Karma Rogue

How To Root Evo

Want to root HTC EVO 4G? Running Android 2.2? Follow my simple instructions and you’ll be there in no time at all. It’s literally a one-click process.

But first, let’s take a brief look at the benefits of rooting EVO phones in the first place for those who are either new to this subject or simply not convinced.

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The Best Address Bar Search Engine: YubNub

In the past, a user wanting to search for “foxes” would type “http://google.com” into the address bar, press enter, arrive at Google’s website, type “foxes” into the search field, and finally click “search”.  Today, popular web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer have search built-in to the address bar.  To search for “foxes”, you’d simply type “foxes” into the address bar and get the results from your browser’s designated search engine.  But what if you wanted to search for the weather in Phoenix? Or for a list of movie reviews for a particular movie? Or go directly to a wikipedia article about foxes? It’s easy: YubNub.

Simply put, YubNub is a website with a social command line search.  That said, YubNub really becomes useful when used as the default search engine for your browser.  YubNub has instructions to make it the default search for each major browser.  Once integrated into your browser, you can easily and quickly search any site on the web using the format “command what-to-search-for”.  For example, “g” is the command for google.  So if you want to Google “foxes”, you would type “g foxes” into the address bar.

Other Google search engine commands are known by their initials: “gi foxes” will search Google Images for foxes, “gv foxes” will search Google Videos for foxes.  Want to grab the map for Chicago? “gm chicago”.  Want to grab the latest news about Obama? “gn Obama”.  In fact, most commands are guessable.  ”yt Foxes” will, you guessed it, search YouTube for videos of foxes.  ”wp Fox” will return the wikipedia article about the Fox.  Weather can be grabbed via weather.com or weatherunderground.com with “w 85022″ or “wu 85022″ respectively.  MetaCritic, which lists reviews of video games and movies, is “mc” – “mc Avatar” for the latest Avatar reviews.

This is a very small sampling of YubNub commands.  Regardless of what websites you frequently use, you will find YubNub useful.  This is because literally every major website is already integrated into YubNub.  And if you were able to find one that was not – you can add it! This is where the social aspect comes into play.  Seemingly the most underrated service on the web, I could no recommend using YubNub enough.

14 Best Twitter Web Tools and Resources

(If you enjoy this article, follow me @Cumberworth)

In no particular order, what follows are 14 of the best Twitter tools and resources on the web!

Just Tweet It – service described as providing Twitter users the ability to “find other Twitter users like you!” Just Tweet It is a “Tweeter Directory” and allows you to add yourself to directories based upon interests that consist of groups of like-minded Twitter users.  In addition, you can list yourself into relevant directories so that people will be able to discover you!

Mr. Tweet – service described as “your personal networking assistant/agent [that] helps you expand your network easily.”  Mr. Tweet aims to provide this service in 3 ways: by getting you relevant followers, helping you discover great people relevant to your current needs, and improve your Twitter usage via useful statistics.  To start, you simply follow @MrTweet

Twitturly – service “for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter”.  Twitturly lists the top links as well as the active tweets that posted the link and is a good tool for discovering what is hot on Twitter.

Favrd – a service that displays the recent highly favorited Tweets.  It lists the tweet that has been favorited as well as a look into the Twitter users who chose to favorite the tweet.

Tweet Later – “productivity tools for busy Tweeple”, Tweet Later allows you to set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream, schedule tweets, send automatic thank you notes, manage multiple Twitter accounts and more.

TweetSum -  a tool aimed to help you investigate potential connections.  When somebody new follows you, you can use TweetSum’s tools help you decide whether this person is somebody you should follow back or not.

Twellow – “a service to help Twitter users find people to follow.  Twellow categorizes and organizes Twitter into hundreds of niches to make your searching easier.”  Twellow is a search engine for searching Twitter bios, names, and locations.

Twitterholic – a service that provides Top Twitter user rankings and stats.  More than anything, this service is amusing and provides you with interesting data.

TwitPic – a tool that “lets you share photos on Twitter”.  It is heavily used and many Twitter clients have built-in support for it already.

Twapps
– “archiving the best Twitter apps”.  A useful service for those Twitter users looking for new and/or unique Twitter applications.

Twittown – an alternative to, and perhaps better than, TwappsTwittown is “The Apps and Widgets Community and Forums” and serves as a great resource for discovering new Twitter Apps and Widgets.

Less Friends
– simply put, a tool that provides an answer to the question: “Do the people you follow on Twitter, follow you?”  This tool can be very useful for making sure you do not accumulate to many people on your Following list.  An alternative to less friends is FriendsOrFollow.com

Twemes
– a service that is “particularly useful for keeping up on the real-time activities associated with a live event”.  Twemes follows tweets that have embedded tags that start with a hashtag (#).

Top Twitter Clients from TwitStat – Provides live data on the top Twitter clients being used to manage Twitter accounts.  Very useful tool for discovering powerful Twitter clients.

Web Design Resources

Kayarc, another website I work on, has started blogging.  The blog will be a thorough source of resources for web design.  If you are looking to bookmark a source of web design resources, check out the Kayarc blog.

Dark Room Sex Game

Dark Room Sex Game allows 2-4 players to participate in a unique erotic rhythm game that takes place in, well, a dark room. The game has no graphics and relies on the player’s imagination to fill in the gap. Not a bad idea if you ask me. You basically bob the the Wii Mote up and down, back and forth, first slowly and then faster and faster and harder and harder until you hit climax! Video goodness after the jump

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Phoenix Web Design Startup

It’s hard for me to justify self-promotion in light of the fact that I have barely updated in 2008 but I need any exposure I can get so here goes nothing.

I just launched a Phoenix, AZ web design company called Kayarc.  If you, or somebody you know, needs a web site built, a logo designed, an existing site optimized for search engines, etc etc then by all means please check out Kayarc.

And yes, I can design more visually pleasing layouts than the one here; this site is built from the ground up to be highly readable.

Zero-Player Games

Have you ever given thought to Zero-Player Games? Let’s

Information:
Zero-player games are games that have no human players
Wikipedia Entry

Examples:
Progress Quest
NPC Quest
Conway’s Game of Life

Most sports games (i.e. Madden Football) can be used to create CPU vs. CPU matches and are often used to simulate the outcomes of real games.  Fighting games, RTS games, and other games can also be used for this purpose.

Glider, a bot that plays World of Warcraft for you, is also worth mentioning.  Botting, in a sense, is cruise control that plays the game for the user. (When I had an active WoW account, my favorite thing about the game was using my bot to turn WoW into an entertaining screensaver featuring my avatar grinding.)

WarGames is a movie where a zero-player game controls the fate of mankind

Discussion:

  • Do you think there is a future for zero-player games?
  • What type of zero-player game do you think would be most interesting/marketable/entertaining?
  • If you’ve ever “played” a zero-player game before, what did you like/dislike about it?
  • Do you think incorporating “cruise-control” into on-line games is a good idea?

Books: Check ‘em Out!

How can anybody forget this gem of a commercial from the early nineties? Check it out after the jump!
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Unreal World: Unique Roguelike

Unreal World is an old-school video game that is hard to stop playing once you start. Not to cut the game down at all, but the fact that it produced the “just one more minute” syndrome in me surprised me. The reason it’s surprising is that it is not at all the best looking game.

Unreal World is a graphical RPG with roguelike qualities. The setting is ancient Finland during the late Iron Age. UrW is full of historical atmosphere and emphasises northern folklore, knowledge, and way of life. Best of all, like any other great game UrW gives you freedom to do as you choose; you can become a rough hunter, a brave adventurer, a fisherman, a trapper, etc.

At $4, it’s hard to not recommend this as a lightweight game that is perfect for little sessions on a laptop.

Unreal World Official Site

U.S. Spies Target World of Warcraft Terrorists

The U.S. intelligence community is developing software to detect violent extremists in the World of Warcrfaft and other massively multiplayer online games. According to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence, this project, known as the Reynard project, will begin with profiling online gaming behavior. The ultimate goal of the Reynard project is “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”

The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are
generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the
emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and
gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned
to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious
behavior and actions in the virtual world.

The report is publicly available, as mandated by Congress. Read the full report in .pdf format.

It’s interesting that Reynard the Fox is a trickster in folklore and literature.

What Would Brian Boitano Do? Live!

“What would Brian Boitano do
If he was here right now,
He’d make a plan
And he’d follow through,
That’s what Brian Boitano’d do.

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Bo Burnham

At 17 years old, Bo Burnham is one talented young comedian and another Youtube sensation. Songs like “3.14 Apple Pie” and “Perfect Woman” are freakin’ hilarious. Now, normally I embed the media right to Karmarogue but in this case I am going to give out a link right to Bo’s YouTube homepage because frankly it is worth watching every single video he’s made and will make in the future. If I was a talent scout, I’d be all over this.

Bo Burnham on YouTube

Gordon Freeman on Coast to Coast AM

Coast to Coast AM is a great late-night AM talk radio show with an emphasis on the paranormal. And for those that actually don’t know, Half-Life is one of the all-time greatest first-person shooters that has a sci-fi story. If you’re familiar with both, you will laugh your ass off as you hear this phone call in which the caller plays the role of Half-Life’s lead character Gordon Freeman.

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Nasubi – A Remarkable True Story

Japan: You are crazy. If I was suddenly able to ignore everything I’ve seen and read about your culture except for that show you did with Nasubi, I’d still think you were fucking crazy.

Never heard of Nasubi? In the name of good television, Nasubi was stripped of all clothing and locked into an apartment with no food, household goods, furniture, or any form of entertainment. Nasubi was led to this apartment with a blindfold on so he would not know where he was. This was just the beginning of the Japanese reality show known as Susunu! Denpa Shōnen.

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Garbage Truck Camper

If living in a treehouse is not your idea of a good housing arrangement, try living in a garbage truck instead!

Once you see just how nice a garbage truck can be, you may seriously consider selling your home and going with the dumpster style!

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Amazing Tree Houses

Because living anywhere besides a tree would make you less of a sloth, I proudly present some kick-ass tree houses!

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How To Make Fireballs

If you’re like me, and you’ve played a lot of Mario Bros. in your day, and you’ve always wanted to eat a flower to gain the ability to handle a fireball in the palm of your hand, then this is your lucky day. Heck, read on even if you hate Mario Bros. and want to hurl fireballs.

If you follow the simple directions outlined in the following video, you’ll have a fireball in your palm in no time at all.

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Laptop Bookbag with WiFi Signal Scanner

A lot of the crazy gadgets you’ll see here at Karma Rogue are not the most practical in the world. This laptop backpack, on the other hand, is another story. Continue on for a picture of the bag and more info!

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How To Make Yourself Miserable

There are a lot of motivational articles out there deal with ways to better yourself. With inspiration from a fellow blogger over at The Positivity Blog, allow me to explain how to make yourself absolutely miserable.

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Armed 13-Year-Old Girl Robs Burger King

In Tampa, Florida, a 13-year-old girl robbed a Burger King Restaurant at knife point! Fresh out of Juvenile Detention, the girl only made one demand: “Give me a FUCKING cheesburger now!” After chasing an employee into the kitchen with the blade in hand, she was subdued by other employees until the police arrive.

She explained to investigators that she was hungry and wanted a burger. Instead of a burger, this young girl is back in JAC with charges of armed burglary, armed robbery, and violation of home detention.

TampaBays10 Report