Verizon starts its own Geek Squad! Are you scared yet?

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

It’s amazing the amount of emails that I received after my GAS story on Geek Squad.    It seemed that everyone thought that I had a direct personal intimate connection to the CEO of Geek Squad and they wanted me to pass on all their customer service complaints to him or her.    The last one was only last week.   It’s getting to the point where I am thinking of billing Geek Squad for secretarial services rendered.

But now we could have a Geek Squad number 3 to contend with, after GS and ConnecTech.   It seems that Verizon wants to jump into the snakepit now with their own offering called Expert Care (nice name, gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling doesn’t it?).    But it’s only for Verizon customers.

First off, we’ve got Verizon on deceptive advertising – I know for a FACT that they don’t have employees sitting there grinning like THAT ready and happy to take your call!   Instead they’ll have minimum wage drones called Chuck or Cindy who won’t know the difference between a CPU and a mouse.

So let’s take a look at their pricing to see what Expert Care offers you :

Device Protection : This covers things such as the telephone, the television and the PC and costs between $4.99 a month and $19.99 a month, depending on what equipment you put under the agreement.   I wonder if shouting down the phone at the Verizon rep and shattering the audio chip is covered?  Worth asking?

Premium Technical Support – 10 month subscription plan at $14.99 per month, with a whopping $60 early termination fee, “help with computer related issues” – so that means they will help you empty your cache and delete your temporary internet files.   Oh and turn your virus scanner on.

Premium Onsite Support – Here’s where they roll out the red carpet for you!  Oh yes Sir!   For up to 250 Americano dollars, your “in-home specialist” (does he move in?) will install, configure, restore, optimize, scan and transfer to your heart’s delight…..then he will empty your cache and delete your temporary internet files.    Then turn your virus scanner on.   Then ask for a cup of coffee.

So what do you think?    Should Geek Squad quake in their boots?   Is Expert Care a worthy rival?   Or are they no different than anyone else?    Your thoughts and opinions please Mr / Mrs / Miss Geek!



RealDVD and a Brief History of Infringement

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The more I read about the RealDVD lawsuit (which I blogged last week), the more I feel like I’m listening to a broken record. Haven’t we heard this all before?

Most recently, Wired pointed out how RealDVD is like a bong shop. After all, RealDVD clearly has a notice stating that users should only use the software to copy movies that they own, not rented movies–just like there are signs by all those pretty glass water pipes warning that they are not to be used with “illegal substances.”

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Buy a lifesize lego replica of yourself for $60,000

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

If you happen to have a spare $60,000 lying around and you don’t know what to do with it (common problem, happens to us all), then here’s an idea on what to spend it on – a lifesize lego replica of yourself.

Imagine the reactions of friends and family as they come round to your place and standing in the hallway is your lego replica!

Nathan Sawaya is one of six certified Lego professionals in the world and using 16 photos and up to 25,000 bricks, he will do your lego model for you.

Is this something you would like done?   Would you consider $60,000 a reasonable price?   If you had a lifesize lego model of yourself, what would you do with it?   What practical uses could it be used for (apart from showing off!)?

Via Gizmodo



Review: Epson WorkForce 600 Wireless All-In-One Printer

By Sterling “Chip” Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Today I’m trying out the new Epson WorkForce 600 printer/copier/scanner/fax combo.  To make a long story short: at less than $200 (about $149 at some outlets) it delivers a lot of printer for the money.  But not everything in this review is rosy.  Read on for the full story and pictures.

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Google AdSense: Coming to a Game Near You

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Last night, Google announced the beta launch of its AdSense for Games program, which will focus on placing ads in casual flash games as well as some larger titles. This move doesn’t come as a huge surprise, since Google bought AdScape Media for $23 million last year.

In fact, one of the major players in this program, PlayFish, a company that publishes casual social games for social networking sites, has already been using Google ads since April. Its flagship game, Who Has the Biggest Brain, has been installed over 6 million times on Facebook. The ads are surprisingly unintrustive, as they come at the end of playing the game rather than at the beginning. So unless you want to play again, you don’t even have to sit through the short video ad.

However, bigger companies such as Konami have signed onto the AdSense program. Apparently they plan to place ads in popular titles like Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution. This is a little harder for me to wrap my head around than ads in casual, Internet-based games. Could we potentially be moving towards a model where games with ads are less expensive to end users than ad-free games? Would YOU be willing to put up with ads in your games (assuming everything from product placement to click-through ads)?

CNET has a good article that has experts in the field speculating about how well this idea will go over. I find myself thinking about it in a binary way–free games should have ads, and games I have to pay for shouldn’t. This is just how I’ve come to expect things, especially on the Internet, to work. I don’t mind ads that are there to keep me from having to pay for something (for example, the ads on PlayFish’s Facebook games don’t bother me at all), but as soon as I’m shelling out money for something, I get annoyed by ads. It feels the same as watching TV on Hulu.com (or even network TV) versus HBO.

Here’s a short video that lists some of the games that are part of the new Adsense Gaming Network. As you’ll see, there’s not only web-based games in there, but also several big offline titles.

Cinematograph HD: The Most Amazing Case Mod Ever

Sure, there are quite a lot of interesting case mods on the web, but I don’t think anything reaches what Will Urbina has accomplished with the Cinematograph HD, his new portable custom-made box. I’m not really the type of person who would go for an overly-detailed case. I prefer classic, clean designs, and Will’s system is exactly what my dream computer would look like. Think I’m over-reacting over something that simple? Here are a few shots of the beast, so you can understand what I mean.

The Cinematograph doesn’t just look great, it features some of the best hardware available on the market today, including two 22-inch LCD displays and a Blu-Ray drive. If you’re interested in seeing how Will has built the system, we’ve included a very complete and entertaining video worklog of the process below.

Geek TV: BBT Takes on AoC

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Last night, CBS’s geektastic sitcom The Big Bang Theory featured the MMORPG Age of Conan. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that it explored the perils of game addiction in a humorous way. Like the rest of the show, it’s not framed in a way to mock the geeky characters but rather makes them pretty endearing. I imagine that to the non-geek it seems like an anthropological view of some foreign culture–like a kid enjoying an adult TV show despite not getting all the jokes. But for us, it’s even more fun because of the nuances.

This isn’t the first time that an MMORPG has been highlighted on the show; last season, an episode opened with four characters playing World of Warcraft, engaged in a rousing battle to get the “Sword of Azeroth:”

Also last season, an episode of the CBS show How I Met Your Mother involved a relationship between the protagonist and a new woman in his life… the revelation being that the two of them had met on WoW (this geek is almost ashamed to say that she actually recognized their meeting place as Stranglethorn Vale).

I don’t play Age of Conan myself, but I’m curious as to how accurate the portrayal of the gameplay was. I do know enough to have spotted a problem with one of the characters becoming a “level three warrior,” since I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a warrior class in AoC (they’re called “guardians”). I have a feeling that Sheldon isn’t the type of guy to call a class anything but by its proper name. Of course, there’s no such thing as the “Sword of Azeroth” either. I’d be interested to hear what our AoC-playing readers thought of the episode! You can find clips from the episode here at CBS’s website (Season 2, Episode 3). Or for those of you out of the country, it’s available on YouTube for the time being: parts 1, 2, and 3.

One part in particular that made me laugh was a comment about wanting a pair of enchanted boots in a different color…. maybe it’s a girl thing, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been playing an MMORPG and have thought the exact same thing. I bet that there are some of you out there who have gone on playing with outdated armor for a while because the better stuff is just too ugly for words. That’s actually one of the things like I like about City of Heroes–total wardrobe control!

Google Labs Releases Mail Goggles

Like everyone, I sometimes send messages that should have stayed in my head. Being impulsive is in the nature of human beings, and to prevent people from blundering, the only thing needed is often a bit of time.

So to help users with their impulsiveness, the folks at Google Labs have released Mail Goggles, a new Gmail feature that will give you the extra time needed to think twice before sending a potentially compromising email. It accomplishes its function by asking you a few math questions before your email is sent on its way, making sure you have plenty of time to reconsider your decision.

By default, when activated, Mail Goggles only works late at night during the weekend, but you can customize it to work whenever you want via Gmail’s “General Settings” section.

The web’s ten weirdest social networks

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

MSN has published a really funny feature showing the ten weirdest social networks on the web.   If you thought Facebook was the worst thing going, you haven’t seen anything yet.

How about Lost Zombies for starters?    Now there’s a community full of wholesome folk that you’d want to meet up with and chat over a cup of coffee!

Or how about Spot A Potty, where members post pictures of their favorite toilets?    I don’t know about you, but if I was a member of Spot A Potty, I wouldn’t be showing my face to the camera or using my real name!    The Google Adsense adverts are also quite interesting – nappy training?!    I also didn’t realise that people could get so passionate about the positioning of toilet seats and the styles of toilet brushes….uuurgh!

The best one of all has to be My Free Implants, where girls ask men for money to get free breast implants!   My jaw totally hit the floor when I saw this one.   Basically if a woman feels that her breasts need a lift-me-up, she can set up a profile and ask for money.   “Benefactors” can then donate money to her and she can have her operation.   The woman’s reaction is then recorded on YouTube for all to see :

“Momma’s gettin’ new boobs!”. Oh man! Does the word “tacky” come to mind? It does for me!

Do you know of any other really weird social networks that makes My Free Implants seem tame by comparison? If so, I’d love to hear about it!