The Blog of an African NERD

Yahoozee like you never heard it before

signs that the naija music movement might be ready to cross over in a major way

Colin Powell Does Yahoozee. Oh boy!!

Jungle Disk is off the chains

This is some amazing stuff. I have been looking for a real time online storage and backup solution for a while but never really found anything that seemed great till I tried Jungle Disk. We are currently working on a huge social app that will run on Facebook and thus we began looking as Amazon Web Services( S3, EC2 etc) to host and scale what we think will be a massively popular app. Doing research on S3 was when I found Jungle Disk ,which backs up all your data constantly to your S3 storage. This thing works super sweet.
Their client side backup and monitoring app is just so well done that you will have total confidence within minutes of using this thing. You name it, auto backup, logs, complete reports, its all there. They even throw in a network drive that lets you access all your backed up files like you do in Windows Explorer.

Am really surprised Amazon let this company slip by and be purchased by Rackspace. Amazon could have purchased Jungle Disk and be reaping tremendous revenue by selling this as a yearly subscription.

Obama Wallpaper for your SmartPhone

See them here.

Obama Wallpaper for your Treo and Centro

Here is a fun project I initiated after visiting Obama's site a few time and seeing all the cool graphics. His web team really does an incredible job.  If you are a supporter and you have a Treo or Centro, you should like this. Learn more here.

Ringtone Shuffler for Treos and Centros

If you love ringtones, then you should really like Ringtone Shuffler. Learn more here.

How a MacBook Air is built

This is pretty impressive stuff. Watch here.

LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu Nike ad

Am really loving this ad. However it is what happened after watching the ad that bugged me out a bit. I knew I had heard the music from somewhere, which immediately brought be back to the song “Blueprint 2” by Jay-Z. I was quite curious who the original composer was as it was apparent this was a sampled beat, which lead me to Wikipedia, which then led me to Amazon.com mp3 store to purchase the original composition among others. All this within 5 mins after the commercial was played, synced to the iPhone and ready for listening while cruising down the highway. It is really amazing how everything thing is coming together in the digital age.

An interesting iPhone comparison

Microsoft's am a pc ad campaign

Glad to see Microsoft finally responding. I hope its not too late.

Chad Johnson changes last name to Ocho Cinco

Fans of Chad Johnson like me have been loving wearing the customized Ocho Cinco 85 Jersey from NFLshop.com. Well, with the looks of things, you won't need to customize your 85 jersey no more.
http://www.bengals.com/news/news.asp?story_id=6995

Went to see Ray Ray and 'em

Took half the day off to go check out the Ravens camp. Pretty cool seeing Ray Lewis up close. With two picks and a lot of smack talking, Ray Lewis did not disappoint.

Here is an easy solution for the Packers and Brett Favre

Have Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers as co-starters alternating games and you have yourself a smooth transition with everyone happy. Here is the reasoning.
The Ben Roethlisberger first year wonders are rare. Aaron Rogers is more likely to have a Peyton Manning like first year as the full starter. While Peyton Manning was able to recover from his disastrous first year to have a hall of fame career, Rodgers will never be able to particularly with this drama. So a scenario where he starts 6-8 games is ideal for him to get his feet wet and prepare him for next season to take the full load. With this, there is less pressure on him since Brett Favre can be counted on to win the other games. One of the things Brett Favre hated the most last year was the tremendous weekly off field work( studying, working out ) that was needed to prepare and perform at a high level. So won’t a good solution be to give him a week off after playing to rest that 38 year old body and more time to prepare for the next opponent?  With the way their schedule is set up , Brett will handle the really tough opponents and key games like the opener against Minnesota, Dallas, Seattle, Indy etc. and they can put Rodgers in for the crappy teams like Chicago, Carolina, Houston, Detroit. If Brett goes 6 for 8 and Rodgers goes 4 for 8 ( after all, who can't beat Detroit twice? ). You have yourself a 10 win season and are probably in the Playoffs. There is no perfect solution for the Packers but this to me is the best.

Maybach Music ringtone

While I was leaving NYC from the iPhone Madness last week, around the Holland tunnel area, I think I may have spotted Jay-Z’s Maybach. Of course you can’t see him cause the curtains are drawn and yeah they are perfectly like a Picasso painting. For real, press the play button on the Image above. Rumor has it that he has a house in this area and I had seen him in some paparazzi picture on theYBF entering what seemed to be a Brown Maybach. So off course the next thing down I-95 was listening to Maybach Music over and over and dreaming how I will move up from my 350 slk to a Maybach when am ready to be chauffeured around. By the time I got back to Maryland, it had to become a ringtone for my iPhone. Now here is the real sweet part about iPhoneRingToneMaker. I can actually make multiple versions of the same ringtone for my iPhone. So now I can choose if I want the chorus or that ridiculous verse he had on the song.

Treo 800w's awesome today screen

You mean to tell me that these 3 search fields can’t be consolidated into one smart search field like this or is Palm being bamboozled and forced to have the live search on the home screen?  This whole thing is getting so stupid. HTC, stuck with the same archaic Windows Mobile has been able to create touch flow 3D and this is what Palm has come up with? It’s just painfull watching all this nonsense as a stock holder.  I hope the Matias Duarte dude will fix this foolishness.

5 Tips for MacBook Air users

While the iPhone gets all the glory, the coolest thing from Cupertino is the MacBook Air. I can’t tell you how many times I have been stopped at the airport or café because of this laptop. With all the coolness, there are flaws and annoyances to over come. Here are some tips I came up with for those of you planning the unusual of running Vista on the MacBook Air

1.Get Back Some Space
The max hard drive space on the MacBook Air is a pathetic 80 gigs. Thus if you plan on running Vista with Boot Camp, it is just not enough particularly if you have a sizeable media library. So what you need to do when you first get your MacBook Air is uninstall as many apps on the Mac OS along with their accompanying files. Uninstalling apps like the iLife suite along with all the iDVD and Garageband templates will save you a ton of space you will need when its time to set your partition size.

2.There is a reason it is not called a laptop anymore
Forget putting this thing on your lap. It heats up so much, It will burn you in minutes. So consider getting a table like this. Now what if you are on the go? The Targus Laptop Portable LapDesk is a perfect solution. It comfortably sits on your lap and will dissipate all the heat and more importantly, it allows you to use a mouse

3.USB blues
Worried about the one usb port?  You can get a usb hub like this  when ever you need to connect multiple peripherals to your MacBook Air.

4.Back Lit keyboard blues
Keyboard illumination or Back lighting on the MacBook Air sometimes does not work on Vista. So do the following: Place both of your hands across the top of the screen as shown here to force it on. Note, you might have to keep your hold across the top a shown in the image for a few seconds even after it turns on.

5.Leopardish U.I.

If you love the Leopard desktop look and feel, you can pretty much duplicate it on Vista
by simply downloading the Leopard wallpaper here. Then to get a dock like the Leopard, you can get ObjectDock for Windows by Stardock.

Vistafy Firefox 3

Glasser , a Firefox add-on, adds the Windows Vista glass frame to Firefox toolbars.Pretty cool stuff. Learn more here.

Marketing of Vista

Even with all its flaws, I have come to love Vista. As a power user, I really like the new search features among many other things. However, what puzzles me these days is Microsoft’s marketing of Vista.
Every day, Vista is getting ridiculed by Apple with their “Am a mac, am a pc” ads. Soon enough, this constant bombardment of ridicule will begin to takes it toll. What’s even weirder is Microsoft’s response, which appears to be next to nothing. You get the feeling that the thought process in Redmond is this:

“Who cares, okay you say Vista sucks, but you will get it weather you like it or not”

Anytime Steve Jobs talks about the Mac OS, you hear words like “it’s the most amazing thing we have ever done”, “it is light years ahead of anything out there”.  You just don’t see or hear that from Microsoft executives. I mean, where is the passion that you believe your product kicks butt? You would think by now there will be a massive campaign by Microsoft to calm down all the bad Vista energy.

Even though there is a lot that is bad with vista, the grass is really not that greener on the Mac side either .There is a good reason why there have been 3 updates to Leopard. That’s because it has its flaws too, and they are plenty. I run a mac now to test iPhone apps and I have already been acquainted a few times to the Ctrl + alt + del of the Mac to essentially  “Force Quit” . With perception being reality and Apple continuing with the constant bombardment of Vista, the long term consequences can be damming to future releases of Windows.

I found it in the iTunes Store, but bought it on AmazonMP3

I think its time for Apple to give up on DRM. Its pointless and sending customers to other music stores.

Finally, a Treo to get excited about

Whats the point in releasing the ugly looking Treo 800w when there is this reported Treo 850 above that looks pretty sweet?