that will make sure your computer is slow and buggy with no need for viruses to do the job (note, by linking to their software I am not recommending it, just showing you it - if you must get anti-virus software, try something a little lighter - not to mention free), have introduced their own competitor to the marvelous OpenDNS. I don't think I need to comment that much on what I think of this new product, just check their status page if you want an idea of their level of professionalism and quality (for May 24th they have a service note of "Fooled you!, everything is fine."). No, they fooled you when you bought their "protection" for your computer thinking it'd solve problems...
Friday, May 28, 2010
Yikes!
Norton, marketers of that anti-virus program that will make sure your computer is slow and buggy with no need for viruses to do the job (note, by linking to their software I am not recommending it, just showing you it - if you must get anti-virus software, try something a little lighter - not to mention free), have introduced their own competitor to the marvelous OpenDNS. I don't think I need to comment that much on what I think of this new product, just check their status page if you want an idea of their level of professionalism and quality (for May 24th they have a service note of "Fooled you!, everything is fine."). No, they fooled you when you bought their "protection" for your computer thinking it'd solve problems...
that will make sure your computer is slow and buggy with no need for viruses to do the job (note, by linking to their software I am not recommending it, just showing you it - if you must get anti-virus software, try something a little lighter - not to mention free), have introduced their own competitor to the marvelous OpenDNS. I don't think I need to comment that much on what I think of this new product, just check their status page if you want an idea of their level of professionalism and quality (for May 24th they have a service note of "Fooled you!, everything is fine."). No, they fooled you when you bought their "protection" for your computer thinking it'd solve problems...
Friday, May 21, 2010
Alltel HTC Hero First Look
What I Needed Was A Hero
I have gone through many Blackberry Tour 9630's and I was lucky to be able to get an HTC Hero after suffering for months through a device that basically just didn't work consistently or reliably. This is Alltel's first Android device. It is available today, May 20, for Alltel customers in AT&T divested markets, and "soon" for those in ATN divested markets (customers who will be staying Alltel).
I have got sick of waiting for AT&T to come to Montana in hopes of a good phone, and the Hero - while far from perfect - should tide me over easily for a one year contract. Yes, it's already outdated. There is no reason to expect FroYo any time soon, and probably not ever, for the Hero. The essentially identical HTC Hero Android Phone (Sprint)
only just recently got the 2.1 (Eclair) update. 2.2 makes the OS faster, offers full flash, and allows app storage on the SD card. More on that in a minute.
Initial Impressions
This phone works great. My wonderful first impression was that once I had Google setup, my contacts and calendar and GMail all worked perfectly. I made sure my contacts were all in my GMail "My Contacts" group and formatted correctly before I got this phone. Everything works great. This is a huge plus, if you are an existing Google services user, nothing could be simpler. Google services work great, too. Google Talk doesn't have any official client for iPhone. It's great on here. Google Voice is totally integrated. All the apps I was hoping for are available on the market, except Square. But that's their fault, it's really too bad though - I was hoping this phone would let me start taking credit card payments. Oh well. The web is fast. Faster on EVDO 3G than my iPod touch rev 2 is even on Wi-Fi connected to 15mbps cable! The signal strength meter means nothing, literally. Actual signal reading is available in status and has no relation to the bars. The phone did drop to 1X randomly at my church, but so did my BlackBerry and so does my aircard. Drops to 1X are common even in strong signal areas on Alltel locally, so I can't fault the phone. There's a few more things I'll talk about here.
Input
Most of you will wonder about how it is to type on a small touchscreen. Eh, okay. Not as good as the iPod touch/iPhone. But not at all bad. You just need to be careful and get used to it. Turning off haptic (vibration) feedback helps a ton. Hearing my phone buzz/shake each time I hit a key does not help anything. Sometimes you miss a letter or the keys take a second to catch up, but it's totally usable - similar to a BlackBerry in terms of ease but not as good as an iPhone.
Speed
Yes, it's slow like you've heard. No, it's not nearly as bad as the BlackBerry Tour. But yes, it's slow. FroYo would help this - probably fix it entirely due to it's new JIT (just-in-time) compiler, but the Hero wasn't on the list of phones HTC announced they'd be releasing FroYo for :( So, yes, it's bad. Not unbearable. Not even as bad as a BlackBerry. But not silky smooth like an iPhone or an HTC incredible. The only place it got REALLY bad (rather than slightly laggy) was when my cousin sent me like 20 MMS messages in a row quickly.
Pictures
The image quality is good for a cell phone but still, obviously, a cell phone. Make no mistake. The files may have 5 million pixels but they're just 5 million cell phone pixels. Still, remember, the best camera is the one you have with you. Sharing and emailing the pictures is a dream. There is a couple seconds of lag to focus, but one of the best camera phones I have seen....
Battery
I have not had this phone long enough to be sure, but a couple hours on Google Talk pretty constantly left me with over half battery. It should get through a day of light to moderate use - lasting at least as long as the BlackBerry I would imagine. I'll update as I learn more.
Conclusion
Based on these first impressions, I'd give this phone a solid four stars. Get Square running on it, and it gets to 4.5 stars. Get FroYo for it and it'll be a solid five stars. A great phone for Alltel, and since it's a 1-year contract (AT&T divested only) you'll be able to get the latest and greatest next summer, maybe even something running Gingerbread. No, it's not a Snapdragon. And no, it's not a super high-res AMOLED screen (it's just a 480*320 pixel LCD like an iPhone [but a hair smaller] - totally adequate for a phone but outdated by today's standards of approximately 200 DPI phone displays). It displays more dithering artifacts than an iPhone too but oh well. It works. It's a great value because of the one-year contracts and outstanding price plans of Alltel, and it's in a totally different league from a BlackBerry... I give it four stars. I'm loving my new phone and am so glad I was able to replace the BlackBerry nightmare! And to close it out, a video:
UPDATE 2 or so:
One more BIG BUG, this one's actually probably in Alltel's network. Alltel will not allow calls to be made with a + in the phone number. This is not a big deal, except that if you link a contact to a Facebook contact that has a + in front of it (as Facebook ASKS you to put in front of your number as that is the proper international dialling format), your contact will have a + in the number with no way to get rid of it except to unlink from Facebook. There's basically four workarounds that I am aware of:
- Unlink that contact from Facebook.
- Add a second phone contact for the person without the +.
- Use Google Voice to call that person (probably breaks M2M and My Circle benefits...)
- Manually dial that person.
One of these should work for you, but it's much better to know about this bug than to be really confused why some calls don't go through when you first run into it.
I have gone through many Blackberry Tour 9630's and I was lucky to be able to get an HTC Hero after suffering for months through a device that basically just didn't work consistently or reliably. This is Alltel's first Android device. It is available today, May 20, for Alltel customers in AT&T divested markets, and "soon" for those in ATN divested markets (customers who will be staying Alltel).
I have got sick of waiting for AT&T to come to Montana in hopes of a good phone, and the Hero - while far from perfect - should tide me over easily for a one year contract. Yes, it's already outdated. There is no reason to expect FroYo any time soon, and probably not ever, for the Hero. The essentially identical HTC Hero Android Phone (Sprint)
only just recently got the 2.1 (Eclair) update. 2.2 makes the OS faster, offers full flash, and allows app storage on the SD card. More on that in a minute.
Initial Impressions
This phone works great. My wonderful first impression was that once I had Google setup, my contacts and calendar and GMail all worked perfectly. I made sure my contacts were all in my GMail "My Contacts" group and formatted correctly before I got this phone. Everything works great. This is a huge plus, if you are an existing Google services user, nothing could be simpler. Google services work great, too. Google Talk doesn't have any official client for iPhone. It's great on here. Google Voice is totally integrated. All the apps I was hoping for are available on the market, except Square. But that's their fault, it's really too bad though - I was hoping this phone would let me start taking credit card payments. Oh well. The web is fast. Faster on EVDO 3G than my iPod touch rev 2 is even on Wi-Fi connected to 15mbps cable! The signal strength meter means nothing, literally. Actual signal reading is available in status and has no relation to the bars. The phone did drop to 1X randomly at my church, but so did my BlackBerry and so does my aircard. Drops to 1X are common even in strong signal areas on Alltel locally, so I can't fault the phone. There's a few more things I'll talk about here.
Input
Most of you will wonder about how it is to type on a small touchscreen. Eh, okay. Not as good as the iPod touch/iPhone. But not at all bad. You just need to be careful and get used to it. Turning off haptic (vibration) feedback helps a ton. Hearing my phone buzz/shake each time I hit a key does not help anything. Sometimes you miss a letter or the keys take a second to catch up, but it's totally usable - similar to a BlackBerry in terms of ease but not as good as an iPhone.
Speed
Yes, it's slow like you've heard. No, it's not nearly as bad as the BlackBerry Tour. But yes, it's slow. FroYo would help this - probably fix it entirely due to it's new JIT (just-in-time) compiler, but the Hero wasn't on the list of phones HTC announced they'd be releasing FroYo for :( So, yes, it's bad. Not unbearable. Not even as bad as a BlackBerry. But not silky smooth like an iPhone or an HTC incredible. The only place it got REALLY bad (rather than slightly laggy) was when my cousin sent me like 20 MMS messages in a row quickly.
Pictures
The image quality is good for a cell phone but still, obviously, a cell phone. Make no mistake. The files may have 5 million pixels but they're just 5 million cell phone pixels. Still, remember, the best camera is the one you have with you. Sharing and emailing the pictures is a dream. There is a couple seconds of lag to focus, but one of the best camera phones I have seen....
Battery
I have not had this phone long enough to be sure, but a couple hours on Google Talk pretty constantly left me with over half battery. It should get through a day of light to moderate use - lasting at least as long as the BlackBerry I would imagine. I'll update as I learn more.
Conclusion
Based on these first impressions, I'd give this phone a solid four stars. Get Square running on it, and it gets to 4.5 stars. Get FroYo for it and it'll be a solid five stars. A great phone for Alltel, and since it's a 1-year contract (AT&T divested only) you'll be able to get the latest and greatest next summer, maybe even something running Gingerbread. No, it's not a Snapdragon. And no, it's not a super high-res AMOLED screen (it's just a 480*320 pixel LCD like an iPhone [but a hair smaller] - totally adequate for a phone but outdated by today's standards of approximately 200 DPI phone displays). It displays more dithering artifacts than an iPhone too but oh well. It works. It's a great value because of the one-year contracts and outstanding price plans of Alltel, and it's in a totally different league from a BlackBerry... I give it four stars. I'm loving my new phone and am so glad I was able to replace the BlackBerry nightmare! And to close it out, a video:
UPDATE 2 or so:
One more BIG BUG, this one's actually probably in Alltel's network. Alltel will not allow calls to be made with a + in the phone number. This is not a big deal, except that if you link a contact to a Facebook contact that has a + in front of it (as Facebook ASKS you to put in front of your number as that is the proper international dialling format), your contact will have a + in the number with no way to get rid of it except to unlink from Facebook. There's basically four workarounds that I am aware of:
- Unlink that contact from Facebook.
- Add a second phone contact for the person without the +.
- Use Google Voice to call that person (probably breaks M2M and My Circle benefits...)
- Manually dial that person.
One of these should work for you, but it's much better to know about this bug than to be really confused why some calls don't go through when you first run into it.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The Future (Of Video) Changed Today
Everyone has heard of HTML5, I'm sure. Apple has been pushing it HARD as an "open" alternative to Adobe's Flash Player for video. However, what few realize is that HTML5 doesn't specify the video format, just how to "wrap" it in a web page. Apple has pushed for HTML5 with H.264 format video. YouTube has used it so far, and it works fine. But it's not exactly "open" like Apple wants you to believe, it is patented by various groups and fees must be paid to an industry organization called MPEG-LA. Yeah... And Apple seems to like it that way. It works well and it's use prevents truly open software from using it freely.
Google, though, makes their money on ads. That means serving as many people as possible. Including us who want affordable, customizable, open platforms. Earlier this year they bought a company called On2 technologies that makes a competing video "codec" called VP8 that's just as good as, if not better than, H.264. Everybody expected Google to make it free. And today, they did. What I think far fewer people expected, was it to gain support.
And today, it did. In addition to Google, VP8 (now part of The WebM Project) is being supported by industry giants such as Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, and Skype. As well as many other companies that you wouldn't recognize immediately, but are responsible for the hardware of many devices we use such as Nvidia, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm.
This changes everything. (At least in terms of a good cross-platform video solution...).
Google, though, makes their money on ads. That means serving as many people as possible. Including us who want affordable, customizable, open platforms. Earlier this year they bought a company called On2 technologies that makes a competing video "codec" called VP8 that's just as good as, if not better than, H.264. Everybody expected Google to make it free. And today, they did. What I think far fewer people expected, was it to gain support.
And today, it did. In addition to Google, VP8 (now part of The WebM Project) is being supported by industry giants such as Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, and Skype. As well as many other companies that you wouldn't recognize immediately, but are responsible for the hardware of many devices we use such as Nvidia, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm.
This changes everything. (At least in terms of a good cross-platform video solution...).
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Watch Out For Those Natural Labels...
The other day I was shopping for groceries at Super 1 Foods and went to get something to drink, looking at the choices one that looked interesting was "Peace Tea" iced tea. A huge can of iced tea for 88 cents? "100% Natural Tea / No Artificial Flavors / No Preservatives / No Artificial Colors" in this huge can? THAT had to be worth a try, so I bought it. But I also bought the juice I wanted, so I just got around to drinking the "Razzleberry Tea" Peace Tea today. And wow, I'll admit, it tasted good and was a decent beverage for 88 cents. But not iced tea. More like raspberry Kool-Aid
mixed with iced tea
. While I liked it, and would buy it again, I was very suspicious how something so natural and healthy could taste so good (and be so cheap). And in deciding to find out, I learned an important lesson in reading the ingredients:
Brewed Natural Tea (Pure Filtered Water, Tea), Sugar, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Sucralose.
It all sounds pretty good until the sucralose
. No wonder the stuff tastes so good. Sucralose is not natural
- it's an artificial concoction. Though I guess it's a sweetener, not a flavor, not a color, and not a tea. They never claim it's naturally sweetened. And thus, we have a lesson in deceptive marketing 101. Not to say it isn't a great product. It's cheap, it tastes great, and it probably is way healthier than most soft drinks. But I don't think you should make the big natural push and then include artificial sweeteners...
mixed with iced tea. While I liked it, and would buy it again, I was very suspicious how something so natural and healthy could taste so good (and be so cheap). And in deciding to find out, I learned an important lesson in reading the ingredients:Brewed Natural Tea (Pure Filtered Water, Tea), Sugar, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Sucralose.
It all sounds pretty good until the sucralose
. No wonder the stuff tastes so good. Sucralose is not natural - it's an artificial concoction. Though I guess it's a sweetener, not a flavor, not a color, and not a tea. They never claim it's naturally sweetened. And thus, we have a lesson in deceptive marketing 101. Not to say it isn't a great product. It's cheap, it tastes great, and it probably is way healthier than most soft drinks. But I don't think you should make the big natural push and then include artificial sweeteners...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Grapefruit
This is what happens when you waste too much time fooling around with a Sony DSC-W350
. This is a really neat camera also available in black
, silver
, and blue
(in addition to the pink I own). As you can see the video quality is good, if a step below most dedicated video cameras. An additional benefit is the CCD sensor. I shot this video while running so that you can clearly see the benefit of CCD - it's totally watchable. There are no "rolling shutter" artifacts. No skew, no wobble, no "looking through jello" effect that CMOS is infamous for.
. This is a really neat camera also available in black, silver, and blue (in addition to the pink I own). As you can see the video quality is good, if a step below most dedicated video cameras. An additional benefit is the CCD sensor. I shot this video while running so that you can clearly see the benefit of CCD - it's totally watchable. There are no "rolling shutter" artifacts. No skew, no wobble, no "looking through jello" effect that CMOS is infamous for.Saturday, May 8, 2010
Dry Ice And The Safety Freaks
From how difficult it is to attain, the age limits, and the safety warnings, one might think that dry ice
is an extremely hazardous chemical. Far from it, it's a safe substance (frozen carbon dioxide) useful for making beverages that middle school kids can safely (with training and precautions of course!) use to explore and experiment as the book Dry Ice Investigations (grade 6-8)
explores. But there's nothing like a good YouTube video to put some perspective on people's fears:
is an extremely hazardous chemical. Far from it, it's a safe substance (frozen carbon dioxide) useful for making beverages that middle school kids can safely (with training and precautions of course!) use to explore and experiment as the book Dry Ice Investigations (grade 6-8) explores. But there's nothing like a good YouTube video to put some perspective on people's fears:Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Chrome Fast?
I've been playing around with Google's Chrome web browser. It's good, no doubt. It loads most pages correctly (better than Safari in my experience, which is quite odd since they're both based on Apple's open source WebKit) and is simple yet functional. It has two big "gotchas" that keep me from adopting it - one: you can't view PDFs in the browser window (or at least not on my Mac the way I have it setup) - two: the download manager is terrible and doesn't let your reliably resume a failed download. Other than those two things though, it is good - and very, very fast. How fast? Watch this:
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
More thoughts on Ubuntu 10.04
I'm still loving Ubuntu, but Lucid Lynx (10.04) has had some major problems in my opinion. Not only on my MacBook (live CD wouldn't even start unlike 9.10) and my mom's desktop, but now on my grandma's desktop too... I upgraded her from 8.04 LTS to 10.04 LTS and while it's nice, and faster, I am struggling to get her printer - a Canon Pixma iP1500 - working. Granted, it was a nightmare to get working the first time, but I do wonder why it didn't "just work" on the upgrade. Also, I struggled with Flash Player being broken and having to manually edit the package file to make it work. That's scary. I love Ubuntu, and it works great and is very user-friendly once it's setup and working right. However, getting everything working is still just too hard for the average person compared to Windows or Mac OS X... Still, it is an amazing free product so have some encouragement here:
Just A Quick Reminder...
...on why gun rights matter. Look at this news article about a lady who went on a stabbing rampage in a southern California target store and an off-duty sheriff's deputy who brought the situation under control with his gun. If you ban guns, the outlaws will still get them ("when you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns") - and people can use anything as a weapon. The answer isn't trying to legislate the world into safety. The answer is community and people working together to protect everyone else recognizing the general good of humanity. Including most gun owners... Here's some reading for anyone interested:
NRA guide to the basics of Personal Protection in the home
Thank God I Had a Gun: True Accounts of Self-Defense
The Concealed Handgun Manual: How to Choose, Carry, and Shoot a Gun in Self Defense (Concealed Handgun Manual: How to Choose, Carry, & Shoot a Gun in Self Defense)
America Fights Back: Armed Self-defense in a Violent Age
The Gun Digest Book Of Concealed Carry
NRA guide to the basics of Personal Protection in the home
Thank God I Had a Gun: True Accounts of Self-Defense
The Concealed Handgun Manual: How to Choose, Carry, and Shoot a Gun in Self Defense (Concealed Handgun Manual: How to Choose, Carry, & Shoot a Gun in Self Defense)
America Fights Back: Armed Self-defense in a Violent Age
The Gun Digest Book Of Concealed Carry
Monday, May 3, 2010
H.264 is not a good thing...
Steve Jobs has been making his opinion on flash quite well known. Adobe's Shantanu Narayen has his own response to the whole situation. I couldn't find an official transcript of that. Both sides have good arguments, and there are pros and cons to both strategies. Apple is strongly pushing for H.264 video with HTML5 to replace one common use of Flash. However, I want to clear one thing up:
H.264 is NOT a good thing. It's a mess of patents that MPEG-LA could enforce at any time in the future. Does anyone remember GIF? While the LZW compression was patented, it was not enforced and Unisys said they wouldn't enforce it for websites, etc. Only for commercial software. Then, in 1999, with GIF firmly entrenched, Unisys started asking websites using GIFs made with open software for $5000. Seriously. A major campaign known as Burn All GIFs helped to slowly get the GIF format out of common use. However, it came at a cost to many larger developers, software companies, and ultimately end users. GIF couldn't disappear overnight. In fact, you still see some GIF around today, though it's no longer an issue as Unisys' patents have expired. However, patents are still being seriously abused today and I even found a book written by lawyers encouraging their abuse - Patenting Art & Entertainment: New Strategies for Protecting Creative Ideas
. "Patenting Art & Entertainment"?!?!?!?!?! Patent law is intended to cover inventions... let's have some history here, after all...
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. H.264 is the new GIF, and MPEG-LA the new Unisys. Enforcement could come at any moment in a sweeping blow to helpless web designers, etc firmly entrenched in using it. The beneficiaries? Apple, Microsoft, and especially MPEG-LA. Most digital video cameras already include a statement required by MPEG-LA that they can only be used for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes. Including professional digital video cameras. While MPEG-LA isn't strictly enforcing this... today, what does tomorrow hold? Let's not forget GIF. Of course, Apple and Microsoft have good relationships with MPEG-LA and no need to fear... it could only help knock out free, open, truly innovating products.
There are alternatives. Ogg Theora exists. Google's On2 VP8 is coming soon. Like them or not, Google's "don't be evil" motto really has been true in many areas, and On2 VP8 has a lot of potential. However, without pressuring Apple and Microsoft to support these codecs, they can never be used on the web. Just like we had to pressure them to support PNG back in the day, the time has come again to push for industry support for open standards...
- Mark
H.264 is NOT a good thing. It's a mess of patents that MPEG-LA could enforce at any time in the future. Does anyone remember GIF? While the LZW compression was patented, it was not enforced and Unisys said they wouldn't enforce it for websites, etc. Only for commercial software. Then, in 1999, with GIF firmly entrenched, Unisys started asking websites using GIFs made with open software for $5000. Seriously. A major campaign known as Burn All GIFs helped to slowly get the GIF format out of common use. However, it came at a cost to many larger developers, software companies, and ultimately end users. GIF couldn't disappear overnight. In fact, you still see some GIF around today, though it's no longer an issue as Unisys' patents have expired. However, patents are still being seriously abused today and I even found a book written by lawyers encouraging their abuse - Patenting Art & Entertainment: New Strategies for Protecting Creative Ideas
. "Patenting Art & Entertainment"?!?!?!?!?! Patent law is intended to cover inventions... let's have some history here, after all...Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. H.264 is the new GIF, and MPEG-LA the new Unisys. Enforcement could come at any moment in a sweeping blow to helpless web designers, etc firmly entrenched in using it. The beneficiaries? Apple, Microsoft, and especially MPEG-LA. Most digital video cameras already include a statement required by MPEG-LA that they can only be used for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes. Including professional digital video cameras. While MPEG-LA isn't strictly enforcing this... today, what does tomorrow hold? Let's not forget GIF. Of course, Apple and Microsoft have good relationships with MPEG-LA and no need to fear... it could only help knock out free, open, truly innovating products.
There are alternatives. Ogg Theora exists. Google's On2 VP8 is coming soon. Like them or not, Google's "don't be evil" motto really has been true in many areas, and On2 VP8 has a lot of potential. However, without pressuring Apple and Microsoft to support these codecs, they can never be used on the web. Just like we had to pressure them to support PNG back in the day, the time has come again to push for industry support for open standards...
- Mark
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