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Michael L. - ACME Widgets Rep

6
Level 6 Contributor
San Francisco, California

Contributor Level

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11,491

About Me

I am interested in the development of new technologies and how they can benefit society.

Social

How I Can Help

I have a background in computer science, business, and internet technologies.

Interests

museums, music, movies (in no particular order)

74 Reviews by Michael

  • Poker-edge

7/18/08

So good, it's banned from all major online poker sites - When Poker Edge first came out, everybody thought it was too good to be true. Was it really possible to know exactly what type of poker player your opponent was, despite the fact that you had never played against him before? Well, it turned out to be real enough to prompt most of the online card rooms to enact countermeasures against it.

Poker Edge is a software program that runs in the background while you are playing online poker, providing you real stats on basically every player at every table. Not only can you scope out the strength of a table before you choose to sit down, you can use a player's stats in real-time to outplay him. Poker Edge designates players as "fish" or "sharks", complete with accompanying icons. Once you find a group of fish that you like, you can essentially "stalk" them and chase them down.

The secret behind Poker Edge is a massive database of over 600,000 players and all the hands they have ever played online. Unlike other poker tracking software, Poker Edge collects data on your opponents even while you're not using it. It is constantly aggregating stats in all the card rooms, so you get a true player profile based on the player's entire lifetime, not just the time he's spent at your table.

Having this data has proven to be such an advantage, that Poker Edge is now listed as "black hat" software and is consequently banned from all the major poker sites. Websites like Poker Stars will literally scan your computer and hard drive to determine whether you are using Poker Edge. In fact, within minutes, you will receive a notification telling you to stop using the software or risk losing your account. This is a true testament to the genius of Poker Edge!

  • High Stakes Report

7/15/08

Watch people win and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars every day - This is a fascinating blog that follows all the high stakes online poker action at every hour of the day. Just scan a few of the stories and your eyes will be opened to what goes on at the online card rooms and how truly volatile the life of a professional gambler is. Literally millions of dollars are won and lost online in the middle of the night while the rest of the world sleeps.

If you follow poker, you will recognize a lot of the names in the headlines: Phil Ivey, Eli Elezra, Gus Hansen, John Juanda, and Dave Benyamine to name a few. But the really interesting stories are those involving the "anonymous" players, who are known only by their online usernames. Nobody knows who they are, but they routinely play against the pros. And once in a while you'll read some incredible story of some no-name player getting DESTROYED, basically losing upwards of $800K in three hours against a pro before calling it quits and going to bed.

I wonder who these people are that have the time and the actual bankroll to play at these levels. Are they aspiring professional gamblers or just some rich hedge fund managers looking for some late night fun to cure their insomnia?

  • What The Folk

7/14/08

Calling all Flight of the Conchords fans... - This is the very first and arguably most comprehensive website dedicated to the Flight of the Conchords. If you don't know who they are yet, it's not too late!

Just watch some of the videos here: http://whatthefolk.net/vision.htm and you'll be hooked.

Whatthefolk keeps an up to date journal of all the latest FoTC news and has links to anything and everything FoTC-related: profiles, videos, episode guides, tour dates, lyrics, etc. The forum community is also quite strong and they're fun to chat with.

Spend just a few minutes on this site and you'll be *down* with the Rhymenoscerus and the Hiphopapotamus before you can even say the words "I put a wig on you!"

  • CrackBerry

7/11/08

If you're addicted to your blackberry... - This is my favorite site dedicated to all things blackberry. It was started by one of my best friend's childhood schoolmates and has grown into the premiere destination for blackberry users. The site publishes the latest news and updates in the smartphone market, and supports a vibrant forum community. I particularly like their reviews.

Kevin, the community manager, was one of the first people to get his hands on the highly anticipated Blackberry Bold, which should be coming out later this year. Apparently, he paid an arm and a leg on eBay to purchase one of the three that were available. You can read the review here:

http://crackberry.com/blackberry9000

This phone looks incredible and in my opinion will be hands down the best phone out in the market! I'm not sure when it will be released to the public, but in the meantime, I'll just have to keep getting my crackberry fix by reading about it on this site.

  • California Wine Tours

7/10/08

Great way to tour around Napa Valley without having to drive - I used this company a few months ago and the service was spectacular. The chauffeur was fun to talk with and extremely accommodating. We rented a 16-person limo bus, which was great because it doesn't feel as cramped and the bench seating allows you to face your friends the whole time. They let you to put in your own CDs into the speaker system and also provide unlimited bottles of water (which comes in handy when you are doing a lot of drinking, or if it's really hot outside). They also gave us three FREE bottles of very nice champagne, which we drank throughout the day between wineries. Overall, a great service that truly makes you feel special while you're using them.

California Wine Tours charges by the hour, so if you want, they'll pick you up from San Francisco, but remember that you'll be paying for the commute. We got a discounted rate at $125/hour and maximized our time by having the limo meet us in the morning at the V. Sattui winery. Then we spent the rest of the day doing our own tour by having the limo simply drive us around to the wineries we had mapped out for ourselves.

I highly recommend this service for birthdays, bachelorette parties, or just something different to do with your friends. And for the environmentally-conscious, they just rolled out their new hybrid fleet, so you can feel responsible while getting your wine fix.

  • Aaron Koblin

6/12/08

Mesmerizing artwork based on visualization of human systems - Aaron Koblin, most well known for his "Flight Patterns" piece, has built up a very impressive body of work on his website. This site showcases many of his data visualization masterpieces, constructed from complex software programs and very large data sets.

Among my favorites are Ten Thousand Cents, in which ten thousand people were asked to draw a sliver of a one hundred dollar bill. The finished product shows the power of independent collaboration and also includes graffiti from frustrated contributors!

http://www.tenthousandcents.com

I also like The Sheep Market, which Aaron created by paying 10,000 people 2 cents through Mechanical Turk to draw a sheep facing to the left. Each sheep drawing was recorded and you can watch how they were all individually constructed:

http://www.thesheepmarket.com

  • Aplus

6/10/08

Aplus.Net hosting has the WORST customer service ever in the history of all companies - Last night we experienced another nightmare scenario for a small, growing company. We went down again for the THIRD time, starting at 12:45am PT. After reporting the problem, I was told that the failed server would get rebooted within 15min. Things got progressively worse from there. After half an hour, I called back and they had no idea what was going on and refused to give me an ETA at this point. After another hour, all of their customer support goes OFFLINE -- i. E. the hosting company goes completely dark and is completely unreachable. Regular server support is offline, dedicated server support is offline, and worst of all, the dedicated server support hotline (phone) starts playing a 30 second generic message and then HANGS UP ON YOU. I called five times with the same result. After yet another hour, I finally see a support person come online and ping her. She says she can't help me because she isn't a dedicated server support representative. I ask her what happened to dedicated server support at her company and she says LUNCH BREAK. Sweet. Two hours into the ordeal, I realize that there is only one person in the entire company that can help me and he is out eating a sandwich.

Fast forward seven hours later and we are finally back up. There's no knowing how many users we lost or pissed off over that time period. But great news, according to their uptime guarantee policy on http://servers.aplus.net/servers_guarantee.html, we will get 35% off next month's bill. Can't wait to save that $80! Well worth the downtime!

The worst part is not just being down, but not having anybody available to talk with. There's no worse feeling than trying desperately to contact your server provider and not be able to reach ANYONE. When will these companies get a clue about what customer service means? When someone is having a real problem, "I don't know", "I can't help you", and automatic messages that hang up on you, just don't cut it.

Stay away from Aplus.Net! At least until someone from their company cares enough to do something about their customer service.

  • CleanMPG

6/3/08

Hypermiling website that provides tips to double your gas mileage! - Wayne Gerdes, who leads the current hypermiling movement to curb fuel consumption, started and runs this website with lots of tips on how to save gas. Some of the techniques, however, are not for the feint of heart. Wayne is able to get up to 50 mpg on his Honda Accord, but it involves stuff like shutting down your engine on the freeway and coasting at low speeds!

The site also has a lot of practical content, as well as a loyal and active community of fellow "environmentalists" (read: people tired of paying $4.50 for a gallon of gas).

  • JibJab

12/15/07

Best customizable online cards - This website has the coolest online card offering on the web today. While the selection is not huge, they allow you to put in the faces of your friends and family directly into the cards! It's hilarious! And it's super easy to use -- the interface is very clean and simple for uploading faces from pictures and putting them into really funny cards.

I just created the Snowball Fight card for my family and it took me only 10 minutes. They got a huge kick out of it when they saw it. I absolutely love the application and will use this site for all my online cards in the future.

TMZ
  • TMZ

7/13/07

Best celebrity gossip site! - always has the most recent breaking news that no other news site can get! This site is as good as it gets... i love it!

  • ESPN

7/11/07

Why are there no other great sports sites? - why is espn so dominant in the sports space? Every guy i know watches sportscenter and refreshes this website every five minutes at work. But is there not another website for sports info? And don't say cbs...

  • The DJ List

7/11/07

The best list for electronic music - this site is the best place to look at who's hot on the dj charts. I am a big trance fan and i think it's great that year in and year out, the trance djs top the list. Will anybody unseat the dutch masters?

I am also a house fan, so i appreciate the presence of sasha. Another favorite of mine is his protege, james zabiela.

Anybody out there know of any other good dj lists?

  • Gmail

4/29/07

Terrible, terrible email system - This is the worst email program I have ever seen. The interface is sloppy and confusing. All of the emails from one person are combined into one thread. But they're separate emails! I understand if some of the emails are related, but I don't want all of them together.

Secondly, there are no folders. There is no way of organizing my messages the way I like to organize them. I usually have folders set up for work, friends, etc. but it's just one big mess in Gmail. People say that the search works to alleviate this problem, but I have not found it to be any faster.

These issues, in combination with the privacy issues, make Gmail a terrible web-based email alternative. Much better is the new Yahoo! Mail beta, which functions just like Outlook, but via the web. It's got the slickest interface available (drag-and-drop, real-time sorting) and just added unlimited storage.

CNN
  • CNN

4/29/07

Greatest online video offering today - CNN has done it once again with CNN Pipeline, a great video product that offers three concurrent streams of video content. It is offered in both a downloadable or web-based package and boasts one of the easiest, most intuitive video interfaces out today. Watch out YouTube! If CNN starts offering user-generated content, your kitten video days are numbered...

Michael [ACME Widgets Rep] Has Earned 471 Votes

Michael L.'s review of Facebook earned 15 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Peloton earned 3 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Aaron Koblin earned 5 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Autocompleteme earned 3 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of achedaway.com earned a Very Helpful vote

Michael L.'s review of Digitally Imported earned 6 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Vwho.net earned 5 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of LinkedIn earned 24 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Gratefulness earned 4 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Aplus earned 10 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of GoFraudMe earned 3 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Walgreens earned 11 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Spreeder earned 11 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Habbi Habbi earned 3 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of AllClearID earned 18 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Crowd Cow earned a Very Helpful vote

Michael L.'s review of Covers & All earned 0 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of FareCompare earned 15 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Tristate Camera earned 3 Very Helpful votes

Michael L.'s review of Global News Enterprises earned a Very Helpful vote

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