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Hodson Report

aka Steve Hodson - a cranky old fart wandering the internet causing mayhem as he goes

There’s Steam in that there CloudNovember 4

One of the cool things about being in this business for a long time is that it can give you some interesting back history to point to as new stuff is brought to the tech market. Such is the case with Valve Software’s announcement today about the upcoming roll-out of its Steam Cloud. Now I remember when Steam first came out as part of the Half-Life game and just about everyone expressed their displeasure over being forced into using Steam. Fast forward to today and we have Value rolling out its own version of cloud computing for Steam members and everyone thinks it is a great idea.

The idea is that the Steam Cloud; a free extension for users of the Steam platform, is that gamers will be able to save games and mouse and keyboard setups on the Steam Cloud and then be able to access those things across multiple PCs

The Steam Cloud will “just work,” meaning any user changes to their game options will propagate to the Cloud by default. Upon logging into Steam from another PC, these settings will be brought down from the Cloud and automatically leveraged by the game. Any configuration changes on this second machine are then synced to the Cloud for future sessions.

As cool as this migh

The ‘numbers’ of blog readers are bullshitNovember 3

Image via Wikipedia

The other day Svetlana Gladkova over a Profy had an interesting post that took the flip side of a recently released study when she asked about the 52% of internet users that don’t read blogs. This led the TechWag blog to wonder if the time was here where readers didn’t know if it was a blog they were reading or not. As interesting as those two related posts might be I’m going to go one step further and suggest that in the larger scheme of the web people couldn’t give a damn if what they are reading is a blog or if it is some mainstream media site.

Seriously, think about it. Does your best friend care what a site owner is calling themselves if the content is interesting and informative? Do kids care if Perez Hilton is a blog or just a really cool site full of gossip that interests them? When your mother or father click on a link do you really think they care if the endpoint is a blog or some newspaper site

A fellow blogger who keeps me seeing the human sideNovember 3

I read a lot of blogs throughout the day but there is one blogger I always look forward to reading each and every day and while he is involved in technology his blog usually has little to do with it. In fact I almost look with every refresh of my feeds for his usual daily post and that isn’t something that I can say about the majority of blogs I read. Sure it’s nice to read all those posts but very few of them consistently make me feel good about life the way than Brett Nordquist does on his.

Now I don’t normally get all warm and fuzzy like here but this is a rare occasion because I just wanted to share this gem of a blog with you. Brett sometimes writes about technology but usually when he does it is still from his personal point view about his work within the sector; and the people he works with, rather than about technology itself. What he does share with use freely is the love he has for his family and how they make him a better man, father and maybe employee.

I relish the posts he writes about the times he spend with his children as it brings back fond memories of when my girls where growing up. I chuckle along with him as he shares the funny things they do. I feel for him when he tries to make his

PJ’s Forum Round-Up 2.11.08November 2

Two days to go until the elections.  Ok, ’nuff said about that crap.

The forums have been in a bit of a lull this week.  Herr Mann Steven is finally nailing down the last of the intransigent little bugs after making the server switch.  I’m guessing he’ll probably not do that again.  From what we’ve been hearing in the forums, Steven’s silvering hair is quickly disappearing due to the abnormally high amounts of stress and hair pulling behavior he’s been suffering. We wish him the best.  Well, ok, a bottle of Rogain too.

One of the better posts this week was one of Steven’s (yeah, a little kiss-up never hurts) relating to RSS feeds.  Check it out and learn the who, what, why and where of RSS.  The post links right back to the blog but it’s worth following the link.

This post didn’t get much attention but I certainly liked it.  Ever have a website just not work for you and left you wondering if its just you or your system?  Well, Is it just me gives us a link to a site that

Why education is more important than everNovember 2

Education in North America sucks rocks.

Just ask any teacher in just about every city and town in either the US or Canada and they will tell you the same thing. It doesn’t matter whether the No Child Left Behind program in the US is nothing short of a joke. The fact is that in both countries we are letting our children down, we are letting ourselves down, we are letting our individual country’s future down; but most importantly we are letting our teachers down. The vast majority of teachers are dedicated people who believe strongly in what they are doing. It isn’t about the money for them, it is about being able to teach our children in the best way that they can so our children are empowered to change the future.

It isn’t the teachers that suck rocks - it is the system within which they are forced to work. It is the battling of little personal power fiefdoms that is sapping the strength of the teachers who literally hold the power to affect all our futures within their hands. Instead of giving them all of the best tools possible with which to let them shape the future of our countries we hobble t