Adam's Blog

Most of you have probably heard about the controversy about the former heads of Modern Warfare 2 at Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella, who were fired this past Tuesday. One of the first things I thought was, “What the hell is Activision’s problem?” Those 2 guys are the reason they made nearly $1 billion on Modern Warfare 2 and now they are gone. Yesterday or the day before they released that Jason West and Vince Zampella are now suing Activision for allegedly terminating them wrongfully and for a breach of contract. I have also heard that they are suing them for the royalties they did not receive from the game sales, $36 million. Either way, I think what Activision did is wrong and as much as Infinity Ward can tick me off, I am rooting for both Jason West and Vince Zampella because they definitely deserve their money for making such a successful game.

I have been a Netflix subscriber for a few years now and I have loved it. For those of you who don’t know what Netflix is, it is like a Blockbuster Video Store through the mail. Depending on what package you get, you can receive from 1 to an unlimited amount of movies per month. The price, ranging at about $6.99 a month for me, is a pretty decent price. They always ship really fast, so you don’t have to wait a very long time. Another good feature for Netflix works if you have Xbox Live for your Xbox 360. There is an application on the Xbox 360 where you can watch any movie on the Instant Queue. If you have a decent Internet connection speed, then the quality is really good, especially if you use HD cables. This is a really great service and if you don’t like buying movies or going to the video store, I strongly suggest you use Netflix.

I have been keeping up with Leo Laporte since the TechTV days. Now that he has his own internet network, I have been watching his shows on the TWiT Network. He advertises this great backup service called Carbonite. This services is a fast and secure way to back up your files. You are able to backup any amount of data that you want. The best thing about backing up with Carbonite is that you get a great deal and all of your files are sent to “the cloud” on an SSL Secure connection, which is tested by McAfee. This service is $54.95 a year, but if you use the coupon code LEO, you can get 2 months free. It is well worth the money.

I am always looking for some great deals and service on servers and domains, so recently I heard about some really good hosting called the RackSpace Cloud. Now, a few posts ago I did one on SliceHost, which is partnered with RackSpace and I was really impressed with them. Now that I am using RackSpace for one of my new projects, I have really good reviews about it. Their services is excellent, their prices are amazing, and their web panel is easy to use and really nice. There are tons of things I could say here, but you would have to see for yourself how good they are. Check it out!

Since I am the head tech on Defcon, an IRC server a friend of mine owns, I look out for some good deals I can get on reliable IRCd server space. A month ago, I came across a very nice service called Xzibition. They not only do IRCd hosting, but also Web Hosting, Unix Shells, Web Proxies and more. They have a wide variety of operating systems to choose from, but all the IRCd’s run FreeBSD. They have stable, fast and reliable servers. I would highly recommend you check them out if you are looking for IRCd space or any other services provide. Not to mention, their prices are great.

I got some VPS space last week to free up some space on my one server and to host one of my websites. I got it from hosting that I have heard nothing but good things about, and that is SliceHost. For now, I only got the cheapest package which is fine for right now and it works great. Now, I have nothing bad to say about SliceHost. Their chat support is absolutely fantastic, their up time is great, they have stable servers and they have a very easy to use website and web interface. You also get full root access to your server and choice of what distro you want. I would highly recommend you at least try their service for one month if you are looking for a VPS host. If you are going to sign up, I would really be thankful if you used this referral:

https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/new?referrer=a9e523cdce8213d628a41d52990b9863

At long last, yesterday night I finally decided to give MobileMe a try when I was reinstalling Mac OS X on my Mac. I got the 60 day free trial and I am already loving it and am hoping to get enough money to pay for yearly subscription of $99.00. The main features that I like are iDisk and the MobileMe mail. For the mail, you get an email address such as steve@me.com. You can either sync it with the Mail app on your Mac or you can see it web based in your control panel on me.com. The iDisk feature is really good in my eyes because it allows you to back up your files to your account. You can sync files at anytime from the iDisk feature on your Mac. The other features MobileMe has are contacts, calendar, and photo gallery. The cool thing about Contacts is that you can sync them with Address Book on your Mac at anytime. I highly suggest you get this if you are a Mac user. There is some compatibility with Windows, but have not looked into that.

Recently, I have been really getting addicted to using something called Google Apps. This is basically a mail system with many other features that you can use with your domain name. Not only do you get mail, you get docs, GTalk, and many more features. There are options to where you pay to get it and there are some options that are free. Of course, I get the free one. It is very simple to set up and is done within an hours time. If you want an easier way of accessing your email for your site, then get Google Apps. It can be found here: http://www.google.com/a