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Google TV. By now if you are a) as into tech as I am and b) as into media as I am, you may be nauseated by the amount of Apple-esque hype that has surrounded Google TV. For those of you that have real lives, let me break down not just the features of the proposed Google TV but the potential impact of Google TV.
The moniker is the best clue. Google=access to their powerful search engine + TV results on the biggest screen in the house. Google TV will allow us to find not just the next time Glee comes on regular TV but episodes, clips, and images from Glee on the internet. The search results can then be bookmarked to watch later. There will also be a homepage where we can keep links to favorite episodes, series, pictures, videos, or channels. Think of it as a media start page in your browser.
For the Consumer:
By merging broadcast and webcast, Google TV will imitate the functionality of Microsoft’s Media Center. In addition, changes made on one’s Android phone or computer will be instantly reflected on Google TV. An Android phone could easily be used as a remote.
Continue reading Google TV?
From the Facebook Privacy Settings: “When you visit a Facebook-enhanced application or website, it may access any information you have made visible to Everyone as well as your publicly available information. This includes your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages. The application will request your permission to access any additional information it needs.” In other words can sell the information it has changed to public information without your knowledge or consent.
Continue reading Facebook “Privacy” Settings
I’ve noticed that I’m just not using my thumb drives anymore. We have a few 16GB Class 6 SDHC cards floating around the family. Between those cards for offline, Dropbox and the web apps I’ve discussed before, I always seem to have what I want at hand. As an added bonus, I can pop those cards into one of our cameras for backup storage as well. I don’t think I’ll be buying any stock in thumb drives anytime soon. Is there a benefit I’m not considering? Tell me in the comments.
Yes, I confess I didn’t want one and have been playing the role of hypocrite ever since my wife got one. Like my iPhone the iPad interface just invites being caressed by my lustful fingers. Touch here and I’m watching a movie. Touch there and I’m reading a book. Ooh, look. Now I’m sifting through pictures from our vacation. By combining the Dropbox and Goodreader apps Joy can even sync her files wirelessly.
What’s not to like? iTunes once again poses an issue. Recently syncing the iPad to iTunes we experienced having all of my contacts merged with all of Joy’s contacts in her contact list (but not mine). We had synchronized her iPad on this same iTunes several times without incident. Then . . .
You’ve already heard me whine about iTunes shortcomings in the past so I won’t go into that here. It amazes me that with all of their peripherals riding on the back of iTunes, Apple can’t put a little more effort into making iTunes perform. The good news is that, under Advanced, there is an option to convert videos into an i-Pad/Pod/Phone/Touch compatible format for syncing. So folks, back up those contacts and proceed with care.
I am absolutely crazy about Netflix on the iPad. The streaming is smooth and the picture quality is brilliant. What could be better? Boxee on an iPad. Boxee is blogging about paid content and how that will work and they slip in this little tidbit at the end of the post – “Vindicia’s flexibility also makes it possible for us to enable payments on our website and across mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android and iPad. Boxee’s eventual expansion to these platforms will pave the way for universally accessible content no matter where a user is (we love this idea!).” Be still my heart. Imagine streaming local media or catching up on my queue with that impressive iPad display.
So, you’re probably wondering, “Is this guy a lousy stinking liar?”
Yes, I did post that I would pass on the iPad, but now we own one. Well, actually my wife owns one. Two weeks ago her netbook died. I had every intention of waiting until the Slate came out to get her one of those as a replacement. Friday, they announced that the Slate project had been killed.
I am not exactly a hacker. I think I would call myself a computer tinkerer. I’ve built my own HTPC, written tons of amateur code, entertain myself with post-processing photos and producing videos, etc. Steve Jobs wants to protect my wife’s computer from being fouled up by shade-tree geeks exactly like me. No professional mechanic enjoys taking over the mess made by a failed shade-tree mechanics project. Computer guys like me know just enough to be dangerous. My wife, on the other hand, is a consumer and the iPad is doing an excellent job replacing her netbook.
As with my iPhone, I am once again forced to interface with a device via the means of iTunes. I love hate tolerate iTunes. iTunes is also consumer oriented. If you buy from the company iTunes Store exclusively it probably is just peachy keen. But God help you if you have metadata to doctor. There is practically an industry made up of software to help those of us that play off the Apple reservation. But for those who play by Steve’s rules of all-Apple all-the-time, it is a slick and easy interface. Since we got the Wi-Fi iPad, at least I don’t have AT&T as part of this deal.
With no Kindle app for Android, all android tablets were out. With the Slate biting the dust, it did not appear that a Windows 7 tablet was on the horizon. Plus Windows, with its constant system updates, grows like Topsy. This is a problem on a tablet with only a few gigs of memory.
As a media consumer, I wanted my wife to have access to email, her Kindle book collection, games, photos, and the internet. As an iPhone user, I knew that Apple had mastered touch navigation and that she would pick up the interface intuitively, which she has done.
I wasn’t thrilled with the 4:3 aspect ratio. However, I have to admit that it is probably better for the internet and ebooks. We streamed an IMAX movie off of Netflix, which filled the screen and looked awesome. Even their regular movies are so brilliantly rendered that one loses any sense of deprivation at the wasted real estate above and below the active area.
We had a family gathering this weekend and the iPad was in high demand. Even so the battery was only depleted about 40%. Games and family photos were the favorite activities. I’ve always been a big fan of putting slideshows or videos up on the big screen TV for us to watch together. The downside of that is that one person controls the remote. With the iPad folks quickly swipe through pictures of people they don’t know or subjects for which they don’t care. The viewer controls the pace. When they want to talk about a picture, everyone instinctively just flipped the screen around toward the other person showing them the picture and relayed their commentary. It might be the best way to share albums with friends and family ever.
Loved the sample book in iBooks. The full color illustrations in Winnie the Pooh show off the iPads ebook advantage. iBooks has a clear edge when it comes to children’s story books. The page flipping gimmick is something that I think is kind of fun for twenty seconds. The Kindle app works very well on the iPad, and for our books will continue to be the first option. It is cheaper and the quick page change is so seamless you forget you’re doing it. Glare makes this a primarily indoor ebook reader.
Real Racing HD was a hoot and even non-gamers could just grab it and go.
The email client worked well, with the GUI optimized depending on whether one is in portrait or landscape mode. The Safari browser worked in a manner very similar with the iPhone’s Safari browser. Apple has not been able to properly cope with plug-ins on their computer and have given up trying on mobile platforms. (Jobs posts tend to make it sound like Apple’s crusade to save the world rather than a failure to cope. Make of it what you will.) However, YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv have already adapted and we were able to enjoy videos from all three of those sites.
If someone in your family is looking for a low-learning curve interface with which to consume media, the iPad should be right at the top of their list. However, you’ll still need to set up their email, their sync settings in iTunes, and the OTA syncing of their Google calendar (assuming you are your family’s designated geek).
On the other hand, I’m not ready to give up my netbook. Even in the field, I want to be able edit photos and videos, download pictures directly from my camera without extra gear, and run software and applications even if they’re not Jobs approved.
On a final note, I am not so conceited as to think that my wife couldn’t pick her own computer. She could but she wouldn’t. Computers aren’t that important to her and she would never voluntarily spend the money on herself. She is really enjoying the iPad – just like over a million other people.
It seems ironic that a Texan would not approve more offshore drilling, but the supposedly more environmentally sensitive current president has given the green light. According to the AP “No oil appeared to be leaking from a drilling rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard said Friday, though officials were trying to contain what spilled after the blast and prevent any threat to the coast’s fragile ecosystem.” We ring our hands about nuclear power, but put our oceans and reefs at risk needlessly. Does this make sense to anyone?
Even more bizarre, according to the NY Times the current moratorium on expansion will continue everywhere but off of the southeastern states. Isn’t it a little late to be seeking revenge for the War Between the States? After all the last authenticated Confederate soldier died in 1951 (and the last claimants in 1959). Please, Mr. President, instead of feeding our oil addiction, I would encourage you to make a new Emancipation Proclamation – one that promises our emancipation from carbon fuel.
 My grandfather, Papaw, had the kind of tool bench too seldom seen. Labeled jars with fasteners, outlines of tools on the pegboard where I was supposed to return them, etc. Papaw was organized and took good care of his tools. He put a lot of thought into what tool to buy and when he bought it he took care of it.
As an engineer my tools are primarily tied to the computer. I have competing priorities when it comes to filtering the vast infinitude of cyber opportunities into the tools down to the ones I wish to use. First, I prefer free. Second, I prefer easy. Third, I prefer powerful. Fourth, I prefer to work “in the cloud.” Fifth, I want to be platform independent.
Today there are a variety of free resources available on the internet. I am writing this on one of them, Zoho Writer. Sadly, being free carries with it certain inherent restrictions. Seldom will one find proprietary codecs in a free application, for example. For a long time this was one of the barriers the normal user had to using Linux, a free and open source operating system.
Which leads me to my second criteria: easy. Until Mint and Jolicloud and their ilk came along, Linux was for the line command commandos. I still remember my noob frustration at trying to play my mp3′s on my first Ubuntu install. Not cool. There are a lot of easy tools out there. Zoho, Google Docs, and Windows Live Writer to name a few.
Unfortunately, free and easy too often equates to lame. I can’t just format my paragraphs to end with two line returns in Zoho or Google Docs like I can in Word. Google Docs spreadsheets require typing in a function to get a hyperlink in a cell. (Zoho is both easy and powerful on this point.) There are some free and powerful tools like Gimp, but I’ve been using it for years and I still haven’t scratched the surface. Office Live is powerful. Just buy MS Office, take your file offline to edit, then save it back to Live. Powerful? Yes. But also expensive and cumbersome.
Continue reading Cloudy with a Chance of Work
 EVERNOTE I don’t know why you would want to browse the web like me, but if you do, here is how I do it.
Search
Most of my surfing time begins with a search. I get my search on either directly through a Google search or indirectly via Ubiquity. I plan to do an entire post about Ubiquity so let me start with Google. The most important tool is the Google Toolbar for Firefox. I don’t use the toolbar itself, but in that add-on’s options, I set the layout to “Replace Firefox search box and hide Google Toolbar.” I also click the ‘search’ option checkbox to “Open search results in a new tab”. Now I type in my search terms and select the type of search I want from the drop down menu. It could be images, map, videos, products, or a number of other options. There is even a Wikipedia option. One click and we’ve dived into the pool of ever expanding knowledge. Normally, I just leave it on Google. If I don’t want to change from the last type of search I did, I just hit ‘Enter’ and a new tab opens with links to the cyber world’s info.
Continue reading Browse the Web Like Me
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About LSS LSS is a nuts and bolts blog. Written by a geek who loves God, this journal reports my quest for technical perfection, environmental and social justice, and venting whatever else is going through my little pea-pickin' brain at the moment.
If you poke around a little, I'm sure you can find something to tick you off, but you might just find something that helps you, too. The former I consider collateral damage and the latter is my hope.
I'm not afraid of or offended by contrary opionions so I hope you'll use the comments to encourage, challenge, and inform myself and my readers. Thanks for visiting and don't forget to subscribe before you leave.
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