I’m spending today setting up a system for my girlfriend so she has one of her own to use while she’s staying with me. I installed Windows, AVG free, Firefox, Pidgin, Office, and most recently World of Warcraft.

I discovered that while the World of Warcraft updater was running, my internet connection crawled to a near complete halt on all of my other machines on the router. It’s important to note here that the download speed of the update was also extremely low, indicating that my bandwidth wasn’t being used to anywhere near the capacity required to initiate a network-wide slowdown. This seemed odd, so I decided to head to my favorite bandwidth benchmarking utility to see what was happening. Here are my results for the first test:

Road Runner has done some unusual things, but giving me a 999 ping on SpeedTest.Net is certainly a new one on me. I walked over to the WoW system and gave a glance at the preferences panel on the upload utility. What I discovered was that it uses P2P in order to achieve a faster download. I unchecked the P2P option and immediately jumped over to my main computer for another test. This is the result of the second test:

I have used WoW updater in a number of instances without the slightest incident in the past, and having checked the connections and finding a reasonable 20-30 computers I was downloading from, I decided to do another test. I checked the option to initiate P2P on the uploader again and was met with the same result.

Could this be the elusive packet shaping I have been hearing about through blogs and podcasts for months if not years now? No matter what the case, I’m going to do some further testing with Azureus and uTorrent in an attempt at finding out what the root cause of the matter is.

Please leave comments below if you’re experiencing simular problems, or just want to discuss packet shaping and how it is going to influence our future.

Matt Ryan of The Daily PWN

Today we’re taking a look at Twitter. Twitter is a web 2.0 service that allows you to enter in short summaries of your activities, thoughts, or initial responses to other’s posts in a very simple and fast environment. Twitter has a lot going for it. It’s a unique blogging tool that allows integration with other blogs and web 2.0 environments. I have Twitter integrated into mattryan.tv so that my daily Tweets, as the call them, updates into my blog automatically while my standard blog posts get sent to my Twitter account so those following me can catch the link and check out the post.

Twitter is magic for people that don’t like to use the phone, yet still enjoy keeping up with their friends. Twitter has a feature where you can get a text message every time one of your friends updates a tweet. The downside I can see would be that the service is rather addicting, as you constantly catch yourself tweeting even when the situation doesn’t exactly allow for such activity. Believe me, tweeting “I’m getting married right now” during your wedding will no doubt draw unwanted attention. So watch yourself and don’t get too carried away with your tweets.

Matt Ryan of The Daily PWN

Tags: twitter, blog, tweet, matt ryan, the frugal geek

Samsung has been hard at work on the newly announced Samsung i617, otherwise known as the Blackjack 2. The Blackjack 2 looks nearly identical to its predecessor, however it has a few neat features. It boasts a 2.0 mega pixel camera, memory card expansion, a choice of black or red, Windows Mobile 6, a glossy finish, video sharing, and more.

Most importantly, as noted by Engadget, GPS capability is integrated. This is a big step for the Blackjack, which has long been sitting on the fence in the eyes of tech writers and professionals as to whether or not the Blackjack is a PDA or a Smartphone. It’s running of a lesser version of Windows Mobile in the original Blackjack than other PDAs (Yes, the smartphone version) gave it a handicap when being considered in comparison to the Blackberry or the iPhone when considering speed and power.
The device is touting a faster 3G connection that the original, which is a welcome change. My Blackjack is used primarily as a tethered modem while I’m on the road, making this change quite useful if it in fact lives up to the rumor.

I’m not saying jump on the Blackjack bandwagon just yet, but keep it in mind when looking for a quality smartphone on a budget. The phone’s rumored price will be $175.00 USD through AT&T.

Tags: i617, blackjack, samsung, at&t, matt ryan, frugal geek, smartphone

I’m sitting at a desk with an iPod from before color screens, a Zune first generation, an old Palm Handspring, a Palm Tungsten E, and a few other gadgets of yesteryear. As the Frugal Geek, it seems only fair that I attempt to find a way to recycle old tech short of donating it all to my local Goodwill. I donate a lot of my old equipment, though I’m interested in how the community recycles their devices for their own purposes. My question to the community at large is, what do you do with your old tech?

One suggestion I can offer for the Tungsten E is that it makes a great palm-size reader. The Sony reader is a great invention and has a useful purpose of its own, though with the Palm™ reader, the Tungsten E shines as a useful reading device. Unfortunately, neither the iPod Classic nor my Blackjack have or would have that ability to any degree of usefulness.

Do you have any handy tips or tricks to make that old iPod worth keeping charged? Have you hacked any of the old devices and made them useful again? Do you still use old Palm devices, and if so, what for?

Please leave a comment below with your handy tip, trick, or suggestion.

Matt of MattRyan.TV

Tags: mobile, device, old, previous, model, frugal geek, matt ryan

After an entire year of fighting with the Microsoft Zune, I decided to revert back to my Apple ways and pick up an iPod Classic. In good tradition, a week after I do so the Zune gets an update and becomes useful. I’m sure that in a month, the price on the iPod classic will probably drop by one third and I’ll shake my fist at Apple once more. The iPod Classic boasts two high-capacity versions. The 80 and 160 gigabyte capacities are a welcome offering to anyone that has a large collection of music and video files. These versions are available at $249.00 and $349.00 USD, which makes the iPod a very reasonably priced media player heading into the holiday season.

The iPod Classic is an elegant looking device with many improvements made to the frame. An all-metal construction gives the otherwise scratch-prone iPod a smooth and lasting look. The back is still a scratch and blemish magnet, so you might want to pick up a proper case before going on any adventures with music in-tow.

The Classic comes sporting a new UI with cover flow and artwork preview while in the standard menu. This is an interesting addition to the iPod, however even with the new updates the cover flow mode is choppy and doesn’t seem ready for this particular form factor. It’s easier to see what you’re selecting and browsing in standard mode.

Syncing the iPod Classic has a tendency to lock up iTunes and interrupt any video you may have playing. The locking up is occurring in both Windows XP and Windows Vista systems, and lasts from the initial plug-in to sometimes thirty seconds after the device has finished sync. Apple has recognized the problem and with each update they say they have solved it, however updating the device doesn’t appear to solve the problem.
Sound quality is exactly what you’d expect from an iPod. It isn’t an audiophile’s dream, but it does have a pretty clean sound that does well enough considering the lossy and imperfect audio formats it handles. The included ear buds are the same as any Apple ear buds from previous versions. They’re more fashion than function, and your listening experience will no doubt improve if you replace them with a higher quality set of ear buds or headphones. Playback is very smooth and uninterrupted which is a delightful change from the Zune’s video lag.

If you’re looking for a lot of dramatic changes, aside from the greatly increased storage capacity, then the iPod Classic might be your second choice behind the iPod Touch or iPhone. The iPod Classic is just what the name intends, a classic version of the iPod. The UI has been revamped and a few browsing features have been modified, but the latency and syncing issues spoil what might otherwise be a very pleasant experience.

Tags: ipod, classic, apple, review, matt ryan, frugal geek

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the recent RIAA victory. Copyright law is solid, and the law permits much harsher punishments than what was imposed on the defendant. It’s curious just how powerful and imposing the copyright law really is. Is it really a crime that deserves more monetary punishment then some violent crimes? Should it be right for a company with limitless funds and enormous amounts of political influence to demand so much of someone that can’t possibly pay the fine?

The RIAA would have this be a lesson to file sharers, riding on the wave of the day and enjoying their victory over the small-time pirates. Perhaps the music industry hasn’t realized one very simple fact. Not everyone can afford the music they love. I have heard countless angles about why piracy is right or wrong, and one simple fact always stands out… Not everyone can afford to purchse the music they love.

Personally, I believe 99 cents to be an outrageous amount to pay for 3 minutes of sound, especially when the cost to distribute is next to nothing. No manufacturing centers have to be opened overseas to distribute a song online. Yes the bandwidth and the servers used cost money, but at over a billion songs distributed, is the cost to produce one copy of one song really 99 cents? Even the studio and marketing costs couldn’t possibly come close to an entire dollar per song.

This just seems wrong to me, regardless of how you feel about P2P sharing. It feels wrong to support an industry that uses our tax dollars to prosecute a single person for hundreds of thousands of dollars knowing it would ruin their financial future, and possibly the future of their children.

I’d like to get a conversation going about this, and see what the Lockergnome community thinks about the music industry as it is today. Perhaps you have ideas about how it can improve? Please leave comments and let us know.

Tags: riaa, lawsuit, music industry, matt ryan, frugal geek, legal

The first thing any good Second Lifer usually does is create and customize their avatar. Customizations are done in so many different ways, and can often be very costly. Your skin, shape, hair, nails, eyes, clothes, and even your HUD is part of what makes your avatar unique to you. Note: the words in bold are search phrases in Second Life’s “places” search.
To begin, your skin is the base coat to your avatar. It is the one thing that defines more than anything else your general appearance and sets your style point. Skin retailers are abundant in Second Life and the stores have a gigantic variety of price points to step into. RAC is the name of a store that sells top quality skins. They have argueably the most detailed and realistic skins in Second Life, though their price is set at 4000L which translates to about $15.00 USD. This can be too pricey for even the enthusiastic Second Lifer.

If you’re looking for something with little to no impact on your pocketbook, free skins are everywhere in Second Life with an easy search in the places tab for “free skins”. Keep in mind that free skins are quite often very unpleasing to the eye and can be quite ghastly. They are meant to be better than the play-dough like appearance of the standard default skin that comes on your avatar. For the Second Lifer that doesn’t want to spend a single dime on their experience, this may be the only option for you honestly.

For someone with a price point in the 200-500L range, which translates to roughly 2-3 dollars USD, you might want to look at some of of the smaller skin creators. Always purchase a demo first, which is usually free but sometimes can run 1L. Demos allow you to wear the skin with a demo word on the forehead, or a spinning demo sign overhead. This gives you a perfect idea of what the skin will actually look like on your avatar. Go to several places and try them out. Two places I love are Naked Designs, Naughty, and Alady (the male version being Aman).

If you have some money to spend, RAC is first and foremost my recommendation for anyone looking for a good skin.

Your shape is also a big part of your avatar. It is argued that you should have your shape before even considering a skin, so take that for what it’s worth. Shapes are possibly the most unfairly priced thing in Second Life, considering you can make any shape you want yourself with a little patience and a little vision. Shaping is as easy as altering appearance and going through some slide bars to alter qualities like height, cheek bone, neck length, torso length, muscularity, and more.

If you really must buy a shape, Alady and Aman have great deals where you can buy 50 shapes for 500L. You can purchase every shape they have for one very low price, while single shapes usually run 300-700L in price. Redrum is a great place to pick up a very realistic shape at a very low price between 30-300L, not to mention they are fully modifiable to your customization. If you are female, Redrum is my recommendation as your first stop. Naughty Designs has some shapes, though they can be costly and generally don’t work for everyone.

My advice for anyone picking out a shape from the shelf is to go to many places. Search for shape in places search and see what’s out there. Many places don’t allow modifications to their shapes and that should be a big reason not to chose them unless you find that their design is absolutely perfect as is. The general rule of thumb is to reduce your expected purchase price by 1/2 if you can’t modify. If you’re expecting to spend 500L for a good shape, don’t spend any more than 250L on anything you can’t customize. This can be scaled up or down depending on your given budget.

Next article I’m going to go into hair and clothes. If you have any additions or suggestions please feel free to comment below or email me at matt@mattryan.tv .

Matt Ryan of MattRyan.TV

Second Life gives you the ability to create and sell your creations. This is achieved through putting your items out either in whole form or in boxes called “Sales Prims.” Typically, your sales prims are flat signs that hang on the walls of your shop and have a price set on them. Visitors pay the sign the required amount and receive a copy of the contents. The trick to being a successful merchant in second life is finding the right location to put your stores to achieve maximum profit potential.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time running my own store in Second Life, and picked up a few tips along the way. The first being the choice of products. Second Life operates around genres. There are areas in the game devoted to Neko (half cat half human) communities where items that appeal to the cyberpunk community would do very well. Things like tattered scarves, floppy ears, and low-life high-tech products are best suited for these areas. Many malls offer a theme that goes well with certain types of clothing, skins, hair, accessories.

For example, if you have a shoe store that mostly contains combat boots and other military/punk accessories, your best bet is to find malls or store space in areas with that theme. Putting an evening gown store in the middle of a biker village is not likely going to get you a lot of purchases, meanwhile a leather shop would flourish.

The next thing you want to look at is the cost per week. Stores in Second Life are often rented on a weekly basis, and charge by the prim. A prim is a single shape that is used to make up parts of an overall product. A cube, for example, is a prim. That’s a lesson for another post, so I’ll continue assuming you know what primitives are in relation to this game. A good rate for a store sets your rent with traffic flow in mind. A mall that receives 2,000 customers a day shouldn’t charge as much as a mall that has 10,000+ visitors. Likewise, a lot of malls contain camping spots that pay people to sit idle in their spaces to up their traffic counts. Malls that do this are best avoided, since they are in the business of falsely representing their popularity, or are just starting out and need the traffic boost to increase their visibility.

A good rent for 25 sales prims would be 250/week. It’s a good idea to try to aim for between 6 and 10 linden dollars per prim. This is a fair market value taking into account the amount the landlords have to pay Linden to use the prims. If the traffic is high and the mall is quality, expect to pay more for your space. This works much the same way as it does in real life.

Make sure your product signs stand out. They need to be classy and realistic. Many newcomers create stores with bright yellow signs that look like they were designed in Windows Paint. You want a sales prim to have a texture that you would be proud to have in a real life store. Many retail stores hire models to wear their products and model them in the sales prim. Time has proven that things like clothing and jewelry look and sell a lot better when photographed on flesh than on a blank background. Don’t under any circumstances use a newbie or bad looking avatar as your model. There are some amazing avatars out there and a lot of money goes into making a realistic and aesthetically pleasing avatar… let them model for you.

Keep detailed records of your spendings and earnings at each individual store. Name the sales prims numerically in order to give you an easier reporting tool to determine which shops are earning their rent, and which are falling behind.

In the next article, I will discuss owning a home in Second Life on the cheap.

Matt Ryan of MattRyan.TV

Tags: second life, life, rent, shop, frugal geek, frugal, matt ryan, business, prims, sales

Second Life is an interesting world indeed, and though the client and experience is available at no cost, the typical Second Life user can usually find themselves spending quite a lot of real cash to set up their avatar. Another high price point for many people is the subscription plans made available by Linden Labs.

If you’re just starting out in Second Life, or are interested in trying it out, I recommend putting your payment info on file with Linden Labs yet holding off on a subscription. A lot of businesses and employers in the virtual world are looking for people that have payment information on file. That’s a big plus when they are weeding out the trolls and casual users from those that might stick to whatever obligation is made during the course of business. Payment information on file is also a pre-requisite for many groups for much the same reason. Advertisers and trolls don’t tend to give out their credit information to Linden Labs.

Subscriptions are available in a variety of different terms and price sets. In order to cash in your Linden dollars, a subscription is required. In every subscription to date you are stipend 300 Linden Dollars per week to spend as you see fit. This doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but you’d be surprised just how well you can do with a small purse in an otherwise expensive environment.

Payment information on file can also include a paypal account for those of you less inclined to give out your credit card numbers. Paypal has a very strong working relationship with Linden Labs, and is the primary way to “cash in” any Linden dollars made during your term in Second Life.

Speaking of making money, you can make a pretty nice chunk of change while playing this game. There are four major markets that bring in revenue. Land, Sex, Shopping, Music. Gambling used to be a giant form of income until Linden Labs shut all gambling down in fear of United States government backlash. Buying and selling land remains the biggest source of revenue for many people. You can buy an island from Linden Labs, and sell or rent plots of land to people for a reasonable markup.

Sex in Second Life is a big source of income. Club owners usually end up breaking even, unless their club has a very good month. Typically, exotic dancers and escorts (Yes, there are escorts in Second Life… to each their own.) usually make a pretty good amount of money which can either be saved and cashed in or spent shopping for new stuff.

Shopping is possibly the most active form of economic activity within Second Life. Stores and malls are everywhere, and setting one up is pretty simple. Products can be made for next to nothing and once they are created, they cost absolutely nothing to sell at unlimited quantity. Store owners are faced with renting out their store spaces from landlords of various malls and commercial areas. There is an art to putting stores in just the right place to generate a positive income over rent. Sex shops with quality products seem to do best in SL for obvious reasons. There are a few quality stores that feature skins, hair, shapes, and other essential avatar goods.

Musicians and disk jockeys can usually find a paying gig in Second Life pretty easily. It’s important to note that pay is hardly equal to real life gigs. Many musicians end a set about $20.00 USD ahead of where they were before the set. This doesn’t pay the bills by any stretch of the imagination, however some musicians can pull in a larger profit based on their popularity and crowd drawing ability. Disk jockeys are often needed in clubs and parties within the virtual world. The money made from tips doing these events can be decent, though going into it with the idea in mind of just having fun and not making a real profit is more realistic.

In the next few articles, I will go into detail on how to get an an amazing avatar together for next to nothing. The articles will also cover how to create a business on the cheap, and some places where you can have a great time without spending a penny.

Matt Ryan of MattRyan.TV