The re-launched non-country specific .me TLC has been released as of today! I registered mine, kylehayes.me, and have it pointing to this site.

Get yours as they are going by fast!

My wife and I are finally at the end of escrow on our home in Chino Hills, California. We should be closing any day now. We've been extremely busy packing, signing, and worrying about getting stuff done. As we actually make the move and get settled into our new place, I will not be able to be online much, nor be posting anything for a little while here. Thank you to all my faithful readers who have stuck with me this long, I promise some decent content upon my return.

Thanks.

Today Netflix, Inc, the nation's most popular online DVD rental service, announced the first Netflix ready device in a series of more to come. The Netflix Player by Roku, as they're calling it, is availabel immediately and will provide over 10,000 movies to Netflix subscribers instantly to their TVs.

This is clearly a product that is aimed at the AppleTV which allows users to rent and download movies from its popular iTunes Store. The immediate clear difference between the two products is the large number of offerings (10,000 with Netflix, and less than 1000 movies from iTunes) and the cost of the two devices. Roku is offering their device for $99 whereas the AppleTV starts at $229. Naturally, I would be the first to agree with anyone that says you are getting a lot more from the AppleTV than you would be from the Roku device, such as home networking capabilities, network music and photo sharing, as well as the Apple name, support, and design. However, I'm thrilled to see this product as it is really the first of its kind to offer a low-cost option for online streams of movies and TV without the need for any kind of individual physical medium such as DVDs or Blu-Ray discs.

Another notable difference is that the Roku device claims the content is "near" DVD-quality, compared to that of Apple's soon-to-be-released HD versions of their movies.

I've been telling folks and friends that I think we have seen the end of physical format wars and that the future is online downloadable content. For you will no longer have to rebuild your entire collection with the latest high-quality tape/disc. This announcement from Netlfix was the next step we needed to push our home entertainment choices into the next century more quickly.

Normally I am against link spamming but this game is just simply too much fun. It is also a novel and unique concept I have to share it: http://play.typeracer.com/

You are competing against a set of people in real time to see who can type the fastest! Very fun!

Driving home from Fry's Electronics this past weekend, my wife and I could not help but laugh and snap a shot of the many uses a VW bug provides to it's owner:

Reading through my blog roll this morning I came across an interesting post that was shared by Clint Ecker on Google Reader. It was about a neat (probably mostly useless but cool nontheless) service that will turn your RSS feeds into a printable PDF whose content resembles that of the style and layout of a newspaper.

An example of mine is below:

The site is called Feed Journal. I suppose the main advantage that I can see is that folks who commute and perhaps do not have the luxury of wireless access on the road, could print this out in the mornings and pretty much read it like a newspaper.

On a side note, it would be interesting to see all the coding in the backend to actually generate the PDF itself. From the looks of it, after a 10 second overview of the site, they are using ASP.NET as the middle-tier. I bet they could have done it much more efficiently had they used CF :-P

Look at the widget above this post. It contains some excellent deals on Wii games today offered all through Amazon. However, I noticed they open a little before the times that are stated so get their early and refresh often.

I don't normally post off-topic entries but this story hit me hard and I want to help. I also want you to help to make a difference for this poor man.

An innocent man and his loving dog were the recent targets of a possible deadly threat from two young children in Philadelphia. His dog, Edna, went missing on Halloween night. After posting "Dog Missing" signs with a $500 reward, he received a phone call days later at midnight from a child asking for a ransom of $600 or he would kill his dog. Bill Whiting heard the collar of his dog in the background and some animal yelps. Immediately he agreed to the ransom and the kid responded that he was going to kill the dog anyway.

You can read the rest of the story in detail below: http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/727940,WA06_edna_s1.article

If you want to help me make a difference, please sign this petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/help-a-kidnapped-dog-in-philadelphia

Out of 5,000 signatures that they need, they have 4,153 at the time of this writing.

Thanks!

Thank you to all who have helped me out this year with my various questions and musings. I wish you all the very best with your family, friends, and loved ones. Remember the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate it. Our Savior came down in human form to show to us how much he loves us.

It is this day that we take to remember the greater things in life. Cherish it and hold deep in your heart. Have a wonderful and safe Christmas.

Merry Christmas

Sincerely, Kyle

Wow, I didn't even expect this, but I was nominated for a CFEmmy for Best Newcomer. Thank you to those of you that nominated me. Vote Now for your favorite blog, host, OS project, community site, and more.

Thank you to Todd Sharp for conducting this once again this year. And thanks again to those who nominated me for Best Newcomer. Whether I win or not, I can surely say that this has truly been a great experience. When I graduated from college I set a goal for myself to be active in this incredible community. Without all of your help I would not be where I am today. You all are always so willing to help and I truly appreciate it and the only way I can repay is to give back what I have learned to the community.

Have a great Christmas and Holiday season!

Ah yes, that time of the year again where the eatin' gets good and you try to stuff more than you can imagine into your mouth. Turkey time! What that also means is that many of you have also discovered the Black Friday ads for the day after stuffing day to get incredibly outrageous deals.

I'm here to say that you don't necessarily have to wait in a cold, black, dark parking lot to get some great deals, Amazon.com has some pretty incredible deals as well for the busiest shopping day of the year. In addition, Amazon.com will be offering lightning deals on an hourly basis on Black Friday as well. Each deal will show up every hour in the widget below:

Be sure to plan your day in time to get the best deals that you want--whether it be that new big screen TV that you have been wanting or pay $5 for 100 DVD-Rs. Also, don't forget to be safe.

Check out Amazon.com's Black Friday Deals