Coming soon, in a galaxy far, far nearer than you’d expect with this type of intro…Star Wars shoes by Adidas!  If you know anything about me, you know I love Adidas and I love Star Wars.  Yes, I have the Collector’s Edition of the Dark Forces dramatized audiobook, and yes I listen to the entire 6 hour adventure multiple times per year.  And yes I bought it when I was about 12.  I’ve also photographed myself with all my Adidas gear and sent it off to the company.

Point is, I couldn’t be happier about the news.  The most influential science fiction work ever produce is coming together with the makers of what I consider the highest quality everyday apparel.  It’s a dream come true.

Sadly, it hasn’t been released yet.  The few images we Star Wars fanatics have been granted leave us drooling and appetite-whetted, though not yet satisfied.  The official Star Wars release says that they will be available in select stores and online in January.  Here are a few of my favorites, though I believe I’ve decided to go with the AT-AT high tops (pictured above).

To add to the frustration, I stumbled across more Star Wars apparel that is currently only available in Japan.  This time it’s hats – New Era (59Fifty) hats to be specific.  Here comes the drool again.  I’m already a huge New Era fan (got my LA fitted a few weeks back and I love it), so again this excites me beyond words.  Here are a few pics of the hats currently available, though I have yet to hear if they will come to the US anytime soon.

Until January, enjoy the pics. I’m sure if you’re anything like me, you will come back for a second or third look. Oh, and a note to all relatives, friends, and random people who might want to get me a Christmas gift…all cash gifts will go into what I like to call my “ATAT FUND“.

A former co-worker and good friend of mine is releasing a new album in November. Kevin sent me and a few others the 4 track press sampler a few days ago and encouraged us to help spread the word and give the songs away to anyone who wanted a copy.

I’ve been a fan of Akshun (Kevin’s stage name) for years now and I’m still impressed. His first official release, Diamond District, was voted one of the best SC releases of the year.  Since then, he has gone underground, releasing 2 mixtapes – “Speaks for Itself” and “Let’s Be Clear Vol. I” (with Dan Johns).  For more on Dan Johns, see his website.

If you like good, lyrical music, check out the sample below.  Feel free to download the mp3’s by right-clicking the mp3 link and selecting “Save Target As…”.  If you like what you hear, stay up to date with Kevin at his Twitter, MySpace, and Magnum-Opus website for more information on the CD release.

Grizzly feat. Cajwell [mp3 link]
[audio:http://rybomedia.com/music/akshun/sinners-therapy-sampler/01-Grizzly-feat.-Cajwell.mp3]
Green Light feat. Lou Hall [mp3 link]
[audio:http://rybomedia.com/music/akshun/sinners-therapy-sampler/02-Green-Light-feat.-Lou-Hall.mp3]
I Don’t Need [mp3 link]
[audio:http://rybomedia.com/music/akshun/sinners-therapy-sampler/03-I-Don’t-Need-(The-Drama).mp3]
Breath Easy feat. Cajwell [mp3 link]
[audio:http://rybomedia.com/music/akshun/sinners-therapy-sampler/04-Breath Easy-feat.-Cajwell.mp3]

For those who haven’t noticed, Twitter recently added explanations to the “Trending Topics” results.  Wondering what “New Moon Soundtrack” is and why it’s a trending topic?  Twitter explains:

The soundtrack for the Twilight sequel, New Moon, will be released this Friday (Oct. 16, 2009). It is already available to listen to in full on MySpace.

Take a look at some of these Twitter explanations.  In my opinion, this would be a pretty neat feature to someone who tends to keep up with the latest trending topics.  However, I can’t remember the last time I’ve cared to look at them apart from the occasional Google mention.

For the past few days, I’ve been trying out Su.pr – the new URL shortener from StumbleUpon.  When I first heard StumbleUpon released a link shortener, I couldn’t care less.  Honestly.  I’m really, really happy with bit.ly – why change?

This is why:

Now, the click counts aren’t all that impressive – I generally get between 20-40 clicks per link I post to Twitter.  The important number is what’s in the little blue box.  This, my friend, is the number of people who viewed your link through StumbleUpon.  See, when you shorten a URL using Su.pr, you have the option to “Thumbs Up” your link by reviewing, categorizing, and ensuring that it’s family friendly.  Once that’s done, it’s ready to be stumbled and is made available to other StumbleUpon users.

So the obvious reason for using su.pr is more traffic.  In the past 3 days alone I’ve received a few hundred StumbleUpon views from the few links I’ve posted.  For a small, part-time blogger, this is a big deal.

Apart from that, Su.pr offers some other great tools for link management.

Thumbnail Previews

Sure, it’s not all that useful, but I like it.  It let’s me know at a glance whether or not my link has been reviewed and it lets me know what I’m clicking on without reading the title.  This sounds incredibly lazy, but…well…yeah, it’s lazy.  But I like it.

Statistics

Su.pr offers a variety of statistics – retweets, reviews, stumbles and clicks.  They also offer the option to download your link statistics in CSV form.

Post to Twitter, Facebook

Like bit.ly, Su.pr offers the option of posting your link to Twitter, along with your message.  However, Su.pr also allows you to post to Facebook – or both!  On top of that, it allows for scheduled updates (like HootSuite).

Promoted Websites

Once you add your domains to your Su.pr settings, you will start to see click report graphs in your sidebar.  This is useful because it shows your most popular websites and posting times at a glance.

Suggested Posting Times

Su.pr analyzes your updates and link counts to provide you with a nice visual graph of the best times to post.  For me, I tend to drive more traffic in the early morning.

BlackBerry users have cause for some serious excitement – a new UK mp3 store called 7digital has come out with a BlackBerry music store to rival the popular iTunes mp3 store for the iPhone and Amazon mp3 for the Palm Pre. Finally.

What’s more, 7digital boasts cheaper (and DRM-free) songs – many of which are only $.77, as compared to the many new $1.29 price increases iTunes has seen. For some time now, it seems as if the only option for BB users was to transfer music with desktop software or through a removable media card. No longer.

For me, the immediate problem with this was slow 3G speeds. I love my Curve, but sometimes even keeping an ESPN game tracker open could take forever. 7digital has an answer for this. When you choose to download a song over a slow connection, you will be downloading a lower-quality track. The next time you’re in an area that can handle more data transfer (or in a WiFi spot if your BB supports it), the song will re-download in high quality and replace the old version. Pretty cool, right?

After browsing the available songs in their store, I’m impressed. There’s even a “Future Releases” section to showcase upcoming music – though this is mostly EP’s and lesser known Indie bands. 7digital reports that it currently has over 7 million songs for download.

It seems like the number one thing I get attacked about when comparing the BlackBerry to the iPhone is the lack of music playability. While 7digital currently does not offer a compatible app for the Curve 8320, I’m still excited about the possibility.  Take that iPhone users – and I can listen to my music without squealing in delight at the word “Apple”. Sure, the BB’s storage isn’t comparable to that of the godPhone, but it’s a step in the right direction – and we’ve been able to picture message for years.

(via PCWorld)

Yep, I’m doing it. Joupes is my baby and I’m going to do everything I can do advertise it. It’s my blog. Get over it.

Hopefully you’re already a user, and hopefully you’re subscribed to the Joupes blog. If so, you can ignore this post. Right now, we’re still only accepting users by invitation. However, in the next week or two, we will be removing this and making it open registration. Until then, request an invite and we’ll get you an account!

On October 3rd we were happy to announce the new text-to-Joupes feature. We know that you might not have time to always log into your Joupes account just to add a task or goal. Thanks to TTJ, you can simply text-message or email us your tasks and we’ll add it for you! Below is a re-post from the official release explaining how TTJ works (from the Joupes Blog).

———————————-

Here is the list of the letter combinations you’ll want to remember when you text Joupes. As of right this second, we’re offering 3 options for remotely handling your account.

Enjoy!

About a week ago, the popular URL shortening service announced that they are releasing a new shortener site. Why would arguably the most popular URL shortener release a brand new site? Simple – j.mp is 2 characters shorter than bit.ly. Really, that’s all.

For those who are currently bit.ly account holders, don’t worry – just login to j.mp using your bit.ly information and your links and statistics will carry over. Now, saving 2 characters isn’t a huge deal to me, but if you are constantly trying to shave letters off of your tweets, making the switch to j.mp might be a good idea.

Starting tomorrow, Monopoly will expand its vast collection of game variations to its biggest “board” yet – Google Maps. That’s right, as of September 9th, you can play Monopoly on Google Maps.

While all the details are still fuzzy, as of this post the game is set to release around 1pm EST. What we do know is that this will be a full out Monopoly game – except that you could, in theory, purchase the street you actually live on! If my understanding is correct, almost all streets and places on Google Maps will be “playable” in the game. You can build houses, charge rent, and even test your luck with the famous Chance cards.

Be sure to check out the official blog for more details and game rules, and definitely keep checking the website tomorrow for the official release.  Another fine move by Google to think out of the box, uniting a classic game with the web service we have grown dependant upon.

I have always considered Facebook as the primary social network.  You can manage photos like Flickr, you can post updates like Twitter, you can show off your cliched profile pictures like MySpace, you can sell things like eBay, and now with Facebook apps, you can add music to your page, embed RSS feeds and play games.

Since all these things are combined into one site, I (and most others, I believe) consider Facebook to be the more private network – for real friends only.  Sure, some people make it their job to collect friends, but for the most part, clicking “Friend Request” is an exciting action that is reserved for people you know – or at least people you have interacted with.

If someone likes the website, I’ll accept their request.  If I’ve emailed back and forth with the author of a favorite blog of mine, I might try and add him/her on Facebook.  Thanks to uSocial, however, all of this is changing.  Well, at least they want it to.

uSocial is a unique advertising service that sells Facebook friends and Twitter followers.  You heard me right.   For around $177, you can ensure yourself 1,000 new Facebook friends (the same prices apply to Facebook Fan Pages).  For $87, you can buy 1,000 Twitter followers.  Plans for both services can cost you as much as $11,000.  Why would anyone pay for friends?  Good question.

Ideally, this service would appeal to businesses and professionals trying to market their services on these fast growing social networking sites.  However, until I see statistics on the amount of friends and followers who want to reach into their pocket and pay for your product because they are your online friend, I’m not buying it.  Why not simply pay for targeted advertising on Facebook?  It can be significantly cheaper, and it ensures that the friends and fans you get will be…well…friends and fans!

“So, how did we do this quarter, Jim?”

“Well sir, we have over 5,000 fans on Facebook!”

“Wonderful!  Now how does that income statement look?  Oh, and what’s this $650 charge?”

“Unimportant.”

To sum up, social networking has brought us around to the point that people are literally paying for friends.  Lovely.

If you haven’t noticed yet, RyboMedia officially has a new face, logo, mascot, icon – whatever you want to call him. If you’re new to the site, or just blind, it’s the rhino!

So, the hard work is done, thanks to William Woody (an excellent designer and videographer if you need one).  Now I need your help for the fun part – a name.  Something fun, easy to remember.  Got any ideas?  Post below, write on the Facebook page, @reply to rybo, or email me!