This (from Gizmodo) is exceptionally cool. But $130? No way.
Archive for the ‘gadgets’ Category
Ray Gun Pen
Saturday, February 7th, 2009Apple TV, part 3 (Boxee)
Sunday, February 1st, 2009I hooked up the Apple TV, accessed iTunes on my Mac mini, and synced my music from my mini to the Apple TV.
Next up was installing Boxee. Not quite as easy as the instructions made it out to be, but I still got it installed and working. There was some overscan on the video but the software has a really easy way to adjust the overscan, so no problem.
Hulu worked, though it listed videos that weren’t available anymore. That was annoying. ABC.com didn’t work, nor did Fox. That’s makes Boxee a lot less useful. Didn’t try You Tube.
I like the Apple TV’s implementation of Front Row for music much better than I like Boxee. I see Boxee as my avenue to Internet video. For that it works well. I had an episode of 24 running from Hulu. It looked great.
The Apple TV and Boxee are definitely worth it.
Apple TV, part 2
Friday, January 30th, 2009As I said earlier, the Apple TV is a breeze to setup. I’ve since loaded all of my music onto it. It took forever to load 65GB of tunes via Wi-Fi. But it’s done and it looks and sounds great. It operates pretty much just like Front Row on my Mac mini. So it’s a keeper. I’ve disconnected my mini from the TV and taken it downstairs to the office where it will replace my ancient mini-ITX project PC. My next step is to load my photos onto the Apple TV. Then I’m going to try out Boxee.
Apple TV
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
Customer Service Disaster
Sunday, January 18th, 2009We talked about excellent customer service on 1/17. Here’s the flip-side.
We all make mistakes but doing things that are plainly unethical, that’s different. I found this on CrunchGear. Here’s what happened:
A site called The Daily Background found evidence that Belkin Bizdev guy, Michael Bayard, is paying folks 65 cents to write good things about Belkin routers.
Here’s Belkin’s response (also from CrunchGear):
We’ve acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system.
We’re working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed.
I wouldn’t say that they fixed the problem. Yeah, they got rid of the reviews but they didn’t mention firing the employee (which I think should be a given for something this stupid and blatantly unethical), nor did they mention refunds for customers that may have purchased the products based on the false reviews.
The moral of the story – be careful what you do on the Internet.
TiVo and Amazon Team Up – NYTimes.com
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008Back in December 2006 I wrote about TiVo not keeping up in the quest to be the provider of the “sofa web.”
Om Malik at GigaOM discusses the new game consoles and the contribution they might make to Internet browsing. He refers to it as the “sofa web.”
It was announced that TiVo and Amazon Team Up – NYTimes.com. This is a positive step towards TiVo becoming part of the sofa web. I can’t wait to see more deals.
YouTube on TiVo Launches, Does This Really Matter?
Thursday, July 17th, 2008Zatz Not Funny! says YouTube on TiVo Launches. I know how crappy YouTube videos look on my iPhone. How bad do you think they’ll look on your big screen TV, especially HDTV? I could see people using this a few times and then dumping it. I say no big deal.
Way To Go Netflix!
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008Looks like Netflix has done some thinking. Profiles feature NOT going away. Nice to see that companies can get it right sometimes.
What Was NetFlix Thinking?
Friday, June 20th, 2008This is the worst customer service move I’ve seen this year. Netflix has eliminated the ability to have multiple queues and reviewers per account. Here’s the details for Ars Technica:
According to an e-mail sent out to subscribers last night, Netflix is eliminating the convenient feature and removing all additional account profiles in September. And to add insult to injury, the additional profiles cannot be migrated to a new account. So all the effort you may have put in to rating hundreds, if not thousands, of movies and carefully crafting the perfect queue will be obliterated. The rental history will be merged with the main account owner, so your recommendations could suddenly change to reflect other profile users’ tastes.
I’d be really pissed if I had to recreate my queue. Maybe they want people to go back to Blockbuster.
TiVo, Please Don’t Sell to EchoStar
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007Om Malik makes a case why EchoStar should by TiVo (Why the New EchoStar Should Buy TiVo « NewTeeVee). I’d like to make a case why TiVo should NOT sell to EchoStar.
1) They are about to win a bunch of money from EchoStar in a patent infringement suit.
2) Other than the ability to combine TiVo functionality with that of Slingbox, EchoStar has nothing to offer since it’s no longer tied to a satellite provider that can put TiVos in homes.
3) I still say that Yahoo or Apple would be a better home, though it looks like Apple has just about finished rolling out its own solution. So that leaves Yahoo. If Microsoft picks up Yahoo, then that pretty much eliminates Yahoo as a possible suitor since MS already has their own solution in the Media Center.
So, on second thought, maybe they should sell since there’s probably not going to be anyone left to buy them that could add anything to the equation.
Whatever you do TiVo, please find a way to get me a dual-tuner, HD box that will work with my cable that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
