Category Archives: Site News
Mission: Small Business – about grants or gaining customers?
Is Mission: Small Business out to help small businesses, or to find new customers for Chase and Living Social?
By now, most of you have seen the Facebook posts for Mission: Small Business. The idea behind the campaign is that up to twelve small businesses can receive grants of $250,000 to expand their company. To be fair, the business that helped with this website, Ogre Techs, is in the running for one of the grants. We’ve received at least a half dozen requests from different companies to help support their business. When we went to vote, we noticed the advantage for the sponsors.
In order to have a chance of receiving the grant, a company needs at least 250 votes by the end of June. The competition is open to any small business in the U.S. that meets a few general qualifications. There are literally thousands of businesses competing, if not tens or even hundreds of thousands. The site does not allow you to see the essay that each company had to write to apply for the competition. It does show the number of votes each company has received to date.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The vast majority of companies listed are not going to gather 250 votes. Not even close. Most companies appear to have less than 25 votes. These companies have no chance of being eligible to receive the $250,000 grant. Read on after the break for more details!
About Nea Lieberman
After graduating UCLA, Nea worked in the far, far back reaches of the entertainment industry before quitting her job to become a full-time mom. Now that her daughter has entered school, she's back on the scene as a tutor, writer, editor, and bearer of all news nerdy!
Freeware: The Mailing List
We all know by now that these are tough times, and when tough times come along what do nerds do? We troll the internet for Freeware, of course! Probably the most successful of our (more or less) ongoing series’ here on ATNS has been our reviews of excellent free applications that anyone can use at no charge to do the kinds of things that the big boys pay big bucks for. While we’ve recently been, shall we say, a bit lax concerning our reviewing responsibilities–things are about to kick up in a serious way. We’ve been gathering the latest and greatest freeware apps to our sides, glued our butts to our chairs (well, OK, so it isn’t actual glue…) and have begun sifting through more free goodies than even Lord Voldemort could shake his rather deadly stick at.
In anticipation of the forthcoming explosion of Freeware reviews, we’ve decided that a monthly newsletter, to serve as a digest of sorts, would probably be a darn good idea. With that in mind, I bid you look to the sidebar for the simple and easy sign up form. You’ll have to check your email for the confirmation letter and click that sucker, but beyond that you should be in relatively good shape. We’ll promise not to sell your email to spammers (well, unless they offer us a really big bag of money) and in return we ask that you promise not to do terrible things to our pets. Which, let me tell you, if you harm one hair on my Nintendog’s head, you’re in for a butt kickin’!
iPhone 3G-S inbound, my wallet weeps
Today Apple, in what appears to be a vicious pattern of flogging my wallet until it cries, introduced the new iPhone 3G-S, which will launch in just shy of a week and a half. Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some hot iPhone action and I’ve been in a perpetual state of enthrallment with my current iPhone 3G since I got it in December. Nevertheless a gurgling, hissing voice has arisen with me and several heads have turned as I’ve uttered (uncontrollably) the words “We wants it, precious! Give it to us, it’s ours!” Yes, that’s just the kind of day I’ve had, thank you very much, Mr. Jobs.
So, beyond the obvious shiny, what does the new iPhone 3G-S bring to all those patient consumers who decided to tough it out? Here’s a quick and dirty chart to show you the difference and what you can expect to pay for that difference. Note also that the chart reflects todays price drop of the existing 8GB model iPhone 3G to 99 effing dollars.
Nevertheless, even the iPhone 3G remains an amazing device that can offer you the ability to be much more productive in your daily doings, so if the price has been what’s holding you back you no longer have any excuse. Unless I’m horribly mistaken (a distinct possibility, I haven’t done the research), this officially makes iPhone 3G the cheapest non-refurb Smartphone on the market.
| Device | iPhone 3G | iPhone 3G-S |
| Storage & Price | 8GB ($99) | 16GB ($199)
32GB ($299) |
| Features | Cut, copy, paste
MMS Widescreen Keyboard Voice notes Spotlight Search |
Cut, copy, paste
MMS Widescreen Keyboard Voice notes Spotlight Search PLUS!!!: Faster performance (2x!) Improved Camera Video Recording Video Editing Post straight to Youtube Voice Control Compass (Digital) My Effing Envy |
| Camera | 2MP mediocrity | 3MP
Video Record Video Edit Auto Focus Tap to Focus (dammit!) |
| Battery Life | Good | Better (I can’t bare to rub any more salt in the wound) |
About Jason Ward
Pardon our mess…and tardiness!
As you can see, we’re doing a little modification here and there to spice the place up a little and add a bit of pizzazz akin to our sister site, All That Gaming Stuff. The new custom artwork you’re seeing was created by our own inestimable Mike Kukuk, who’s hard work and skill are greatly appreciated. Don’t be surprised if a few more elements get spruced up here and there as well–in fact, if you have any ideas along those lines, let us know in the comments!
I’d also like to let you know not to worry–we’ll be back up to normal operating speed again starting next week with a brand new series on setting up your own USB drive with portable apps that you can use anywhere–even at work–without the need to install a single thing on the remote PC’s you’re working with. And as always, we’ll do it using nothing but free software! In the meantime, go check out our sister site, All That Gaming Stuff!
All That Gaming Stuff launches!
We’ve been swamped the last week or so as we prepare for the launch of our new sister site, All That Gaming Stuff. While we occasionally cover games industry related news (and generalized bitching) here, the new site will focus exclusively on games news and reviews and Industry chatter. We’ll shortly be launching a new Gamer’s community on the new site where you can drop by and shout out what you think about all the latest comings and goings in the industry!
Welcome to the fold, ATGS, we look forward to a long and fruitful run!
About Jason Ward
Site Wars: A New Host!
You probably didn’t actually notice anything, but in the wee hours of last night All That Nerdy Stuff made the jump from one host to another. As of today we’re officially hosted by the fine folks at HostGator. We decided to make the jump for several reasons, but the biggest of these is simple site performance. At our former host, imhosted.com, the site loaded pretty slow and had more than its fair share of downtime.
We believe this was because they simply overloaded their servers with too many accounts on a single shared host. While our new host is also a shared hosting model service they appear to take much more care about how many clients exist on a single server and what the load of that server ends up being in order to ensure a good experience for all involved. We like that.
Beyond sheer speed (which you should already notice, we certainly do!), our new home offers a greater array of features that we can use to create a cool experience for you, our esteemed visitor. As a consequence we’ll shortly be introducing some new community features that will enable you to share your own Nerdy experiences, advice and ideas with the world at large. As always, thanks for your visits and your patience through this time; we’re pleased as punch to be able to bring you the best in Nerdiness!
All Our Base…
Are belong to whatever fancy new doodad grabs our attention!
Welcome to All That Nerdy Stuff, the new site where anything nerdy is fair game. Whether your fetish is software, gadgets, video games, movies, TB (Nobody has a TB fetish do they?) TV, or what have you, ATNS is here to ponder points, stir the pot and give you our take on all the fun stuff that goes on in the Nerdiverse. As we get rolling on the site there will be a lot of stuff moving, appearing, disappearing and such, so don’t get your grapes in a bunch, its all part of the plan! Without further ado, let there be nerds!
