Do you ever have the urge to play one of those 8-bit video games, but you can’t find a working NES and you don’t want to download anything onto your computer to make them playable?  Well, Alpha Males of the Group feel your pain and have put together a brilliant list of 95 old school games you can play for free online.  There are some really awesome games on the list, and some really obscure games.

Are there any on the list you’d totally recommend for others?  I love 1942 myself, but I’ll try anything so long as it’s free!  There are a lot of games on there I’ve never even heard of, so I don’t want any hidden gems to go unnoticed in favor of another epic 8-hour Mario Brother session.

The swine flu has become the hot story.  Everywhere you look there’s discussion of the flu, how it spreads, and how to protect yourself and others.  The major key to all these efforts is hygiene.  Specifically, cleaning up after your sneeze or cough.

Everyone says to smother your sneezes or coughs with your sleeve, a tissue, or your hand, but what if you work in an office environment and thus have your hands attached to a keyboard all day?  Wouldn’t your keyboard pick up all those horrible germs, plus any and all leftover dribbles of food, cookie crumbs, and snarfed soda?  Of course it would, that’s why you need a washable keyboard.

Firebox has a washable, waterproof USB keyboard for $58.  Not only can you toss it into the washing machine when it gets grungy, it also features Silver Seal technology to retard the growth of gross, sickness-causing bacteria.  So if you tip over that cup of coffee, no worries!  Sneeze all over the keyboard if you want!

Jade passed this video along to me, and it was too funny not to make it up for Musical Monday.  And it’s not even one of GoRemy’s best works, as his TurboTax video is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in quite some time.  I just wish I had seen it closer to April 15th!

For years, Apple users have crowed about their operating system’s lack of viruses, never thinking that the reason why Apples were virus free was based mostly on lack of install base rather than lack of ways to infect the system.  After all, if given proper motivation, Apple computers are easy targets for hackers.  Just like any other computer, Apple’s software is full of exploits and bugs, and now that Apple’s popularity is up, the hackers are coming for Jobs and company.

The first Apple virus in the wild is called iBotnet, and in this case, if you’ve installed a pirated copy of iWork onto your machine, you might have infected yourself (though you deserve it for stealing).  While it has only infected a few thousand computers so far, it should put a shiver down the back of any Macolyte who doesn’t maintain an antivirus program on their machine.  Your Apple can be poisoned.

As always, keep your computer patched (and hope that Apple will close their security holes a little more quickly than they have in the past).  Be careful what you download and where you download from.  Have an antivirus program, keep it up to date, and make sure you run it regularly to keep your machine clean.  You know, pretend you’re a PC user and browse suspiciously.

These days, you can’t be too careful, and no one is safe anymore.

Image:  Neatorama

If you’re like me (and for the purposes of this discussion you are), then you’re an avid player of rhythm games.  Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, the Rock Band track packs, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Guitar Hero Metallica… I’ve got all of them.  I’ve played them all a ton.  I love them all, but at this point I don’t need any extra plastic instruments (just Wii-friendly Guitar Hero drums).

However, I have to admit that I’m sorely tempted by the prospect of the special-edition equipment that comes with The Beatles Rock Band.  I’m not even a really big Beatles fan (I think they’re overrated, which automatically makes me pure evil in the eyes of all those Beatles fanatics out there), but for $250 at my local GameStop I can pick up the game, a new set of Beatles Rock Band drums with a metal kick pedal, a custom microphone with microphone stand, AND a Hofner violin bass like Paul McCartney played.  If it came with a Gretsch Country Gentleman like George Harrison played (or just a generic Gretsch guitar body) then I’d have already ordered the game.

As it stands, until they throw in that Gretsch body so I can get my Rev. Jim Heath on, I’ll just pick up the game on September 9th when it is released to the general public.

Were you a supporter of HD DVD?  Are you bummed that your side lost the format war, and now you’re stuck with a failed format and a bunch of really expensive coasters?  Well, fear not, videophile!  Warner Brothers is taking pity on you with Red2Blu.

Here’s how it works:  You select the HD DVDS you want to get Blu Rays for.  You mail WB the original cover art.  For $4.95 plus shipping and handling, they send you a brand new Blu Ray copy of the movie!  There are limits to the offer, of course (like the HD DVD you bought has to have a Blu Ray equivalent), but for those that backed the wrong side in the format war, a new Blu Ray disc for $5 isn’t a bad deal at all.

You even get to keep the old HD DVD, in case you get nostalgic.  It’s great that Warner is doing this (especially considering they don’t really have to) and I hope that more companies follow in their footsteps.  I just wish I had bought some of those discounted HD DVDs when I had the chance!

One of the first things I did when I got my MP3 player last Christmas was to go to Amazon and look for free music.  Unfortunately, because I have a low frustration tolerance and tend to miss out on the simplest solution, I was never able to find as much free music as I was looking for.  What I did find was a bunch of samplers of varying quality, but no way to adequately sort them. I signed up for Amazon’s newsletter, check it when it comes in, but otherwise give it no thought.

Then I saw this guide to free music from Gear Diary and kicked myself.   Apparently, Amazon had a listing for free songs all along and I never noticed it.  You can even sort it by genre!

If you’re looking for recommendations, the Amazon Sampler is worth checking out, if only for Flight of the Conchords.  I’ve also grown to appreciate the funktasticness of the This is Daptone Records sampler.  Totally different styles of music, but excellent samplers.  If you find anything exceptionally good on there, feel free to share it in the comments!

This is absoultely the craziest thing you’ll see all day.  It’s Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody performed by a bunch of antique-quality electronics!  I’ve discussed my love of Queen before (as strange as it is), and while the orchestration isn’t exactly right, you are trying to make symphonic rock and roll with some oscilloscopes and an old printer.  Can’t expect miracles, and the awesomeness of watching the spectacle makes up for the timing troubles.

Mark Rejhon types 75 words per minute on a BlackBerry.  I type only 80 words per minute on a full-sized keyboard.  This guy is incredible.  He must have thumbs of steel!

I was reading an interview with Sony marketing executive John Koller today over at GamesIndustry.biz and one of the comments he made that really intrigued me was this:

Q: So the obvious questions is, is this the beginning of the end of the UMD format?

John Koller: We still look to actively support UMD. Again, it’s a balance, because we want to make sure that retail has theirs, and on that we on the digital side support this new kind of distribution model. We look to the tangible disc as continuing to be very important. I think there’s certainly a consumer out there who values tangibility. We say that alot in our research. Consumers who just want to hold the disc and be able to use it.

On the other side, and again going back to music, we’ve seen that model and we know how that ended. We know that after a couple of years of digital most people said digital was for them because it’s so easy, they’re not going to lose the license to something they download. The consumer who likes tangibility is worried about system crashes and losing downloads. So that’s an education process for us to talk to consumers and let them know that content can be re-downloaded. It’s a balance, but UMD isn’t going away.

It reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend of mine once concerning the purchase of legal downloaded movies off of iTunes or Amazon Unboxed.  I couldn’t possibly fathom paying $10 or $20 for a downloaded movie that didn’t come with a physical copy.  I’d be too worried about DRM restrictions, viruses corrupting my movie files, and hard drive crashes.  Of course, with physical home video media, discs can get scratched or broken, lost, or stolen pretty easily (and there are still format issues between newer and older DVDs and players).

There’s no such thing as the perfect format, I guess.  Both formats have their problems.  That’s why the movement of including digital copies with the physical copy of whatever DVD is starting to grow on me.  Every DVD I’ve picked up or reviewed in the past three months has had a free digital copy included.  It’s kind of the best of both worlds.

Could you live in a world where movies are download only, or are you a Luddite like me, attached to your shiny discs?