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Geek Patrol has finished its review of Rock Star. The verdict? 9/10. I'd like to say we couldn't be happier, but we did only get a 9! 🙂

Too good not to keep for posterity, this one:

me: i removed the accounts of anyone i deemed unfit to continue beta testing
me: if you'd like to file a complaint, you may do so with our board of advisors
me: which includes and is chaired by me, the only member.
betatester: and how do I file said complaint?

I'll never tell anyone this person's name, but I will say that the last line is very indicative of the behavior warranting the first.

Question: Should euthanasia be legal?

My Answer: As I watched men beat themselves senseless in an "ultimate fighting" tournament last night, I reaffirmed my belief that euthanasia should be legal. If it's legal to sign a waiver and let yourself get beaten, then it should be legal to end a suffering that will simply end eventually anyway.

Of course, that isn't really a reason - just the thought that stuck in my head. There are any number of reasons to legalize euthanasia. I don't advocate the Jack Kevorkian types - I've heard that in Sweden or somewhere, your case is heard by a five-person board that tries to protect people from, among other things, relatives looking to cash in earlier on an inheritance than later. Such measures would be important. Knowing this country, however, we'd go overboard with the red tape.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: What percentage of the people you "talk" to in a day are "electronic"? In other words, how many people with which you regularly correspond one-on-one (email, IM) have you ever met "IRL"?

My Answer: As I look at the list of "buddies" online right now, I've met just over 70% of them. My guess is that this is a fairly high number. I also expect that, for women, it may be higher than it is for men.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: How do you feel about the statement: "Any god that would condemn me for seeking the truth isn't worth believing in to begin with."?

My Answer: It's my statement, so, uhh, I agree! 🙂 I want to see what y'all have to say.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I'll probably reference this post around May 15, but I designed some PulpFiction badges today:

Grab them as you wish. Host them on your server. Link them to this page.

I have a small PHP/MySQL project for someone who's interested. The project is - primarily - a back-end "admin" area for a project I'm working on. It loosely relates to PulpFiction. Anyone who is interested should IM me. If you're skilled with PHP and MySQL, this work should take about three to four hours. We're not paying a lot because I could get around to it eventually, but we are flexible if you'd like non-monetary reimbursement. 😉

I'm offering this up because I've got other things on which to spend my time these days… Y'know, until May 15 or so. 🙂

I sold Cocoa Dev Central to Scott Stevenson back in December because I found myself with a startling lack of free time. The content was languishing, the design was poor, and the site was suffering.

Scott has been working for a few months and late last night produced the first article: Introduction to Bindings. The article is very nice - if you're not using bindings, you should be.

You'll note a new design on that page alone. Scott (and I) will be working over the next few weeks to update the older content, develop a CMS, and in general get Cocoa Dev Central back on the track we set out on in March, 2001.

Question: If you had to list the top five celebrity Mac bloggers, who would they be?

My Answer: In no particular order, and completely off the top of my head: John Gruber, Todd Dominey, James Duncan Davidson, the Unsanity Folks, and Steven Frank.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Jeff pointed this out to me:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

Those little arrows in iTunes now take you to your own browser. You can hold down the option key to go to the iTMS. Très frais! 🙂

The top 25 slogans. I pared down the list by deleting those that didn't have much immediate appeal. From here I will find some way to narrow the list down to 10, at which point I'm going to use a patent-pending decision-making algorithm to help me choose the best. Andy, Brad, and Nick will as well and we'll have our slogan.

Throughout the day I'm going to update this post by either making some entries bold (good) or striking through them (bad). When ten are bold and fifteen are stricken, I'll move on.

1. Like Orange Juice for your mind. (not topical)
2. Freshly squeezed news.
3. Content Squeezed Fresh Daily ("content" is pretty bland)
4. RSS for the rest of us (overused)
5. Keeping your eyes peeled for you (sounds like a personal safety device)
6. Keeping news fresh (no, we download fresh news)
7. Freshly Squeezed Syndication
8. Juice the Web (sounds like a scraper or a "browse faster" app)
9. Putting Simple Back In Really Simple Syndication
10. Content At Your Fingertips (too vague)
11. Pulp-Free Syndication Squeezed Daily
12. All your news are belong to us! (funny, but only to a few)
13. The Web: Fresh Every Day (bland, plus syndication != Web?)
14. All the news, all the time. (... and you're watching CNN.)
15. Strain your news. (strain your poo)
16. Content poured fresh daily. ("content" again)
17. Hand Picked News
18. Aggregate. Consume. Produce. (wtf is "aggregate" the masses wondered...)
19. Separating the Pulp from the Rest. (too much pulp)
20. PulpFiction: It's bright. It's orange. It's news.
21. Real. Simple. Syndication made fresh.
22. Your News, Freshly Squeezed.
23. 100% Personalized Web. You'll need to add water. (too long)
24. 100% of your recommended daily dose of news.
25. The web, from concentrate.

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Want to win $25 in iTunes music gift certificates? I'm having a little contest. The rules are very simple: rewrite one page on Freshly Squeezed Software's site. The Rock Star page is pretty darn bland - pictures of a keyboard and a television? It doesn't pop. It's got no sizzle. The MailDrop and FTPeel pages pop. They sizzle. Rock Star is a game, and currently our FTP client looks more fun! 🙂

The contest is simple: redo Rock Star's main page. Clearly you will need to keep the top. The right. The bottom. Basically, change anything inside of <div id="content">. Host the page somewhere and post a URL in the comments, or create an image as viewed in Safari and post that URL (or email it to me).

The contest ends Saturday evening.

Substitutions are possible. For example, a license to Rock Star + FTPeel is a substitution we'd gladly make. If you win, just make a suggestion.

Freshly Squeezed Software is pleased to announce that Rock Star 1.1 is now available.

• Slow down or turn off disappearance of choices.
• Adjust the length of party games.
• Automatically pauses iTunes when launched.
• Reworked high scores screen.
• Fixed a few bugs and whatnot.

We're continuing our special $9 pricing to celebrate the fact that we're MacAddict's Shareware of the Month. Download away. And, if you're feeling witty, post a review at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Those of you who want a little LCD to display your current iTunes song may want to check out what fellow FSS member Andy Monitzer has done.

Andy's IOWarrior does just that. The page describes how to display your current iTunes song and EyeTV channel on an external LCD display by using a universal USB-controller.

Pretty snazzy stuff really. I've already placed my order. 🙂

Question: What feature do you wish iTunes had most?

My Answer: A wish list in the store. I want to see what music my friends want and buy them. I want my friends to see what's on my wishlist and return the favor.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.