I spent many nights at that stadium watching everything from Pirates games to Monster Truck races. Nothing beat $6 general admission seats to Pirates games, especially when you showed up for batting practice and left with a dozen baseballs and autographs. And I’ll never forget the summer of 1997 that the freak show Pirates gave me. Good times.

Notice the cheering in the background. The cheering was more for the progress of the City of Pittsburgh. We received new homes for football and baseball — you can see Heinz Field on the left in this shot (it was very close to Three Rivers Stadium). This was a time of joy for the city. Little did we know that in these 9 years, the Steelers would have already celebrated 2 Super Bowl championships. As for the Pirates, well, we love the Pirates, too.

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Mashable:

• Why Apple’s iPad disappoints
• A comprehensive guide
• What’s missing from the iPad

TechCrunch:

• Everything you need to know (this has all of TechCrunch’s stories linked)

CrunchGear:

• Our take

Crackberry:

• Love reading Crackberry addict responses

Gizmodo:

• Could voip calls on iPad be next?

You can watch today’s entire press event here, as always. Like I said, I’m doing some reading on it. First impressions are that it is not a game changer in any way. I thought I’d want to buy this instantly, but now I don’t think I’ll make the effort to save the money. As hype dies down and I gather more facts, I’ll write a complete review here.

Related posts:

1. Apple unveils iPad (video roundup)
2. Apple’s tablet, rumors for Wednesday’s event

Apple unveiling, from NY Post

iPad hands on, from TechCrunch

More from press conference

MadTV’s iPad skit from years ago

Report from CBS News

Steve Wozniak’s opinion

Related posts:

1. Reviews of Apple’s iPad
2. Apple’s tablet, rumors for Wednesday’s event

Related posts:

1. Apple’s tablet, rumors for Wednesday’s event

Metro, a free Canadian daily newspaper, has teamed with foursquare which will allow it to add their location-specific content to the foursquare service. This opens up worlds of possibilities in terms of advertising specials, business reviews and general content. No matter where you are, just check in and you could have specific news delivered straight to you.

Metro is even offering a contest to promote the new venture:

To promote this exciting new partnership, Metro is running a contest to win one of five iPhone 3GS units.  Over the next 4-weeks, Foursquare players who follow Metro and check-in near where they pick up Metro will unlock a special Metro Foursquare badge and be automatically entered to win. The contest is being promoted through in-paper ads across all 7 editions of Metro, and in English Canada, through Metro’s recently launched reader loyalty program, Club Metro.

Just awesome stuff. This should only be the beginning of what news organizations should be doing. Tapping into these markets can only help them reach audiences that may not be looking for their content. It’ll be fun to monitor this situation.

Read more: Poynter; Lost Remote; Metro News; Mashable

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1. Ask and I shall receive apparently

I’m going to start reviews for apps that I use on my BlackBerry 9550 this week. But first I wanted to just list which ones you can expect. The following is a list of all the apps I have loaded on my BB. I only load apps that I use, too. So, obviously, if you see it here, I get use out of it. In no particular order:

1. BerryWeather
2. BlackBerry Messenger
3. Opera Mini
4. Seesmic for BlackBerry
5. Foursquare
6. Facebook
7. WordPress for BlackBerry
8. ScoreMobile
9. BlackBerry App World
10. Google Maps
11. Visual Voicemail
12. Gmail
13. DriveSafe.ly
14. Vlingo
15. Movies
16. reQall
17. Pandora
18. Tether
19. Poynt
20. Loopt
21. BeejiveIM
22. iheartradio
23. eBay
24. iTookThisOnMyPhone
25. Urbanspoon
26. MileageMeter
27. CrackBerry.com
28. UberTwitter

Starting this week I’ll single reviews for each. You’ll notice I don’t use Viigo, which pretty much everyone does. I’ve had it installed a few times, but always find myself not using it. What it provides I get better from other sources. Anyways, I’ll start these this week and at the end I’ll list some apps I’d love to see supported by my device (Storm2).

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1. WordPress for BlackBerry

Guest author Jeff Scott looks at the Apple tablet from a gaming perspective. I thought this was fitting given all the gaming articles I’ve written recently. It poses some interesting thoughts, but I think the tablet as a gaming device would be more of a secondary feature. Sure, it would be nice, but it would serve the masses better in other areas — most importantly mobile productivity. I’m hoping Apple doesn’t play it off simply as a gaming console.

Anyways, Scott’s opening and link to the full article:

While we still don’t know the name of the new tablet device; could be iPad, iTablet, iSlate, iCanvas, or an extension of the MacBook name. But what we do know, due to many recent leaks on the announcement coming from Apple next week, the tablet is being targeted as a gaming device.

Connections with the device and gaming started when the Wall Street Journal reveled that Apple had been working with Electronic Arts purportedly to have games available to demo for the device reveal on January 27th. What games EA will be presenting, we don’t know. This follows earlier reports that Apple had been in contact with “select developers” to create apps to showcase on the device. At that time we were unable to find anyone to admit to working with Apple for the Tablet launch.

Then in the last couple days came indications from many gaming related publications small and large that they had been invited to the special Apple event on 1/27. This shows a clear push by Apple to have the device covered in the games press, pointing to gaming as a major target for the device.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Apple tablet as a gaming device.

Read the full article at Crunchgear here.

Related posts:

1. Stuck on video/mobile game material
2. Reviews of Apple’s iPad
3. Mobile gaming’s future

I want to make this review quick and to the point.

First, let me say that I love the car. My viewpoint that led me to looking at the Soul — I wanted an SUV (because I always loved driving my mom’s Ford Escape). SUVs are expensive, though, and are generally out of my price range. Also, driving that type of vehicle in the Lowcountry doesn’t seem practical. There is no snow, hills or anything. I’d be better off with something better on gas, but has SUV-type room. This led me in the Honda Element or smaller hatchback options. With all this in mind, when I first saw the Soul I really liked it. It is small, competing with the likes of a Scion or Nissan Cube, but doesn’t possess the boxy look (which I don’t like at all). Instead, the Soul looks like an SUV, just in a miniature form. It also rides like an SUV and when you put the seats down in the back, it has the room like one. It was a perfect fit.

If this is anything like you’d be interested in, then I promise you’ll enjoy the Soul. Just give it a ride. Further details after the jump.

Likes:

The price (it can’t be beat): My model, the sport, is the top of the line model and came with the sunroof already installed. Factor in the 18-inch wheels, all the technology hookups and goodies the Soul is equipped with and it’s just amazing. I got it all for under $19,000. Fully loaded vehicles in this class were pushing well over $20k.

All the technology. Bluetooth built-in (use it all the time with my Storm2). iPod sync. Excellent sound system (mine came with the upgraded sound system). Free Sirius for 3 months (I already had a subscription anyways).

The room, like I said. When you need the space, the seats fold down to give you SUV room. If you don’t need it, then there’s plenty of room in backseats for passengers (or dogs!). The little car is also good on gas. I’m beginning to average around 28 mpg, which is worlds better than what my Sable was doing.

Dislikes:

The extremely small engine, even on the sport model. I wish at the least sport model had the 2.4 that the top of the line Kia Forte possesses. Sometimes, that little extra pep is needed.

A simple thing, but the Forte has a MPG function built in on the mileage counter. It was a nice little feature. Don’t understand why it wouldn’t be on the Soul as well. I use a BlackBerry app (mileage meter) to keep track of it all.

There aren’t many dislikes because I really do love the car. What bothers me the most is that I bought mine on the first go around of the vehicle. With each production cycle, Kia seems to be tweaking with little things inside (changing the speaker lighting, adding leather seats, etc). Obviously I’d enjoy some of these changes, but that’s to be expected.

Even if you don’t want something in this class, check out the Soul. It’s a fun vehicle. If you want a car, I’d test drive the Kia Forte as well. I took one for a spin and would have bought it if I wanted that type of vehicle. Instead, I’m the proud owner of this:

Love it.

Share and Enjoy:

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My ride through the gaming industry started when I covered the Geekend conference in Savannah. Microsoft’s famous “Major Nelson” was there as a keynote speaker on Saturday night and his discussion sparked a few ideas. Maya then focused me on the consoles at first before switching to mobile games. Learned a lot just from writing those pieces and mentioning it here also nabbed me a copy of foursquare’s BlackBerry beta app a good two weeks before it was publicly released. That was cool.

Keep an eye out for some more stuff.

Related posts:

1. Mobile gaming’s future
2. Apple’s tablet, rumors for Wednesday’s event

Web Designer, Practical Web Design, Website Magazine -- must reads.

Update (I’m home now): Web Designer — http://www.webdesignermag.co.uk/; Practical Web Design — http://www.netmag.co.uk/; Website Magazine — http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/

Of course, you should already be reading Smashing Magazine, too. Keep an eye out for all their RSS feeds as well, because I’ll add them to my list.

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