"Sontar-Ha!"

It's May 1st and I need to select a winner for the mimico-sponsored 'give-away' competition! There can only be 1 mimobot Boba Fett winner! The tension is mounting, but I'll announce the winner on May 4th!

Missed out? Don't worry! I'll be running further 'give-away' contests throughout the spring and summer! Fancy winning a copy of AVPR: Aliens Vs Predator - Requiem on DVD? Then enter this competition over at horrorshare.co.uk (unless otherwise stated, I accept no responsibility for the content of any other web site, including any site which may link to or from this site).

The month of May heralds the fourth anniversary of my blogging career! And I can't think of a more auspicious way to mark this milestone than with the most recent Google PageRank algorithm update! This blog is now the beneficiary of a PR5! Absolutely awesome.

Did you enjoy Saturday's Sontaran yarn? It was good fun, and most humorous to see the diminutive potato-headed clones back in full force! The tech noir trappings of The Sontaran Stratagem were most becoming! Can't wait for the action figures!

Re-Tweet

Last night (GMT) I read a tweet by Darren Rowse (whom I'm following on Twitter), inviting his followers to submit their best blog posts from last week! The best of these, as selected by Darren, would be reposted on Darren's Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger.

This morning I discovered that Darren had selected my submission Cats, Jelly Babies, FeedBurner and an iPhone wallpaper! for inclusion: Re-Tweeted - 73 Top Posts from the Last Week. This has resulted in more traffic to this blog and new Twitter (direct link to my profile) followers! I'm delighted and humbled.

Darren will be running another Twitter-related participatory post next week! Be sure to follow Darren on Twitter (direct link to Darren's profile). Incidentally, Darren is a fellow Mac OS X User and periodically compiles (with the aid of his readers) lists of blog-related Mac OS X applications, which I've found invaluable and hope you do too.

Cats, Jelly Babies, FeedBurner and an iPhone wallpaper!

The last few days have been particularly manic!

Since Friday I've embarked on the process of updating Nick Smith's blog template and publishing his Blogger hosted site to a custom domain name using GoDaddy (you can register domain names from any of a number of different registrars). This is no mean feat when you factor in html coding, FeedBurner, AdSense and Google Webmaster Tools amongst others!

Cat City Online
Cat City Online is the weblog of Nick Smith, author of "Scriptwriting: The Secrets Unleashed," "Milk Treading," "The Kitty Killer Cult" and "Undead on Arrival."

Drop by Nick's new and improved site and leave a comment. He's a good friend and a creative chap...

Memorial
Making further progress with my mother's memorial project! Today Shop@Panasonic, Harlequins Centre, Exeter, pulled through with a Plasma HDTV TH-37PX70, which will be installed at Lucerne House once the refurbishment work on the Alphinbrook Unit is complete! And a Shop@Panasonic staff member recognised me from myentertainmentnews.co.uk (formerly Unit News)! Always a pleasure to meet a fellow Doctor Who/Torchwood fan!

In addition to the plasma television, we've bought a PC, widescreen monitor and a Nintendo Wii (includes Wii Sports)!

The next steps include researching the needs of each resident and costing the peripherals and software needed to facilitate the highest level of transparency! At this stage I have no idea of the total cost - anywhere from £300 to £3000 and beyond! I'll give serious consideration to approaching disabled charities, for extra funding, if my mother's memorial fund falls short.

FeedBurner Help Group
Be sure to visit the brand new official FeedBurner Help Group, which launched last night (GMT), where I'm a Community Expert! I'll help out as much as possible along with my fellow Community Expert peeps Improbulus, Charles LaPage, Mathaba and Franklin Tse.

One last thing...

"Peek-a-boo" wallpaper
I was inspired to create a wallpaper for the iPhone (and it looks cool on iPod touch too)!

"Peek-a-boo" is my cheeky homage to the Apple logo and started life as my Twitter avatar!



More wallpapers to follow.

Kindle

Today's Sunday Times Culture section spurred me into researching Amazon's Kindle and establishing another dedicated aStore!

Obviously, as I'm a UK-based blogger, Kindle is out of my reach (unless someone at Amazon would kindly send me review hardware prior to a Pan-European launch)! Have you used Kindle? What's the end user experience like? Is it a viable portable platform when Apple dominates this space?

The Kindle Shop currently carries more than 100,000 books plus newspapers, magazines, and blogs. For your convenience, you can shop the Kindle Shop directly on Kindle or on your PC via Amazon.com. Either way, all titles are wirelessly delivered right to your Kindle for free. Amazon pays for the wireless delivery charges so you don’t have to. Buy a book and Amazon will auto-deliver it to you wirelessly in one minute.

The Kindle Shop provides the same Amazon shopping experience you're used to, including customer reviews, personalized recommendations, 1-Click purchasing, and everyday low prices. Check the store often; we're adding new titles every day.

Books
Whether you prefer biographies, classics, investment guides, thrillers, or sci-fi, thousands of your favorite books are available. The Kindle Shop offers more than 90 of 112 books currently found on the New York Times® Best Seller list and we’re adding more all the time. New York Times Best Sellers are $9.99, and you'll find many books for less. Can't decide what to buy? Kindle lets you download and read the beginning of any book for free. This way, you can try it out—if you like it, simply buy and download with 1-Click, right from your Kindle, and continue reading.

Knight Rider

This post was guest blogged by Nick Smith of The Scratching Post.

I was looking forward to seeing the revamp of Knight Rider on NBC last night. I love driving my Ford Mustang, so I was quite happy with the make and model being used for the Knight Industries Three Thousand car (“KITT”). I was even willing to give Val Kilmer a go as the voice of KITT, and I thought a cameo by David Hasselhoff (from the original series) would be fun. The director had worked on Rome and Deadwood – he had to be a smart cookie.

I must confess, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled when the old Knight Rider theme began to play. But it was replaced within seconds by generic rock and from then on, the TV movie resembled a 2 hour car commercial: lots of shots of the tires, the windshield, the grille etc. No amount of fast cutting allowed for the fact that the director Steve Shill had forgotten to make the car chases exciting.

Worse, the storyline was dull, formulaic American TV stuff; the leads were bland, with no interesting lines to test their acting chops; and the dialogue was often drowned out by the rock music.

It’s a shame that executive producer Glen A. Larson couldn’t have taken a cue from a revamp of another of his shows, Battlestar Galactica, and added some more engaging, believable characters. The new Knight Rider was so vacuous that I didn’t stick around long enough for the Hasselhoff cameo, and Steve Shill should stay away from car porn in future...

NICK SMITH BIO
www.nicksmithbooks.com
Nick Smith is a filmmaker, writer and actor. He has written screenplays (The Terror Game, Cold Soldiers); dramas and documentaries for the BBC, Sky and all other major UK networks. He wrote a year's full content for "The Property Channel" on cable and contributed to "The Medical Channel" on satellite.

Other work includes novels (the bestselling Milk Treading, The Kitty Killer Cult and Undead on Arrival), stage plays (Crime School, Foodfellas), comedy sketches, articles (The Scotsman, Charleston Magazine), radio plays and comic books. He founded and ran a production company and The Film School Scotland before moving to Charleston, South Carolina where he’s currently directing feature film and teaching writing, acting and filmmaking. He charts it all in his blog, The Scratching Post.

LEGO Skywalker

This link was sent in by Dave (blogger and owner of BrickPlayer)! As someone who grew up playing with LEGO and Star Wars toys, I'd have done Dave a disservice by not giving props:

Luke Skywalker LEGO Sculpture

Dave's goal in creating BrickPlayer.com is to share information about: LEGO building projects, building tips/tricks, LEGO product/company news, and whatever other LEGO related topics come to mind. I wish him all the best with this endeavor and look forward to seeing more Star Wars characters and vehicles in the future!

If you have an interesting blog post/link, that is relevant, to share with my readers, please e-mail me via the contact form (right hand sidebar).

Link Love

My BlogRoll, despite resistance, had link detritus surgically removed at the weekend! And I'd like to introduce you to these very cool bloggers:

Christina Warren who does both Mac and PC!
Christina was on the “Coaches” panel for USA Today’s American Idol coverage and wrote about the show weekly online and for the print edition of the paper. She's also a blogger for TUAW.com and DownloadSquad.com. And co-hosts a videocast - the Squadcast, for Download Squad.

Danie Ware in her own words...
I'm a professional on- and off-line Marketeer for Forbidden Planet London as well as being a Mum, a keen cyclist and weight-trainer, an old school geek, a bit of a longhair and a social media convert. This is my professional and personal thoughts, stream-of-consciousness style.

Danie continues to ascribe me with a misbegotten 'allegiance' to another company, which goes by a similar name! I have assured her, on various occasions, that Forbidden Planet London rules, and my blog awaits sponsorship!

Family Guy Blue Harvest

Tyler, from Hybrid Studio, dropped me an e-mail suggesting this very cool official Family Guy Blue Harvest widget! Embed this widget into your blog, MySpace or Facebook!

The laughs come full "Force" when the Griffin clan puts a freakin’ sweet spin on the greatest sci-fi saga ever told. With Peter playing the swashbuckling Han Solo, Lois as the sexy Princess Leia, Chris as an adolescent Luke Skywalker, Brian as a well-spoken Chewbacca and Stewie finally embracing his dark side as Darth Vader, who knows what will happen? Filled with outrageous gags, spaced-out droids and more intergalactic satire than you can shake a lightsabre at, this epic spoof of Star Wars: A New Hope is a must-own for every fan of Family Guy.

You can pre-order the Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest DVD today!

Published Prose

Towards the end of 2007 there was a dramatic increase in the number of visitors to Generation Star Wars! This was due in part to a Google PageRank of 4, and that Generation Star Wars is listed on BlogBurst, a syndication service that makes premium blog content available to major international publishers such as Reuters, USA Today and Fox News.

USA Today was the first to syndicate one of my posts:-

Vanquishing Vista

Now it appears that Reuters is also syndicating some of my posts, giving Generation Star Wars significant exposure and introducing it to a larger readership in the process.

I have listed a couple of examples below:-

Platinum Bells
Warner Bros. Do Blu Only

Please let Reuters know what you think of the posts and this blog. Thank you.

Three Kings

This is my final post of 2007! May I take this opportunity to thank all my readers and sponsors for their continued support.

If I may focus on sponsors for a moment. I’m excited by the type of companies that this blog has been attracting of late! DK books are worthy of particular mention for providing fabulous competition prizes. If you’re interested in getting your message out to my readership you can contact me here.

Don't miss Doctor Who: The Voyage Of The Damned on Christmas Day!

I wanted to wish you all a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa and a Festive Festivus. I hope that 2007 was a good year for you and that 2008 will be even better. I'll be back in the New Year...

Published by USA Today

I'm most flattered to learn that my post, Vanquishing Vista, has been republished by USATODAY.com (direct link).

This wouldn't have been made possible without being a BlogBurst member, and I implore readers, who also blog, to at least consider, if they haven't already done so, the opportunities open to them via social networking, at local, national and international level.

Reading Maury McCown's announcement that RailHEAD Design is no more, reminded me that I've neglected my portfolio site (founded June 15th 2001) since February!

The site was originally conceived to promote my skills and support job applications (don't assume that every prospective employer will bother to look at your site, no matter how easy it is to click a hyper link). However, it soon developed its own identity and became a springboard for affiliate marketing, graphic design, editorial, social networking and so on...

Whilst my portfolio site could never hope to garner the, deserved, success of RailHEAD Design, I've been proud to maintain it, exchange links with best-of-class Mac-related sites such as The Iconfactory, and humbled to read every e-mail inquiry. Like Maury, I've now taken the decision to no longer update the site. It won't be deleted.

The saga of Generation Star Wars has only just begun...

Mac-O-Lantern

Happy Halloween or Hallowii to fellow Wii owners!

No treats (Halloween 2006) this year! Here's a cool Mac-related trick!



How would you like your very own Pumpkin Pimped Mac-O-Lantern? Read the following how-to at the bad banana blog! This rates as one of the coolest custom suggestions I've seen in a long, long while! Imagine a Mac Performa in this livery! Thanks to Amanda Huff (Twitter) for the tip!

I'll be watching I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream tonight! A Kevin Williamson-penned double bill.

Add Chitika to Facebook

Chitika has launched iBought:

iBought is our newest Facebook application that lets you show off the cool gadgets & items you've bought. Watch out because your friends will rate your purchases by giving you a thumbs up or down. (Don't worry you will get a chance to rate them back!) The best part is you will get $1.00 every single time you get someone to add the Facebook application, whether you use Facebook or not!

Promote this application in your blog or website or add a referral banner. All they have to do is add the application and you get $1.oo:



Don't wait - you could lose your chance to earn!
This promotional offer will be given to the first 10,000 downloads only. That means Chitika is giving away $10,000 in total for referral revenue on Facebook! Example: 20 referrals = $20.00. Grab your code now for your chunk of cash before someone else does and it is gone!

Jedi Master of My Domain

We all know that new iMacs are on their way today. Therefore this post will be self-indulgent and focus on the very blog that you are reading!

Blogger introduced custom domain name support in January 2007! This blog has been online for over 3 years and, somewhat belatedly, I've finally registered a domain name:

http://www.generationstarwars.com/

Redirection from http://johnhood.blogspot.com/ is automatic (what's called a 301 permanent redirect). But apologies, in advance, for any technical issues in the short-to-mid term. I've not experienced any issues using the following browsers Opera, Safari, Firefox or IE 7 (in Windows Vista Home Premium).

Subscribers to my RSS feed - powered by FeedBurner - do not have to make any changes to their subscription! Matt Shobe, at FeedBurner, confirmed that my decision to change the source feed from

http://johnhood.blogspot.com/atom.xml

to

http://www.generationstarwars.com/atom.xml

was correct. RSS goodness is uninterrupted.

I'm feverishly working on ways to minimise the impact of a domain name change on my search engine rankings - old Google PageRank was 4 (on the cusp of 5), new PageRank is 0. However, I'd encourage anyone setting up their site, who intends to blog frequently and in the longer term, to register a domain name as soon as possible! Maybe even prior to your blog going live or increased marketing activities.

Lastly, remember to create a new sitemap for your new domain and remove the existing one as Google may remove your site(s) from its search engine - duplicate content is a no, no!

The One

Looks like there's a bug (or three) with the latest Windows Live OneCare 2.0 Beta! OneCare Tune-up appears to run correctly, but upon completion reports innumerable errors! For example an unknown error prevented Disk Fragmentation (perhaps due to Boot Camp disk partitioning). However, when I log back in, it reports that the PC status is good. Initially I assumed that my Windows Vista Home Premium installation was at fault!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this story. My OEM (original equipment manufacturer) copy of Windows Vista Home Premium is installed, via Boot Camp, on Intel-based Mac hardware and presumably is not officially supported (if someone at Microsoft would like to clarify the company's position regarding Intel-based Mac hardware, I'd be happy to post). It is worth pointing out that product activation was successful. Therefore, if you're wondering whether or not to opt for the considerably cheaper OEM edition, I'd suggest that you go ahead, your bank manager will thank you.

I decided to post a query on The Windows Experience Blog. Brandon has kindly confirmed that this issue is affecting some (if not all) PCs too. I'll await the next automated update.

Overall Windows Live OneCare neatly integrates automated anti-virus and malware protection, updates, PC performance and backup services within a single easy-to-use front-end. Think .Mac, albeit splintered, during its infancy.

I doubt if I'll be using Windows Vista Home Premium enough to justify purchasing an annual subscription once the free trial ends. Should .Mac integrate Google goodies sans subscription (as early as tomorrow's new Mac announcements and evinced by current iDisk outages), Microsoft maybe forced to review its subscription-based strategy. This would be a win-win for both Mac and Windows users.

"Underwater, no one can hear you scream."

Nerd alert!

Spent a pleasant afternoon basking in the sunshine on Exmouth seafront and envisaging Transformers Seacons, an aquatic team of Decepticons that combined to form Piranacon (known as King Poseidon in Japan), harassing swimmers, jet skiers and kite surfers! Old habits die hard, blame Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and the recent media moral panic surrounding alleged Great White shark sightings off of the Cornish coast!

A monolithic menace. The diabolical combination of the five Seacons who comprise him. Master at undersea warfare. Few Autobots can outdistance him or escape his evil clutches. Destroys everything in his path with ghoulish glee. A troublemaker and malcontent. Rarely follows orders. Fellow Decepticons are unable to control him. Capable of creating colossal tidal waves over 300 feet high. Because of his incredible size, Piranacon's reflexes are impaired out of water. Armed with the Seacons' entire arsenal of firepower.

This evening I've been analysing site search statistics. And the top two search terms for this blog are:

1). Jennifer Love Hewitt
2). Scarlett Johansson

Hmm...

Windows Live Writer

Switched back to Windows Vista! Why? I'm keen to give Windows Live Writer Beta 2 a test drive and there's currently no Mac OS X client (get your skates on Mac Business Unit (Mac BU)).

Microsoft has built a powerful desktop application blogging tool, which largely precludes the need to directly login to your blog account. Windows Live Writer can publish to Windows Live Spaces, Sharepoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server, and many other weblog services.

Windows Live Writer is by no means unique. There's an abundance of third party applications and widgets available for both Windows and Mac platforms. Yet, Windows Live Writer goes someway to consolidate rich publishing in one easy-to-use application. Setup is a breeze. However, I'd like to see more formatting options - such as justify - made available from the GUI. Of course you can switch to HTML and, manually, insert code yourself.

You can post directly from within Windows Live Writer or save drafts locally and/or online. A very useful trick it has up its sleeve; updated drafts, saved locally, will overwrite the online draft if you saved at both locations. Therefore you don't need to worry about reconciling different versions or accidentally double posting (a bane of bloggers everywhere)!

Time to Pownce

Thanks to an invite from Jim Long (a Twitter friend), I'm now using social media tool Pownce!

Pownce (direct link to my page) is a way to send stuff to your family, friends, co-workers et al. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and much more. You can do it all on their web site, or install a lightweight desktop client (built using Adobe AIR) that lets you get out of the browser bubble.

Pownce has the potential to distill the blogging and IM paradigm into one extensible platform.

Am I about to leave Twitter for Pownce? The simple answer is no. However, if the likes of Google or Yahoo! swooped in and bought either Twitter or Pownce, I'd be in quite the quandary!

I have Pownce invites to give-away. Everyone who leaves a comment will be entered into a draw for the chance of winning an invite. What are you waiting for?

Mac Users vote now!

Looks like Yahoo! hasn't completely forgotten about us Mac Users! The Yahoo! Messenger Blog is currently running a Poll for Mac users.

If you want Yahoo! Messenger sooner rather than later, and avoid further tardiness, be sure to drop by and vote for a Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger release only. Even the beleaguered beta knocks, pre-Leopard, spots off of the current Windows version. That being said, I'll be keeping tabs on the upcoming Windows Vista update, which promises "3D" eye candy.

Gadget Galaxy

You know how much I love Star Wars! Come on, the title of this blog is a dead give away, eh! So, it was a pleasant surprise to hear from Jennifer L. DeLeo, an Associate Editor for PCMag.com, on this auspicious day!

Jennifer has written a really cool article, one I'd have ripped a droids arms out of its sockets to write:

Technology and Star Wars go hand in hand. We lowered the blast shield and used the Force to find FX lightsabers, Chewbacca flash drives, and more.

The 10 Coolest Star Wars Tech Products in the Galaxy

May the force...