One Love.

The season of good cheer and gifting is upon us once again!

Like many other people I struggle to find the perfect gift for everyone in my life. We scour the malls with the hoards of holiday shoppers rubbing shoulder to shoulder, looking for the right gift at the right price. The extremists fight off the turkey hangover to be the first in line for the door buster deals at the their favorite retail outlets on Black Friday.

At the top of my loved ones wish list is one of the top selling gifts this year, the iPod Touch. With nearly 120 million iOS enabled units sold to date its easy to see why everyone is clamoring to get their hands on this product. Yes, I fought with the masses at Best Buy to get my hands on one and got a $40 gift card in the process. But I didn’t want to just give my girlfriend a shiny new toy, I wanted to load it with all the top applications without blowing my budget out of the water. Lucky for us, Apple has made this simple now that they have enabled the option to gift apps out of the iTunes Store.

Here is my list of the top 5 apps, for under a $1, you should bundle with the new iPod Touch for your loved one:

1. Angry Birds – The top paid app in the iTunes Store right now and with good reason. Hundreds of levels and hours of entertainment for people off all ages. The game play and story are delightful and the game is filled with hidden challenges and achievements to keep the interest high.
2. Pocket God – Take the lives of the Pygmie race into your own hands! Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and more let you be as destructive as you would like to be. Of course you don’t have to kill them off, you can take them on a series of adventures unlocking achievements along the way.
3. Instagram (Free App) – Not just a photo sharing app for you iOS enabled device. Instagram allows you to apply a variety of filters to images from your library and easily share them across multiple social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.
4. Amazon Kindle (Free App) – Who says you need to shell out all that money for a new Kindle? Get all the same features and access to all of Amazon’s 750,000 books with this free app. Once you have purchased a title you can access it from a variety of devices, it even syncs your last page read with Whispersync.
5. AUDIOPRESS (Free App) – One stop access to anything spoken word, whether its your favorite podcast or an audio article provided by sources such as the Associated Press and it even gives you access to stream radio programs. This makes AUDIOPRESS the ultimate app to access or discover a work of words you may have never had access to before.

I guarantee smiles on Christmas morning when your loved ones open their shiny new iPod and find a few extra surprises when they turn it on!

One Love

On twitter @EddieLynn
more info about.me/eddielynn

This article originally written by me for poordadtech.com. See it here.

I consider myself to be a fairly tech savvy person. I’m not afraid to take a new product and push it to its utmost capabilities. Needless to say I could not wait to Jailbreak my shiny new iPhone 4 (running iOS 4.0.1), especially since there was a new and improved web based method to unlock the phones OS (technically its a PDF font exploit in Safari).

So I Pointed Safari to JailbreakMe.com and I was on my way! The progress moved quickly and within a matter of minutes I had a confirmation message telling my that my iPhone had successfully been freed from the Apple chains of bondage.

First order of business, open Cydia (Open Source alternative to the App Store) and install WinterBoard. I have always been frustrated with the customization/personalization options offered Apple so I was excited to start browsing and downloading an array of themes. The installation process is relatively straight forward and WinterBoard allows you to tuck its administration panel nicely into the iPhone settings. Downloaded a couple of themes via Cydia, switched through a few and settled for Tenuis for the time being.

MyWi would be my next venture, tethering has been on my iPhone wish list for the last two years. MyWi required that I download and install the Rock App (a Cydia knock off) as well in order to use. I signed up for the free 10 day trial ($9.99 subscription fee there after) and was greeted by a host of options that looked similar to what my wireless router offer. I set up the WiFi name (SSID), enabled WEP, and fired up tethering. It took less than 30 seconds to wrap my MacBook to my iPhone’s wireless connection (insert Hallelujah sung by a choir of angles)!

The Rock app lead me to another little gem called My3G ($3.99 after 10 day trial). AT&T doesn’t want you to know this, but you can use Face Time over the 3G network. Just Jailbreak your phone and install this handy little app! Worked like a charm with only a small amount of video degradation.

From here out it was all bad news.

The next three applications I downloaded were Orbit ($1.99, Icon and screen management), MyCinema ($Free, Movies straight to your phone) and Categories ($Free, Icon management). Every effort to launch these apps resulted in an immediate crash and boot into Cydia’s version of safe mode, which basically returns your phone back to boring Apple functionality. I tried reinstalling each application several times and sent several letters to the developers which have received no responses. I was forced to remove all three apps from my phone and I am now out the $1.99 I invested in Orbit (still awaiting my refund).

My phone continued to crash randomly from this point on. Restored the phone back to its super boring state via iTunes until these developers can get some of these bugs worked out. I can see why Apple works so hard to protect the original design/functionality of the iPhone, but the glimpse I got into the iPhones real power has left me wanting.

One Love.

XtraNormal is a cool site that allows you to put your own custom script to a pre-rendered animation. It allows you to tweak gestures, looks, sounds, people, and scenery to a small extent but the script is all you. Let the madness begin!

I finished my first video in about an hour, most of that time was spent movie camera’s and adjusting the timing on the script. The result is a public service announcement for white people, based on a ton of my favorite stand up from people like Chris Rock and Katt Williams. The topic at hand is the use of the ‘N’ word between white and black people, there is an etiquette people. This video shed’s some more light on the topic and you will leave filling more informed, I’m sure.

If you are sensitive to racial jokes, don’t like foul language, or thought I was a nice guy, you should not watch this video. If you don’t mind a little poke and jab at stereotypes, then go forth my friend!

One Love.

Approximately 24 hours ago John Mayer (@johncmayer on Twitter) proclaimed that he would be selling ad space inside his tweets.

Just signed a deal to sell ad space inside my Tweets. Now it’s time to celebrate with one of the many low sodium soups from Campbells!

At first I thought this was just another of his clever posts to spark some interest in his profile on Twitter. I mean how can a man who seems so anti-industry sell his soul to the marketing Illuminati? But then it happened, and its onslaught was swift and fierce:

http://twitpic.com/1w7ux – Taste testing home brews. Happy Friday!!!

Guys, I just had an amazing soup by Campbell’s, Steak and Potato. See all of the great varieties of hearty soups – http://tinyurl.com/c4gus8

“@davidvizUT We want authenticity, John!” I hear you. And so do I. http://tinyurl.com/29gfa3

Twitter is one of the few social mediums that I can browse through freely knowing that I will not be inundated with ads at every turn. You have deprived me of that John, I am drawn to your tinyurl and I must click! This needs to end or I will be forced to drop you from my reading list and have to ask you to please not follow me on Twitter @EddieLynn. I will ban you on Facebook and stop feeding your songs into my profile on MySpace.

On the bright side, I guess if I need some soup I will know who to ask.

One Love.

Not sure how this is going to work out, but if it fails blame it on the a a a a a a a Alcohol Baby!

Blame It.mp3

One Love.

Dear Mr./Mrs. 66.159.239.140,

Thank you for taking down my website and replacing it with a fake virus scanning application. Both of my readers (thanks cousin) thank you for the information, but we will not need your services at the time. Instead I would like to inform you that you have inspired me to update .htaccess file. For years it sat lonely and unused, but now it is alive with a new set of ip’s to keep it company. And just in the nick of time for valentines day.

Thank you 66.159.239.140, and happy Valentines Day everybody.

One Love.

p.s. – I made you a cookie 66.159.239.140

One Love.