Triple treat! No one can beat today. After a long day of work, I was treated with 3 surprises.
I don't get to watch a lot of TV these days since my son usually dominates it in his waking hours by watching Disney and Cartoon Network. Today was odd because he was watching HBO. Enemy At the Gates - just one of the several WWII flicks that I love, was showing. We watched it together (but he had to head out early to do groceries with Mommy).
It was a tale of love, jealousy, war, sniper games and communist ideals set at one of the bloodiest battlegrounds, Stalingrad. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 53%, a rather high rating considering how brutal their reviews are.
After watching the movie, I went to my usual spot at home - in front of the computer. What was waiting for me was a video podcast of Broken Social Scene's live performance at
Spinner.com's stage.
I love iTunes because, unbeknownst to a lot of people, it is a portal to a lot of free quality content especially the US online store. Every week, there are new songs, music videos, TV shows and, if lucky, full movies released by Apple. You can also treat yourself with hundreds of free apps you can use with your iPhone or iPod Touch. Lately, I have been downloading several free online lectures from universities like Berkeley and Stanford through iTunes U. And then there are the dozens of free video and audio podcasts.
Spinner.com's The Interface video podcast is a gem. Every week it features live performances from indie artists and this is where I usually discover new music. Today, one of my favorite indie acts, Broken Social Scene, was featured! I've always loved their sound but never really got a chance to looking them up in YouTube (when you have an insanely slow broadband connection, you just don't bother streaming). Today, I got to see them perform in a live set!
And, finally, I found a way to use iChat!
iChat is the default IM application of every Mac and because of that it seamlessly works and easily integrates with most of the other applications in Macs (e.g., Address Book, iPhoto, iTunes). The sad part is that you can only use the following accounts with it - AOL (mostly used by old Americans which none of my friends are), MobileMe (Apple's paid service... which a lot of people I know don't use) and GTalk (I have a lot of GMail friends but they don't use GTalk because...).
Yahoo is still the IM king and is used by most of my contacts. That was the only reason why I was still using Yahoo Messenger and Adium. Until now.
I didn't how exactly how I found it but, yep, I stumbled upon a blog that said we can already use our preferred 3rd-party instant messengers for Facebook Chat. Now, I have never really been a fan of Facebook because of its lousy and draconian privacy policies but almost everyone on Earth have an account. At least, this time, I've put my FB account and contacts to good use.
With Tweetie on the left and iChat on the right, I'm ready to conquer the world!
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Want to set up a US iTunes account without a credit card and enjoy plenty of free content? Here's how.
Rent or buy a copy of Enemy At the Gates on iTunes (requires a US iTunes account).
Add The Interface in your iTunes podcasts list here.
Here's how to use Facebook chat with your favorite desktop IM software.
"This can't be real" was my first thought. Then I checked the source: The Guatemalan government. What you are looking at here is a sinkhole that just appeared in the Zone 2 of Ciudad de Guatemala. And it's very real.
