Since November appears to want to whiz by in about 3 days, I figured it was time to talk about everyone’s favorite holiday – Christmas.  Someone has finally figured out what iPhone fans and fanatics really want under their tree – coasters.  Not just any coasters, but the default icons from their beloved iPhone.  Now I can show some true geek cred while keeping water rings off the coffee table.

Now this is really geeky cool!

As geeky as I am, I still like to be able to sit down and physically read stuff.  I like to make notes in books, high light interesting points, or flag pages of frequently used reference material.  For most people, switching from a paper version to an electronic version of their favorite reading material is a hard change to make.  I’ve adopted some items to electronic format – e.g. tech books from O’Reilly Safari.  I get a virtual library of technical and computer books for a subscription fee.  But when there’s a book I really reference a lot, it ends up on my bookshelf in the dead tree format.

However, some material is just meant to be read in printed form, like your local newspaper, your favorite magazine and especially a really good book.  Well starting in 2009, one my favorites is going all digital – PC Magazine.  PC Magazine is one of the publications that got me started down my path to geekdom.  I subscribed for many years until I graduated to more advanced journals like Linux Journal and 2600. 

With the passing of the print edition of PC Magazine, I’m wondering how soon other prominent periodicals will go all digital.  For some time now there have been rumors of publications like the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today going all digital.  With the first domino to fall, how soon will the next one be?

NPR is reporting about some new tech being applied to an age old dilemma: college students leaving unattended laundry too long.  At the University of Virginia a new laundry room has opened that will send SMS text messages to a cell phone alerting a student that his/her laundry is done.  On top of the alerts, student can see if washer and dryers are available before going down to the laundry room.  Now that would have extremely helpful during the winter months here in Minnesota. 

Evan is starting to walk around, like a lot.  He will take every chance he gets to walk behind his firetruck or any other rolling toy.  I'll post a video when I get from South Dakota. 

Sometimes you need to get the latitude and longitude for an address for various reasons (e.g. legal documents).  While Google Maps does a great job locating the address of what your looking for, Google Maps does not show a location’s latitude and longitude by default.  Here are the steps to get this little nugget of information from Google Maps.

1. Go to Google and enter your point of interest in
2. Locate your point of interest and open the detail map page from the search results
3. In the browser window with the map, paste the following code into your address bar

And no I don’t mean baby #3 being on the way. Gas finally fell below $2.00/gal in town today. I have to wonder, if gas stays this low if this may help delay the collapse of the Big 3 auto companies. Hmmm… probably not.

The beloved children’s show from PBS has now arrived on iTunes.  The initial offering is only for the more current episodes and tentative plans are in place to start working back to older episodes, depending on how well sales work out for the initial offering.  Sesame Workshop (the actually owners of all the Sesame Street shows) said they were reluctant to open the entire door, due to concerns of damaging sales of currently available DVD’s. 

Once again, a company that almost got it right.  A majority of the most coveted episodes can already be found on YouTube or BitTorrent, so why not release everything right now?

Follow up from Anita Renfroe for Dad's. Link to original – Mommy Sense.

Some of my Iowa heritage (can you get that for just living in a state for 5 years) was pretty proud today after seeing the Iowa Hawkeyes win one over the nationally ranked Penn State.  As I watch another Minnesota team implode (go Gophers!), it was great to see some positive news out of the college football scene this weekend.  The Hawks come to MN in two weeks and I will be showing my colors when the they take on the Gophers.

AT&T recently added free Wi-Fi access to AT&T's wi-fi access points across the US.  Now, AT&T has added a larger coverage area with their aquistion of Wayport Wi-Fi.  This now brings a total 20,000 access points across the US and 80,000 worldwide.  Use AT&T's Wi-Fi finder to locate common places you go that support AT&T Wi-Fi – AT&T Wi-Fi Finder.