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Monthly Archives: August 2006

Editing: It's not censorship

Posted on August 30, 2006 by Guest Contributor

“Worst, the game is heavily censored. Namco Bandai, in its efforts to get a T rating, has sucked all of the blood out of the game. Normally it wouldn’t much matter, but major plot points of this game center around brutal violence – including the climactic scene in which the biggest twist in the plot of the entire series is revealed. It’s an insult to the fans that have tread the rocky path this series has taken.”

Nutt, Christian. “Xenosaga Episode III review.” Gamesradar.com

“Now, censorship isn’t new to the Xenosaga franchise–the first game featured one disturbing scene (involving jailbait Realian MOMO) that was edited for the U.S. release. I’m not entirely sure of exactly what was cut from XS3, but I’ve confirmed that at least three cut-scenes have had substantial amounts of blood/gore edited out. Yeah, Namco made these cuts in order to get a “Teen” rating from the ESRB, but I still find it all a bit upsetting. Xenosaga was always intended as a mature, complex RPG…and it’s discouraging that Namco wouldn’t allow the final chapter to come out with a Mature rating.”

Shane Bettenhausen, blog, 1up.com

Am I disappointed that XSIII had some blood clipped from it? Of course, my red American blood boils that anyone dare strip anything from a piece of entertainment. But to be honest, I have two gripes with this ruckus that the internet is feeling as role-playing game fans writhe in fury that Xenosaga’s final episode was altered for its US release:

a) I want more good RPGs to come from Japan to the United States. In the current political climate, asking a publisher to stick to its guns and include elements that make a game offensive to a run-of-the-mill consumer when they could remove them and not cost the story anything is asking them to not only take a loss of sales on this game, but to discourage other publishers from doing the same. An M rating doesn’t just get games cut from some retailers these days, as well. Beyond straight sales hits because the game isn’t on as many store shelves, an M rated game makes an easy target for hungry, sharp politicians. Shipping the game with needless blood for the benefit of lower sales, decreased exports of Japanese style games, and the risk of political attack doesn’t benefit anyone but politicians; and

b) It’s only adjusting content to get a rating. This isn’t a new institution in the United States; it took decades for the film industry to get to rate films to alleviate the need to self-censor heavily. Film viewers only rarely flip out when a movie is changed to meet a rating need during post-production. If a movie can only expect to come overseas at a rating where it won’t succeed? You don’t get to see it, or you see it an edited format. Does anyone scream censorship at that point, or does everyone really concerned just knuckle down, import the original, and learn its language?

Electronic entertainment is just one more product that is packaged for consumers; even as its consumers crow about its growing puissance they seem unaware that that means growing responsibility on the part of the providers. It’s not a long fall to be staring at a rip-off Hayes Code, so it’s important for consumers to draw their lines in the sand at more reasonable points than meaningless gore being cut so a product has a chance in an unfriendly political environment.

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Posted in General | Leave a comment |

Too good to be true…

Posted on August 27, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

As I mentioned last week, I placed an order for a new Canon SD700.  Despite Amazon reporting the vendor was in stock, they were apparently backordered, which was a very frustrating email to receive, by the way.  So I decided to poke around online, see if I could find another option.  Turns out in the 2 days between ordering and getting confirmation, the Amazon price shot from ~$360 to ~$420)!

bestpricecameras - google results.jpgI went to Google, and searched for “SD700” (pictured on the right) and saw a result from “bestpricecameras” (not linking to them, you’ll see why shortly) at $309!  Wow, good deal.  Did another search on Cnet, nothing better.

So, I visited that site and rather than click through, I called their order number.  While on hold, I went to do a bit more research.

Site

Reviews searchI googled “bestpricecameras.com review” and did a little poking around.  I eventually clicked on this link and read enough scathing reviews to hang up, and wait for trusty Amazon to deliver. 

Scam!

As the sayings go…

Better late than never

and

If it seems too good (or too cheap) to be true, it probably is.

Thankfully I didn’t lose my $309 along the way.

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Posted in General, That's Janky | 3 Comments |

A Brief Fling with Windows Live Writer (Beta)

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Guest Contributor

Let’s just say we didn’t click. It wasn’t meant to be. We waltz to different foxtrots (or maybe that’s the PROBLEM…) Windows Live Writer is SUPPOSED to be this nifty new desktop blogging tool that makes your life easier…or something. I have to admit to being a skeptic from the very beginning (Why do I need this? What void does it fill? Will it really help me out, or just clutter my hard drive even more?), but I decided to give it a fair shot.

First of all, let me tell you that it would be extremely wise to NOT do as I did when installing, and let them give you that toolbar. It may SOUND useful, but only if you are STUPID and use Internet Explorer still. (Who does that? Why give us a toolbar for something that only complete noobs and “people who want viruses” –according to one acquaintance, use? Honestly, I feel sort of sorry for anyone still surfing on that thing, but it’s probably their own fault…) Insults aside, it takes a ridiculously long time to install it and then when it’s done, of course, you’ll find all sorts of little tidbits hanging around that you probably didn’t want, but didn’t think to cancel out and OH MY HELL.

After that unsightly mess, my real odyssey began here. The reader will note that I have limited experience with the fancier word publishing projects and sometimes have to fight even to just get my margins lined up. That said, this thing DOES claim to be WYSIWYG, and I feel like we should be able to expect some things from that, which apparently we can’t, as shown expertly in this sad and mangled post.

So that was about the time I gave up on trying to synch with my actual blog. Incidentally, that also means that this is about the time I gave up on this ever actually being useful for me. I don’t want to have to keep a whole different new blog just to use this thing that seems so eager to be totally pointless! For the purposes of this write-up, however, I went ahead and set myself up a Windows Live Spaces account. Actually…

Subsequent experimentation led to the relief that it will at least publish pictures to Live Spaces. I think maybe there was just something tricky with the Blogger scheme of uploading. So, I suppose if you like your Live Space, then this isn’t such a bad thing. I don’t know anyone with one, and do remember that I had forgotten the existence of my own! Not a great sign.

Penultimate thoughts…

One thing I was sort of happy about, in a way, is that you can edit (“EDIT EDIT EDIT”) old posts directly from the Live Writer set-up. I wasn’t expecting that, since by the end of this I wasn’t expecting much. I guess I meant “happy” more in a “whew, at least it does THAT” way.

The bottom line is that I just can’t find anything that wrong with the blogging interface(s) I already use, certainly nothing that Live Writer fixes. There’s no reason for me to adapt to a new program. For people who care more about formatting, it might have been a decent download, but I’m not sure I would even trust it to handle it if some of my less successful tests prove anything. Anyhow, it’s a mutual break-up. I don’t like Live Writer, and after this review, I can’t blame it for not liking me.

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Posted in General, Product Reviews, That's Janky | Leave a comment |

TiVo Series3: too little too late?

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Quick personal DVR history (here’s a good one for generic PVR history)…

  • 1999: Bought my first 14-hour TiVo in 1999.  Rough cost $400ish if memory serves.
  • 2000: Sold it, upgraded to a 30-hour unit.  About the same price.
  • 2002: Switched services to DirecTV, got 2 30-hour combo units.  With promos, ended up spending either $50 or $100 each. 
  • 1999 – 2005: Sold literally dozens of TiVos to friends, coworkers, relatives, etc.
  • 2005: Signed up for HDTV services through Comcast, got dual-tuner HD DVR.  No upfront costs, added $5/month to cable bill. 

While it’s very true the Comcast DVR experience (as delivered via my Motorola DCT 6412 III) is nowhere near as satisfying as the TiVo experience was, it’s now been almost a year and I really don’t look back anymore.  The first few weeks were painful, but, like all things, the pain turns to a dull ache, and then something you barely notice.  I miss the sound effects still, and completely acknowledge that the TiVo GUI is substantially better, but I don’t think it matters.

So when the news leaked yesterday that TiVo Series3 units (S3) are in testing/production, I just wasn’t all that wowed (I might be one of the only ones).  First, Dave Zatz asks the exact right question “how much will it cost?” 

See, that’s really all that matters.  Sure, it’s great that S3 supports CableCard and HD and all that (read Sean Alexander’s post on the matter for good CableCard insight).  But right now, the feature set only barely matters.  PVR Wire did a survey of their own readers (a.k.a. PVR Enthusiasts – the ones who will set the tone for the rest of the market) and there was very little interest in even upgrading to a dual-tuner TiVo.  Furthermore, according to TiVo’s own (public) sales figures, their net sales of new units in the first quarter was about 51,000 units.  For reference, in the third quarter of 2005 was almost 400,000 units.

TiVo, while a great brand and a great product, is fighting a massively uphill battle.  I pay a net of $60 per year for my (again) dual-tuner HD DVR.  I paid nothing up-front, and in fact some guy showed up at my house to do the installation for free, and while I had to sit around for a few hours, it was still free. 

While there’s no official number yet, Zatz is predicting $800 per unit.  Personally, I’d guess higher, probably $999 as a starting point.  Furthermore, if you need installation help, you are probably going to have to pay the Geek Squad somewhere between $100 and $300 for the install. 

The worst part is the past 2-3 years showed a bit of a dropoff on the TiVoMania effect.  Frustrated customers began doing the same move I did (although again, I was not frustrated by the company in any way) and switching to the freebies.  I applaud TiVo for making great products.  I sincerely hope the rumored Comcast-TiVo DVR is available in my area one of these days, as I’d probably make the switch.  As long as it’s free, that is.

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Posted in General, Video/Music/Media | 1 Comment |

The Demise of Sony's PSP

Posted on August 21, 2006 by Matt Whitlock

-Courtesy TechLore.com

Not long ago, everyone was excited about Sony’s PSP. Why shouldn’t we have been? It’s by far the most technologically advanced handheld device that has ever been conceived. It plays games, music, and movies, and even surfs the Internet when connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot. It’s a very versatile handheld device, one that could have been the biggest thing since sliced bread. But like so many gadgets that have come before, the PSP is currently sitting idle in the closets of its once rabid fan base. The biggest question is why?

Peter Redmer, a gaming enthusiast from the Chicago suburbs, is one of many disappointed PSP owners. “I was so excited about the release of the PSP. I scraped together all the loose change I could find, and even traded in some of my older games to get one, but now…

Read the rest of this entry>> (external link)

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Posted in General | 1 Comment |

Time for a new digital camera

Posted on August 19, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

Cameras!Well folks, I’ve given up on the Swedes. While a few Canon cameras did show up on their official lost and found Web site, none are mine.  I have given up and am moving on.  I’m grumpy (I couldn’t even take pictures while hanging out with cool folks like Robert Scoble and meeting Mike Arrington at the TechCrunch7 party last night – although Thomas Hawk caught a picture of me!), but I’m moving on. 

After looking around briefly, I narrowed down quite quickly to Canon, Panasonic, and Sony for my choices.  Why these three?  Well, I don’t know much about digital cameras myself, but I do know a few people who do, and these are the three brands they all own.  Might sound simplistic, but it works for me. 

I am eliminating Sony from the list even though I have a Memory Stick slot in my laptop, I prefer to use SD cards as my wife‘s laptop (Dell Inspiron 700m) has SD built-in, as does her Treo 700w and our Garmin Nuvi 350, etc.  Bottom line: I want to use SD.  Also, at $36 for a 2GB SanDisk card, it’s hard to argue!

PannyRich (my boss at Sling Media) uses a Panasonic, and Dave Mathews (another coworker) likes them as well.  I played with Rich’s camera (Panasonic Lumix) and the picture quality was pretty impressive, but I really didn’t like the user interface, on-screen menus, or button layout all that much.  Maybe I fear change, I’m not sure, but I just didn’t like the ‘feel’ of using it.  This pushed me towards Canon.

A single visit to Amazon sealed the deal.  Why, you may ask?  I took a look at the top sellers at Amazon and at the time of writing, they are ALL from Canon.  Not some, not a few, not most, but ALL.  And while I may not agree with “popularity wins” as my reasoning (seen Titanic?), there’s a certain point where you have to assume all these folks know what they are talking about.  Not only that, two of my best friends and my CEO just got Canons in the past month.  I smell a winner.

Canon SD700

With the variety to choose from, I quickly narrowed my choices down to the SD450, SD630, and SD700.  The 450 was the one I ‘thought’ I wanted, as the price wasn’t bad, and has a nice feature set.  But with a little more investigation, I decided I’d plunk down the extra $100 to get the latest and greatest.  The biggest additional feature to the 700 is the image stabilization technology, which looks like it’s probably becoming a standard feature on most new models.  That, plus the amazing customer reviews on Amazon for the SD700 was pretty much all I needed.  A final check at DPreview sealed the deal (although it looks like I may need to pick up an extra battery).

Full review to come after it arrives, assuming I don’t go to Sweden again…

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Posted in General | 4 Comments |

Free-form entertainment

Posted on August 16, 2006 by Guest Contributor

Into the “fun” of dropping hundreds of dollars on a video game console? How about the pain of PC gaming, which can basically cost infinite dollars? It used to be easy to write off the PC gaming costs because the consoles, your PS2s, your Dreamcasts, your Xbox360s, all needed surround sound systems and the largest, most powerful, most deadly TV possible.  No longer the case.

Yes, we’re getting closer to not having to double up on a monstrous display and surround sound systems, but that’s only really if you trust Microsoft for all your nerd needs. Which brings us to an upcoming bit of nerdery for Windows, Gothic 3.  We’ve talked about Oblivion before, and Gothic as a series has always been the gruff German cousin to Oblivion’s Elder Scrolls.  But with Gothic 3 there’s a real chance that won’t be the case.

It’s not for a few reasons.  Graphically, despite its issues, Oblivion appears to still set the gold standard for western RPGs.  And there’s no reason to think that support for Oblivion will drop off in the form of user mods or official mods.  The two things that truly impressed us during our recent hands-on with Gothic 3 are closely interlaced, and where we get into the tech part of the post.

Telling a story as a game puts a critical choice into the designer’s hands: how much freedom to give the player, in exchange for a focused, epic story with the player at the center?  Gothic’s reaction, as a series, has always been to struggle to give the player all the room they’d like to play in but such a gripping story that the player actually decides to pursue it.  In Gothic 3, the nameless main character finally returns to his homeland to find that it’s been overrun and his people are slaves.

Not save the princess, or “oh no, demons!”  Humanity enslaved.  Yes, by the traditional fantasy bad guys of Orcs, but unlike saving the world from demons, most people can relate to themes of slavery, power, and put-upon social groups rising up and taking power.  Oblivion lets you lead an assassin’s guild; Gothic 3 will let you be quisling against your race.

All of which revolves around an AI system that is looking amazing.  More play will reveal how much it can really do, but there’s something about watching the fantasy genre’s most disposable characters — town guards — employ realistic tactics to engage a character, and then watch them fly in fear, into a berserk state, or into cover to try to hide as the combat goes against them?   It’s the sort of thing that occurs in films easily and effortlessly, and that’s what the real promise of Gothic 3 can be: To finally put players into the center of a fantasy epic.

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10 Tips on Maximizing Laptop Battery Performance

Posted on August 13, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

I am on the planes a decent amount of the time (100,000 miles by late May) and tend to spend a chunk of my flights using my laptop.  Most of the time it’s productive, but it can also include a DVD or the occasional game (either Nethack or Battle for Middle-Earth 2, which are obviously similar).  When I was a-hunting for a laptop, battery life was a key criterion in my selection process, as was weight.  While I like my Vaio VGN SZ-160P, the standard battery was lasting about 3 hours (the extended life clocks in under six hours before my tweaks), not enough for the SFO-JFK route (now switching to SFO-EWR as a default due to Manhattan traffic, which is a huge bummer because United’s P.S. flights have standard AC outlets on board). 

Vaio battery tipsSo I did a lil’ Googlin’ for tips on extending battery life, and I found them all pretty, well, lacking.  Stuff like “don’t try to do real-time 3d rendering” or “fully charge up your battery before flying.” One of them even said “buy an extra battery.” Not exactly helpful (Sony’s tips are in the picture on the right).  The most common tip that I’ve found truly deceptive is on disabling wireless: many claim it makes a huge impact to disable it, but personally I’ve only noticed a minor difference.  I do in fact disable it (and Bluetooth) but on my Vaio the difference was about 10 minutes over 3 hours (but as I state below, it all adds up).

Alas, I’ve gone and done a lot of experimenting and have a list of my tips to really maximize battery life for my laptop.

Battery remaining timeKey to this process is having some good methodology.  While testing, I kept a plain text file on my Desktop (creatively called “battery.txt”) tracking the real clock as well as Windows’ expected battery life.  The problem with the Windows tool, is it really just tells you the current state of the battery based on the current system activity.  This means if you start with 3 hours remaining then spend 30 minutes doing something that rapidly consumes the battery, you’ll be down to 2 or less.  In other words, you need to track the actual history/lifespan of your battery if you want to get the best information out of your system.   You can check out my little tracking file for inspiration.

And now, with no more delay, here’s Jeremy’s Tips for Maximizing Your Battery, or How to Fly From San Francisco to New York City With an Average Battery and Not Have to Watch an Ernest Goes to Anywhere Movie):

  1. Brightness: how low can you go? Without any question, the fastest way to suck the life out of a battery is leaving your brightness high.  Turn it down as low as you possibly can without needing to up your glasses prescription.  On my Vaio, I can select from one of 8 levels.  During one test, at brightness level 3 my system reported 60% full, with 3:52 (all times are hours:minutes) of life to go.  I switched up to level 5 and in 17 minutes of use, I was down to 52% full, with 3:06 to go.  In other words, 17 minutes used 46 minutes worth of battery (all other variables were held constant).  You can even be so bold as to lower your brightness all the way down when sitting idle for a minute or two (for example, if you are writing a long blog post and pause to clarify your thoughts before typing).
  2. Don’t use any external devices.  USB and PC-Cards (aka PC-MCIA) use your battery to function, even when you aren’t using them!  Have an EVDO card or maybe a USB mouse?  Remove them if you can.  Even a memory card reader in your PC-MCIA slot uses power just by being in there.  The effect varies based on the type of device, but even a few minutes here and there (as you’ll see) add up significantly.
  3. Single-task, not multi-task.  The more you are doing at the same time with your PC, the more memory and CPU usage increases.  Both of which directly use up battery.  Close any applications you aren’t using, even the small ones.  When doing some experimentation, I found it more efficient to run a single application at a time, then close it and open a new one when ready to move on.  While your hard drive uses the battery too, if you are doing anything ‘productive’ you are probably hitting the drive on a regular (even if infrequent) basis anyway.
  4. Keep it cool.  You can take a page out of the extreme gamer’s handbooks, and have your system perform more optimally by keeping it cool.  Make sure your air vents (inflow and outflow) aren’t blocked by anything, which often occurs by poorly positioning your notebook on your lap (which is known to have some other side-effects too, by the way).  Heavy CPU and memory use all contribute to heat as well, hence my comment on multi-tasking above.
  5. Windows task managerShut down unused services. MSN Messenger, Google Desktop Search, QuickTime, wireless managers, etc.  They’ve all gotta go.  You probably aren’t going to use them, and they all eat up valuable resources.  Especially things that ‘scan’ anything.  For advanced users, I also recommend launching Windows Task Manager and getting rid of anything not used in-flight.  In fact, I put together another little text file with a list of all the services I don’t use, and I go down the list and manually shut down each one.  If you really want to get this one right, a little bit of research is in order.  While online, I launched the task manager (control-shift-escape) and for each service that has my User Name, I googled it.  There are a few good web sites out there which chronicle what all these mysterious services do, and you should be able to figure out which you need, and which you don’t.  Important warning: if you aren’t comfortable with this lingo, you should skip this step, or get some techie friend to help you out.  Less important warning: you may end up in a situation where you need to do a reboot after you get to your destination.
  6. Hibernate optionsDo Hibernate, Do Not Suspend. I’ve found that my Vaio tends to use way too much battery when in suspend mode.  Not sure why, but the ‘instant-on’ effect isn’t worth the extra 30-60 seconds it takes to get out of hibernation.  Furthermore, the minor hit to the hard drive is unlikely to have a significant impact to your overall battery time.  Also, if you weren’t aware, going in and out of hibernate is much better than a full startup/shutdown sequence.  Note that you might need to manually enable Hibernate as a system option (once you have, the quick shortcut into it is ‘windows button’ followed by U followed by H, and some PCs will have even faster shortcuts available as well).  If you make a run to the bathroom, however, that’s worth a quick Standby, but anything over 10 minutes and I’d Hibernate instead.
  7. Advanced power optionsTweak advanced settings. Virtually all laptops manufactured in the past 24 months have some advanced power options.  Mine, for example, allows me to go into 16-bit color mode, force the CPU into a power-saving mode, disable my LAN port, and more.  This might seem obvious, but if you aren’t doing it already, go find these settings (probably in the control panel, or possibly through custom software provided by your manufacturer) and get aggressive with them!   If you don’t have any extra control, one good extra tip is to manually force your screen into lower color modes, as they use less CPU overall and can make a huge difference in the long run.  While you are at it, you might want to change your Alarms settings, as many laptops default to shutting down with as much as 10% of your battery still available (my Low Battery is just an alert at 5%, and my Critical is force hibernate at 1%)!
    Advanced Vaio power options
  8. Choose Wisely.  Good: Word, Excel, Outlook, Text Editors.  Bad: anything by Adobe (you think Microsoft has bloatware, have you noticed how long even Acrobat takes to launch these days???), all Google plugins, many ‘Widgets’, ‘Gadgets’, etc.  All I can say is pick your battles wisely.  50 minutes of a video game ate up over 2 hours of my battery time, whereas writing email or documents tend to use up less than what Windows predicts (about 105% of the estimate on average).  I’ve also found WinDVD is right on the money for battery consumption, and Windows Media Player is a little power-hungry (by the way, if you are using your laptop to play music make certain you disable visualizations).  On that note, don’t use your laptop to play music unless absolutely necessary, it’s a real resource killer.
  9. Watch That Hard Drive. I just wrote, don’t play music, but the reason is mostly about your drive.  The more it spins, the more power it takes.  Make sure you’ve set your basic power option to turn off your drive relatively fast, but not necessarily too fast.  Some drives use more power getting started than staying running for short periods of time.  I set my Vaio to turn off the disk after 3 minutes of inactivity, you may want more, you may want less.  At the end of the day, if you are doing anything that prevents the hard drive from spinning down ever, you are draining your battery more than needed.
  10. Power alarmsLike a Boy Scout, Be Prepared. I make a point of configuring my ‘flight mode’ prior to getting on the plane.  It may only take 5-10 minutes to get your system setup properly, but that just eats into your battery life if you wait to do it on the plane.  Once done with all the settings, the last thing I do before unplugging my power supply is hibernating the PC.

I hope some of these tips help you out.  Personally, I add around 30 minutes (or more) to the longevity of my standard battery (3:30 on average now), and almost an hour on the extended one (6:30 or so).  This gives me almost 10 hours of combined life (4 full DVDs guaranteed), which suits me quite well.

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Posted in General, Guides, Mobile Technology, Travel | 64 Comments |

Lost: Digital camera full of memories!

Posted on August 11, 2006 by Jeremy Toeman

My poor cameraThis is my desperate plea to anyone who on absolute random chance flew SAS flight 526 (that’s SK0526 or SK526, depending on how you read it) from London to Stockholm on August 09, 2006 who found a Canon SD100 digital camera in a small leather case.  You are more than welcome to keep the camera (although I’d obviously appreciate it back), but if there is any chance you find this post and have not deleted the pictures stored on the camera, I’d greatly appreciate it.  The last picture of it I took is to the right, I left it on seat 02E.  Please!

For verification purposes, well, you’ll find pictures of me, including

  • camping photos (including the picture of the skunk by our tent)
  • pictures of an iRiver Clix and HTC Mteor/Breeze I planned to review
  • photographic evidence of the Loch Ness Monster

On the assumption I never see it again: this sucks, and I’m terribly annoyed – I rarely lose stuff, as in just about never.  I’d have given up just about any other gadget I own to not lose the pix.

Does anyone have or know about some Web site where people might have posted lost and found photos (or will I be as lucky as this guy)? For the record, SAS has a kick-butt Web site for finding stuff lost on their planes.  And yes, for those wondering, this is much worse than the incident with my tires. 

Losing memories is pretty rough.

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Posted in General, No/Low-tech, That's Janky, Travel | 10 Comments |

NXT-powered Insignia Home Theater System: wow

Posted on August 9, 2006 by ron

Thin speaker in handI remember the first time I saw the Bose Acoustimass 2 channel system way back in the early 90s and how impressed I was by it.  Until I listened to it for a long while and decided I didn’t really care for the sound quality.  I’m still impressed by the design and all, but just need more oomph in my living room (otherwise my cantankery upstairs neighbour will have less to complain about).  When I saw the NXT Insignia system, I assumed it too would be sorely lack in sound depth and quality. Even though their SoundVu laptop and Kensington iPod dock were both impressive, I just assumed that the scene in The Return of the King where they light the beacons (you know it totally made the movie) would leave me wanting more.  I was mistaken.

The Insignia line is from Best Buy, and it is a “home theater in a box” (yes, HTIB is acceptable).  This means you buy the box, and get all the pieces you need for a home surround sound experience.  Typically, all the cable either use proprietary connectors or have colored ends, in an attempt to idiot-proof the setup process.  Took me a good 3 minutes to get the whole system in place, plus another minute to hide some of the wires.

Main unitCenter channelRear connectorsRear connectorsSubwooferRemote control

Speaker compared to Definitive towerI tried the unit with several DVDs and even a few CDs to test the sound quality.  I then did some comparisons with my Definitive tower speakers and Velodyne subwoofer.  While my existing setup ‘won’ the test, it should be mentioned that I could’ve bought THREE Insignia HTIB kits for the price of JUST my subwoofer!  The other key thing to mention is the Insignia kit was by no means a lightweight.  The sound quality was great full of rich, vibrant sound.  Dialogue was clear, and it functioned great for high-action, tense drama, and the music CDs sounded nice as well.

Center and Front speakersThe Insignia system comes with 5 speakers, all about the size of a paperback book.  They can easily be mounted to a wall, and would leave a very aesthetic appearance, especially if paired with a wall-mounted flat-screen TV.  If you don’t want to mount them, they also come with little stands to prop the speakers up.  One minor warning for the extremely clumsy: the speakers can be dented, so try not to drop them on something pointy. 

Insignia SpeakersInsignia SpeakerCenter channelSpeaker standSpeaker standThin speakerSubwoofer   

Speaker on standAll-in-all, I was very impressed with the Insignia Home Theater System.  If you have a friend who is still living in a hole with only 2-channel audio (a.k.a. “stereophonic”), this might be the perfect holiday gift.  In fact, if it weren’t for my ridiculous needs to have about 11 things hooked up in my living room, I’d have probably switched to it myself (it would most certainly make the wife a lot happier with the living room setup).

LD Approved

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Posted in General, LD Approved, Product Reviews | 1 Comment |

I can't drive.

Posted on August 7, 2006 by Guest Contributor

I spent a good three hours on a Greyhound yesterday coming back to San Francisco from Santa Cruz. I like looking down into other people’s cars when on a bus. You can see their fax machines or video games or sacks of garbage. GPS systems. I envied them their small personal environments while I was stuck in a smelly backseat. The bathroom was ripe and reeking.

I started thinking how maybe it would be better for me to get my driver’s license. For some reason, though I took DEd (Driver’s Ed. Driving freaks me out a little bit and I have weird dreams about it fairly often. My acronym didn’t help.) Even though I had my temps for a while, I never actaully completed the test and everything. I don’t think I’ve been in the driver’s seat since 2002. I can’t even imagine how I managed to get out the driveway, much less to my grandmother’s house in Milwaukee, an hours drive away on the highway.

Next thing you know I’m inventing a horde of Robo-Chaffeurs. Maybe they would drive the busses, too. And the airplanes, taxis, cruise ships. Sounds like it would put a lot of people out of a job, but just think! No more worries about drunk drivers! Maybe we could have cool pods on rails à la The Incredibles (although in that movie they seemed to be a severe security risk… Speaking of security risk, have you heard of “bump keying?” A friend sent me the link this morning with the comment “This is disturbing…”) Anyways, if I had a friendly and helpful Robo-Chauffeur, my driving problems would be solved. I wouldn’t have to worry about screwing up, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else screwing up. Everyone would always be going the speed limit, too! We wouldn’t need traffic cops.

I figure this topic has probably been taken up in science fiction a zillion times, although I couldn’t think of any specific examples. They had nifty transportation in Minority Report… I wonder if anyone has ever written a story where society has a Robo-chauffeur system and they all go rampant and decide to kidnap the entire human race and take us…to their leader? To another planet? Maybe the rampancy is triggered by particles of alien subconciousness floating through space!!!
Anyhow, I least I wasn’t bored.

PS – This is what came up when I googled “robo-chauffeur.” The team continues their projects here.

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And the hits just keep on coming: 5 GB online storage space from AOL

Posted on August 3, 2006 by Guest Contributor

big2.jpgThis is a step in the right direction, for those who think that AOL has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. Forget the days of useless CDs sent in the mail; if AOL plays their cards right, this is what people will remember. AOL has announced that, starting September, www.xdrive.com will offer 5 GB of free online storage space to all users with an AOL or AIM screenname!

Additionally, there is mention of a drag-and-drop interface between online storage and your desktop. More details to come in September!

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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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