Is it really that much of a surprise that Apple has extended their product line to also include “best friends”?  According to their website they will be staffing apple personal trainers (without the huge muscles) who are positioned as experts in all things Apple.  While the site offers limited information on this new service, it looks like the cost for securing the luxury of reserving time to speak to a sales associate that’s knowledgeable and capable of teaching you a thing or two is $99/year. 

Watch out HP, looks like Apple is taking over making things personal again.  Hmm or maybe they are just charging you for the fact that their staff is required to know a thing or two about the products they are selling.  Anyway, interested candidates in digital photography assistance, website production help, iPod 101 classes, podcasting, getting the download on Apple TV, making music, putting together a presentation or last but not least bringing a dream project to life… call the geek squad’s worst nightmare, the apple jock.  

Playing videogames has always been a big passion of mine.  I tend to play more strategy/first person shooter games, a fav being the ever popular Tom Clancy’s series but nonetheless when i’m browsing online I give into the urge to click on bright colored buttons screaming “coffee break” like the one featured in the above screen shot.   

There has been a huge wave of train-your-brain games out on the market, Nintendo BrainAge making the biggest boom.  What’s most interesting about this online crossword puzzle is its built in cheat sheet.  The split screen feature has a search bar on the bottom half of the webpage that pulls up the most relevant websites for you to dig around and find an answer when you’re stumped.  If you happen to be to lazy to do the homework than you might prefer the “give up” option which feeds you the answer in one click costing you a lower score.   

While I admit, crossword puzzles are not necessarily my thing I do enjoy this feature (and i’m sure they enjoy the additional time users spend searching on their site vs. going to google - yay ad revenue).  Besides, I always felt a little guilty opening up another window to search for the correct answer.     

http://zone.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_spotlight

Say goodbye to online registrations.  Simply hop over to this site and pop in the name of the website you are trying to gain access to and wha-la, a user name and passcode is served up to you faster than the time it took for Britney to cut her hair off. 

www.bugmenot.com

Audiobooks aren’t for everyone but if you get hooked here are two resources you might find handy.

Librivox provides free audiobooks from the public domain.  If you have recording software, a pleasant voice, and a computer you to can donate some recorded chapters to the collection.  Some of the newest additions include Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Miracles by Walt Whitman, The Odyssey, and Adventure of Sherlock Holmes.

http://librivox.org/ 

BMW and Random House partnered with authors James Flint, Karin Slaughter, Simon Kernick, and Don Winslow to bring you four (free) audiobooks [bmw not required].  I haven’t had a chance to hear them yet but the reviews seem pretty consistent with an average of 4 out of 5 stars.

http://www.bmw-audiobooks.com/

Like the user generated news garden digg.com, this music based website lets users “jig” through a library of mp3 streams and vote for favorites.  After hanging around for a while (of about 20 streamed songs I only voted for four) I ran into a pleasant Snow Patrol remix.  Nonethless, I support most endevors that give the next generation of artists a voice.

www.ijigg.com

Here is a project that is worth tuning in to. Words like aggregators, algorithms, treemaps and news all in one sentence can really take away from the creative thinking behind this venture but lets keep it real we all have a little inner geek in us. That’s right dancing in front of the mirror doesn’t exactly classify you as cool. Anyway, imagine how interesting it would be to get some behind the scenes action on how Google prioritizes their stream of digital news. Consider Newsmaps your ticket into just that. I will leave it up to them to describe how the technology works…  

Website:  http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/index.cfm (Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe. Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.)

Music has always been an investment but what if in the end you could have more than just an mp3 you can’t burn or a cd sleeve that takes up to much space? Here is a way that artists and fans come together to break down the walls of the Top Hundred Billboards around the world. Simply shop around for a band that you are into. Purchase a piece of their digital stock (could be as little as $10). Than lay back and have a few (thousand) beers and hope that that artist is hotter than fire. Once that bands stock totals $50,000 they are given studio time to record a professional CD that gets mailed to you when produced.

After the cd’s are released the tracks are uploaded online for users to download for free. Every time someone downloads the song you actually accumulate some of the overall profits. In the end you’re a few cents richer and a playlist deeper.

Website: http://www.sellaband.com/

Similar concept different service: http://www.burnlounge.com/