A friend sent me this very cool video of how Intel makes processors, so of course I thought, “Hey, that’s some Nerdy stuff!” And sure enough, it is. Check it out, it’s darn cool!

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Update: And it’s gone again. On the bright side, mine from the last deal arrived a couple of hours ago, so I’ll be posting my impressions in the next day or so!

Just a quick blurb to let you know, that Acer Netbook deal from TigerDirect is back! $199 is a killer deal!

So today we’re  checking out something especially geeky, the VisualSVN SubVersion Control Server. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? For most folks, this is something you’ll never, ever use. However, if you’re a person who develops, say, software-or artwork-or games, then this will be of interest to you. There’s a lot of Version Control software out there, and believe me I’ve looked at a lot of it lately. But most of it has a problem that prevents it from being accessible to the average user: most of it runs on Linux. Now, Linux software is all well and good, and there’s very little negative I’d ever say about Linux overall. However, the reality remains that for the average user-who by this point has used Windows of one flavor or another for most of their computing life-Linux just isn’t very friendly. As a rule this won’t matter because people who need version control can often afford to hire an engineer who understands Linux just fine, or they may be savvy enough to sort it out on their own. This software, indeed this review, is not for you.

Who this software is for, is the small time developer of something, whether it’s code or art or whatever, who needs version control but doesn’t have a huge budget or a lot of time to spend learning the ins and outs of Linux. This is version control that you can install on Windows in 5 minutes, have it configured in 10, and be using it in 20 (the extra 10 is because you will need to install Tortoise SVN on your client PC and reboot, then configure it to Check Out your repository). If you’re unfamiliar (and I was until a few days ago), what this software does is it runs on a server that your team then connect to via client software on their PC’s. The clients each sync to and from the server, and as changes are made to the files in your project everyone is kept up to date on the latest project files with their own local copy. When they’ve made changes, they sync back to the server and the rest of the team will get their changes next time they sync. 

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Today’s nugget of tasty freeware is something for, perhaps, the slightly more advanced user. Now, for a site that’s all about Nerdy Stuff, that shouldn’t present a problem for anyone reading this. Even so, a fair word of warning is in order: this one will require a little patience.

Orb Networks. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe not, but what they do primarily is provide the free Orb Media Server software. Now, in theory this is an amazingly cool piece of software, but in practice it’s actually only pretty darn cool. Yes, cool has levels.

Anyway, the software. Orb is pretty slick; what it does is fairly simple in premise: install it on your PC, configure it to point to your folders full of music and video clips, and it will stream all that media to your mobile device, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, cell phone, iPhone or pretty much anything else with a web browser. In cases where the target device doesn’t support the media in its native format Orb will transcode it to something a little more universal, notably Flash FLV format (as you’d find on YouTube or similar sites).

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Of course you do-don’t be shy, we all like to do it.

No, not that, you perve! I meant download free software. It’s something we all like to do, am I right? (Of course I am). Particularly right now, in this horrendous economy where Democrats and Republicans alike are trying to fix the problem (nevermind that they caused the problem, that’s another post for another site and time), the reality is that when government does–let’s face it-anything–it takes forever to start working. Well if you’re like me, you’re impatient as hell and you want to have stuff to play with but you also want to eat at least a few times a week. Or maybe you just have needs that aren’t being met, who knows.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll begin introducing a series of articles (complete with links) covering free software that you can use to do jobs that are typically done by commercial software but for free. We’ll give it a final judgment and recommend it along with a few words about its utility compared to the commercial software it replaces, and hopefully that will help you out. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure the links are easy to follow. We’re also going to try and cover both PC and Macintosh as much as possible.

Want to help out? If there’s a need you have, tell us about it in the comments and we’ll put our brainy staff on task to find something to meet your needs, assuming a free equivelant exists (almost everything has a free equivelant, but we can’t guarantee anything). If you have recommendations, let us know and we’ll be happy to write it up and give you credit, just be sure to include your name, a link to the software you’re recommending and a way to contact you if we have any questions.

Last night I realized an important fact: Several days ago I downloaded the Windows 7 public beta–legally no less–burned it to a disk, and promptly forgot about it. So just before bed I thought to myself “heck, I might as well install Windows 7 and let it finish while I sleep!” In general I’d say it’s a fairly clever plan, especially considering how long it takes to install Windows Vista, but much to my surprise Windows 7 was done installing by the time I got my teeth brushed (admittedly I do have a full set of teeth, so it takes a bit of time).

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As if it werent strange enough that Microsoft has publicly released the beta of the next version of Windows, possibly over a year early if their statement that “Windows 7 may not be out in 2009″ ends up being true, Microsoft has now announced that Win7s new Personalize Your PC website has launched. The new site (or Service, as the case may be) offers a variety of new themes, desktop backgrounds and gadgets for your desktop or Windows Sideshow (did that really ever materialize on any laptops?), all of which are, I suppose, geared toward making your PC feel more “you” centric.

And by “you” I mean “Me”, because we might as well just face it right now: this world revolves around me and should be personalized accordingly.