It's Time for a Tea Party

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March Madness - How to counter the bandwidth suck

Every year us folks responsible for corporate networks have to be the bad cops. This is one of those times, March Madness. Now, thanks to the NCAA, all of the games can be watched online for free. Luckily these folks have also made all of the video play via the same Fully Qualified Domain Name (http://mmod.ncaa.com).

So all you have to do is block that particular host. This can be done several ways.

1.) add mmod.ncaa.com to your block list on OpenDNS
2.) Create a firewall rule at all of your sites to block to mmod.ncaa.com, and its IP addresses.
3.) Create a false DNS record on your internal dns servers to point to nowhere
4.) Create a hosts file and distribute it via GPO or other means to block the lookup.

Option number 1 is much easier, and OpenDNS provides quite a bit of value for being a free service. I would suggest taking a look at it. http://www.opendns.com/

iPhone OS 3.0 - My take

Ok. First off, I am a proud owner of a G1 iPhone. I love it. When I heard about iPhone 3.0, I figured that besides the GPS in iPhone 2.0, that they would continue to add some features that would try to push me to a new 3G version of the phone. So far, they haven't, but the feature I was really wanting to see, is a 3G only option. Bluetooth stereo. It must be some type of hardware shortfall between the iPhone 1.0 and 3G. I had thought that other than the GPS and 3G, that both phones were pretty much hardware identical. Perhaps not. I would love to get bluetooth stereo, but is it worth purchasing a new iPhone, and having to pay premium 3G rates in an area where 3G is barely available? Nope. Not yet.

Other cool stuff in the new version.

1.) Purchases inside of Apps
2.) Maps inside Apps from the Map Kit API (New)
3.) Like 1000 new API's in the SDK.
4.) Picture MMS - 3G only
5.) Push Notification for 3rd Party Apps

And a few others. What are your takes?

St. Patrick's Day Music

A couple of years ago, I happened across the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast by SongHenge, and Marc Gunn. Its a great cast, full of awesome traditional and contemporary Irish tunes.

http://celticmusicpodcast.com

You can also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes!

New IPod Shuffle

So a new shuffle was announce by Apple today.

Check out http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/features.html for the full info on the new shuffle.

Its super tiny. It does have some new features besides its improved diminuitiveness. It now allows you to put multiple playlists on the device, along with the new Voiceover feature. At $79 for the 4GB model, it seams that the pricing model isn't changing. I am a big fan of the previous shuffle, but I think that this one is bordering on a bit too small, and very easily lost :)