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I spent last two days working hard on setting my youngest son up with his own dedicated desktop PC. What is interesting, is that his prime gripe about his earlier system was that it couldn’t run Minecraft properly, especially with some add-ons!

I really like to encourage less violent and more creative games and this one is definitely it.

Game graphics is nothing fancy in this one, and the whole thing is written in Java – not exactly known for it’s lightening speed nor optimized memory management. So, a good XP system with 1 gb memory was really struggling, and after just few minutes of play was grinding to a halt. Interesting, putting Ubuntu on there didn’t help any, and resulted in slowdown seemingly even faster!

So off I went to find a new system for my son with virtually no budget, but with goal to have him run latest games. So I started with refurbished open-box system from local Microcenter. It already had 6 gb DDR3 memory with Intel i3 and 1Tb drive! To this I added nVidia 440 GT graphics and 20” LED backlit display, and still stayed at around $500 mark!!!

The PC is screaming fast with Windows 7 64Bit and has no troubles with Minecraft at all. In fact, it also runs World of Warcraft at max settings with no problems either, especially after we discovered DirectX 11 support hidden in Advanced options in WoW!

So to all those analysts who project every few years that we would never need a more powerful computers, except if Voice Recognition or HD Video Editing takes off. While those scenarios never materialized – good old Gaming is keeping our demand for ever faster computers with prettier graphics Alive And Well!

So be sure your computer is powerful enough and dive in!

First, this is a response to a blog post here (via Techmeme). If you are too lazy to read it, here’s an executive summary: Google is saying they will delete 2 years worth of email and all other Google Account data for 10 years old Alex (Who is naturally crying now). All because he is under 13, which they just now learned about.

This one really hit home for me – as most of you probably know, we are completely Internet family here. Really – my 7 year old has his own laptop on his play table. It’s there for many years now and he feels extremely at home with it. My other kids are not under 13, but definitely were using Google and Microsoft and other services, for many years as well.

I must be missing something – but I definitely know that Yahoo has Family accounts Specifically for children under 13. In fact, that is how our 7 year old Elijah is able to safely enjoy email! Furthermore, there are now myriad of Online Social Games Designed for Children – such as Lego Universe he enjoys immensely this summer.

If other big companies, including Disney, Nickelodeon and many others, figured out how to let Children onto their site – is Google just incompetent or lazy?

And what about Facebook? There are TONS of children on Facebook under 13, we know for sure. They aren’t safe, because Facebook has no good parental controls or mechanisms! Either way – we keep telling our son that he needs to wait until he is 13, as lying is not something we do. There are countless times he gets upset about this, if only to be able to play those fun Facebook games (by Zynga and others) he keeps seeing others enjoy. Ridiculous – even Facebook has no excuse not to have some viable Parental controls and let kids onto their site! Does Facebook and Google think they are still young “dorm” startups, with no time or budget to ‘figure it out’?

Dealing with important Real World issues like parental-controls is what being big business is all about!!! Do they want the next generation to grow up holding a grudge against these companies, for not letting them onto their sites sooner?

My children are participating in summer classes this year, and ran into this issue. Looks like Polar site has a little trouble with latest and greatest Internet Explorer 9 – so here is very easy fix: Compatibility Mode. Internet Explorer 9 can “behave” like previous IE, simply by triggering compatibility soon as soon as you arrive on healthyschools.net site.

The button is up in the address bar – and to make it easier, we added BIG BLACK arrow to point to it (Click on the image for larger picture). Once that button lights up blue, web site should work on all pages and buttons. As an aside – that feature in IE works with most any other website you may be having troubles with in IE9. But if you continue to have any further problems, simply post comments below – I am sure collectively we will figure this thing out.

That is what my daughter exclaimed, after learning that we purchased Kobo eReader from Borders and mishearing the name. She came to this natural conclusion after seeing that our new device prefers ePUB books to feed it’s appetite for content!

If you have a Borders store closing near you (sadly, they are struggling with bankruptcy – which seems inevitable, in retrospect) you should be able to pick one up for just $60 as well. I wasn’t even sure about this price, with company going bust. But, it reads EPUB and PDF format, even if Borders were to decide to discontinue their online store as well. Though, I think it is more likely that they will keep that business or sell that unit to someone. And why not, it’s virtually free money, as almost no overhead for operations there – just online servers to sell digital downloads and manage DRM. Seems no brainer – a business with no complex warehousing or shipping, and no chance of “overstocking” or “under-stocking” a title.

We only had it for one day, but so far works as advertised! Like Kindle, it is eInk (so black and white and no videos, naturally) and should last for almost a month on a single charge. Ours came preloaded with about 100 classic titles, and I didn’t even realize at first that it also lets you read Free eBooks From Your Local Library!!! Plus, it should let you read various languages through loading up your own specially formatted PDF or EPUB files, though I haven’t tried that yet. Here is full features recap from Kobo eReader site.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Looks like timely news on shaky state of Barnes and Noble today. I like their stores, but I also must admit that in the last year hardly been there, or bought anything.

Forgive the loud title of this post, but I promise that it is totally relevant! For the past few weeks I have tremendously enjoyed several audio-books from my local library. Our local Gwinnett county library had Digital Downloads for a long time via OverDrive Media Console. However, the big breakthrough is my discovering that they are offering iPhone App!

Actually, the Media Console client software is also for Android, Blackberry and it even works on iPad 2 ! This is most likely US only (sorry International friends), and probably not all local libraries offer it, though I hear very high percentage do.

Pretty simple to use – just look up your county’s library and login via your mobile device’s browser, using your library card. Then select latest blockbuster eBook or Audio Book in your favorite category, and click Download! Voila, it should download and be available for you to enjoy in seconds! Although, having selected long Audio Book myself, I had to wait until I was in Wi-Fi zone to be able to download it. It works just like any other Library material, in that it will expire within 14 days (or whatever your library designated). No need to “return” anything to the library, it will just disappear off your device.

I started off with absolute classic 1984 by George Orwell, which I enjoyed even more than expected. Then, I continued onto modern fiasco tale in All The Devils Are Here – The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.  Ironically this “other side of the coin” book seems most appropriate to me, and will undoubtedly stimulate my further exploration into alternative structures for society next.

Did I mention that OverDrive Media Console is Absolutely Free? I haven’t checked on all platforms, but I can confirm that it is free on iPhone, Android and Windows. Enjoy!

PS: I read that some libraries offer Audio Books in WMA format – these won’t play on iPhone (not sure about Android), but can be enjoyed on your Windows PC. Just glance at Audio Book format which should be listed on your library’s Audio Book page, before the download.