There are certain things that come with being a geek. For some, a $4000 computer, and a $500 car. With others come gadgets. I know for me, I’ve spent more on my computer(s) than my car, but I’ll just leave it at that. Now, I can certainly say that I’m one for gadgets of any kind. Big, small, ones that do lots, or some that do very little. It’s a gadget, and I must have. A few of the most common ones are iPods, soon to be iPad’s, and of course, phones. It seems like today, almost every person has a cell phone. Whether that be a simple “only for calls” phone, or something as advanced as say an iPhone or a Motorola Droid, everyone has one.

Now, a few things arise when you think of the cell phone. One of the latest issue is texting while driving. It’s a big issue! It has states considering the idea of banning texting while driving, or just banning the entire phone while driving. When you drive, you should just drive, they’re arguing. And can you really argue with that? With so many distractions already, should this just be another? CBS News has posted some very interesting stats regarding this issue. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute recorded one of those.

the study also found that “texting took a driver’s focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds–enough time…to travel the length of a football field at 55 mph.”

Another interesting stat that I found was by Clemson University in a December 2007 simulator study. They were quoted,

… that “text messaging and using iPods caused drivers to leave their lanes 10 percent more often.”

Now me being a teenager, I have to say, we text a lot. Not me personally, but there are some that do. So it’s no wonder that we’re at the biggest risk. Especially for those newest drivers who have just only recently acquired their license. Here is a stat to back this one up. It was done by AAA,

When it comes to texting while driving, teens are a particular risk group considering that, according to Nielsen (PDF), “The average U.S. mobile teen now sends or receives an average of 2,899 text-messages per month” and apparently some of those texts are being sent and read from behind the wheel.

A 2007 study conducted by AAA and Seventeen magazine has been widely misquoted as 46 percent of teens admit to texting while driving. But what the study found is that “61 percent of teens admit to risky driving habits.” Forty-six percent of that 61 percent say that they text message while driving.

So with these facts in mind, I ask you this: Should texting while driving be banned while behind the wheel? Should we broaden this to cell phone usage of any kind? With these shocking results, wouldn’t it seem wrong not to?

Comments welcome.

All quotes can be found here. Thanks to CBS News.

Truth be told, more often than not, what people consider to be ‘hate’ on places like YouTube and so on, are really just idiots who have nothing better to do with their time then try to upset someone else. Such idiots on the internet, are called trolls.

And so, on this episode of TechKnowledgey, Devir, along with the ‘Hate Police’ talk about various ways that hate appears in New Media, and various ways to deal with said hate. Also, do NOT respond to YouTube hate.

Remember, Don’t take Internet hate seriously. Don’t stop making YouTube videos because of it.

Check out my YouTube channel!

I’ve been having issues surfing through the iTunes App Store this morning. On certain apps I would sometimes get the error below:

At first I thought it would be just me, but I asked about 10 different people via AIM, and 8 said they were having issues updating their apps via iTunes and surfing through certain apps. Some work, some don’t.

The issues don’t seem to be widespread, so if you’re perfectly fine not getting any errors, don’t be surprised. Some have reported zero issues, but the majority of the people I’ve asked have had some issues.

Let me know if you’ve had any other issues, or if everything is fine.

Update – It looks like the issues with the iTunes store are Worldwide, instead of only in the US. Hope Apple fixes this soon.

I’m a fan of TeamViewer for the Mac and PC. Sometimes it gets to be very buggy, but most of the time it works. Today, while finally looking around in the app store for some apps(which I haven’t done in almost two months), I found TeamViewer as one of the top productivity apps for the iPhone. I was shocked to see the fact that TeamViewer was finally on the iPhone, but not many people reported about it. I tried the free version(The pro version is $99.99) and it works alright. if you’ve ever used a VNC client the layout of how TeamViewer works should be very similar to you. On the bottom left corner there’s an X to leave the connection, a keyboard which when you press it brings up a keyboard, a mouse, a zoom feature, and settings. In terms of security, it’s absolutely secure, using 256 bit AES Session Encoding, 1024 Bit RSA Key Exchange. You can pretty much do anything to the other computer, such as rebooting, right click, left click, keyboard, everything. You can also change the keyboard to support special keys from Windows, and special keys from the Mac.

TeamViewer as of now is #1 on my list as the best computer sharing client. Beats VNC by far, and works perfectly even on a 3G connection on your iPhone.

Download Link here [iTunes Link]

If you would like to download the Pro version[mostly geared towards professional and commercial environments] Download link is here [iTunes Link]

if you follow baseball and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re probably familiar with MLB’s MLB.com At bat iPhone application, which gives you an all in one application regarding everything dealing with baseball. I bought the 2009 version and I was definitely impressed, but a negative to this was the fact that it was $9.99, AND you had to pay for the next year as well. So this year, I was gonna buy it for $9.99, but I found that the price went up from $9.99 to $14.99. Which left me thinking – is this app worth $15?

The app does bring a ton of features to the table though:

• Listen to every regular season and postseason game live
• Watch 2 featured games as long as they aren’t blacklisted in your area, all playoff games are able to be watched(unless it changed, the 2009 version let  you watch every playoff game)
• Live gameday which updates automatically, no need to refresh
• Up to the minute box scores and player stats
• Push notifications
• In game highlights

They plan on adding more features as the season goes on(keep in mind, it’s only spring training).

But, is the app worth the $15?

After seeing all the features, and all the features they plan to roll out, yes. However, they should really add one key feature: the ability to watch all games, for maybe a higher price. Getting these features for $15, but say, getting those features AND the ability to watch every game, for a month, for $25, is more worth it. And then you pay an extra $15 a month for all the live games you want to watch. The problem is, since you usually want to watch your favorite team, and you probably live near your favorite team, the game is blacklisted in your area. So it may not be worth it for someone like you. But for those who want to watch every game, it would be a nice addition.

Download the game Here: [iTunes Link]

But in general, if you’re into baseball, and you have the money, go for it.

Some screenshots:

After a few weeks of tension and rumors about Apple delaying the shipment of the iPad, today they finally announced that the iPad will be available on Saturday, April 3rd , and Pre orders will start next Friday, March 12th. Other countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK will get all versions of the iPad in late April. In the US, the WiFi + 3G model will also be available in late April, as well as in the other countries listed above.

If you don’t remember or don’t know the pricing for the iPad models, here they are:
16 GB WiFi ONLY – $499
32 GB WiFi ONLY – $599
64 GB WiFi ONLY – $699
16 GB WiFi + 3G – $629
32 GB WiFi + 3G – $729
64 GB WiFi + 3G – $829

Will you be getting an iPad, or are you happy with your iPhone/iPod Touch(If you have one)? Comments are welcome.

About a month ago Microsoft gave you a preview of how the new MSN homepage was going to look like. If you have a Hotmail email account you might of gotten an email from Microsoft called “A new MSN is coming.” On that email it just gave you a link to another updated preview from the website “Tourmsn.com” which basically goes over the new features that the homepage will have and how it will look like. Microsoft tried really hard to make the new home page website MSN.com organized and clutter free. The new page will be way faster then the old one and you will be able to play HD video clips right from the home page. Now MSN is also jumping into the social add-ins like Yahoo and others. In my opinion the new homepage looks sleeker, cleaner and it is way easier to find your needed stuff. The new page will be public really soon.

Today, Twitter has reached a remarkably historical number: 10 Billion tweets. It’s remarkable how Twitter hit 5 billion tweets just last October, and now reached 10 Billion tweets. Twitter has grown so much the last 2 years, it’s hard to even imagine the fact that 10 BILLION tweets were made. I guess this proves to all the Twitter haters: Twitter isn’t a dead network, and has lots of potential. Now, this figure may not be all that special to the everyday twitter user, but this will be a great argument for those who wants their friend or family member to join twitter, but insist that the network is dead.

so close to nailing it perfect!

UPDATE — According to TheNextWeb, this(technically) was the 10 Billionth tweet.

Second Update: According to Mashable, the ACTUAL Tweet #10 billion apparently belongs to a protected user.

What is the best Twitter client for the iPhone, you ask? Well on this episode of Techknowledgey, I tell you.I honestly think that it is Tweetie. It has every feature I would ever possibly want, and it’s incredibly well designed. The developers really knew what they were doing, and the way they implemented many features is just incredible.

For instance, refreshing the feed is done by simply scrolling to the top of the list. Shortening URLs can be done while composing a new tweet with the tap if a button. Things like that are found throughout the entire app. It is completely full featured and has EVERYTHING you could possibly want. And so, I explain why I, at least, think Tweetie is indeed the best twitter client for the iPhone, as well as demo some of it’s unique and innovative features.

Download Tweetie: www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/

My YouTube Page:

On this episode of TechKnowledgey, I talk about Windows 7 and some of it’s nice window management features. You know how you can compare two windows by dragging them to the edge of the screen? Well now a developer has created a program for the Mac that allows you to do this in Mac OS X as well.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>