How to Fix Your Washed iPod Shuffle!

I thought I'd take a slight departure from my regular content to give a short and sweet "how to!" followed by my anecdotal account of how I came about gaining this wisdom.

Here's the HOW TO...
Simply put... if you wash your iPod with your clothes and it stops working, set it on the dashboard of you car for a day.

A couple of days ago I was putting on a pair of slacks for work when lo and behold... my iPod Shuffle drops from the pockets of my recently washed pants. I switched on the bac and tried pushing buttons but to my dismay, no lights came on. I was slightly depressed with the prospect of retiring the gadget after only half a year of use so I set it aside. Who knows... maybe the worthless piece of junk will be fun to take a part and fiddle with. At any rate... my wife was telling some of her students about my mishap and one mentioned that she had set her washed iPod on the dashboard of her dad's car for a day and it worked again. When my wife brought me this news that hope might not yet be lost, I thought I would give it a try. This morning I put my precious little iPod in a nice, comfy spot on my dashboard. When I returned to my car after a long day of work I, in the style of Charlie Bucket with the Golden Ticket, slowly switched on the back. I then gave the button a little click and WOOHOO! A light came on. I took my iPod home and plugged it into my USB drive... neither my songs nor my data were lost or corrupt! Moral of this story... A child's wisdom can remedy a lost cause.

My Interview with SquidU

About a week ago I got an email from the senior director of community development for Squidoo, Heath Row. He asked if I would be interested in being interviewed for a profile on his SquidU website. A week later, my interview has been posted. The interview focuses on how and why I create lenses on Squidoo.

Read my interview on SquidU.

Check out all of my lenses on Squidoo.

Loads of Flash Games for Your PSP!

If you're like me and you recently installed the 2.70 Firmware on your PSP, you already know that there's a beautiful new feature that's been added: Flash support. Now you can play Flash games through your WiFi connection to the internet or play saved .swf files on your memory stick. Unfortunately many flash games don't work well on the PSP. Flow for instance doesn't completely load. Others require keyboard input. However, a few programmers have stepped up and created PSP compatible Flash games and, better yet, Flash games that work exclusively on the PSP. Here's a list of sites to help you find these games.

Shallan's Flash PSP Games - There are five fairly entertaining games here. One of the games, Switch, is an addictive puzzle game that requires you to match up similar shapes by switching them two at a time. Portaball, an Arkanoid clone, is another addictive puzzle game on Shallan's site.

QJ.net - QJ.net held a contest for flash games for the PSP. There are about 10 reviewed games.

Tetris - This is a nice little tetris game I found on the PSP Vault.

Chubigan's Blog - This blog has a PSP Flash game of the week feature.

GFX Pros - This site has a few real simple games like Tic Tac Toe, Paper Rock Scisoors, and Snakes.

Game.Salesmunn.com- This site has a selection of classic puzzle games, chess, etc.

Pac Man - The quintessential arcade classic in flash form for your PSPleasure.

Blufr: Trick Questions Were Never So Much Fun

About a week ago, I learned about Blufr(http://www.blufr.com/), a simple yet very addictive trivia site. Blufr tests your trivia threshold by dispensing user submitted trick questions one at a time. The question is accompanied by a "global Bluf rate" or a percentage of people fooled by the question. Once you answer, you either see "You've been Bluffed" or "You're Right" along with an explaination of the trivia fact. The site keeps your score and, in the style of the old school arcade classics, you can claim your high score and put up your initials.
As if that wasn't enough... Blufr has another beautiful aspect: Webmasters can add Blufr to their site. Through an easy copy/paste code window, you can add your favorite "Bluf" content. I was even able to include a bluf on this blog entry. Try out the bluf below.

Powered by Answers.com: free online dictionary and more

Squidoo Lens of the Day

My Warped Lens on Squidoo was Lens of the Day on 6/22!

Lens of the Day Blog

Music Discovery Meccas

Lately I've been checking out many new and not so new music discovery services on the web. Most of them are either completely free or have a free version with option to upgrade. In any case each of the following has their pros and cons.

Yahoo Music - This one's been around for a while in some form or another. It uses a system of ratings based on other listener's trends to help find music to match your listening preferences. You can set up your account so that other members influence your taste. Yahoo's Music Player looks a lot like iTunes but it's integration of LAUNCHcast radio and the Yahoo ratings is nice. The big drawback, as with anything on Yahoo, is the commercial aspect. You can expect a commercial between every other song. What's worse are the commercials for the music video player. But, then again, what do you expect from Yahoo? To check out my station on Yahoo Music, click here.

Music Hawk - This service is currently beta but it looks like it will be a MySpace for music. There isn't much to it yet but it allows you to share your favorite bands. For people with webpages, you can easily set up a badge with cd covers from your favorite bands. To view my stage, click here.

Last.fm - Last.fm is one of my favorites because of it's simplicity. After installing the player, you can simply type in a favorite band and it does all the work for you in finding similar bands or bands of the same genre. If you don't like a song, you can easily skip it. It also has some nice features for webmasters like a chart builder. I've included an example of the chart below.

Pandora - Pandora is just like Last.fm only its player is entirely web-based. The interface also has a more step-by-step guided approach. I recommend this one to users who require a more user-friendly service.

LivePlasma - LivePlasma is a nifty music discovery tool that works like a mind map of the collective music preference trends of it's users. It also works with movies. Unfortuneately it doesn't include a player.

Musicovery - Here's an example of the potential of a service like LivePlasma if it included a player. Musicovery is a French site but it's easy for any anglophone to figure out. It prompts you to pick a genre or genres, tempo, and mood. Then it creates a mind-map like LivePlasma and plays a song by the artist in the center circle.

Evolution in Gaming Addiction: Flow and Spore

A while back I came accross a simple (yet strangly addictive) game on the web. As a part of her master's thesis, Jenova Chen created Flow. The game is a sort of organic Pac-Man. You start out as a miniscule organism with a big appetite. As you swim through different layered levels and eat other organisms, you grow and evolve. Your enemies (or prey) vary in size and shape from the small single celled flagella propelled creatures to large (and quick) sting-ray like animals and strange circular creatures. The larger creatures actually attack you in this "kill or be killed" game. If you can escape the reach of your enemy's mouth and turn the tables, nibbling at your enemy, your enemy breaks apart into smaller organisms that you can then prey upon. Over time you grow longer, stronger and faster. If you play long enough, you can actually try evolving as another creature. I've gotten as far as evolving as the circular creature after about 30 minutes of game play.
When I first played Flow, I noticed some similarity in concept to another game that I heard about which will be released in Fall or Winter '06. The maker of the Sim City games and the Sims, Will Wright, is creating a game about evolution (and civilization) called Spore. A video on Google Video shows the game in action. The concept is the same as Flow at first. As your character evolves, however, it grows legs and moves onto land where the game develops further. The game then turns into tribal mode. As your tribe develops, you move into "civilization" mode and later into "colonization" mode where you explore other planets in space and either destroy them or colonize them.
Part of the appeal of this whole concept is the same for me with the Sim City games: starting simple and building a complex system. Perhaps games like Flow and Spore will create a new trend in evolution simulation games. Personally, I can't wait to see what happens with Spore.