Last year, Prilosec OTC was giving away tickets to SuperBowl XLII, run down memory lane right here. It’s ok that I didn’t win. I really didn’t cry. Much.

But I still had fun thinking that I might win. There’s good news…

Well, Prilosec is at it again and they really want you to not only win tickets to SuperBowl XLIII, but they also want you to “Get Tough On Heartburn“. And since I’m a good sport, I’m sharing the information with you. And if you win… don’t forget who showed it to you first.

Good news is - Prilosec OTC is at it again! The new Prilosec OTC® promotion that could send you and your readers to the Super Bowl XLIII. By visiting www.gettoughonheartburn.com, you can enter to win a prize package for four people to go to Super Bowl XLIII.

Got your interest yet? Read the rest of this entry »

‘Tis the season to… backup and synchronize? There’s nothing like coming home and finding out that your machine will not start up, that you’ve lost some files because of a bad file copy between locations or worse, hard drive failure. Been there, done that… kicked a hole in the wall.

Now, I back up my files from my main machine to a hard drive that has a network connection.

But every now-and-then, I also tend to have files on my other machine’s hard drive that aren’t the same as my networked hard drive or my main machine. It’d be nice to have a way to synchronize the files and let me know which file is newer while I’m manually doing my backup.

And to throw in that I might take some files to work with me on my 16gb USB thumb drive… I might have up to four different versions of the same project or file(s) and if I switch to my other machines, I might be making more work than necessary. Enter Siber Systems Inc. GoodSync and Scooter Software, Inc. Beyond Compare. Read the rest of this entry »

With stories like the closing GM factory in Dayton, Ohio basically spelling doom for that city in a state that’s seen more than it’s share of lost jobs these last 8 years causes concern about the people involved; however stories like Mitt Romney telling the New York Times “Let Detroit go bankrupt…” might get a person angry at the CEO’s for letting the situation get that bad in Detroit. There’s always two sides to a story.

And GM wants to share the facts and myths about how things have gotten to this level and how America would truly suffer if the “Big Three” were to go down tomorrow.

One out of every 10 people in America is employed in a service that is related to the U.S. auto industry.
More than 239,000 Americans are directly employed by the Big Three.
If GM were to discontinue operations, the cost to local, state, and federal governments could reach $156.4 billion over three years in lost taxes, and unemployment and health care assistance.

Read more about the Myths and Facts about this looming auto crisis.

And always remember… Chrysler and Lee Iaccoca got federal assistance once; however he paid his loan back in record time. So this isn’t something that’s never happened before.

I went. I voted. I did my American civil duty.

And for the very first time in my life, I actually feel special about having some little sticker announce to the world that I cared enough to fulfill my civil duty as an American. This moment, I’ll share with my son who will grow up now knowing there are no artificial ceilings for him… he can achieve the absolute highest position in the US. It’s been done before. No excuses for anybody… race. Now gender needs to fall next. As well as religion.

America. I salute you.

“We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”

I’m not one to normally editorialize much; however it seems like something that actually made sense, will probably be looking at closing it’s doors due to licensing fees. The idea… Pandora Music Genome® Project. Sign up, tell the site what music and musicians you happen to like, and it’ll find music and match from other offerings in it’s catalog that you just may like as well.

I’ve had an account for years. And won’t even lie… it’s shaped my taste in music in so many genres where I thought I’d like only one or two in a particular genre. Next thing I know, I have like twenty favorites. And armed with that information, I’d open up iTunes, buy the music that I found on Pandora and go about my day. Even share that knowledge with people around the water cooler, online, et al.

Enter the bad guy(s). Normally I’d just go straight at the fact that the RIAA had created SoundExchange merely to collect royalties from music that’s played on satellite and internet radio. Mind you, there’s no model for collecting royalties for music played over the normal radio at all. And if you were to think about it… it’s the most backwards way of thinking. Internet entities that are willing to work with the RIAA and each of it’s arms - I can’t even keep up, so I’ll just use the RIAA as common term from hereon - that the RIAA possess, it seems like people are getting penalized for having genuinely good ideas and all the RIAA wants to do is capitalize for as long as they can, then shut them down.

Yet… Pandora opened up the doors for new musicians that most people had never heard of. Which in most simple terms… would mean that more sales for those lesser known artists, the ones that the labels don’t exactly allocate advertising to and thus garner less sales might have yet another avenue to be seen and heard.

But no. The RIAA wants it’s money. The same money that the RIAA has collected and yet they “cannot find the artists” to give them the money they owe. Or this is the same RIAA that basically gives the artists about $2.00 out of $20.00 - and the RIAA didn’t create anything. And don’t forget… this is the same RIAA that had about 700mb of e-mails leaked out that detailed on how it would create fake torrents and trackers all to disrupt p2p traffic.

Simply put… RIAA is clearly a dirty organization that has yet to catch up with the fact that it’s poor sales are clearly attributed to the death of the CD single - face it, only one to two good songs are on each music CD released, to find more, it’s rare - and the fact that the distribution model shifted from in-store to online quicker than they were willing to change to… and no DRM will last forever. It’ll be overcome in mere minutes. And here is a pretty legitimate unique idea that for once broadened my personal music tastes instead of hampered it with playing music over and over from artists that a certain label thought should sell well.

Here’s to hoping that Pandora finds a way to continue to exist.

Read more about this situation in a more informational manner over at the Washington Post.