I tend to extensively research anything that I know I’ll be spending a lot of time with and/or money on. And so it was with iPod accessories. I’m glad I did, because I now have many quality accessories. To try to save you time, here’s a list of the accessories that I consider to be the best, and most essential to enjoying your iPod or iPhone to its fullest (listed in priority order).

1. Case / Skin
   The iPod scratches very easily, especially the screen (I didn’t even take my iPod out of the box before I got something to protect it); you’ll want to get something to protect your investment. There’s a TON of cases out there, all that suit a different purpose… you may want to just buy locally so that you can browse through them… the Apple store, Best Buy, etc will all have various cases. The skin i got was just a simple clear film, but it’s been really nice to have. Over a year’s time, it gathered many scratches. I recently replaced it, and it felt like I had a brand new iPod.
   iPod Video/5G Enhanced Crystal Shield [~$5 from DecalGirl]
2. Earbuds
   The earphones that come with the iPod will end up hurting your ears after awhile… they’re too hard and inflexible. I’ve been overly-satisfied with the earbuds I got. They were inexpensive, very comfortable, and sound great. I’ve bought 6+ pairs of these (2 for myself, and others as gifts).
   Griffin EarThump Earphones [~$14 from Amazon]
   (a couple Sony ones are also popular, though I didn’t care for them):
   Sony MDR-EX81LP Bud-Style Stereo Earphones [~$34 from Amazon]
   Sony MDR-EX51LP Fontopia Headphones [~$26 from Amazon]
3. Car Cradle & Charger
   
   Other than using my headphones at my computer, my car is certainly the place where I listen to my ipod the most. I feel sorry for those people who dont have an ipod car solution. When I began the search for a car solution, I was looking for a few qualities: ease of plugging / unplugging the ipod, sound quality, nice looking, and flexible configurations. I put a lot of time into this search, and after returning three unsuccessful products, I’m not in the least bit disappointed with what I ended up with. It’s called the FlexibleDock, and it’s a pretty difficult to get a hold of. It plugs into a car’s 12 volt outlet, and a flexible-yet-strong gooseneck arm extends up from there. The iPod easily clicks in and out of the top. There is a 3.5mm jack at the bottom, in which a cassette adapter, fm transmitter, or a straight line-to-line cord can be plugged into.
   Ten Technology FlexibleDock [~$50 from ???]  (seems to now only be available used)
4. Cassette Tape Adapter / FM transmitter
   
   In order to listen to the ipod in your car, you’ll need to choose 1 of 3 possible methods (there are other solutions, but they are custom & expensive). The first and best method would be to plug the ipod directly intot the stereo through a line-in cord. If you have a 3.5mm hole somewhere on your car stereo, you’ll be able to do this (in which case you would just need a stereo line-to-line cable). Most people don’t have this. The 2nd best solution is a cassette tape adapter, although the quality can vary greatly among brands. I tried about 4 brands, this one was head and shoulders above the rest.
   [~$11 from Amazon]
   For those people without a tape deck or a line-in jack, a method that has limited success is to use a FM transmitter. I bought one of these and it worked ok in rural areas:
   [~$13 from Monoprice]
5. Loud Portable Stereo
   
   For parties & trips, for charging / docking the iPod at home, for outputting the audio / video to another system. The one I got is really popular. It comes with a remote controller, and it can reach very high volumes.
   [~$183 from Amazon]

For more accessories, iLounge’s “iPod & iPhone buyer’s guide” is a very well laid out guide for anything iPod or iPhone related. iLounge.com is the best site I’ve found for all things iPod related: how to guides, articles, reviews, product descriptions, etc.

Good luck finding the best accessories, and let me know what you’ve found & if this article has helped you! …and stay tuned for part 2 of this article.

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Call Of Duty 4 was a very highly anticipated game for me, being that Call Of Duty 2 was the only game I’ve played much at all since Mario Cart. I was really looking forward to the game, and in many ways I was not let down. There’s a lot of areas in the game I haven’t played much (xbox live, campaign, etc). In fact, I’ll only comment on the mutliplayer split screen, for that’s all I’ve played much of. For someone who works in the industry (QA department at THQ), and someone who loved playing Call Of Duty 2 multiplayer SS, I can give a lot of feedback. And because I own part of Activision, I’d like to see the game succeed as much as possible ;.) Here’s some of my initial thoughts (I’ve played it maybe 6 hours total).

I’ll only comment on where the game fell short of perfection for me. There’s just so many positive things I could say about the game, it would take forever. There were only a few things that were frustrating about the game for me. Here’s a (short) list (again only referring to local multiplayer split screen):

1. No option for “random” map selection: not that big of a deal, but seriously, how hard would this have been to program in? I like not having to decide on a new map every time. When there’s a “random” option, no one has to agree on which map to play. Better yet, no one can disagree. It also allows the next game to get on quicker.
2. Respawn points: seriously flawed. Especially in multiplayer teams, you’ll respawn in the same location often, sometimes completely trapped by your enemy. The respawn points should be a good distance from the enemy. This might be one of the only major flaws in gameplay, but it’s a big one.
3. The number of maps: Only, what, 9? Really? COD2 had somethin like 20. According to multiple pre-release articles, Call Of Duty 4 was supposed to ship with 16. Is there something I need to unlock to get to the others?
4. Perk selection: In the beta, you were able to select each perk individually, but in multiplayer, you have to choose one of the pre-configured packages.
5. No guest accounts allowed with Xbox Live: It would be really nice (as it is in Halo 3) to allow multiplayer local split screen while being on xbox live.
6. Search and Destroy bomb locations: Too easy to ambush. Its also too hard to get the bomb back if you are shot when you have it (especially if it right near the target). I guess that is realistic, but doesn’t make for great game play.

Besides those few things, like I said, the game is awesome. The graphics are insane, especially when it comes to the shadowing. I love the ability to run (press down on the left joystick). The different types of grenades are outstanding (I especially like the flash grenades). The weapons are (mostly) balanced. The perks (and even the idea of perks) is genius. Overall, this game gets a 9/10 for me, with Call Of Duty 2 still outranking it slightly (it’s hard to duplicate perfection).

P.S. If I’m wrong about any of these details (which in some cases, I really hope I am), please let me know in the comments. Maybe we can get Activision to release a patch and change a couple things ;.)

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There’s 3 subgraphs, showing the different home games I play in on a regular basis. The Tom’s tourneys subgraph is a $10 buy-in no limit Texas Hold-Em tourney I play in regularly on Thursday nights. The Tom’s live subgraph is a $5 to $10 buy-in no limit Texas Hold-Em game, but rebuys & cash outs are allowed at any time (i.e. not a tournament). We usually only play that if we don’t have enough people to play a tourney on Thursday nights, or we might play it after the tourney is over. The “Grandpa’s” subgraph is a dealer’s choice (usually some variation of 7 card stud) split pot game, which usually happens every few weeks or so.

Other than that, I’ll play in other home games from time to time, and in the casino whenever I’m on vacation. The sharp spike in early September is from playing at Circus Circus in Reno this year on a family vacation. I’m still recovering from staying up so late (or early depending on how you look at it… I played 13 hours straight from 11pm Saturday night till 12 noon on Sunday). Anyways, if any of you are statistical nerds like I, you should enjoy this ;.) I’ll put some up for previous years as soon as I get Quicken reinstalled. Click the graph for a higher quality version.

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I begin the “Best Basic Strategies For Casino Games” series with Let It Ride, one of my favorite games in the casino (besides poker). The casino may have a bit more of an advantage in this game than craps or blackjack, but I have more fun playing Let It Ride. Cause’ even though you may only win one out of four hands (on average)… when you win, you usually win more than you bet. I’ll explain.

How To Play

    The Object: In Let It Ride, you aren’t playing against the dealer or the other players. You are simply trying to make the best poker hand using the three cards dealt to you and the two cards the dealer turns up.

    How It Works: You begin by placing equal-sized bets on each of the three circles on the table (see picture below). Don’t worry, you aren’t committed to betting all of them. After you are dealt three cards, you have the option of taking back your first bet (indicated by a sweeping back motion of the cards toward you). The dealer then turns over a card, and you have the option of taking back your second bet. You must then place your cards face down near the last bet, and the dealer proceeds to turn over the last card. Out of the five total cards (your three plus the two in front of the dealer), you must have at least a pair of 10s or better in order to win.

    Summary: You must place three initial bets, but you are actually only risking one of them (since you can take back the other two during the course of play). You have the option to let either of the other two bets “ride”, and you will want to sometimes, as I’ll explain in the strategy. The payout schedule is as follows: a single pair (of 10s or higher… Jacks, Queens, Kings, or Aces) pays 1-to-1, two pair pays 2 times your bet, Three of a kind 3x, and up from there. The rest of the payout schedule may vary based on casino, but the most standard one pays: a straight 5x, a flush 8x, a full house 11x, four of a kind 50x, a straight flush 200x, and a royal flush 1000 times your bet.

Strategy

    Basic: The basic strategy can be used on any table, regardless of the number of players at the table. It doesn’t matter whether there is a full table, or its just you and the dealer… your odds are the same (this, as we will see later, is not quite true if you are using the advanced strategy). But first, the basics. After you look at your first three cards, pull back your first bet, provided you don’t have a pair of tens or better, or three cards to a Royal Flush (meaning three cards above a 10, all of the same suit). If you have a pair of 10s or better initially, you can place your cards face down alongside your bets and sit tight waiting to collect on your winnings. Its such a nice feeling

After you see the fourth card, it gets a little trickier, but still isn’t too hard to remember. If you make a qualifying hand (two pair or three of a kind) on the fourth card, obviously “let it ride”. If not, pull back the second bet… unless… you have four cards to a flush (all four cards are the same suit) *or* an open-ended straight draw (meaning you have four cards in a row, one of which is NOT an ace).

That’s it. There’s no more decisions. Lay your cards face down and accept your victory or defeat.

    Reasons: All these decisions are based on probability. The first decision is too mathematical to get into, but the second decision (riding on a straight or a flush) is fairly simple to explain. The odds of catching a flush are about 1 in 5. A flush pays 8 to 1 by the casino, so your payoff is far bigger then your risk… meaning LET IT RIDE! An open-ended straight is similar. Your odds of making the straight are slightly less, but on the whole (including getting high pairs), it pays about even money. Your call here… if you don’t feel lucky, pull back any straight draw.

    Advanced: There are several other things that can increase your chance at winning, but they take a bit more concentration. These include:

• Looking at other players cards, and adjusting statistical decisions accordingly (especially play on the fourth card). For example, if you drawing to a flush and you notice that the other people at the table also have a few of the suit you are trying to get, it may be wiser to pull the second bet back.
• Table selection (finding a table where all the high cards are grouped together, and raising your bets when this occurs)
• Decisions on four cards to a straight flush

Details

    Odds: There are a few pages dedicated to showing odds for this game. For more details, check out: the wizard of odds

    Rules:

• You have to place your cards face down in front of you after your decision on the last bet
• Don’t take the cards off the table, and hold them with one hand
• Don’t be obvious about looking at other players cards

    Nuances:

• Play with your hand open / face-up (don’t hide your cards from anyone)
• The dealer will usually help guide you along
• If the casino asks you to not look at other players cards, leave the table. Tell them that the casino already has a large advantage on you, one that you couldn’t be made up by seeing other players cards. For this reason, they usually wont make a big deal about it, but technically it is against the “rules”.
• The $1 bonus bet is a side bet that should be avoided at all costs. the house has a minimum 15% advantage in the best paying casino. It is among the worst bets in the entire place.
• Same goes for the 3-card-poker side bet. The casino enjoys a 7% advantage on you there.

Comments

Playing the strategy above will give the casino about a 3.5% advantage. Playing the advanced strategy might reduce that by a percentage point. While it may not be your best odds in the casino, it is a fun game to play and gives an opportunity to hit a real jackpot that you can tell your grandkids about someday. Overall, its fun, simple, decent odds, and sometimes very exciting.

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If you are planning a trip to the casino, first of all, take me with you.

Secondly, if you plan to gamble, make sure you know what you’re doing. You’ll almost never have the advantage in the long run (with exception of blackjack (if counting cards) & poker (because you’re playing against other people instead of the casino)). But there are things you can do to have the advantage in the short run. This series of articles will give you a quick guide to playing various casino games, and the best basic strategies to use in order to maximize your potential for winning.

In each article, I’ll go over how to play the game (the rules, object, and summary), as well as the strategy for the game (basics, tips, reasons, odds, and advanced play). I’ll also reference charts that you can print out and take with you, and provide videos to help you learn. Within 5 minutes, you’ll become familiar enough with the games to play them, and with a little luck, win & win big!

Last, but not least, learn how to set a bankroll and a limit for yourself. This way you’ll know what games / limits you can play. A very basic guide for setting a bankroll is this: you’ll need 20 times the minimum bet per game per night. For example, if you plan on playing $10-per-bet-minimum blackjack for a night, you should have a $200 bankroll to risk (20 x $10). Even a $5 minimum bet can get large if you plan on playing the correct strategies for some games. For instance, placing an “odds bet behind the pass-line” in craps, or “doubling down” in blackjack.

For smaller bankrolls, stick to the games that take a while to play, or those in which the casino has a smaller advantage on you. A few of the games that take longer to play are: Poker, Pai Gow, and Slots / Video Poker & Electronic Games. A few of the best games percentage-wise include: Blackjack, Craps, and Poker.

I cant guarantee you’ll win, but I can guarantee that reading these articles will make you more comfortable playing the games, allowing you to have more fun. And I can also promise that you’ll have a better chance at winning using these basic strategies (as opposed to no strategy at all). Have fun & good luck!

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I started my wishlist site reviews by simply glancing over the user interface of each site… just to get a feel for how they looked. Many times (especially as a web developer), you can tell how well a site will work without ever clicking anything. But to be fair, I will still sign up for and attempt to use all of them. This is, after all, a survey to find the best… not merely the most popular.

I will, however, begin with the site that already boasts the most traffic, Kaboodle. I don’t want to announce a winner from the start, but I have to say, if I wasn’t doing a survey, I would stop here. Although some functions were a little difficult to find, it provided almost everything I was looking for.

As it seems many of the other sites do as well, Kaboodle focuses on community / social shopping. Although I really don’t care too much for this in a wishlist site, I suppose it doesn’t hurt. Kaboodle allows you to have personal tags (labels which describe the individual), as well as a profile picture, and a short “about me” section. You can also enter your birthday and location. There is a “style compatibility test”, which is based on your ratings of product types. This seems to me to be more of a marketing ploy than anything else. There’s also friends, groups, email, and comments, as any social networking site should have. I liked that they give the ability to set up surveys, so that people can recommend products to you. Enough on the social aspect.

The Wishlist

After a cluttered initial interface (with all the social / shopping stuff), I was surprised to find that the wishlist itself had most of the features I was looking for. You can create multiple different types of lists (screenshot below), along with privacy settings for each one (desired features a & b). You can either make lists public or private, and you give access to the private lists by way of email.

The nicest thing about Kaboodle’s wishlist is importing items into it. You can either enter an item manually, or insert a URL and let Kaboodle gather all the related info it can. This allows you to enter items that you might not have a link for, or items that you want but may not even be aware exist yet (feature c). I was very impressed with Kaboodle’s import feature (screenshot below). It gathers a good amount of information (including pictures, title, descriptions, highlights) for a variety of different URLs I entered. The only thing missing here was a couple more well-defined fields, such as “approximate price” (however, you can use the general fields for whatever you’d like)(d). There’s also browser integration in the form of a cool little button that’ll grab whatever URL you’re on, and start the import function. At first, I didn’t notice the link that allows you to import an Amazon wishlist (i), but it’s there as well.

Kaboodle’s integration with other sites is better than average, although it still leaves me wanting more (f/j). You can create widgets (screenshot below), by way of flash slideshows of your lists or javascript “badges”. You can get RSS updates of recent activity, but not a straight XML export of the lists themselves. Integration with Facebook would be a definite plus.

The last feature I want to touch on is the ability to pull current prices for each item (h). While it wouldn’t grab the lowest prices for every item with one click (something that would be awesome, but that I’d imagine may put too much of a strain on the server), it did allow a query through shopping.com (screenshot below) of each item on an individual basis. Very cool.

Downsides

- Community / shopping aspect clutters interface a bit
- Multiple ads per page are also distracting… too focused on selling products.
- Printable version of wishlist is too large (no compact view, must print with images) (e)
- No true raw export of lists (j)
- I didn’t see a gift calendar (g), but I’m assuming that since you put your birthday in, it’ll remind you of friend’s birthdays. Still, a custom calendar would be nice.

Conclusion

Since Kaboodle has just about everything I wanted, save a few interface items, I’ve decided to use it as the base model, to which I will compare the rest of the wishlist sites. I know that is saying something in itself, but hey, Kaboodle deserves it. A-

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I was browsing through my Amazon.com wishlist the other day. It’s probably the only site I’ve ever used the wishlist function on. It’s cool and useful, but it leaves me wanting more. Even though there is an enormous number of products on Amazon, I still find myself having to bookmark / create shortcuts to, or even write down on paper (ahhh!) some of the products I want. I’d love to have one place that I could keep a list of all the products I’m keeping my eye on, along with a link on where to buy them. I’d also like the ability to do other things, besides just adding a product to a list (see below). So I began researching wishlist sites…

I came across various blogs referencing one or another, and I’ve compiled a list from those. I plan on trying each of these out, and then blog on my evaluation of each site. If you’d like to be part of this wishlist site survey, don’t hesitate to chime in with your pros and cons for the sites! Here’s a list of the sites I’ve found (if you know of others, please let me know in the comments):

1. Kaboodle
2. This Next
3. Things I Want
4. Wish Pot
5. Gift Tagging
6. Wish Listr
7. Gift That
8. List Ideas
9. Meta Wishlist
10. Wish Roll
11. Wish Radar
12. Wishlist Complete
13. Hint Dropper

Features I’d Like

• different types of lists (gift list, shopping list, grocery list, etc)
• private and public lists, as well as lists shared only with specific individuals
• add items from local stores as well as online stores, or even items you’re looking for that you haven’t found at any store yet
• tag items with labels / metadata (categories, subcategories, special instructions, notes, etc)
• printable version(s) of wishlists (for local shopping, or to give to someone)
• integration with multiple other sites (facebook, myspace, etc)(provide an rss feed of my wishlist items)
• gift calendar with reminders (for birthdays, anniversarys, holidays, etc)
• pull current prices for the items (from multiple stores, like pricegrabber does)
• import from other wishlists (amazon)
• export wishlist to a spreadsheet (e.g. excel)

Taking Amazon as the base model, and looking for these features, I’ll soon write about the pros and cons of the sites I look at. I’m looking forward to my shopping life becoming much more easier… hopefully one of these sites can provide me that. Till then, it’s Amazon, paper, and shortcuts.

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