Yes! It’s out today! The e-mail is dated the 30th but I got it today. What am I talking about?
The One And Only SlingPlayer for Mac Beta! GET IT NOW! It sucks that it took this long to get it but If you read this letter from the Sling Media CEO, you’ll see that they do put their heart into this project.
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Time to pitch to you my concept for the alt, the next version of iSwitched, coming late ‘06, early ‘07. the alt will be based around the concept of discussion, making the forums the real heart of the operation. The main site will be more of the showcase of the best the community has to offer.
How is this going to work? First off, parts of the forums will be dedicated to reviews and opinion pieces about the Mac, iPod and iTunes, the Wii and the DS. When someone posts an article, they will add a poll to their post asking ” What do you think of this article?” with “It’s well done” and It’s not well done” answers. Other users will be able to post comments and vote, keeping in mind the question isn’t “Do you agree with this article?” but was it well written and though out. From time to time, I’ll, and any other moderator, be checking the posts. If we find the response to the article is positive enough, we’ll ask the original poster if they mind if we put their article on the main page. If they accept, I’ll add the article.
This concept might also be used in a “feature request” part of the forum. People post feature or message board requests and people comment and vote. Until it’s nothing I can’t do (and the “I can’t do category” is still pretty big) and people want it, I might add it.
(19 DAYS UNTIL Wii LAUNCH!!!)
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Before we go too far:
WOO-HOO! ONLY 20 DAYS UNTIL Wii LAUNCH!!!!!
Just like to tell you that I cleaned up my sidebar and changed my blog’s design. I also shortened the name to just “iBlog“, cutting “The official iSwitched Blog” seeing how iSwitched will fade into history in the coming months. When the new site is up, I’ll switch any personal stuff (really just my GarageBand music right now) and the iSwitched podcast archive (including the classic episodes that I made unavailable on the podcast feed) to a page on the blog here.
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The Wii seems to have a special power: Unlike any other console, it’s made me want to play nearly every (good) game. Like I said before, I don’t own any first person shooters but I want to try out Red Steel. Never played a Zelda game but I’m probably going to pick up Twilight Princess in December. I’m not very fond of stakeboarding games but I wouldn’t mind trying out Downhill Jam. I can’t wait for Excite Truck and Rayman : Raving Rabbids. Rayman seems like the kind of mini-game fun and pure insanity that I love in the WarioWare series (just minus the insane time limits). How can one system deliver so much possible fun? It’s the nature of the games itself : I doubt anyone would get all excited about pressing buttons. Here, you do the actions and that’s fun by itself. Sure, you need to back that fun with graphics, storylines and more but look at it this way: I would have never been interested in playing Red Steel if it was an XBOX 360 game. I might have passed on Twilight Princess if it stayed a GameCube exclusive. I’m not what you might see as a “real” gamer : I like simple games (like WarioWare) or “different” games (like Animal Crossing). The most in-depth game I have and one of the only RPGs I played is World of Warcraft. I’m slowly getting into more games (I’m planning on getting FF III for the DS later this year) but nothing relay made me interested in these games. Nothing pushed me to try them meaningfully… until the Wii came.
By now, you must be wondering what in the world does this have to do with my post title. Well, I’m not planning on buying all these games. I’m already not the kind of person who replays anything; when it’s done, it’s done. Heck, I traded in Paper Mario : The Thousand Year Door before finishing the final boss. I tried maybe once or twice then stopped completely. So if a game doesn’t seem interesting and long enough, I won’t buy it. It won’t be worth it for me. That’s why I might look to video game rental stores to fulfil my need to try everything out. If after trying a game out there’s still a lot to do and I find it fun, I might go buy it. And there you go: that’s why Blockbuster will love the Wii. It has that special something that entices you to try out new things. I guess Nintendo’s non-gamer strategy isn’t just for non-gamers.
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21 DAYS UNTIL Wii LAUNCH
IGN has actual Wii interface footage! It doesn’t have all the features like the Mii or Weather channels but you have nice footage of the message centre (or whatever it’s called), the options, the memory management, and the disk channel. It’s really worth checking out! Go here and go view IGN Weekly Episode 30. The Wii footage is at the start of the episode.
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Shocking twists! Angry Fans! And Vote Tampering! No you aren’t flashing back to 2000. It’s 2006 and it’s the My Dream App competition. After clearing up some vote tampering, the results were made public: Atmosphere, Portals and Cookbook won and are getting made. But the truly big shock was that Cookbook won by 5 votes, leaving Hijack with Whistler (Why?! 
I want it!) and Blossom as the runners-up. Outrage came from Hijack fans. But the big shocker is…
Hey all. MDA brought to my attention this morning, that there was someone, that I know personally, who was gaming the vote system. It is with a heavy heart that I have to say this. And I realize this puts my integrity on the line. For what it’s worth, I want to go on record, that I never condoned any such action or behavior, I did not know it was even going on during this round. Not only do I feel horrible, but so does this person, and it is our relationship that I value over anything else. That is why I’m going to decline any prizes being offered (i.e. the Mac Mini, Office Suite, and the Tshirt). It’s the only thing I know how to do at this point to help restore the trust from everyone here: the community, the Hijack fans, my fellow contestants, and of course, all the fantastic people at MDA. I apologize to everyone above for any direct or indirect anguish this may have caused.
Thank you,
Kevin Capizzi
My Dream App » Contestants » Kevin Capizzi » Blog
This is from the creator of Hijack. He’s still not decided on the question of the prizes (He might donate them). Already, people are planning projects to bring Hijack to life. But the saga isn’t finished.
One things for sure: Someone better make Whistler.
But on a serious note, it’s a pity that this tampering happened and that Hijack lost by 5 votes. Makes me feel a bit guilty as I wanted that app to get made also. But I decided to only vote for Whistler and not use up the extra votes. I’ll keep on following this as it unfolds, hopefully ending in a result that leaves everyone happy.
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It was bound to happen. Happened with my mini with that silent update they did. And now, it happened with my MacBook Pro… It can now come with a Core 2 Duo. And there seems to be distinguishable speed boosts in apps Apple tested.
I feel old.
But on a good note:
23 DAYS UNTIL Wii LAUNCH!!!
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25 DAY UNTIL Wii LAUNCH
That Wii launch is slowly but surely coming which will also mean the launch of “play”, my site for the Wii (and DS) is coming soon. I was also planning to start “Macbits” for Mac stuff but I decided otherwise because I want to concentrate more on the big site update I’m planning at the end of the year or beginning of 07 (and “play”, obviously). On the subject of the new site, I think I have the name down. It might change but for now it’s going to be the alt. Why? You’ll know later. Can’t spoil everything! I will spoil something else, though: the main site will be built with iWeb and there will be forums. Well, that’s it for now. Expect to learn more as the iSwitched re-launch nears.
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Thoes shares in Disney are sure paying off for the Mac:
Do you have a Macintosh, been wanting toontown?Toontown on the Macintosh is NOW taking signups for testers!
Just visit www.toontown.com from a macintosh and sign up!
ToonTown Central – Fansite for Disney’s Toontown Online
Disney’s Toontown Online was my first endevor into MMORPGs and, at any age, is loades of fun! I had a small hope in my heart this would happen. And it did! Sign up for the beta, oddly limited to ages 18 and over. Trust me: this game is certainly not designed for ages 18 and over (but again, is fun at any age).
And before I forget:
27 DAYS UNTILL Wii LAUNCH
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Don McAllister, who hosts ScreenCasts Online, does what he does real well. He’s the one that made me learn of Libsyn, my current podcast hosting service, which is just perfectly tailored to podcasters, and not pricey at all. It’s from him that I leaned about Flock, the cool Firefox-based browser with special features like blogging and Flickr support. Now I nearly never use Safari and when I’m on my mac, it’s the only way I upload blog posts to my blog. He cleared up the mystery of OmniOutliner, included on my MacBook Pro, which ends up being a pretty powerful outlining app that’s a bit the equivalent of MS’s OneNote on Windows, which was a great Idea but was very pricey. And now, he’s done it again! He has me interested again on a new thing: SiteGrounds, his website hosting provider. Offering a very interesting set of features (Free domain name, 40 GB of space, 900 GB in bandwidth and the amazing Fantasico – check out the screencast to know more) for a nice, economical price – a price that comes to $4.95 a month paid for 2 years with no setup fee, my mind started working again: This is a great alternative for both Libsyn (unless my podcast becomes very popular all of a sudden) AND .mac ! I have my e-mail service, podcast hosting and website hosing in one very economical package! So expect the iSwitched website, and everything around it, to change soon. Because I have alot of my money set asside for my Wii, don’t expect a new site too soon. I’d say end of December, start of January. It will be before my .mac subscription renews. And you’ll probably be seeing a new name as there’s no good domains left with “iSwitched”. I already have some ideas that I’ll leave brewing in my mind in case a better one comes up. So, thanks again Don! You sure know how to get people excited about what you talk about in your screencasts. Keep up the good work!
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Friday, I made 30 wallpapers, each with a number from 1 to 30. I’ll let you a guess why… Yes, It’s because the 1-month-to-launch mark has passed for the Wii!!!! I’m changing them everyday to pass the time. And may as well start the countdown here too, so:
28 DAYS TO Wii LAUNCH!
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Yes! Woo-Hoo! It’s pre-ordered! I did it at Zellers. It comes with Excite Truck and Rayman: Raving Rabbids. The person there told me I should be able to get it on launch day. Happy! Happy! 
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Here’s a little announcement:
ONE MONTH ‘TILL Wii LAUNCH!!!!
I recently got hooked on The Show with Ze Frank. I saw a video of him speaking at some convention and it was just hilarious. I’d recommend him if I was doing the podcast now. Anyway, today’s show will undoubtedly cause major reprecutions throughout the vast tubes of the information highway. With that sentence, you might say I’m megagaltastic. Well probably not but the deal is that his friend discovered there’s no word meaning to have a large vocabulary so he invented one: megagaltastic, and sent it to Oxford. Unfortunately, there’s some conditions to make it a real word so check out today’s The Show to know more and help put “megagaltastic” in our dictionaries.
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From Apple.com:
We recently discovered that a small number – less than 1% – of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006 left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.
MacDailyNews | Apple shipped Windows virus on small number of 5G video-capable iPods
Apple screws up and can blame Windows?! I’m not sure if I should be pissed or send them an email telling them they’re doing a great job.
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It was announced to the public on 23 October 2001 as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put “1000 songs in your pocket.”
IPod – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That date means that on October 23rd, 2006, the one-and-only iPod will be 5 years old. In under five years, Apple was able to not only make sure everyone knowns what an iPod is but to make sure everyone had one. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it. I hope Apple does something to commemorate this and not just let it pass by like their own 30th birthday.
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Yes, it’s back. Quinn, the T***** app for Mac is back with a new version. It became unavailable due to a dispute with The Tetris Company just before I got my podcast and PDFcast recommending it out! Now it’s back (and for some time it seems). Go check it out!
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Sling Media, makers of the very cool Slingbox, released 3 new models of the box (these ones actually look good). Their packaging note that they have Mac support but unfortunately that isn’t really the case. The Sling Player for Mac still isn’t out yet. Not in the box, not for download. Leaving mac users who bought the new models, not to mention current users who were waiting for the mac version, pretty unhappy. The player does work under Boot Camp and Parallels but, really, you try to go in Windows the least amount of time possible. I only use the player under Parallels for one particular show. C’mon Sling, you should, really for your own good, release at least a beta of the Mac player. You’re slowly but surely loosing the Mac community’s faith and respect.
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EB Games Canada stores will begin accepting limited pre-orders for the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles on Monday, October 16, on a first come, first served basis. Due to extremely limited supply, we expect to reach our limit very quickly, most likely in minutes. We will not accept additional pre-orders at that time. To avoid an unnecessary trip we strongly recommend you call your local store to determine availability. $50 CDN in trade or a $200 CDN cash/credit reservation deposit is required. As we cannot control production and shipping issues by the manufacturer, a reservation deposit does not guarantee receipt of a system available to purchase at launch. Reservations/Purchases are limited to 1 per household.
EBgames.com – EB Games Canada Wii Pre-Order
That’s for Canada…
GameStop and EB Games stores will begin accepting limited pre-orders for the Nintendo Wii console on Friday, October 13, on a first come, first served basis. Due to extremely limited supply, we expect to reach our limit very quickly, most likely in minutes. We will not accept additional pre-orders at that time. To avoid an unnecessary trip we strongly recommend you call your local store to determine availability. A $50 reservation deposit is required, which can be funded with cash, credit or trade. As we cannot control production and shipping issues by the manufacturer, a reservation deposit does not guarantee receipt of a system available to purchase at launch. Reservations/Purchases are limited to 1 per household.
EBgames.com – EB Games Canada Wii Pre-Order
And this is for US. Not only do I have to wait 3 days, I have to pay more than half now or trade in $50 worth of games while the US just has to give $50 in cash, credit or trade-in. You suck (I’d say something else but I’d probalby be inapropriate). I might even take my chance on launch day… at Future Shop or Best Buy.
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“Amid rumors that Apple will introduce a Special Edition red-colored iPod nano on Friday as part of Bono’s ‘Product Red’ campaign to fight AIDS, the white illuminated Apple logo hanging inside the glass cube over Apple’s Fifth Avenue retail store is now glowing red. iProng staff is currently in New York City to cover Digital Life and took the following photos of the new-red logo Thursday evening, from inside and outside the store,” Bill Palmer reports for iProng.
MacDailyNews | Apple Store Fifth Avenue logo goes ‘red’
Very nice touch! Visit MacDailyNews for a photo and a link to more photos.
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Photo evidence and the big man himself (Steve Jobs) confirmed it.
“Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and humanitarian rocker Bono hit the city’s ‘Magnificent Mile’ on Thursday for a shopping spree to promote a new line of clothing, accessories and gadgets, including a special-edition iPod, that will raise money to fight AIDS in Africa,” Ashley M. Heher reports for The Associated Press. “Dozens of ‘(Product) Red’ items will go on sale in the coming weeks by Gap Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Motorola Inc., Converse Inc. and Emporio Armani.”
“Apple will contribute $10 from the sale of each new red-colored iPod nano. The model, priced the same as its $199 cousins, goes on sale Friday,” Heher reports.
MacDailyNews | Steve Jobs, Bono confirm ‘Product Red’ Apple iPod nano, iTunes ‘Red’ gift card
Nice job although seeing how Nintendo was ready to spare the full price of pink DSes for breast cancer, it’s seem a bit low, 10$. But, in all fairness, that Nintendo offer probalby was for a day or a couple of days. This seems to be semi-permantent. Plus, red looks soo much better than pink. Still, just 10$? Even if I won’t be helping the fight against AIDS with a shinny new red iPod nano, I will gladly go for a red iTunes gift card (also coming). If I can find them up in Canada, I’ll most certainly go for it! I do have a long iTunes wishlist going on… Buy legal music, stop AIDS!
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I updated the “iSwitched presents play” preview site with a selection of links to other sites that cover more fully the Wii. Obviously, don’t forget to come back to “play” on November 19. I also added my track for “iSwitched presents play”, oddly named “play” . I hope you like it. And forget (I skipped the “don’t”, I want there to have some Wiis left for when I go) that the EB Games and GameStop Wii preorders start tomorrow!
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I like using GarageBand. By itself, it’s worth the price of iLife (heck, nearly every app except iWeb – it’s great but it’s more of an addon to the others – is worth the price). Probably the single best podcasting app and a great music maker, for musicians and non-musicians alike (although, I can only account for the non-musician side of that comment). I love going in there and making music with the loops. Having a .Mac subscription also offers me some samples of Apple’s Jam Packs (overpriced if you’re a seasonal music maker like me). I try to try something new with GB when I make a new track (By the way, you can download my creations right here). This time I deiced to dive way into GB’s software instruments. There’s a way to play some music with you’re average keyboard and record it in GB. It’s not exactly easy because you can’t stuff all the music notes on your keyboard so you’re left scrolling through them or using GB’s screen keyboard (you click the keys). But I decided to press on some keys and I got a nice 4-note combo going on. I recorded it but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I adjusted the length of every note, made them equal, made the space between them equal and made GB repeat the 4 notes and it sounds great. Remember, I’m no musician. Yes, 4 notes isn’t anywhere near a masterpiece but I’m still proud of myself and GarageBand.
Now for a related story, the My Dream App contest is going on (I talked about it here) and there’s one piece of software I can pretty much swear with certainty that I will buy if made and priced reasonably: Whistler. It let’s you whistle (among other methods) a tune in a mic and make it sound like an instrument in GB. Sweeeet! Now that would make me even happier about making music in GB! Vote for this app! And if it looses, and I sure hope it doesn’t, someone HAS TO MAKE IT! This is too good of an idea to let it fade in to history.
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Just got an e-mail announcing the new iPod (a bit late, eh?) from Apple. This one was French. It was a bit odd: Apple didn’t used the turm “Podcast” like they do even in the french version of iTunes. They called it by it’s (as far as I know) real french name: “balado” which would be short for the real french name “baladodiffusion”. “balado” would be, I guess, “balade” – a stroll or a walk. And “diffusion” would be “cast”. Nice to see Apple supporting names, kinda.
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All roads seem to lead to a Friday start for EB Games (and GameStop but, as far as I know, they aren’t in Canada so it doesn’t really matter to me) Wii Pre-order season. Called my local EB today and the guy strait out said they don’t do Wii pre-orders. I say that just because they can’t say that it starts Friday. I guess we’ll see.
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That may not be true but what is is that Google just bought the biggest competitor it had against the free protion of Google Video. Yes, you know the name: YouTube – now part of Google. Will the big G kill the famous name, change it’s service to YouTube or even, somehow, keep both?… Or settle for Google YouTube? I guess we will know soon enough.
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Don’t think I won’t be doing anything with iSwitched until next summer. The Wii is coming soon and I want to spread the love to the suckers the poor people who can’t enjoy it early on (Europe, Japan ,etc.) So here’s “iSwitched presents play”, a kind of special info site much like the Windows on a Mac site. Here, I’ll have photos, videos and reviews for the Wii. I have a teaser page up and, although not linked to the main site, an example of a “play” page: in this case, a photo galery (the photos are the ones that come with iWeb). I’m also thinking of making some music in GarageBand for play. I hope you enjoy the site and see you November 19th!
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So many (Too many, even) games are coming our way in the upcoming holiday season. Here are the ones I’m excited about:
-Elite Beat Agents for Nintendo DS
I guess you can call it “Dance, Dance Revolution, DS style”. Using real music (A IGN clip showed the game with the song “Walkie Talkie Man”) and wacky situations, you – mostly – tap buttons to the beat to complete levels.
-Final Fantasy III for Nintendo DS
The one that never came this side of the Pacific, remade in glorious 3D. This might shock some, and trust me, many gamers will be having a heart attack by the end of this post, but I never owned a Final Fantasy game. I played my friend’s Kingdom Hears, not to mention having Chains of Memories and then trading it in, and FF X-2 or something but that’s it. It seems really interesting and seems like it can be used as a “World of Warcraft” fix when away from my Mac.
-Wii Sports for Wii
I’m glad it comes with the Wii. Like I already said, it was a “I’d like to play it but I doubt I’d buy it” game for me.
-Wii Play for Wii
More mini games and it seems it comes with a Wiimote without the numchuck. I’m going to keep my eye on this one.
-The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii
Time to stab gamers in the heart again: I never owned or played a Zelda game. I’m ready to try this out and see what it can do. If I like it, I might get it and who knows: I might even go get some classic Zelda with the Virtual Console.
-Red Steel for Wii
Another confession: I never owned or meaningfully played a first person shooter. But I must say this one looks sweeeet! I’m debating between Zelda, this and Excite Truck to be my first… well ok, second game for the Wii.
-Excite Truck for Wii
Trucks going fast and going really hight in the air with simple controls. Pinch me; I’m dreaming.
-WarioWare: Smooth Moves for Wii
I played all the WarioWare games (except that GameCube one) and I love the wacky and fast-like-crazy gameplay! But I’m really not a fan of making a fool of myself. This ones a maybe.
-World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusades for PC/Mac
For the Average Joe WoW Player, this isn’t a no-brainer: you can live without this or atleast wait for a price drop. But the new races and Outland do seem interesting. I’m still wondering about how big Outland is. You’re pretty much paying for WoW in full again: you kinda hope you’re getting something for your money.
Well there’s the list for ya. If you have choices of your own, go ahead and leave a comment.
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It’s time to say goodbye to the podcast… kinda. I realise that I can’t get myself to do a weekly podcast, at least, not during most of the year. I’m ready to podcast during the summer months; I have time for that and I do like making them. But at any other time it becomes an annoying chore. And I don’t do annoying chores unless I really need to. So, let’s all mark our iCals for July 1st, 2007 and call it “iSwitched Season 2″. Until then, I might add somethings to the feed but I doubt it’s going to be on any basis. See you then!
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I was nearly ready to slap my forehead when I stared the latest episode of TWiT. Netcast… Now it’s called a netcast. Visit the website: TWiT Netcast Network. No, No, NO! PODCAST! This all started when Apple sued a company for the using the turm “My podder” (If I remember) and the turm “Podcast” (“Podcast” was in the company name). Leo now decided to rename his podcasts to netcasts. Steve King from Your Mac Life explained it up best: What better way to stick it to Apple that to do exactly what they want you to do. Not use “Podcast”. I knew Leo was a bit pissed at Apple but I didn’t realise he acctualy changed to calling it “netcast”! Leo! Leo!
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