Man can Fly! Base Jumping with a wing suit

http://www.vimeo.com/1778399

Watch this full screen for the full effect.

You need to see this cool video of some dudes base jumping and flying literally within inches of the ground. Your heart will pump just watching this!

Fun Holiday Guitar Hero Flash Game

Though the holidays are over, there is a fun new Guitar Hero Flash game out which should help you make the transition back to work!

The game pits you against a grinchlike character as you attempt to rock the socks off of him in order to save the holidays. Obviously this won’t offer the same experience as Guitar Hero World Tour or Rock Band; but it should keep your fingers in shape while you are away from your TV.

Via Download Squad

Previously - Guitar Master - Fun Guitar Hero Flash Game

The hazards of clearance shopping

So I feel like Micheal Scott…

Amber was picking up some clothes at Aeropostale right before Christmas and I decided to browse through the the clearance table.

I found a pair of sweat pants for only $10! I didn’t bother trying them on because I figured an XL is more than big enough.

Flash Forward to tonite.

I try them on and they seem a little tight. Then I notice that they are flared at the bottom. It didn’t take too long to put 2 and 2 together and realize that Amber just inherited a new pair of pants.

What can I say, it was crazy and they were on a table full of guy’s clothing. Who would have thought that a pair of girl’s pants were sitting in there waiting for an unsuspecting shopper.

At least it’s almost 60 degrees here.

Pandora finally comes to Windows Mobile!

Pandora, one of the coolest iPhone apps and awesome online music streaming service, finally released a Windows Mobile client! The official version only supports the HTC touch and Motorola Q9c but a user on PPCGeeks has cooked up a version of Pandora which runs on any Windows Mobile phone.

The “hacked” version works great on my Samsung i760 as well as many other phones although it has issues displaying correctly on VGA screens.

Other phones which work;

• Touch(6900)
• Mogul
• Apache 6700
• 700wx(WM5)
• 800w
• Diamond
• Touch Pro
• Omnia
• Samsung I760
• AT&T Tilt

Hit up PPCgeeks for the quirks that some phones have.

I’m currently listening to one of my favorite pandora playlists and can’t wait to spike my data usage with this! The sound quality isn’t as good as on the desktop, or the iPhone if I recall, but it works fine for on the go Music Genome Project listening!

Here’s to the efforts of Pandora and the hope that they roll out a higher quality stream. I’d plunk down some cash for that!

New design on Imjosh.com

I took a little time this past week and adopted a new design for Josh Smith Online. I’ve trimmed some of the fat and tweaked the Revolution 2 Theme “Code Gray” to fit my needs. Code Gray is available for free as part of the new Revolution Open Source package but also offers paid support packages if you need help with the innards.

I’m pleased with the new presentation and think it provides a more professional look and easier navigation.

I’m curious to know what you think! Leave your suggestions and comments below.

Thanks for stopping by!

More musings on Twitter

I’ve been spending more and more time on Twitter recently and I wanted to collect a few random thoughts and experiences I have had to share with blog readers.

One of the coolest things about Twitter to me is that I can be in contact with people I couldn’t normally meet through other sites like Facebook which are meant to build an online collection of people you already know or nestled away in Ohio.

For example yesterday I hopped on to Twitter and saw a page full of updates from MC Hammer, the actual MC Hammer, and I replied “@MCHammer Opened Twitter to a page full of MCHammer updates, musta been Hammertime on Twitter!” Had this been any other network I belonged to I’m sure the “conversation” would have ended at that. Instead I got a tweet back a few minutes later, “@Josh_Smith U got it Josh”.

While it’s not as if MC Hammer and I sat down and discussed the meaning of life over coffee at Starbucks, this brief exchange was similar to many others I have had with prominent writers, CEOs and others on Twitter. Short sometimes meaningful bursts of conversation.

I’ve also found Twitter to be an excellent source of checking local road conditions when traditional media was slow to report on the actual road conditions. And I recently found out that many great Broadway shows come to Ohio stopping in Columbus and other cities because I follow BroadwayAllison on Twitter.

When I had suggested we see a Broadway play in the near future my friends scoffed that, “We aren’t in NY” and were genuinely surprised when I told them about Grease playing in Columbus, OH!

There are a lot of wrong ways to use Twitter and it is easy to have a bad experience if you go in looking for one but if you just want to make connections with other people Twitter is a great tool.

Are you following Josh_Smith on Twitter? If not go sign up and let’s chat.

Web 2.0, support systems and Tobias Buckell

Whatever you do when someone you care about is in trouble, you should start doing it now. One of my great friends and a talented writer, Tobias Buckell, went into the hospital yesterday for a heart problem; one they are still trying to track down. While Toby is doing better than when he was admitted to the ER early Tuesday morning he is still under observation and continues to look like a prototype of the Six Million Dollar Man.

Throughout this whole ordeal Toby has been blogging the experience and updating us on his status as well as twittering other updates during the past day and a half. According to one source close to Toby, twittering has been one of the most helpful distractions from the hospital, which I’m sure is a major plus.

This brings me to two points regarding blogs and Twitter. First of all I am extremely thankful for the information that I was able to find out about his current condition without constantly bothering his family but the whole process highlighted an important aspect of relying on Twitter for important communication. Yesterday; when Twitter was undergoing, “database maintenance”, I felt extremely cut off from the situation and refreshed Twitter more than a Wooter trying to get the next Wootoff item. Even though Twitter was able to stand up to the recent election, it can prove unreliable when it’s most important to you, meaning it might not be up for mission critical duties just yet.

Getting back to my other point, it is amazing to see the outpouring of support for Tobias and his family both on TobiasBuckell.com and on the BoingBoing post about his latest novel Sly Mongoose. As I write this there are almost 300 comments from writers, readers, family and friends on Tobias’ website and likely untold numbers of facebook, livejournal, instant and email messages waiting for him. The fact that Web 2.0 and social networking have the possibility to quickly lend and direct support to a person and their family in a time of need cements the importance of social media, networking and blogging, at least to me.

While you have a minute, take a second to share your well wishes over at Toby’s page, keep him in your thoughts, prayers, tweets and blog posts while he recovers.

I know, personally, I can’t imagine a world without the characters and worlds Toby brings to life in his writing, any more than I can imagine a world without a friend like Toby.

Get well dude, I need to beat Gears of War 2 with you, the locust hordes won’t wait forever!

Why do publishers still flood the game market at Christmas?

I recently wrote an article for WalletPop.com about how to save money on video games this fall. It is especially pertinent because there are too many blockbuster titles to count releasing in the next month and a half. I understand why publishers used to feel the need to release close to the holidays; back when gamers were 15 years old and had a tiny bit of patience games made great gifts. However, now that the gaming age demographic is rising and people as a whole have forgotten what patience is the cramped release calendar makes less sense.

Honestly, most gamers I know purchase their own games on the release day and seldom ask for games as gifts no matter what the occasion since we all feel the need to beat the game before stumbling across the ending online. While I personally enjoy picking up some of the good games from the used rack in February, I know that I forget about at least one game that slipped out in the avalanche of games.

Unless your game’s target player is an 8 year old with mountains of patience and a long memory I see no reason to fight for the consumer’s dollar in November and leave the month of June barren in terms of new releases. For many developers releasing in November is akin to launching your indie movie the same day as Watchmen or The Dark Knight! In reality it isn’t a battle worth fighting.

I’ll be watching to see if this trend changes in the coming years; already Halo Wars slipped to an early 09 release which, I think will prove beneficial as more gamers will be in the market for a new game. What are your thoughts on the mountains of games released in November and early December? Do you like it or are you as overloaded as me?

Photo - Kevin Walter - Flickr

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