Fred rubbed it in my face at the outset of the fantasy football season when his team exploded and took my humble squad to school. Well, thanks to Denver making a 1st down late in the game on 4th and 2, and then passing to Brandon Marshall on two consecutive plays, I was able to squeak one by Fred and maintain my position in the race for the playoffs.
So much going on indeed. That’s true for my life and the sports world right now. So without wasting any more of your time, I’ll jump right into it.
Red Sox win the World Series
First things first, I’m not a big baseball fan. But I do like to keep tabs on the season as it starts to wind down and actually mean something, and I check the scores throughout the playoffs. The Red Sox took 86 years to win their last World Series, and only 3 years to win this one.
The little I know about baseball, I have a problem with the playoff schedule MLB uses. They have a bunch of teams that are used to playing either every day, or every other day, and then throw in a ton of off-days during the playoffs. The Rockies were on an unbelievable win streak, 21 of 22 games or something like that, and then they had to wait 8 days to begin play in the World Series. 8 days! They hadn’t had anywhere close to that much time off since the season started. Boston meanwhile came off a series where their bats had just started to heat up, and made quick work of the Rockies in 4 straight games. I’m not saying Colorado would’ve had a shot even if they had been able to keep their momentum, but at least it might have been worth watching. I’m one of those ‘fans’ that didn’t watch a single game because I knew they never had a chance. The post season is simply FAR too long, and MLB has to do something about it. The Rockies are a young team and might get another shot in the next few years at going all the way, but alot of teams never see that second chance, and to take it from them because of a layoff is wrong.
Google will come out in mid-2008 with a mobile phone platform that incorporates a variety of Google online services and lets outside developers create applications, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
I like the fact that Google is coming right out and saying they are letting outside devs in from the get-go. Obviously a shot at Apple, but let’s face it: Apple set themselves up for that one.
When asked about the complex and competative world of mobile technology, Marissa Meyer made this brilliant statement.
In a recent post I mentioned that I’m trying to diversify my portfolio holdings in the area of dividend stocks, in the pursuit of that I’ve pieced together a list of 369 dividend stocks that pay a monthly dividend.
Gone are the days of manual jailbreaks and sitting there waiting a whole ten minutes for iJailbreak to do its stuff. Enter AppSnapp, now you can jailbreak your iPhone or touch without a computer!
1. Jailbreaks iPhone/iPod Touch on 1.1.1
2. Patches Springboard to load third party apps
3. Activates non-AT&T iPhones automatically, while leaving already activated phones alone
4. Fixes YouTube on non-AT&T iPhones automatically, while leaving already activated phones alone
5. Installs Installer.app v3.0b5 on the iPhone/iPod Touch
6. Fixes Apple’s TIFF bug, making your device MORE secure than it was without AppSnapp!
Word on the street is that Apple might be releasing a revision to their MacBook line up tomorrow. Previous rumors have pointed to early November as a release date for the revision, so this wouldn’t be that far off.
Details of the update are pretty much nonexistence, however, Apple’s Leopard update has revealed drivers for the newer Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. This is the successor to the Intel GMA 950 which is currently used in the existing MacBooks. This would suggest that the next MacBook would see an upgrade to the Santa Rosa chipset. The driver, does appear functional and works when used on a PC laptop with the X3100 chipset.
I recently acquired an iPod touch, and the first thing I did was jailbreak it and install 3rd party apps, seriously, I didn’t even sync any music to it first.
While cool, the iPod touch is limited greatly out of the box, but add in a quick jailbreak, installer.app, and some iPhone applications like mail and you’ve got yourself a winner. I can do just as much with my iPod touch as I could with my Dell Axim 51v, granted the range of available applications are fairly limited right now, but with the SDK coming in February the best is yet to come. In all seriousness though, an iPod touch of the 8GB variety is $299, verses the $399-499 price tag of a Pocket PC with far less storage space.
Yes, the iPod touch does have a ways to go before it can really be billed as a Pocket PC replacement, and I’m sure Apple would rather roll out an updated Newton to fill that role, but it’s still a very solid mobile platform and incredibly versatile considering its intended use as a music player platform.
So if you can afford an iPod touch and are cool with potentially voiding your warranty, get one, jailbreak it and enjoy!
Recently I’ve been trying to diversify my portfolio in the area of dividend stocks, while rocking the research scene I happened across CapitalSource Inc. (CSE) which looks like a good investment.
While their business model is a little more high risk than I’d like, I think they’re a decent buy at their current price thanks to the market weakness of the past few months, plus their current dividend yield is 14.30%.
The biggest question now is whether to buy CSE prior to their earnings report of November 6th or not. If they report weaker than expected earnings, you might be able to pick it up at a discount.
eTrade (along with most other banks) recently dropped their interest rates to 4.70% from 5.05%, so I set out to find a new bank to stash my money with. I’ll still do all my stock trading with eTrade, but I’ll move the bulk of my savings over to my new account.
Enter AmTrust Direct, boasting an interest rate of 5.36% APY and the ability to transfer money to and from my current external accounts (limited to six transfers a month). It’s not the most flexible account, but its certainly not the worst. No minimum balance requirements either.
After doing some research and finding mostly positive reviews of AmTrust Direct, I’ve decided to open an account there later this week.
