2009 – Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears – Tell 'em What Your Name Is

When I was first brought Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! I had no idea what to expect. I hadn’t heard of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears and I had no idea that they had only recently put out a previous album. In the years the followed I forgot to check up on them, but the band is still together putting out new music, and it’s very exciting stuff. The band is an unexpected turn from what you hear on the radio these days. I don’t know where they get much air time, but I’m glad a band like this exists to challenge pop music.

Now, these Music Monday posts aren’t intended to be music reviews, they’re just here to help you find something you may not have heard before. Although you may not consider funk and soul your typical genres of choice, I’ll let you judge for yourself whether or not you can resist tapping your foot along to their song Sugarfoot:

Here is the phone number for Xbox Technical Support

This week’s Xbox Tip of the Week isn’t a direct suggestion for the Xbox itself, but rather some easy ways to contact Xbox Support! People constantly ask me the fastest way to get ahold of the folks at Xbox Support. I encourage you to use Twitter or the Ambassador Chat first and foremost. They should be able to help you. But if you really want to contact Xbox Support over the phone, in the United States, just call 1-800-4MY-XBOX (that’s 1-800-469-9269). If you are outside of the United States, or if you do not wish to wait on hold and would rather an Xbox Support representative call you, you can simply fill out this form which will offer you some troubleshooting tips but also provide you with the proper contact information at the bottom of the page. If you’re in the United States, look on the lower right portion of the page after describing your issue and you will see an option to have the support team call you!

Again, you can call 1-800-4MY-XBOX, or if you’re outside of the U.S., just visit https://support.xbox.com/en-US/contact-us and answer a couple of questions so that they can help route you to the right people when you call in!

How Windows 8 applications will handle Push Notifications

iPhones, Androids, even Windows Phone 7 devices and your old brick phones… they all had notifications to let you know if you’ve got a voicemail, text message, email, or nowadays even to suggest that your Draw Something friend has… drawn something. This all happens in the background, either on a schedule like every 15 minutes, or with a technology called “Push.” In many cases, developers need to have their own backend servers for their applications to communicate with. So how will Windows 8 do these Push Notifications? With Windows 8 development, your Windows 8 apps will use the existing Microsoft Azure servers and access the WNS (Windows Push Notification Service). In this video from Microsoft’s Channel 9, Nick Harris is here to tell you all of the details. It’s a lengthy discussion, probably more than the average person wants to know – but for geeks & developers? Some of this might be pure gold.



A free game, 10 years in the making… Wing Commander Saga

A fan project that ran for nearly ten years recently came to a close… or perhaps it’s only just begun. However you want to look at it, Wing Commander Saga is now available for download at multiple major gaming websites. There is even a torrent available for a no-waiting, download now kind of experience.

The game was made in the open sourced Free Space 2 engine, and has been polished more and more as the years went on. Since the root engine is so old, you can play it at max resolution on a current gen system and easily maintain an over-30-frames-per-second average. It’s now a full blown Wing Commander game in every sense of the word except legally. There is such strong fan support behind this that if EA, the current holders of the Wing Commander name, tries to shut these guys down, there will be an outcry from the fans. The projects been well publicized for the better part of a decade, they knew it was coming – if they try to step in now that it’s been released? It’s too late. But I won’t rain on anyone’s parade. Head on over to WCSaga.com and check out the details!