Warning: squirrels.

Called it!

On Monday I wrote that

The final nail in the HD DVD format's coffin will be an announcement from Wal-Mart later this summer that the company will no longer sell HD DVD discs and players. If the movie industry doesn't put the HD DVD format out of its misery, the folks in Bentonville will. Soon.

This morning Wal-Mart announced that, by June, the company will exclusively stock Blu-ray products [source: c|net, Gizmodo].

My next prediction: Toshiba [the developer of the HD DVD format and its largest supporter] will very soon announce its exit from the HD-DVD market, followed by similar exits from Universal, Paramount, and Dreamworks.

As I said back on January 8th, "It's over. Blu-ray won."

Update [Saturday, February 16]: A source at Toshiba announced this morning that the company is pulling the plug on the HD DVD format.  That leaves only Universal, Paramount, and Dreamworks in the HD DVD camp. Let's see which studio jumps ship first.

Update [Monday, February 18]: It looks like Toshiba's source jumped the gun.  Toshiba's official announcement is that the company "has not made any announcement or decision. We are currently assessing our business strategies, but nothing has been decided at the moment."  So, while the HD DVD  format is technically dead, it is not officially dead. Yet.  For more information, check out Ars Technica's coverage.

Bama bound!

Well, I am off to the deep south tomorrow to speak at the Alabama Educational Technology Conference, see my family, and chow down on some exceptional barbecue, chicken fingers, and mexican food.  If you are going to be in Birmingham any time this week, stop by the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center and say hi.

Call me Ishmael

So, in between playing Crackdown and waiting for the beta of Halo 3 to be released, I've been updating my resume.  Should I put the following Crackdown achievement under "Awards and Honors" or "Hobbies"?  :P

BREAKING NEWS: I are a college student!

Well, it looks like Christine is going to be marrying a "doc-tah": I've been accepted into the Ed D program at USC.  :)

How to Use MSCONFIG [Updated]

For the last 10 years, I've been telling everyone I know about the benefits of using the "Microsoft System Configuration Utility" or simply "MSCONFIG." Designed to help you troubleshoot problems with your computer, MSCONFIG can also be used to ensure that your computer boots faster and crashes less.

Well, I just did a massive rewrite of my world-famous How to Use MSCONFIG page at NetSquirrel.com.  What's changed?  Well, instead of cramming the MSCONFIG information for every operating system onto one page, each version of Windows now has its own page:

• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Windows 2000
• Windows ME
• Windows 98 SE
• Windows 98
• Windows 95
• Windows NT

To be honest, I am a little frightened by this rewrite.  My old MSCONFIG page is hands-down my most popular page -- it's even the number one MSCONFIG hit at Google -- but the old layout was really confusing.  I hope the rewrite makes things a little easier for everyone and that I don't get punished by the Google gods. 

I'm back [again]

Note to self: Don't launch a new blog in the midst of cramming for the GRE and speaking at ed tech conferences in Illinois, Washington, and Michigan.

Well, I'm back.  Again.  I want to give a special thank you to the folks at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators, Northwest Council for Computer Education, and Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning for inviting me to speak at their conferences over the past few weeks.

If you weren't able to attend my conference sessions, all [or at least most] of my presentations are are licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.  For an alphabetic list of all of my presentations, including the ones I did at ILTCE, NCCE, and MACUL, just visit the PowerPoint Files section of my NetSquirrel.com website.

Happy downloading!

My GRE score

I'm not sure if my score is high enough to get me into the Ed. D. program at USC, but I'm happy.

Illinois Technology Conference for Educators

It's conference time again.  My next stop is at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators on Friday, March 2nd, at the Pheasant Run Resort and Convention Center in St. Charles, Illinois.  Drop by and say howdy if you are in the neighborhood.

I'm scheduled to give four 45-minute presentations:

• Crispen's Guide to What's New and What's Next
• Now that I know PowerPoint, How do I Use it to Teach?
• The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly—How Internet Filters Work, How They Don't Work, and How Students Bypass Them
• Google 201: Advanced Googlology

The cost to attend all of Friday's sessions, including mine, is $90.

Holiday computer buying guide podcast

On last week's Steve and Johnnie show on WGN Radio in Chicago, we spent about twenty minutes talking about everything you need to know and think about if you want to buy a new computer this holiday season.  If you missed the show, or if you just want to hear what I sound like over the telephone, you can download an MP3 of what we talked about.

In particular, we talk about the five questions you need to ask before you buy a computer:

1. What do you want to do with it?
2. Do you want a desktop or laptop?
3. How much do you want to spend?
4. Windows or Mac?
5. Where should you buy it?

And, yes, I explain each of these questions in-depth in the podcast.

GaETC 2006 podcasts now available

A few weeks ago, I was a featured speaker at the Georgia Educational Technology Conference [GaETC] in Atlanta.  GaETC just posted a podcast of two of my presentations as well as podcasts of presentations by Tony Brewer, Leslie Fisher, Will Richardson, Susan Silverman, Brent Williams, and Tonya Witherspoon.  There are three ways to find and download any or all of these podcasts:

1. If you have iTunes, you can open GaETC's podcast page directly in iTunes
2. You can point your favorite web browser to GaETC's podcast page and manually download the conference's MP3 files.
3. You can point your favorite RSS reader or podcast client program to GaETC's podcast RSS feed.

If you're new to the whole podcast thing, I suggest manually downloading the conference's MP3 files from the GaETC podcast page.  That's the easiest solution.

Oh, and here are the handouts that accompany my two podcasts:

• Keeping Up with the Googlebots: What’s New at Google [3.53 MB Flash file]
• Patrick Crispen’s Complete and Total Waste of Time [88 KB Flash file]

Enjoy!