welcome to Windows. Totally blank monitor. This was a brand new monitor, so it had to be in the PC.

By a largeount of internet research, I came to learn a few things:

• e-Machines are famous for having power supplies go dead.
• Any power supply (aka PSU) can be used (at one time, you had to buy them from e-machines)
• When the power supply goes out, it can blow the motherboard (aka MoBo).

The clicking was actually the floppy drive trying to access the floppy disc (as many PCs are set to boot the A: drive first) over and over and over. In essence, the PC was re-starting every :01 second. Here is a quicktime video of the actual event.

Scary yes? Think of watching that happen and wondering if your data is still there?

My troubleshooting steps:

• Removed power cable from floppy, this was the clicking – accessing it over and over.
• Had PSU checked at PC shop, it works.
• Swapped PSU for a good one and PC did the same thing, so the PSU wasn’t the issue.
• HD is a-ok, works fine in a USB enclosure.
• Removed cmos battery, and even replaced it.
• Un-hooked all external connections other than monitor.
• Removed HD and tried booting without it.
• RAM is seated and not loose.

Ugh. I SO not a hardware guy. Software oh yeah, I got it covered. PC hardware, no chance.

It all pointed to the MoBo. Time for a new one.

So with a lot of help from the Unofficial eMachines Forums, I tracked down a motherboard.

My only requirement was that the new Mobo must fit my case (MicroATX), had to support my old memory (DDR 256) and I wanted it to have an AGP video slot since those are cheap (scarce!) and my old MoBo had integrated video, which I didn’t want again.

This was the hard part, as Socket 478 boards are hard to find (my emachine’s CPU is a 2GH Celeron). Eventually, after more hours of internet research, I chose the MSI 661FM2-LSR, (no longer available) at NewEgg.com. It was on sale, and had pretty good reviews, good enough for me.

I also ordered a cheap AGP Graphics card that was pretty middle-of-the-road. It had 256MB of memory and was AGP, it met my minimum specs. Oh and a $15 rebate, so that was good too.

Once it arrived I was sweating bullets, I have never replaced a motherboard before. It was not as bad as I thought, but I did it very carefully. Very slowly. It took a long time, but hey, I didn’t want to screw it up.

Eventually I had it all back together, and I booted it up.

OK, I see CMOS! Woo-hoo!

And? A lot of DOS stuff then a page asking if I want to load the “last known good configuration.” I chose that and nothing. If I coose command prompt, it runs a list of things it is loading, goes black, and takes me back to the post again … But this was OK, this was more than I had seen before.

I think “Maybe I can repair the XP installation.” The next day, I pooped in the XP CD, booted to the CD and repaired XP (not using the recovery console – every place says not to use that, dont know why).

I got through the repair (which acts just like a re-installation), and upon final reboot, I see the XP loading screen for a nano second, then a flash of a BSOD, then we are in the same rebooting cycle as before the attempted repair.

No way to see the BSOD without a video camera and a frame by frame replay – it is that fast.

Shy of reformatting, I was stumped

Alas, I knew I had to install XP as if it was a new PC, which mean I couldn’t retain any previous settings, favorites, or installations. UGH. Well, if I going to reinstall, then I may as well start with a fresh Hard Drive and use my old one as a slave (and recover the data that way)

Office Depot had a 300 GB HD on sale (with rebate) for $99, so I grabbed that. I installed it, and guess what?

The original e-machines PSU was no match for the new HD and MoBo, and it couldn’t go on. It died on the spot.

So now I had to replace the power supply. The original PSU was a 250w, which is way low for theount of things I do with my PC. So I upped it to 480w using a no-name PSU.

This made the PC work again (hang on, this aint over yet).

Well, the new PSU had things working again.

Time to load drivers, partition the new HD and prepare to install XP. I created a slipstream XP SP2 installation CD. This made my XP CD include SP2, saving another hour of updates. Plus I set some things so that it would install unattended. Very nice not to have to click Next and fill out all the prompts. I statred the CD and left for the day. When I came back, XP was ready for me to get to work.

I won’t go into all the customizations I made to the new XP, nor the days of reinstalling software I needed. It was a chore and you probably already know the pain. But I had to do quite a lot to get my PC back.

Was it worth it when you can buy a new PC for about $200? No, not in an economic sense. But it was worth it to me to go out on a limb, and do some things I didn’t think I could do, and have the PC come back to life by my own two hands. Now that is a great feeling. But you may find buying a new PC to be easier and certainly less expensive (depending how much value you place on your time).

I had a blast, but I DO NOT want to do it again anytime soon!

Bottom Line:

e-Machine: T2040, Celeron 2 GHz, (originally) 256MB (PC 2100), 30GB HDD

Rebuilt with:
HDD: Maxtor 200GB SATA - $49
Memory: 512 MB DDR 400 - $29
Graphics Board: MSI 661FM2 - $35
Power Supply: 430w - $25
Graphics Card: Xfx GeForce 6200 AGP 8x - $45
Cost: - $183

The post How I Resurrected My E-Machine appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

This post is sort of a bookmark for me to review later. With iTunes Agent apparently you can trick iTunes into thinking your MP3 player is actually an iPod.

I actually have an iPod, but this still looks like something that could be useful down the road.

Dig iTunes Agent at sourceforge.

LifeHacker has another program (iTunes Library Updater) that will do something similar and a tutorial.

I suggest you visit both sites to see each and decide which works best for you.

The post Using iTunes with non-iPod MP3 players appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

I took the plunge – I have bought a new motherboard for my dead e-machine PC.

This is a last-ditch effort to ressurrect this workhorse of a computer. I have nothing else to try, having checked: all cables, power supply, video card, hard drive, and everything else.

Now, replacing a MoBo is something I’ve never attempted before, so this will be interesting for me. It should arrive by this weekend, but I doubt I will have a free afternoon to devote to this for a while.

If this fails, it will be off to Dell for a good deal on a home PC – and the emachine parts off to e-Bay.

The post Mother, Bored appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

Yes, yes, yes!

THIS is Jack Bauer’s little bag of tricks. THE bag of Jack Bauer. Say it!!! It is the Andrew Christian Heavyweight Classic Messenger and Travel Bag.

Now YOU can own it (or does it own you?).

Wondering what Jack keeps in his Man-Purse? And no, I’d never say that to his face! BarstoolSports.com has the answer.

And forget Chuck Norris, Jack Bauer facts are the real deal. Word.

The post Own the bag that Jack Bauer Ownz appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

Well, now it will! OK, I speaking of internet radio, but you just HAVE to check out Pandora!!!

It is 100% free (though an ad-free version is for pay), just enter a song or artist you like, while it play Pandora will go out and find other songs that you might like. This is bananas!!!

Hear a song you like, click the album art and say so. It will keep adding more songs like that. Don’t like a song, say so. And so on and so on. I hearing songs I’ve never heard before, and I really like them.

I building the “My 80s” radio channel, and you can get a sample of what it sounds like on my Pandora Favorites page. Or just click here to liste to “My 80′s” (though it isn’t all 80′s).

Now, this is suddenly very popular thanks to posts like this and this on Digg.com, so it may be slow. But when it works baby, it isazing.

Of course, who knows how long it will last. They didn’t call it Pandora for nothing (as in opening Pandora’s Box).

If you create a station, click “SHARE” and email it to me a Promo “at” promoguy.net. Mmm kay? I want to hear what several of you come up with!

Now, go listen already!

The post What If The Radio Played Only Songs You Liked? appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

When I went to get the dog from the groomers yesterday, I had my iPod in the front passenger seat. I usually listen to a few podcasts on my way to and from work (via my iTrip FM transmitter). I had this thought that maybe I should move the iPod before I put the doggie in the car.

Should’ve listened!

Of course, since she’d been at the groomers all day, she was a fireball of licks and yips and jumps when I picked her up. I put her in the backseat of the car and before I knew it, she was in the front seat… jumping up and down … on my iPod!!!

As soon as I got her in the backseat, I was a bit upset to see my iPod would not turn back on. I pushed and mashed the clickwheen like a maniac! Nothing. I tried a soft reset by holding the menu and play buttons for 10 seconds. Nothing.

When I got home, I tried plugging it in to the charger. Still nothing. So, I gave up. I remembered that if you let the battery drain for 2-3 days, it can re-set things like this. Not that I waited that long.

This morning, it was still dead, but I saw a glimmer of hope. As I mashed the clickwheel, I saw a very weak looking Apple logo appear. It then turned into an uncharged battery icon, and went blank. This was a good sign.

So I decided to plug it back into the Apple USB PC connector, and lo and behold, it fired up. You could hear it’s little hard drive spin back to life. It clicked and whirred, then displayed the “charging” icon.

Whatever the dog’s paws had done, had totally drained the battery. Then about 5 minutes later, the iPod began to beep. Beep-beep-beep! Pause, repeat. OK, this was freaky! It stopped, went back to sleep, woke up again, said “Do Not Disconnect” and moments later, had connected to iTunes.

Woah, talk about a panic attack.

My best guess is that maybe the dog’s pouncing had activated the Sleep Timer, which will “wake up” the iPod with a beeping alarm. Very odd though. Still not sure what happened.

I did find this Apple Support page to be helpful, if you find yourself in a similar situation.

But my best advice, keep you dog off the iPod!

The post The Case of the Sleeping (and Beeping) iPod appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

Just a link I want to review later.

BoingBoing.net – How to extract video from Yahooligans
via Digg.com by way of this search.

The post Yahooligans – Video Extraction appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.

I wish… I wish….

* I wish the next update to the iPod’s software included a cross-fade option. I’d love to be able to have it shuffle the songs and play them flowing in and out of each other just like the radio stations do.

* I wish that same software update included a Beat-Matching option (or at least, pesudo Beat-Matching). That way my music would mix right into another, just like the Club DJ’s do. That would be suh-weet.

See? I ain’t askin’ for much!

The post iPod Wish List appeared first on PromoGuy dot Net.