The number of plugins I use for this site has grown quite a bit.  If you have your own blog, take a look at the below list of plugins.  Perhaps you will find one useful.  I have the name of the plugin linked to where you can find it, along with a brief description and explanation of why I use it.

Advanced Tagline – Installed this one for fun and flexibility.

Akismet – A must have… blog spam is annoying and frequent.

All in One SEO Pack – Meta tags, etc… if you don’t know what this does – research it.  It will be worth your time.

Best Posts Summary – Awesome plugin.  Gives daily, weekly, or monthly post summaries.

CyStat – Awesome stats plugin for wordpress.  Tab right in the admin menu.

Digg This Reloaded – Adds the Digg button to the bottom of single posts.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Some people don’t like to redirect feeds via feedburner.  It was worked well for me to this point, so still use the functionality.

Google XML Sitemaps – Great plugin, auto-generates a sitemap for google robots.

RSS Footer – Nice plugin that lets you tweak the footer of individual posts in your RSS feed.

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form – Great and easy to impliment contact form for wordpress.

SimpleTags – Adds technorati tags to the bottom of posts.

Social Homes widget – A widget for the sidebar that allows you to link to your various social networking websites.

Spam Karma 2 – This plugin worked well for a number of years.  It has been discontinued and Akismet has been doing the trick.  So will probably be pulling it soon.

Subscribe To Comments – As the title sounds, allow your readers to subscribe to idividual comment feeds.

Tweet This – Adds the twitter button to the bottom of blog posts.

TwitterCounter – Displays the number of followers you have on Twitter.  A fun little addition.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – Awesome must have plugin.  As the name implies, automatically upgrades your wordpress installation every time a new version comes out.

WP-Amazon – Generates amazon links with your affiliate id to add into posts.

So that is actually quite a few plugins.  Hopefully that will give you some ideas on how to geek out your own wordpress install.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, plugins, supergeekblog

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SuperGeekBlog – WP Plugins

I saw this… and instantly thought I should get a few at home.  I think my wife really wouldn’t care for them, but who doesn’t want coasters that look like iphone icons?  Toxel.com actually has a whole list of cool/unusual coasters – most of which have quite the geeky theme.

Found this off of TechEBlog originally.  Look through the listing on Toxel though.  Tell me if those *wouldn’t* be awesome in the living room or the BSG room?  (Wife and I have a slight disagreement on what to call our downstairs family room.  BSG Room is my name for it and totally unapproved for home use. Yes, by BSG I mean the one and only Battlestar Galatica, which is returning for the final half of the season in January.)

Technorati Tags: Geek, Coasters, BSG, Supergeekblog

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Geeky Coasters

Well, I have installed and started customizing a new theme here at SuperGeekBlog.

The idea is to finally make the jump (like I did on OlorinPC.com) to a theme that supported widgets.  Not totally sure about it yet, as the dividers are doing some funky stuff… but I might be able to find the code that is doing that and tweaking it a bit.

So let me know what you think – I might still try a few others before tearing apart the code… but it is a work in progress.

Technorati Tags: Supergeek, SupergeekBlog, Wordpress, Wordpress Themes

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SGB New Theme

Daktronics of local(to us) Brookings, South Dakota created and installed the world’s largest high definition video display.  The display, installed in Miami Dolphins stadium, measures 50 feet high and 137 feet across.  Gizmag has more details and techeblog has a video of the display in action.  Good to see some upper midwest companies get a little love from the gadget front.

Technorati Tags: HD video, dolphin stadium, daktronics, largest HD video display

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Daktronics Builds World’s Largest HD Video Display

Aside from the fact that this looks like something out of a milk bar in “A Clockwork Orange”, why is it that everyone insists on imitating the iMac and iPod designs? Is it because they are so popular? And why white? Seems like I’d spend most of my days cleaning the damn thing instead of using it.

Seriously folks, here’s a review of the Compaq B2800, which is only available in Asia and Australia. Any Aussies wanna send us one to toy with? Didn’t think so.

With a super slim profile, a 14″ screen, and weighing in at only 4.8 lbs, the B2800 sounds like a pretty serious traveling laptop.

That doesn’t seem to mean that it is a cheapo machine either. Sturdy case design, a 1.7 or 2 ghz Pentium M 740, up to 1.5 gigs of DDR2/533 Ram, and a dedicated graphics card mean this could become a favorite for all around usage. Fan Specs and screen size may limit it from ever being a gamers machine, but for a multi purpose, portable, this one may take a few cakes. Here’s a few snippets from the review to whet your appetite:

The screen is one of the week points of this notebook. For some reason it isn’t a widescreen, but it is true that widescreen have taken a bit longer to be adopted in Asian notebook models, except by Sony. But still, at this day in age they should offer this notebook with a widescreen.

The results are what you would expect from a Pentium M 740 machine. It is much faster than my old Pentium 4 HP notebook and is also a bit more responsive than my AMD Athlon XP 2000+ desktop. It is more than fast enough for nearly anything you would ask of it. If you want further speed you could also buy a faster CPU model like the Pentium M 760.

Technorati Tags: compaq b2800, compaq, b2800, ipod, imac, notebook, pentium

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Introducing the iMac… I mean Compaq B2800

A reader has commented on our speculation about “Apple’s Next Move” as possibly producing a console system. I found this an intriquing line of discussion and thought I’d bring it up again with my comments and responses to the readers comment. See the original article here.

1. Christian Koster says:

Look, Apple is not entering the Console Game market. Of course they can afford to do it, but they’d lose a lot of money. The 360 and the PS3 are losing money on every console, we know this. Obviously Apple would have to go with a Revolution philosophy, but then why would anybody buy an Apple over the Rev? So then we look at if they did the Home Media center thing and then added a game console feature to it. Well, now we have a computer than can do all the Home media things and can play games. So it will cost as much (or more probably) as a PS3/360 and have the graphics capabilities of a Revolution (or probably less).

And where are the games coming from it. We have seen that a 4th player in the console market never lasts, so somebody would need to go. Now it looks like that could be the 360 (crossing fingers) but if Apple joined the market the support for them would be abysmal. The only way Apple could have done it is if the Revolution tried to be the graphical monster that the PS3 is. Then, Apple could have taken the simple/innovative way (which would have been very convincing like we have seen with OSX and the iPod).

One final paradox: Apple will not enter the console market because they would not succeed if they did. However, if they did enter the market they would succeed.

(Meaning if Apple did enter the market it would be because Jobs saw the magical way to be successful in it, that mere mortals like us could never comprehend until he showed us the light.)
January 5th, 2006 at 1:08 am

Or maybe they are? No one on earth would have believed Apple was going to switch to Intel chips if we had predicted that last year. The console market is going to change a lot in the next couple years. It’s an unfortunate truth that in all likelyhood one of the major players is going to fail and there is a good chance it will be Nintendo.

Furthermore it’s not inconcievable that Apple would consider making console machines but they definately would not do it at a loss. Something Apple is exceedingly good at is selling really nice hardware at a premium price and making a 60% or greater margin on it.

Honestly if Apple applied it’s usual technique to the console market they would dominate over the current major players if merely for the fact that they wouldn’t be losing money on early single console they sold unlike Microsoft and Sony.

Now a niche market that is nearly untapped at this point is the portable gaming market. The Playstation Portable has done surprisingly poor and the Nintendo DS has had meidocre sales until recently. A slick handheld unit with style and good battery life could go a long way in todays market. The PSP looks nice but is huge and clunky while the DS is fairly portable but is ugly and has a bizarre interface that people aren’t taking to (How the hell are you supposed to hold it while using a gamepad and touching another screen at the same time? Grow another arm?).

I think that the biggest possibility for this unlikely entry into the portable gaming fray would probably be a future generation of Ipod. Millions of people already have them and will likely upgrade if the features are right. Supposedly the next gen Ipod is going to have nothing but a huge touchscreen accross it’s entire front so it would be feasible to also ship it with some basic games like tetris. Now what would be even more genius would be that Apple could deliver more games Itunes for a fee instantly. As we’ve learned with the Ipod the convienence of Itunes easily overroad the competition in the hardware market for mp3 players. Apple quickly took 90%+ of the market and continues to hold it to this day.

The only thing in the way of portable gaming on the current Ipod is really just the interface. The click wheel is incredibly annoying to use for games but ideal for navigating mp3s. Now if they were already going to go with a touchscreen it would be quite easy to dynamically change the interface to suit the current application be it playing mp3s/movies or games. The unit is powerful enough to run basic games already and could easily be pumped up to handle better graphics while maintaining Apples high profit margin.

As is typical of Apple they would also try to use the new system as a way to leverage Mac sales through further convienence and coolness factor. With Intel processors running in their entire line by release time for any new Ipod/Console device they would already be set to get a plethora of gaming companies producing for their computer systems as well.

Which brings me to another topic… Why do you think Apple is switching to Intel? Surely it can’t just be cost as it’s a drastic step to take just to cut costs. Jobs is planning on growing Apples’ computer market share. For other than the obvious advantages of more profit it makes sense from a user-base standpoint. The Mac becomes more valuable for Game and Application publishers to release new software onto when it has a larger user-base. It’s the whole reason Apple platform machines are unpopular now. Because they can’t run what the other 90% of the world is running easily. Its the same reason Apple switched to a Unix based OS a couple years ago. They knew Unix would instantly add to the their userbase especially in the nerd category which is probably the most influential on other buying groups. Nevermind the massive amount of opensource software OSx added support for as well.

I merely wanted to point out reasons why our previous speculation could easily be true (Not that it is now of course) and construct a logical reasoning set behind it. Feel free to comment and realize this is all for fun and being right down the road would merely be a bonus for us

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, apple intel, console, xbox, revolution, nano, osx, microsoft, psp, playstation portable, mac, macintosh

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Apple Console Rebuttal

Well I got really excited this evening when I saw that there is a portable thumbdrive version of OpenOffice 2.1. Ever since I picked up a couple 512mb thumbdrives on sale on Radioshack I’ve been looking for new applications and utilities to load them up with for service calls and portable computing when I’m away from my computer. I have accumulated quite a collection of apps so far and plan to post a quick listing of them for my next installment.

I have to say that the utility of thumbdrives completely escaped me for some reason when I bought a 64mb one a year ago. I honestly don’t even know what I did with it but I forgot about it until a couple weeks ago. I’ve so far used mine to transfer files for several clients, install anti-virus/anti-malware apps, carry passwords/wifi keys, and backup documents like my resume so I always have them handy.

A good site that has OpenOffice 2.1 Portable also has quite a few other portable apps. I’m currently just browsing through things but it looks like a really nice resource that I’ll be visiting more in the future. Check out portableapps.com.

Technorati Tags: portable apps, thumbdrive, usb drive, flash drive, open office, sandisk cruzer

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Portable Apps and USB Thumbdrives Continued..

I thought this was a nice concise list of DVDR media and their rated quality. I’ve seen many other lists that have lengthy reviews and tests but this is nice in that it arrives at a simple list for easy reference. Check it out.

Technorati Tags: dvdr, dvd media, best dvd media

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Best DVD Media

Radioshack has the Sandisk Cruzer Micro 512mb USB 2.0 thumdrives on sale for $29.99 through Christmas. Stock up for those stocking stuffers and gifts now (Don’t forget one for yourself!). I love mine and plan to buy another one this week again for this price. Available in most stores and online.

Technorati Tags: tech deals, sandisk cruzer, cruzer micro, usb thumbdrive, thumbdrive, radioshack

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Sandisk Cruzer Micro 512mb Deal

Well if it isn’t already apparent… it’s been a slow couple of weeks for SGB. I’d imagine we can use the hectic nature of this time of year as an excuse. I plan to get back into the habit of regular postings to SGB as well as some new developments in the way of unique content for our readers (I know you guys are out there somewhere).

While I work on some of above mentioned content why don’t you guys checkout a couple of things I’ve found useful/cool as of late.
TightVNC (Another free VNC remote desktop application similar to openVNC)
MythTV (Setup your own free PVR using an old computer and a tuner card)
Portable CE 2.0 (The man over at Furry Goat gets a nice Windows CE virtual machine running off a USB thumbdrive. I did this on mine at it works great!)

I’d also like to remind everyone to checkout Digital Life TV every Tuesday and Thursday for a good free tech videocast. I also highly recomment “Security Now” and “In the Trenches” podcasts for those of you who aren’t doing anything at work (You know who you are you slackers.. . Stream them if you don’t have an mp3 player you won’t be disappointed. Maybe someday I can con Jake and Shane into helping me do an SGB podcast. In the meantime enjoy these shows and dream about how much better and SGB podcast would be (Just Kidding of course…).

That about wraps it for now keep checking back!

Technorati Tags: podcast, security now, in the trenches, digital life tv, sgb, vnc, myth tv, portable Ce, thumbdrive

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Slow week for SGB