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Monthly Archives: March 2006

Spooky Fortunes

Posted on March 22, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

First off, this has nothing to do with technology, so if that’s all you are here for today, scroll down to the next article.

Here’s my relatively un-scientific thoughts on fortune cookies:

  • About 60% are NOT fortunes, but instead should be called “observation cookies”.  These contain items like “you have a lot of friends” or “honesty is a good way to be happy living”
  • The next 20% are more like call-to-actions.  Things such as “you should have more generosity in your relationships” or “eat more Chinese food”
  • This leaves us with about 19% of traditional fortunes, “expect good news” or “expect another 30% drop in Google’s stock”

Fortune CookieThe final 1% is reserved for what I call the “spooky fortunes”, and I got one today.  A spooky fortune is something that is just WAY too specific, like “watch out for the green truck on Van Ness tonight” or “the second most powerful man in the world is going to shoot someone in the face and not even be at risk for jailtime”.

Today I got a spooky one: “You are soon going to change your present line of work.”  Does this mean I need to polish up the resume?   Or is that self-fulfilling?  Am I due to be fired?  Will I be made an offer I cannot refuse (oh, that reminds me, I have the new Godfather game for my Xbox to try out tonight)?

Spooky.

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Posted in General | 2 Comments |

Beta Swag is Better Swag

Posted on March 21, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

At the end of the original Slingbox beta program, I made a small run of t-shirts.  The batch had exactly enough for all the beta testers as well as all Sling Media employees.  No more, no less.  The shirt had a ‘unique’ flair to it, and it was honestly a proud moment when we sent them out, in fact, it was a bit of an emotional one.

Swag Bag packagingI received today a little package from the Ether team, and before even opening it up, I was almost as excited as I was when I signed up to their beta program. 

Inside the bag I found a cool t-shirt, a nice leather business card holder, and a few printed Ether business cards, with their signature ‘hello’ on the back written in cursive (you remember cursive, right?  that thing we learned in the third grade to screw up our handwriting skills?  if I actually still wrote checks instead of doing all-online banking, I guess it would come in handy, but as far as I can tell it’s right up there with the nine months fifth graders waste learning long division.  but I digress).

Ether t-shirtEther Cards - backEther Cards - front

I don’t remember how much the Slingbox beta t-shirts cost, but I’m going to assume it’s your typical $12ish per shirt.  The bag I got from Ether might’ve cost a couple of dollars more.  But as far as the emotional trigger it pulls with a beta tester goes, to paraphrase some smart folks over at MasterCard, it’s priceless.

Word to the wise: if you have a product, service, technology, or other offering that needs a ‘grassroots’ or ‘guerrilla’ effect, think about how big the impact is of making your earliest of early adopters a little extra happy one Tuesday afternoon.  It’ll be the best $12ish your company ever spends.

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Buying a new notebook

Posted on March 19, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

The Old DellSo, as I wrote previously, it’s time for a new laptop.  The only problem is, I am a bit of a nut about buying laptops, I like to make sure I get the ‘right’ one for my needs.  And I’m a picky guy, here is what I want:

  • Fast, good performance.  I need to be able to leave, at least, Outlook, Photoshop, Word, and IE running simultaneously.
  • Decent battery life, enough to last 2:30 while actually doing the above
  • Standard IO, including 2 USB ports, WiFi, PCMCIA, and preferably a DVD drive
  • Bright screen, preferably wide-screen, of at least 13″, maybe even 15″ (the D800 was 15.4″)
  • Lightweight, no more than 5lbs (my back is killing me!  hopefully the newest Slappa backpack will show up soon so I can switch to it)
  • Must have Intel Centrino Duo!

ASUS V6J notebookThat’s a tall order, but I didn’t think it’d be impossible.  I’ve seen some new Toshibas and Thinkpads that I thought would fit the bill, but then I remembered a cool ASUS laptop I saw at CeBIT.

So, I went to their web site and found the V6J.  Next step, I Googled “asus v6j review“, and read reviews at CNet, and PCPro (UK). Decent reviews, but not great, so I continued at PCPro to read their review of the Evesham Voyager C550.

They liked it, but it was clearly too heavy for me. I decided I really liked their reviews, so browsed their notebooks section, where I found the Sony VAIO VGN-SZ1VP, which sounded, well, fairly awesome.  I then cross-checked the review at TrustedReviews, who gave it a 9/10.  From this read, I was hooked.

Cnet screenshotI did a few more scouting reads, including this Acer, some Lenovo news, and then I went to read some Editor’s picks at Cnet.  I have to say that Cnet, normally one of my favorite sites, was absolutely worthless here.  Check out the screenshot on the right.  In the “Work thin-and-light laptops” category, only a SINGLE model was reviewed in 2006, and one review dates as far back as June, 2005.  Furthermore, not a single notebook on the list had an 8.0 or higher score!  I’d rather them say “nothing, we can’t recommend anything right now” than see this worthless list.  Very frustrating.

The New VaioAnyhow, I decided to buy the Sony, which proved harder than it would seem.  Turns out that the SZ1VP model is a “pro” edition, not really even distributed regularly in the US.  But at the Sony Style Web site, I did find the VGN-SZ140.  After a couple of calls to the local Sony Style store, it turns out it is virtually identical. 

Here’s a few comparison photos between the old and the new.  Roughly a 2lb drop in weight (~35%), a supposed 60-70% increase in speed, and a 100-200% increase in battery life, and all I feel like I’m giving up is about 40% smaller screen.  Mister, you’ve got a deal.

The Vaio on the DellThe Vaio on the DellBoth notebooks (closed)From the sides

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Posted in General, Guides | 3 Comments |

CeBIT? More like CeBIG!

Posted on March 19, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman
IMG_4482 german chancellorIMG_4481 cebit map
IMG_4492 intel keynote - umpc sudokuIMG_4491 intel keynote - umpc wmp
IMG_4495 cebit snowIMG_4493 intel keynote - umpc logos
IMG_4497 sony ericssonIMG_4496 cebit snow
IMG_4499 lgIMG_4498 samsung
IMG_4501 retrostarIMG_4500 viliv media player
IMG_4503 linux smartphone gpsIMG_4502 retrostar
IMG_4509 linksys - voip phoneIMG_4508 linksys - voip phone
IMG_4514 skywood mp3 players - nano videoIMG_4513 skywood mp3 players
IMG_4520 speaker backpackIMG_4515 gigabyte
IMG_4526 coolerIMG_4521 speaker backpack

Seriously, who thought this one up? Every winter, we’ll get the entire consumer electronics, PC, mobile phone, software, gadget, technology, and case manufacturer in the world. We’ll put em in, oh, I don’t know, how about Hannover, Germany? It is cold there, right? Ok, next we’ll make the place big, I mean five to ten times the size of CES big. Last thing, and this is important, don’t build any new hotels or temporary residences in Hannover, that way the 400,000 attendees can stay up to two hours away and take trains, metros, subways, buses, and dirigibles in. Perfect.  

Winter in Hannover is cold, people, very cold.

Apparently in Europe, trade shows attract quite some attention – I saw the Chancellor of Germany here! After seeing the King of Spain at 3GSM, I wonder who I’ll see at CTIA next month in Vegas? I don’t think the mayor even shows up there…

I did attend the Intel keynote and saw the unveiling of the Ultramobile PC (the device formerly known as Origami). I want one, no question about it.

Saw a Linux-based Smartphone with built-in GPS. Which naturally combines everything I’ve needed into a single device. Other than Linux, that is…

Retrostar makes corded handsets for PCs or mobile phones. Not practical in any sense, but a shining star in a sea of dullness.

Panasonic’s 103-inch 1080p plasma TV is further evidence of why I don’t need to go to the movies anymore.

Looks like the guys with the speakers built into the backpack have solved the problem I’ve always encountered while hiking through the Marin headlands – where’s my tunes, man?

A company named Skywood was showing an iPod nano knockoff, only theirs had full video (mp4) playback capabilities.

Linksys’ VOIP handsets were a big yawner. Saw em in Barcelona. Saw em at CES. I’ll see em at CTIA. But I sure won’t be buying one soon.

Viliv (not Viiv) was one of about two dozen Taiwanese companies building portable media players. At least theirs is not in the EXACT form factor of a PSP. That’s a neat trick to play on your kids – “here son.” “Thanks dad, a PSP, awesome!” “haha, no, actually it just plays mp3s and some Divx, no games or anything cool.”

To borrow one of my fav terms from the 80s, CeBIT is just plain uncool. For as big as it is, everything is crowded, and you’re pretty much surrounded by smokers (yes, IN the halls) and awful-smelling food stands.

I did grab some brochures from some of the more comical Chinese/Taiwanese OEMs, including one “from your best valued partner”, and I’ll dig through them soon to see if anything else is worth a mention.

Looking forward to CES 07!

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Hunka Hunka Burning Dell

Posted on March 17, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Monday evening I noticed the fan in my laptop (an 18-month-old Dell Latitude D800) was going non-stop and the system was performing worse than me in a one-act about the pleasantries of the North Korean lifestyle.  I am a little used to this happening when I am running a LOT of applications simultaneously, or when Internet Explorer or Java crash (yes, Java crashes, all the time, and it’s awful, but I digress) and near-freeze my computer.

So I reboot.  Windows comes up.  Fan on.

Ugh.  I reboot again.  Fan on.

Third time’s a charm, and lo and behold, all is well.  For about 4 minutes.  Then the fan comes on.  So I watched some TV instead of putting up my fun pictures from CeBIT which are still stuck in limbo (no, this story does not have a happy ending).

The next day at work, after 2 hours more of fan noise (not to be confused with white noise, which can actually be pleasant), I deduce that something is wrong and it isn’t Microsoft’s fault in any way shape or form.  While looking at the BIOS settings, I notice the CPU speed is set at 600MHz, a bit low for the 2.0GHZ Pentium-M.  I then recollected the system had reported a CPU temperature of 85 degrees (this is high), despite the laptop being fairly cool.

X + Y = some sensor inside my laptop has crapped out (can I still say ‘crapped out’ these days?) and is fooling the thing into thinking it’s overheating, so the system is running in “cool-down all the time” mode.

Two days later and I have a loaner laptop and have removed the hard drive from my old unit, and I’m faced with a dual dilemma (and no, I am probably not really going to set it on fire):

  1. Exactly how peeved at Dell should I be?
    Here’s all the stuff that’s gone wrong so far: the rubber feet have fallen off twice, the power supply cable binder (which is a very nice plus) fell out and got lost, the power supply cable itself is getting frayed and looks like it might electrocute me, three keys have almost worn away to nothing, the clasp that holds the notebook shut broke off (preventing me from firmly closing the laptop!), the motherboard needed replacement, the battery needed replacement, the PCMCIA “eject button” broke off, and a USB slot somehow broke.  Is this officially a lemon?
  2. What kind of laptop should I get to replace it?
    I am all-too-tempted by a new dual-core Centrino (by the way, want to see how useless RSS and spammers have rendered Google’s blog search?  try this).  Supposedly they are faster AND have longer battery life, and aren’t adding too much to the price either.  I saw some of the ASUS notebooks at CeBIT, and I might just give them a shot!

In the meanwhile, using this loaner laptop is like staying in a hotel for 3 nights – I don’t really want to import all my old files or settings, but living out of a suitcase isn’t much fun.  For example: I do have all my CeBIT photos sitting here, but do I really feel like installing the FlickR uploader on this PC, copying the files, registering, etc, considering I know I’ll be on a new one within 72 hours?

Very unhappy.

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Posted in General, That's Janky | 4 Comments |

Docupen – Scan on the Run

Posted on March 10, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

DocupenOkay, I must admit when I first heard about the Docupen, I thought it was a combination scanner/pen, and I couldn’t possibly conceive what I would ever do with it.  But they offered to send me one to try out, so I figured I’d give it a shot.  As a pen, it performed quite poorly (probably since there is no pen involved), but as a scanner, it’s worth a little look.

DocupenThe device is about 8″ long, and about a 1/2″ thick, comes with a leather (pleather?) carrying case, a USB cable, and software.  It has a built-in lithium-ion battery that nicely charges over USB and according to documentation should last a couple of hundred scans a time, which is more than plenty!  It has a single button which is used for both scanning and synchronizing files with the PC, and is basically designed to let you carry around a black and white scanner in your laptop case with no noticeable weight difference.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Gadgets, General, Mobile Technology, Product Reviews | 3 Comments |

On cloud 9… ZoomCloud, that is…

Posted on March 6, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

ZoomClouds logoI guess this week is all about thin air.  First I tried Ether, now (thanks to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch), I’m trying out a ZoomCloud.

Basically, ZoomClouds gives you (as a blogger or other type of Web site administrator) an extremely easy way to create a cloud of tags.  If you look over on the left below my little Flickr badge you can see the real-time ZoomCloud.

But here are a few more fun ones:

As always with this Web 2.0 stuff, I seem to be a bit late to the game.  Check out some other popular sites and their clouds:

  • BoingBoing
  • New York Times
  • BloomBerg

Cool stuff!  Also, they’ve made sharing cloud designs quite easy.  Here’s the LD design for anyone who likes our little color scheme. Also, they have a few useful tips and tricks for people who like to tinker. 

The ZoomCloud team seems to move fairly fast, as its been a week since Emily Change at eHub made her cloud, and it’s already updated on the shared designs page.

So now we have Ether and Clouds.  Too bad http://www.atmosphere.com/ isn’t exactly a Web 2.0 proposition…

 

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Ether: A penny (or more) for your thoughts

Posted on March 5, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Ether logoThis past week Ether officially started their beta program, and already got folks like Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) giving a bunch of love.  I’ve had the privelege to beta test the system myself, and I have to say, the world is a-changing!

While they’ve been in stealth mode for quite some time, I have a feeling this is one of those things that could take off quite fast.  It’s one of those concepts that makes so much sense you wonder why it hasn’t happened already. 

Here it is in a nutshell: Ether turns your time into money.  How? Pretty simple: you sign up, you set your rate (per minute, per hour, or even for ‘blocks’ of time), you get a phone number.  Give someone the number (or, say, put it on your business card, Web site, blog or whatever), and any call you take is money in your pocket.

Want to try it out?  I’ve set up two numbers, one’s a freebie, one will cost you.  I’ll open up the freebie one for an hour or two a day (yes, you can set ANY call-in hours you want – which is nice), and leave the other one up too.

Freebie:  

Jeremy Toeman alpha
1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 01294495

Paid ($200/hr):  

Jeremy Toeman alpha
1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 01240176

So why Ether?  If you are a…

  • lawyer
  • accountant
  • therapist
  • “lifecoach”
  • geek
  • programmer

you could use Ether.

Picture this: it’s April 14th at 8:30pm, you’re doing TurboTax, you need to know if you can deduct the 3 extra sheep from your farm expenses.  You google “tax advice” and rather than have to set an appointment, or find open hours, you see a number offering last-minute all-night tax help for $15 per 10 minute call.  Some poor schlub who works at H&R Block during the day has set up an Ether account and is going to make himself an extra $500 that night alone!

How about this: my wife runs a chocolate business (subtle plug) and knows a lot about gourmet food, chocolate, and pastries, but I’m her Webmaster and she’s still learning QuickBooks.  She does her monthly accounting only to find her statement is way out of balance, and googles “Quickbooks help”.  She finds someone’s blog who sells an hour of his time for $50 flat.  Ether.

Here’s a techie example: you and your buddy Sergey are putting together your first Search web site, and between the two of you you have no idea how to make an HTML table, or change a link color.  A web consultant can help, and Ether can be his vehicle for the transaction (although in this case, he should opt for stock).

Last one: you’re a Best Buy employee and you sell HDTVs all day and all night.  You sign up for an Ether account, then go sell some Google Adwords, and without a Web site, business card, or even your boss knowing, you are making an extra $45/hour for guiding people to buy the right Panasonic, Sony, or Pioneer plasma for their home.  For another $250 you can even arrange to come install it!

There’s a lot of musings about the “Web 2.0“, and there’s a lot of new silliness to ensue. In the midst of it all are some great ideas.  Ether is one of them.  Plus don’t those guys look like they could change the world (at least a little bit)?

I’ll do a full review of the Ether sign-up process in the next few weeks.

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Posted in General, LD Approved, Web/Internet | 5 Comments |

PictureCorrect, Thomas Hawk, more Flickr fun, and Falbum

Posted on March 5, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

PictureCorrect logoRichard Schneider, from Picture Correct got in touch with me a few days ago, and after some browsing around, I would definitely say if you are in the market for a digital camera, you’d be missing out if you didn’t take some time to ready some of his excellent reviews.  The site mixes in news releases, Richard’s own reviews, and a few links to external sites as well.  I’m also checking out some of his Photoshop tutorials, which I probably really need.

Once you’ve checked that out, I would also take a few minutes to read Thomas Hawk’s suggestions on finding cool Flickr photos.  By the way, if anyone is reading this, runs a WordPress-powered blog and uses Flickr, you should check out the FAlbum plug-in!

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Posted in General, Product Reviews | Leave a comment |

About

Jeremy Toeman is a seasoned Product leader with over 20 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include CNET, Viggle/Dijit/Nextguide, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents his personal opinion and outlook on things.

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