I spent a few hours yesterday tweaking the look of the site. Not a complete overhaul, but I think the overall look and feel of the site is much better. Here’s what I did:

• Header (Removed the menu bar that was above the image, added kevinrossen.com to the image and made only that text clickable). I got the header from the Digital Westex Image Gallery and customized it in Photoshop.
• Changed the picture that shows up in the address bar (it’s a Mountain Dew bottle). I figured out how to do it using Wikipedia.
• Made a flash file for the countdown to the Mavericks season. I made it using SWiSHmax. It’s a great program for making basic flash files. I customized a sample countdown that comes with the program. I’ll write about the program sometime in the future.
• Changed the Flickr Pics badge to the Flickr Daily Zeitgeist. It’s s simple script that Flickr create for you and you just copy and paste it into your site. I chose to only include my photos and my contacts’ photos.
• Sidebar overhaul (took out “bullets” in the boxes, moved the subscribe links into the about section, fixed some of the spacing, and added an archives section)

Looks like a lot, but I’m really satisfied. The next thing I’m going to try to figure out is how to make the search function in WordPress work–it doesn’t now. If you have any suggestions or ideas please share them in by commenting on this post.

In the words of Glenn Beck callers, “Awwwhhhh Yeeeaaaahhhh!” Costco has the 360 bundle available to order online. I know I’m going to get it when I read these little words: “Backwards Compatible: top-selling Xbox® games can be played on Xbox 360â„¢, including Halo® 2.”

***UPDATE***
Costco has taken the page down. Don’t know why, but you can see if it’s back up here.

Kodak has just started shipping a digital camera that is wi-fi enabled. The idea behind it is that you can email the pictures directly from the camera when you’re connected to a wireless internet connection. It is equipped with 4 megapixels of resolution, 3x optical zoom, storage room for up to 1,500 photos and a 3-inch touch screen. This may sound pretty good, but I don’t see it catching on. Firstly, the pictures will be rather large–roughly 1mb per high-res picture. Most email accounts don’t allow very big attachments, so you’d only be able to send a couple of pictures at a time. Secondly, it’s not very hard to plug most camera’s into computer anymore. Usually you either plug in a usb cable to the camera or take the memory card out and put it in a reader.

Basically Kodak is trying to appeal to people’s general laziness. However, I see it being much more of a hassle getting the camera to connect to a wireless network than the normal process digital camera’s do now. My thought is that it’s a big waste of money.

Read the story here.

The merger between Sprint and Nextel is complete. They’ve got some new coverage plans which look pretty good. One that I haven’t seen from Sprint before is the free incoming minutes plans. Check them out here.

IGN.com is now reporting that Microsoft plans to release the Xbox 360 on Friday, November 25. That’s the day after Thanksgiving. It was originally thought the system would be released around November 4, but it looks like they want to give game developers a little more time to finish tweaking some software title.

My thought is that this date is the best date they could possibly choose. People are already insane when it comes to shopping then and retailers generally have massive sales and open their doors early. I think Microsoft could hit a jackpot by releasing the hottest system on the biggest shopping day of the year. If this story turns out to be true, I think Microsoft did something right. Now if they could just get the brains that work on Xbox to help the Windows OS people . . .

For all my iPod owner friends, this won’t be of much help to you. However, I wanted to let everyone know that the Yahoo! Unlimited service is great. For only $5 a month (when you pre-pay annually) you get access to instantly play over 1 million songs or download them to a portable music player. In my scenario, this works perfectly. I can connect my Treo 650 to my computer and transfer songs directly from the Yahoo! Music Engine (YME) and listen to them on the go. This has been a great new feature to my already super-cool phone/pda.

At first, I liked the service, but thought it had some shortcomings. For example, you used to only get album results when you did a search for an artist. Now they’ve fixed that by letting you choose your view (albums/songs). They’ve also added the ability to listen to song from the top 100 chart. Pretty nice upgrades to an already good service.

On top of that, YME is customizable. I liked iTunes feature that allowed you to subscribe and download Podcasts directly in iTunes. I didn’t think YME could handle podcasts, but I found a plugin for it on the YME plugin page.

There is a free trial of the service, so check it out and decide for yourself.

A lot of people ask me for help when they have computer problems. One of the biggest frustrations with computers (at least PCs) is Windows starting to run slowly and overall system performance getting worse. One of the best and easiest, although time consuming, ways to improve performance overall is to format your hard drive and reinstall Windows. I have had to do this on my current laptop at least once before and have done it on every computer I’ve owned–sometimes multiple times.

Here is a step-by-step guide to reinstalling Windows.

Let me first warn you that every system is different. While your process should be easy and error free, things can go bad. If you run into problems don’t hesitate to get some more help.

1. BACKUP YOUR DOCUMENTS
This is the most important step of them all. Almost every software program is replaceable, but your Word files, music, pictures, videos and such are not replaceable. If you have a CD/DVD burner this should be relatively easy to do. In my own situation I was able to copy all of my files from my laptop to my desktop via network connection. This might work for you as well, although having a hard backup is a really good thing to have.

2. Make a list of all the programs/software you use on a regular basis.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget some of the programs that you don’t use very often. Just click through the “All Programs” button in the Start menu and make a list (and print it out) of the programs you want to make sure you’ll get reinstalled after the format.

3. Track down all your software discs and activation codes.
If you have a name brand computer like Dell or HP, is should have come with restore CDs and the Windows XP disc. I recommend doing a format and install from the XP disc, not the restore. The restore CD puts a lot of extra software on that you probably don’t use anyway.

4. Put the XP CD in your CD drive and reboot.
Your computer should be set to be able to boot from CD by default. If, with the XP CD in the drive, your computer boots to Windows like normal you probably need to change some settings in your bios. You can typically get into your bios by press F2 or something like that when the very first screen comes up right after you turn on your computer. Check for something like “Boot Order” and make sure the CD drive is selected.

5. Follow the options Windows offers to reinstall.
At this point, XP basically guides you through step-by-step. You want to make sure you choose new installation or something like that. Also, if it gives you the options, make sure you format the drive. This makes sure you have a clean install.

6. Download Windows updates using Windows Update.
You’ll need internet access at this point. The very first thing you need to do is click Start > All Programs > Windows Update. This might take a while if you have to download Service Pack 2 (especially if you’re on dial-up). There are a lot of securtiy updates that Windows has released and the sooner you get those on your computer the safer it will be.

7. Download updated drivers.
Again, if you have a name brand computer this is easy. Just go to the company’s website and look for a support/drivers link. They keep all the most current drivers for the computer in this one spot.

8. Download / Install your software list.
Start with Firefox and then get the rest of the programs. You’ll want to install the software from the company’s website whenever possible. The newest versions are kept there and they’re always better.

9. Enjoy your clean, smooth-running machine.
If you go through the reinstall process, please comment on how it went and if I’m missing any steps. It’s been a little while since I’ve done it myself, so I may have left something out.

Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s a better option for web browsing out there than Internet Explorer. Firefox has quickly become one of my favorite software programs of all time. It’s a much more stable software (very rare for it to crash), highly customizable and user-friendly.

My favorite things about it are (in no particular order):
– Search box (you can search many different websites by typing in the box on the top right of the page)
– Tabbed browsing (doesn’t seem like big deal at first, but once you start using it a lot you can’t live without it)
– Extensions (this is where it blows IE out of the water!!!)

I currently use the following extensions:
– Adblock
– Forecastfox
– FoxyTunes
– SmoothWheel
– Tabbrowser Preferences
– Yahoo! Toolbar
– MapIt!
– downTHEMall!

Best of all, it’s FREE!!! If you haven’t got it yet, download it now!

If you’ve been to my blog before, you’ve probably noticed the new look. I’ve switched from Typepad to WordPress and have it hosted at VizaWeb. I’ll be able to customize the site more and it’s cheaper!!! I’ll hopefully have a better look to the site very soon.