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You are here: Home / Archives for Technology / Web and Technology

We just bought a Kindle 2 eBook Reader

May 11, 2010 by Chris

Wow, my wife just bought a Kindle 2 eBook Reader! She bought it on line through Amazon. It’s a 6 inch screen and comes with some really neat stuff. I never really thought that we’d pick up something like this, but we did.

kindle 2 eBook reader

It comes with dictionary, text only web browser (this is in the US only damn it!), and a wireless 3G device. Our new Kindle 2 is slim at just over 1/3 of an inch, which is as thin as most magazines. The device is light weighting in at 10.2 ounces, lighter than your average paperback.

The Kindle looks quite paper like in it’s display without the glare that you sometimes get in some devices, even in bright sunlight. I wonder if you can adjust the brightness of the screen itself. Our notebook screen is not all that bright in the sunlight which pisses me off when I’m in the backyard trying to do some work. They claim the battery life on the Kindle is very long, up to 1 week on a single charge. It carries up to 1,500 books. You can find a fair amount of free books at Amazon and other book stores online. We’ve already downloaded some onto our notebook to be uploaded to our new Kindle when it arrives.

Read-to-Me is a neat feature my wife told me about. With it’s experimental Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud to you, unless the book’s rights holder/owner made this feature unavailable. Perfect for after more then a few light refreshing liquid beverages, ha!

She bought a electrical wall mount charger, car charger, ear phones and last, but not least the Amazon leather cover. I’m forever scratching electronic screens, I should take a pic of my phone so you can see what I mean, so this will come in very handy.

The only bad thing about buying it here in Canada is the custom and duty taxes $33 (CAN) that comes with it, but hey, no use complaining too much. We should be getting out little hands on it this Wednesday, so sometime after that expect another post about our new addition to our home!

Do you have a Kindle? How do you like it?

Keep on Kindlin’!




Filed Under: Electronics, Entertainment, Home and Lifestyle, Recreation, Technology, Web and Technology Tagged With: Amazon, books, download books, ebook, internet, kindle, kindle 2, mp3, read, reader, Shopping, text to speech

The Fender Phone from T-Mobile, that’s what I’m calling it!

January 24, 2010 by Chris

I found the new T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender Phone quite the novelty item. Hum, not sure though if I’d go running out there to get one. I realize that it is a limited edition (I’m sure they’ll make more) but if I was a real super fan of Eric Clapton then I’d bite.

We were watching the final episode of The Tonight show with Conan O’Brien that we taped on our PVR (TVO) last night and this ad came up talking about this product. With Eric Clapton and a wall of Fender Stratocasters behind him, hell ya, that got my attention real fast!

The thing that honestly grabbed my curiosity was an application for the phone showing the strings of a Fender guitar, I assume, and Eric strumming it, ha genius!

For the life of me I don’t know what you’d use this for? Is this app created just for it’s novelty or is it intended for tuning your guitar if the battery on your guitar tuner is dead? If so then they might be onto something here folks.

Fender will also be coming up with it’s own apps for it later on. If anyone out there knows of any apps for phones that Fender has done in the past then please tell us! I don’t have a phone that uses apps, I use it for calling people that’s it!

The look of it fascinates me. The Faux Wood’s fiery grain pattern to it, just like the one that a vintage Fender guitar has is always a smart way to go for that classy appearance. It comes loaded with some of Eric Clapton’s tunes on it, which ones I can’t say. The phone holds a 16GB microSD card in it as well. Just like in the past I can hear some people saying what the hell do you need a 16GB card in a cell phone for anyway?! That’s similar to what Bill Gates said about 4 MB of RAM that came installed in the early 80’s computers I believe?

So has anyone out there picked one of these bad boys up? If you do have one these phones then what other apps come with it and which other ones did you but to use that is guitar oriented?

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Electronics, Entertainment, Technology, Web and Technology Tagged With: 3G, cell phone, Conan OBrien, eric clapton, myTouch, t mobile, The Tonight show

Ball Media Productions

December 8, 2007 by Chris

This is a company that is owned and run by an old guitarist buddy that I use to play with way back in the day. His name is John Ball and what a success story his is.

John and I always played together but not in the same band. We hung around the same circle of friends and musicians and to make a long story short, we had different playing styles that never really over lapped. He gravitated to the harder speed metal sort of arrangements while I was under a more Progressive Rock, Jazz and to a lesser extent Pop genre.

My sister and John were closer in age and they both were in the same grade at St. John’s College. Boy did both of them get themselves into a little bit of trouble as kids during those years! Then again, I was no angel either.

His company is called Ball Media Productions and he had his humble beginnings in our home town of Brantford, Ontario. He at first started his empire with a recording studio in the basement of a well known Brantford music studio called Music and Sound. Over the years he has branched of into different area’s as he sees fit.

Now his company has a jaw dropping amount of specialized services that can now compete with the big guys!

Ball Media includes Printing/Bindery, Packaging, Branding/Indentity, CD / DVD Replication, Graphic Design and Web/Multimedia plus video area’s of expertise. Take a look for yourself and if you do need his services for anything no matter how small, just tell him “Stickman” sent you!

I wish him well with all of his company’s future endeavors but I know that he doesn’t need it!

Keep on Jammin’ Johnnie!

Filed Under: Entertainment, Home and Lifestyle, Music, Musicians, My experiences, Playing Styles, Technology, The early Years, Video, Web and Technology, Web Site Promotion Tagged With: Ball Media Productions, band, Brantford, brantford media specialists, CD, design, DVD, guitar, guitarist, Home, jazz, metal, Music, musician, Musicians, Ontario, play, playing, Progressive Rock, recording studio, rock, sound, Video

New Look

October 26, 2007 by Chris

So what do you think of the new look of Guitar Licks?

I think it’s much better than the old look! When I created this blog my wife quickly picked out a theme and we realized fairly fast that we really didn’t like the look of the theme. Unfortunately I don’t do any of the design work. Tricia does all of that stuff. She’s been so busy with her other blogs that she just didn’t have time to get around to changing this theme. It’s always been on the list … but ya know, other things come up and a big job like this gets pushed aside.

Anyway, she worked all evening modifying a theme for this site. I like it.

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Technology, Web and Technology Tagged With: blog, changed look of site, design, guitar licks, modify, new look, new theme, theme, wordpress, wordpress theme

eTrafficJams – Pay for performance

April 11, 2007 by Chris

If you run website, perhaps one that is an online business or an online showcase for your small or large business you probably already know how important it is for your website to be found quickly and easily by people searching search engine sites like Google or Yahoo for the type of products or services that you sell.

Why not use the services of a company such as eTrafficJams to promote your site and achieve higher standing for your keywords on the various search engines? eTrafficJams is a search engine optimization company that is based out of the Tampa Bay, Florida area. This company created the “Pay for Performance” seo service.

What is a pay for performance SEO service? Well, eTrafficJams charges monthly fees based on the number of top 10 rankings that they achieve for your websites keywords. They promote your site, using keywords that will work best to bring traffic and customers to your site, on the big search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. eTrafficJams guarantees that they will get your site a minimum of 10 top 10 ranks on these search engines each month, or that months service will be free of charge.

Visit the eTrafficJams website to learn more about their SEO services and the company in general, and then decide if you’d like to promote your site with a company that stands by their performance.

Filed Under: Sales and Marketing, Technology, Web and Technology, Web Site Promotion Tagged With: etrafficjams, Google, keyword search, keywords, MSN, Search engine optimization, SEO, site promotion, top 10 keywords, top 10 rank, website, Yahoo

451press needs blog writers – earn money blogging

March 22, 2007 by Chris

Hey Gang … my wife, Tricia, writes for a blogging network. It’s called 451press and they are looking for some new writers to take over existing blogs. Check out my wifes page to see the list of blogs that they need writers for – there’s a huge variety of topics to write about, so I’m thinking that some of you might be interested.

Oh yeah, you can make some money by be a 451press writer too. Check it out.

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Web and Technology Tagged With: General, Web and Technology

Learn about promoting your site at the Apogee Search Blog

March 15, 2007 by Chris

My wife is the person that set up this site and does all the maintenance on it – like adding new features and promoting the site when she finds new directories to list our sites in. However, I’m slowly learning a bit about promoting sites.

Not everyone has time to work on promoting and optimizing their own sites – especially if you are running a small to large business. That’s were Search engine marketing firms such as Apogee Search come in. Apogee has been in business since 2001 and in that time it has grown to become one of the largest search engine marketing firms in the world.

Apogee works hard to promote their clients websites using proven marketing methods – paid search, affiliate marketing, natural search, and pay-per-call. They even have a Search engine marketing service that set completely sets up and customizes Pay Per Click accounts for your business or website.

I personally enjoy reading the Apogee Search Blog from time to time. There’s always great information about marketing and optimizing resources.

Their most recent post “Why I’m not a fan of Google Sitemaps” was full of helpful information. We use Google sitemaps on our sites to help get new posts and pages indexed faster. I didn’t realize how important it was to have good internal linking on your site to help promote new pages though. Read the article for more information on how to use Google sitemaps to your best advantage.

Anyone working on promoting their own site should bookmark the Apogee Search blog. Every time I visit the blog I learn something new.

Filed Under: Sales and Marketing, Web and Technology Tagged With: Apogee, apogee search blog, marketing, promotion, Sales and Marketing, search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, site promotion, Web and Technology

Use the PaidByCash card online just like a credit card

February 19, 2007 by Chris

Don’t have a credit card, but want to purchase services or products online? Now you can with the new PaidByCash virtual Mastercard.

For the longest time we didn’t have a credit card. We’d misused ours in the past and had poor credit from being behind in payments. When our credit was finally ok again we still didn’t rush to get a credit card because we were afraid we’d fall into the trap of using it for things we didn’t have the money to pay for on our own.

As a result of this we missed out on opportunities to purchase items online at lower prices than in retail stores, and we couldn’t sign up for various internet related services like online games easily either. Now we have a credit card, but I still like the idea of a Virtual Mastercard as I can pay for items online right away with cash that I’ve already deposited into the cards account.

That’s right. With the new PaidbyCash service you can add money to your account and use the card online just like you would a credit card. The only major difference is, as I said, that you are paying for your purchases right away rather than on credit because you are using cash that you already put into the card.

This service will come in handy for those that like to play online games but couldn’t in the past because of a lack of credit card, and for those that want to purchase items at lower online prices too.

The PaidByCash card is accepted by pretty much every internet retailer, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll only be able to use it in a few places.

Check it out for yourself and see if you think this is great idea too.

Filed Under: Shopping, Web and Technology Tagged With: deposit cash in card, no credit use cash card, Paidbycash, pay online with cash, Shopping, virtual mastercard, Web and Technology

Listen to great new musical artists at Unsigned.com

February 18, 2007 by Chris

A couple of months ago my wife introduced me to this great new site called Unsigned.com. It’s a site dedicated to giving independent music and vocal artists an outlet to be heard on the internet.

The site is a great place for unsigned artists to create a profile and upload their music. The website now has over 4000 artists and listeners using the site on a regular basis. When visiting the site you can find musicians that play in a variety of genres such as Rock, grunge, hip hop, metal, country, jazz, and New-Wave Artists. The variety is fantastic, and I’m sure anyone who loves music and enjoys discovering new bands will like Unsigned.com.

I mentioned New Wave artists because, believe it or not, I used to really enjoy new wave music. New wave has changed since it first came out in the 80’s but it’s still a great genre. At this time there’s 13 different artists listed in the New Wave category. You should visit and have a listen, or if New Wave isn’t your thing check out some of the other types of music that the independent artists have uploaded. You’ll be hooked on Unsigned.com before you realize what’s happening.

When I get my act together I’m going to have to upload some of my work onto the site. Then you’ll be able to hear some of my music too. Come to think of it, I’ve got a few friends that would probably be interested in Unsigned.com. If they upload their music I’ll be sure to let you know.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Recreation, Technology, Video, Web and Technology Tagged With: country, Entertainment, grunge, hip hop, independent artists, jazz, listen to music, metal, Music, Musicians, New Wave, Recreation, rock, singer, Technology, unsigned.com, upload music, Video, vocal, Web and Technology

The lead Dogs specialize in Lead Generation

February 12, 2007 by Chris

Over the years a lot of the guys that I used to be in bands with have started their own music related companies, and I know that some of them have struggled to promote their businesses. There’s a lot of competition out there, especially in niche markets like the music trade.

I’ve just come across a site called “The Lead Dogs”. They specialize in
Lead Generation. They assist a companies business marketer by helping them manage inquiries, and in generating leads by phone, as well as nurturing interesting prospects into sales ready leads.

The lead dogs have been in business since 1994 and have built a solid reputation in the lead generation business.

Off the top of my head I can think of at least two of my friends who have started companies in the past few years that could use the help of a company such as The Lead Dogs. I know their businesses would do well if they managed to get more sales and business leads. I’m going to pass this link on to them right now.

The Lead Dogs is a lead development company that works with business-to-business marketers helping them manage inquiries, generate leads by phone and nurture interested prospects into sales-ready leads. Established in 1994, we have built a solid reputation by hiring the best talent, giving them to tools to succeed and being rabid about quality control.

Filed Under: Sales and Marketing, Web and Technology Tagged With: business marketing, business prospects, inquiries, lead dogs, lead generation, sales leads, sales ready lead

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