So, as we wrap up 2011 and look forward to the last year of our existence, I figured listing a slew of resolutions would be even more pointless than usual. Instead, I only have one: to survive.

That’s it. And I’m going to do it. This is one resolution I won’t toy with for a few weeks and then leave languishing on the floor of a 7-11 as I walk out with a bag of Funyuns and a Dr. Pepper under my arm. Nope. This time, it’s for keeps.

So, you can either bow to the whims of the fatalist Mayans and wait for the end, or you can stand up and refuse to go gently into the night. I’m going rage against the dying of the light like a room full of honey badgers on an epinephrine bender. And here’s what I’m going to need to do it:

Guns

First thing’s first, in post-apocalyptic Earth: Protect yourself from the hordes of the dying. For that, I’m heading to Grandpa’s Pawn and Gun, 312 Main St., in Longmont, where they have an enormous arsenal of new and used weaponry and ammo. grandpaspawn.com

Survival Gear

Obviously infrastructure’s going to crumble and that means basic necessities such as power, running water, etc. will cease. So, we’re gonna need to load up on everything from tents and tarps to matches and rope. So I’m heading to Jax Outdoor Gear, a locally owned company (just because the world’s ending doesn’t mean I can’t shop local) that has pretty much everything I’m gonna need, 900 Hwy. 287, Lafayette, jaxmercantile.com

Transportation

If zombie movies have taught us anything, it’s that the end of the world will result in a mass gridlock of dead cars on the highways. Which means, if we want to get around, we’ll need off-roading vehicles, and for that, Rocky Mountain Kawasaki, 645 Frontage Rd., Longmont, fits the bill just fine. I mean, a side-by-side will make getting around in post-apocalyptic Earth possible and fun! rockymountainkawasaki.com/

Electronics

Sure, electricity won’t be an option for very long, but there is no shortage of battery- and solar-powered options available for pretty much anything I’m going to need. Remember how awesome Radio Shack used to be? You could pretty much buy and assemble a robot henchman purely from stuff you bought there. Now, however, Radio Shack is where you go to buy remote control cars and sign up for cellular phone service. No worries, though, because there’s SparkFun Electronics. It’s like the way Radio Shack used to be, but times a thousand. Screw the generator. I’m gonna build a particle accelerator with their stuff! 6175 Longbow Dr., Ste. 200 Boulder, sparkfun.com

Alright Mayans. I’m prepared now. Give me your best shot.

I want to basically store as little as possible on my iPhone. It should merely be a conduit to what I need: Internet, chatting, playing Words with Friends, etc. One of the things I like least about my iPhone is having to carry around several gigs of music that I want to swap out every month. I’d like to sync on any machine, not have to decide which device I want to use to listen to music.

Which is why I use Pandora.com so much, but the free version’s catalog is limited and the occasional commercials are blaring. But then the clouds parted and Spotify.com appeared. The streaming-music service has been a Godsend for people like me. Before I committed to the paid version, I figured I’d compare it to similar services. What follows is my analysis, so you can make an informed decision about which you’d prefer.

Spotify.com
Cost for premium: $9.99/mo
Speed: Fast. Pretty much no discernible difference between 3G and Wi-Fi.
Catalog: Giant and growing quickly. More than 16 million tracks; 10,000 added daily.
Supports syncing your own music: Yes
Ease of use: Set up is a little dodgy as the desktop app needs you to first set up an account online then go back and set up the desktop app then set up mobile apps, etc.

Google Music
Cost for premium: Google music is free while it’s still in beta for Google.
Speed: Very fast. Some chugging on the Amazon side on occasion .
Catalog: Limited to what you own, up to 25,000 tracks.
Supports syncing your music: Yes, and that’s it.
Ease of use: As with everything Google, it’s a snap. But this is more cloud-based storage solution with a streaming component than music service. And it’s not iOS compatible.

Amazon Cloud Player
Cost for premium: $20/year
Speed: Noticed some hiccups when I still had three bars.
Catalog: Limited to what you own, up to 20 gigs. However, any tracks purchased from Amazon don’t count against storage limit.
Supports syncing your own music: Yes. You can add tracks you’ve purchased from Amazon.com as well.
Ease of use: It’s compatible through the iPhone’s web-browser interface, so not completely native as in Spotify’s case. Still, pretty easy to navigate the system.

Rhapsody
Cost for premium: $10/year
Speed: Fast. Even down to one bar.
Catalog: 13 million and growing.
Supports syncing your music: Nope
Ease of use: Easy to set up and has iOS support, but it’s a pure streaming solution, meaning you can’t upload your own music

Winner: Hands down, Spotify takes it. It supports your own music collection, streams to unlimited devices, and works fast and seamlessly. Plus, it has the biggest music catalog in the bunch. For the cost of an iTunes album a month? It’s a sweep.

Typically, our federal government lags at least two or three laps behind the technology sector. And that’s probably a kind estimate. For proof, witness pretty much any discussion about ’net neutrality over the last decade or so. Most of the discussions and debates on that ensued on Capitol Hill were akin to me trying to teach my high school sweetheart about football.

“Why do they wear those costumes?”

“Those are uniforms.”

“What’s a line of cribbage? They play cards, too?

“It’s scrimmage.”

And so on. And if you really wanna frustrate yourself, dive a little deeper into the transcripts of hearings around digital copyrights. The people we elect into office are as technically astute as the majority of people voting for them…which is to say, a whole lot of people who have a blinking 12:00 on their microwaves.

And that’s just at the federal level. It gets worse as it trickles down to state level, where it seems every other month some state senator or governor seems genuinely shocked his emails and tweets weren’t private, which is what he thought when he was transmitting pictures of his privates. Privately. But not really.

When you get down to the local level, well, I get the sense most local municipalities regard computers and the Internet as black magic. Witness trying to pay a parking ticket online. Or renew anything with the Department of Motor Vehicles (true story: I renewed my license online here in Colorado. Paid the fee and everything, and I thought, wow, this is great! Three months later, still no license. So I call up the DMV and find out I was going to have to come in and pay the fee again because I waited 2 days past an arbitrary 90-day deadline to report that I never received my license. None of which was spelled out on the site when I renewed. Luddites).

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled onto the city of Longmont’s new mobile-friendly site. Granted, I shouldn’t have been that surprised; Longmont is light years ahead of pretty much any other similar-sized municipality on the planet (witness its amazingly cogent bid last year for Google’s fiber access experiment). But surprised I was, nonetheless.

Starting on the homepage, the nav is über simple (if a little drab in color), with what looks to be emergency and closure notices high and center. From there, it’s a quick dive into well-organized layout of civil services, directories, news and one of the more useful sitemaps I’ve ever stumbled across. Individual city departments are labeled alphabetically and news headlines are dated. You can also submit a form to report street damage or graffiti (although, I wasn’t able to upload a photo using my iPhone, and I’d suggest the next iteration uses a pull notification to grab the user’s location so you don’t have to type it in).

Job well done, Longmont. Now, could you subcontract your Information Architecture team out to the Department of Motor Vehicles? They could use some help.

Thankfully, other services have filled the void that Myspace left, and Reverbnation.com is arguably the most popular. It’s a FaceSpace just for bands, and provides tools Facebook and Myspace doesn’t (although it does have a seamless integration with both), such as easy access for bands to set up iTunes accounts and sell their wares. If you’re in a band, it’s worth exploring, and if you’re just interested in what you can hear in your own neck of the woods, here’s a quick sampling:

Artist/Band name: Camryn

Based in: Denver

Genre: Pop

Sounds Like: a female Hanson (back when Hanson was prepubescent)

Link: reverbnation.com/camryn

Artist/Band name: FC Murda

Based in: Aurora

Genre: Rap

Sounds Like: he listens to a lot of 50 Cent

Link: reverbnation.com/fcmurda

Artist/Band name: Rob Swanson

Based in: Golden

Genre: Singer/Songwriter

Sounds Like: if Morphine plugged himself into a leslie amp and didn’t have a saxophone

Link: reverbnation.com/robswanson

Artist/Band name: Pat Carr

Based in: Broomfield

Genre: Blues

Sounds Like: he probably always wears a hat and loves barbecue

Link: reverbnation.com/patcarr

Artist/Band name: Tempting Zen

Based in: Denver

Genre: Rock

Sounds Like: their favorite wine is from Caduceus Cellars

Link: reverbnation.com/temptingzen

Artist/Band name: Taarka

Based in: Lyons

Genre: Gypsygrass

Sounds Like: if Django Reinhardt hung out with Bela Fleck

Link: reverbnation.com/taarka

Artist/Band name: Mourned by Flies

Based in: Longmont

Genre: Metal

Sounds Like: that moment just after you slam your head through a windshield

Link: reverbnation.com/mournedbyflies

Artist/Band name: Scott Dale

Based in: Boulder

Genre: Roots Rock

Sounds Like: folky country music but less sucky

Link: reverbnation.com/scottdalemusic

What follows are gadgets every student needs (even those of us who are just students of life), so waste no time rushing out and buying one for the student in your life. And if you don’t have a student in your life, you can buy one for me.

Macbook Air: Folks, the future is about non-movable media. Anything that spins is sooooo 2005, and that includes the hard drive in your computer. The Macbook Air uses solid-state technology, which is better because: It accesses data faster, uses less energy, stays cooler, is less prone to damage from physical shock and is way lighter. Which means it’s perfect for a student lugging stuff around in her Jansport backpack with her field hockey cleats. Plus, with the new Lion OS and Thunderbolt I/O, the machine is faster than ever. $999 and up, apple.com/macbookair/

Laptop Lock: Let’s face it, students can be irresponsible. Chad’s easily distracted by a pretty girl, and when he leaves his laptop sitting on the bench and jogs over to get her number, wouldn’t it be nice if he knew it was going to be there when he came back? The TryTen Laptop lock is exactly what he needs, at a price point you can afford. Now you just have to get him to remember to lock it. $24.90, tryten.com/Laptop-Locks

iPad 2: Macbook’s out of range? Well, there’s very little you can do on a Macbook Air that you can’t do on an iPad2; you just do it a little differently. Between open source cloud computing apps such as Google Docs, Bluetooth-enabled peripherals (such as a keyboard), and the clarity of one of the most crystal clear displays on the tablet market, the iPad 2 is every bit as tough a computer as your student needs. $499 and up. apple.com/ipad/

Mini Portable Hard Drive: There’s only so much room on your student’s computer, and his music collection alone is 500 gigs. Well, fret no more; Lacie’s Rugged Mini Hard Drive is built to take on any ultimate Frisbee competition and keep on ticking. It looks like it was made to throw at something (still, not advised). And an 1TB drive is plenty affordable enough to make it a no-brainer for big data storage needs. $159.99, bit.ly/laciedrive

iPhone/iPad projector: This one’s my favorite, really. Hauling around a flat-screen TV isn’t just a pain; it’s asking to have to rush out and buy another flat screen TV. But say you had a way to project what you were watching on your iPhone or iPad onto a wall…say, at 60 inches? In staggering 1000:1 ratio? With something about the same size as your phone itself? Now we’re talking! Check out the Optoma Pico Procket Projector and take movie night literally anywhere with a wall. $182.99, bit.ly/pocketprojector

Illustration by Haley Sir

Dear Pop,

I know you want some gadget or tool for tinkering for Father’s Day, but, let’s face it, we both know it’ll end up on a shelf. Ma will dust around it and mutter under her breath about another annoying tchotchke cluttering up the house (never mind her porcelain bunny collection). So, instead, I figured I’d write you a letter in a really public forum so you can show it to all your friends at the retirement community pub and brag about your son, the writer, which I know you love to do.

The last dozen or so years have been tough. Watching you fighting a losing battle with age and illness has been an exercise in humility, at best. The random dramatic texts and calls from Ma about the latest doctor visit and the next battery of tests—well, I’d be lying if I said I looked forward to those.

Your driving has evolved from “slow enough to drive Miss Daisy” to downright “menace on the asphalt.” The daily emails or calls while I’m in the middle of work (like you think I retired when you did) to chat about something else the president did that pissed you off drive me nuts. Your random Facebook and LinkedIn political diatribes give me migraines. Your Don Quixotian battle against the medical industry’s statistically biased reasons for not giving you a kidney just make me shake my head.

And yet, when I take a step back and forget for a second my own issues with it all—my own ego and approaching-middle-aged second adolescence—I’m moved. Because I realize, as I look at how many ways and how many times life knocks you down (hell, you’ve actually died, what, five times now?), you still get up.

Every. Single. Time. At an age when the fight seems to flicker out of most people, you’re just fighting harder. In so many ways, you’re tougher now than you were as a “go-to-hell G.I.” back in ’Nam.

Pop, I know there’s never enough time to get it all out, to say everything that we should say, and I know even if there was, we likely would skip around it talking about politics or football anyhow.

So I’ll just say this: Thank you.

Thank you for letting me fail. Thank you for challenging me to pick myself up again. Thank you for being morally incorruptible. Thank you for teaching me how to deal with pain. Thank you for showing me how to change a tire, for teaching me “lefty-loosey-righty-tighty,” for showing me how to splice a wire, how to use jumper cables, to open the door for a lady, to keep my guard up and my head on a swivel, that Mickey Mantle was the greatest baseball player of all time (even though it was Willie Mays), that it’s OK to call a professional but not to ask directions, and why John Wayne mattered.

Happy Father’s Day, Pop. Love ya.

Illustration by Haley Sir

Summertime in the Rockies means sweet Olathe corn roasting on a grill, lazy back porch evenings drenched in honey-gold sunsets and music festivals more ubiquitous across the Front Range than wild fires. And while anyone can pick a decent ear of corn, selecting which festivals deserve your preciously guarded time and hard-earned money can be a more daunting task. So I’ve done it for you. Here are the top music festivals of the summer for your planning needs.

Taste of Louisville
Where: 800 Main St., Louisville
When: June 4
Why: Enjoy a half marathon, followed by a collection of Louisville’s best restaurants. tasteoflouisvillehalf.com

People’s Fair
Where: Civic Center Park, Denver
When: June 4-5
Why: Experience dozens of the best local music acts for free. Plus: meat on a stick. peoplesfair.com

Louisville Downtown Street Faire
Where: Historic Downtown Louisville
When: Friday evenings, June 10–Aug. 12
Why: You live near a place like Louisville exactly for this reason: A classic small town Friday night gathering with food, lots of neighbors and live music. downtownlouisvilleco.com

Aspen Music Festival
Where: Several venues across Aspen
When: June 19–Aug. 17
Why: There isn’t a more respected
classical music series in the country. aspenmusicfestival.com

Rhythm on the Rails
Where: Whistle Stop Park, Niwot
When: 6pm, Thursdays, June 9–Aug. 18
Why: Hazel Miller, Lionel Young and Rebecca Folsom are slated for this family friendly series. bceproductions.com

The UMS
Where: South Broadway, Denver
When: July 21-24
Why: The UMS (Underground Music Showcase) has grown into the biggest non-corporate music event since the first years of SXSW. With 325 acts across three days, get introduced to killer music you’ve never heard. theums.com

RockyGrass
Where: Planet Bluegrass Ranch in Lyons
When: July 29-31
Why: This year’s lineup may be one of the best in the history of Colorado’s longest running bluegrass fest: Del McCoury, Peter Rowan and an Open Road reunion. bluegrass.com/rockygrass

Telluride Jazz Fest
Where: Telluride
When: Aug. 5–7
Why: Telluride Bluegrass gets all of the press, but the jazz fest presents a more diverse lineup across a wider spectrum of sounds. telluridejazz.org

Arvada Harvest Festival
Where: Grandview Avenue, Arvada
When: Sept. 9–11
Why: Say goodbye to summer with one of the longest-running (86 years) historic festivals in the state. And there’s a parade. arvadaharvestfestivalparade.com

I love streaming.

Ever since I got my iPad (and yes, I’m waiting on delivery of my iPad 2), my most-used app has been Netflix.

The missus has Real Housewives of Latvia or whatever on the TV in the bedroom it seems every single night as we nod off. Now, I can throw on my headphones and watch whatever B movie with Rutger Hauer I want without listening to my wife scream about how utterly stupid she thinks Blind Fury is (how we’ve stayed together this long, I still don’t know).

But, I have this deep sense of foreboding that bliss may not last. As I type this, AT&T joins the swelling ranks of broadband providers who think data transmission should be rationed, like beef and steel during WWII. The wireless giant has announced it’s going to cap usage at 20 gigs a month for users of its network.

Before that, it was a pure Mexican stand-off between Comcast and Netflix supposedly around the cost of service provided through Netflix’s ISP Level 3. In a nutshell, Comcast was concerned Netflix’s strain on its network was greater than what it originally agreed it would be with Level 3, and thus Netflix needed to pony up some more coin.

The conspiracy theorist in me, however, wonders if that was really at the underbelly of all of it. Have you tried Xfinity’s new app yet? Depending on your tier of service, it basically exposes all of your normal cable channels to any broadband Internet-active device. Like, for instance, my iPad.

At any given moment, Comcast’s library of On Demand content doesn’t yet rival Netflix, but it’s conceivable this might change, and sooner rather than later. While Comcast throttles my streaming access to Netflix, it builds a bigger library…slowly destroying the competition.

AT&T is in a slightly different boat. As a broadband provider in the wireless universe, bandwidth is at a greater premium than for hardwire landlines like Comcast. So their case is marginally more legitimate. That is, until they buy one of their biggest competitors and soak up all of their available bandwidth, too. Say, for instance, T-Mobile?

That being said, the truth of the matter is, it all comes down to the golden pipes rule. He who has the pipes, rules. At least, it’s gonna be that way until the FCC figures out how to regulate Internet access in a way that protects the consumer without making it unprofitable for the provider (and, considering the insanely huge profit margins on this stuff after the capital expenditure, that shouldn’t be the tall order it sounds).

So, if Netflix doesn’t want to end up like Blockbuster, it’s gonna need to figure out how to continue to deliver HD content while using less bandwidth. Anyone listening over there at the Fraunhofer Institute? Are you guys on this one? You did such a good job on mp3s, this should be right up your alley, right?

About a month and a half ago, Egypt, long considered one of the more stable Arab countries in the Middle East, boiled over into a revolution that resulted in the unseating of long-sitting President Hosni Mubarak. The recipe for this change included most of the usual ingredients a good revolution needs: extreme class disparities marked by an inordinately large poverty class; despotic, oppressive leadership; police repression; and ever-climbing price inflation of basic staples like food and energy.

But this one had a new twist to it. This one had Facebook.

While I’d stop short of calling Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “Moses,” his brainchild’s role in the Egyptian conflagration was more than just spark to gasoline. The ubiquitous social network site provided calls to action, an online rally point for what might have been an otherwise disorganized collection of rebels, and a magnifying glass for the rest of the world to see what was happening.

Facebook is boasting more than 500 million active users, and is second only to Google in terms of daily unique visitors in the U.S., according to Quantcast.com.

Those numbers are huge, but they don’t tell the whole story. Already, content-driven platforms have recognized the value of Facebook—whereas a year or two ago, driving traffic through search engine optimization was considered the holy grail of obtaining readership; the pendulum has now swung toward social networking. According to a TechCrunch.com article, ChompOn.com, a startup focused on helping people monetize the Web, valued a link shared on Facebook at $14. By comparison, a link tweeted was only worth $5.

In terms of ad revenue, that number is staggering, and it keys into the second oldest sales truth (The oldest: sex sells.) known to man: word-of-mouth is the best sales lead you can offer.

The fact is, people log on to Facebook before they do anything nowadays and are getting news and information shared to them by their friends on a more regular basis than from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. If your friend posted a link to a story, chances are you’ll click on it, because you probably share a lot of interests with that friend.

When you put that into context of the flow of information, suddenly, Facebook looms larger than Google. Whereas Google’s algorithms are set to crowdsource based on the search activities of millions, Facebook can set algorithms based on just your social network. Simply identifying patterns within the network in which you’re most active provides scads of deeply relevant information. All those “likes,” all of the people with whom you interact the most, all of the personal and demographic information you expose, all of the geotagging on your pictures, all of the “checking-in”…that all amounts to exposing human activity on an individual, person-by-person basis to Facebook that you’re providing completely voluntarily. A twist or two of the dial and Facebook can ensure you’re seeing exactly what they want you to see in that stream. And you’ll click on it, because those are your friends in there, by God. They would never mean you any harm.

But the real question is: Is Facebook your friend, too?

Not if your name’s Hosni Mubarak.

This old adage should be embossed in steel and mounted on the offices of every major corporation in the world, and none sooner than the walls of AT&T.

On Jan. 11, Verizon announced it will begin carrying the ubiquitous iPhone on its network by the time you read this column. The ripple effect of this announcement may be one of the largest such events in cellular telecommunications history.

That may sound like an unreasonable charge, but mark my words, the shakeup will be huge, and, in good capitalistic tradition, should benefit the consumer.

AT&T has had a stranglehold on the biggest game-changing device in mobile communications and computing in history since the iPhone launched in 2007. True to Apple’s form, the company clung to a locked-down, one-network approach as long as it could, but in 2010, Android phones edged past iPhones for the first time in gross sales.

Apple’s draconian, share-nothing-with-anyone product management has long been a marketplace weakness it could overcome by being, well, really, really good at design. Ironically, the Achilles heel in this approach appears to have turned out to be the one time it truly partners externally, and AT&T’s subpar voice network and lackluster 3G data speeds forced Apple to admit it was time to open the gates to a new player.

Enter Verizon. As an iPhone user, I’ve bemoaned the dropped call issues of AT&T network, and stayed only because I’m so in love with the device and not keen on unlocking or jailbreaking and voiding my warranty.

Verizon’s entry into the arena signals a slew of changes on the wind:
Pricing: Competition breeds better prices, and while the cost of the iPhones themselves may not budge much, associated usage and data charges will. Both companies will have to adjust to stay competitive, perhaps with huge breaks for longer contract terms.

Networks: Although no one knows how the iPhone will perform on Verizon’s network, anecdotally, the situation looks good. The Verizon customers I know never complain about dropped calls. If that trend continues, AT&T is gonna have to look at infrastructure. And it may be too late for that.

Other competition: As long as AT&T remained the only carrier with the iPhone, all other, smaller companies such as Sprint and T-Mobile survived on an equal playing field. But a lot of customers have been sitting on those networks, simply waiting for the iPhone to move to someone “other” than AT&T, such was their disdain for the goliath carrier. With the iPhone now on another network, a large, if not mass, exodus from these tertiary carriers is not unlikely.

Android killer?: There’s a strong segment of the Android market who use Android phones because they couldn’t (or rather, wouldn’t) get their hands on an iPhone while it was on AT&T. Now that it’s on Verizon, this may be the knockout punch Apple wanted to deal to Google’s open-sourced phone.

As with anything, time will tell. It’ll be another year and a half before we know the impact; the iPhone 4 was released in June of 2010, which means AT&T’s contracts will start expiring in the summer of 2012. Who knows? By then, AT&T may have figured out how to resolve connectivity and press issues. Because even when it’s bad news…

Nothing lasts forever.