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The personal blog of an old-fashioned geek

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Amazon is becoming my new favorite company

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I’ve been a long time customer of Amazon.com, going way back into the mid-90′s when all they sold was books.  But lately, I’ve found myself using their products and services more and more often, and I am very impressed!

Since buying my Roku XD I have since become an Amazon Prime member to gain access to the unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows that Amazon Prime has to offer.  While the interface of the Amazon On Demand channel for Roku needs much improvement (their customer service dept was happy to hear my suggestions about creating a queue/playlist/subscription), it gets the job done, and it has a good selection of content to watch.  I’ve also puchased a couple season of TV shows to watch On Demand, and their HD movie rental rates are cheaper than what I get direct from Charter (my cable provider).

Moving on from their video services, I’ve been very impressed with their new cloud storage and MP3 cloud player service.  I’ve purchased several albums from Amazon that I would have previously purchased from iTunes because they were a few dollars cheaper.  And with the Cloud Player on my Android phone, it makes having my music with me wherever I go as simple as a click of a button. (I just wish there was a native cloud player app for my iPhone/iPad2).

I’m also an avid book reader and enthusiast, and the fact that the Amazon Kindle app works on my EVO, my iPhone, and my iPad2 means that I can take my whole library with me wherever I go.  Granted, I also have the Barnes & Noble Nook app on all 3 devices as well, but the Kindles whispersync is so much nicer to keep my books synced between devices.  With the Nook, it’s annoying to have to figure out where I was in the book when I want to read a quick chapter on my EVO after reading for a bit on my iPad2 before bed the previous night.

Amazon’s seller marketplace also makes it easy for me to convert my old collection of physical books into money, which in-turn helps me expand my Kindle library.  I’d love it if they had a book exchange program where you can send in physical books and receive discounts on the kindle versions of those same books.

All in all, I’m a very happy Amazon customer!

Playin with the WordPress app for Android

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I just installed the WordPress app for Android on my HTC evo. This is a test post from the app.

So far this seems like a pretty sweet app! I’m still not used to the Android/evo keyboard… I think the spacebar needs to be a bit bigger as I’m trying to type as fast as I do on my iPhone but my words blend together, so its either the auto spell correction or I’m missing the spacebar as I type.

HTC Evo & Apple iPhone

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I’ve had an iPhone 3g for just over 1.5 years now, and I LOVE IT!   I’ve also had the Samsung Instinct as a work phone for the past 2 years, and it’s been pretty meh.   Today, our new work phones arrived, the new HTC Evo, the worlds first 4G smartphone blah blah marketingspeak.

All I can say is this thing is HUGE!  And when I turned it on, it’s got a nice, crisp, hi-res display and it looks fantastic.  I can’t wait to get it activated and start playing with it.  I primarily use my iPhone for personal, but I use the email / web features of it for work because it was so much better than the instinct.  I might actually start using my work phone for work (email/web) as well as personal.

Here is a picture of the phones side by side while I wait for the new phone to activate…

Ebook Raders – iPhone, Nook, Kindle, and now Edge

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I recently grew a love for ebook readers.  I use my iPhone with the Stanza app, which allows me to read ebooks, purchase and download ebooks wirelessly via my phones internet connection, and access the full project Gutenberg library (my personal favorite).  I enjoy it immensely, as it lets me bring my books with me wherever I go, since I bring my iPhone with me wherever I go.

Over the holidays, I had the chance to play around and use my brother’s Kindle from Amazon, and I was impressed!  I liked that the Kindle had a bigger screen, and the e-ink was very nice to read, compared to reading the backlit ebooks on my iPhone.  However, I did not like the fact that the display was not touch-sensitive, and I had to use the physical buttons to turn the page.  The Kindle interface wasn’t very intuitive and it took me a while to get used to it and be able to quickly navigate the menus.

Also over the holidays, I was able to check out my Uncle’s Nook from Barnes and Noble. Feature wise, the Nook and Kindle are pretty evenly matched, but due to the fact that the Nook has a 2nd screen, and has built in Wi-Fi, I would probably buy the Nook over the Kindle, if I had to get one or the other.

BUT! (there is always a but)  I just read about the new enTourage eDGe which combines 2 displays, and the google android OS to make a hybrid ebook reader that functions also as a tablet pc/netbook.  Now this is more along the lines of something that I would buy.  I’ve been contemplating getting a netbook, and if I make the plunge into netbook ownership, I’m going to take a hard look at the eDGe.  I’m not that familiar with the droid OS, and if there was a version that would let me run the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, then it would be just right.

AT&T Navigator for iPhone

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I just got an email from AT&T letting me know about the new AT&T Navigator app for my iPhone 3g.   I love my iPhone and one of my biggest gripes was how much of a pain it was to navigate anywhere while on the road.  Google maps was funcitonal, and since I can read a map, I could find my own way, but if I was anywhere unknown and just wanted to get there without dealing with anything complex, I would use my Samsung Instinct on Sprint that I have through work.

I think it’s great that FINALLY after how many years the iPhone has been out, and for the past year with the 3G with GPS, that they have a turn by turn direction app.  But I think it is TERRIBLE that AT&T wants to charge me $9.99/mo for the service.

$9.99 to download the App as a one time fee would be perfectly acceptable, but don’t tell me that they need to charge a monthly fee for the service.  I don’t pay extra for the Sprint Navigator on the Instinct, nor do you pay a monthly fee (that I’m aware of) for a TomTom.

Come on AT&T, give us the app for a one-time $9.99 or even $19.99 fee, and then charge per update.  Let me know when the routes in my home area have been updated due to construction, and give me a $1.99 update option to update when I want to.  Don’t nickel and dime me with a $10/mo recurring charge.  Over 1 year, that’s $120 spent on navigation, and how often do roads change?

My Ultimate Home Media System

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I recently did an overhaul on my home media system, and I LOVE it!  First off, my goal with this system was to give me ultimate flexibility with my media and provide it in an easy to use, easy to manage system.

For the past 2 years, I’ve had a modded Xbox, and was running a very very early version of XBMC (Formerly Xbox Media Center).  The Xbox had a 300gb hard disk and I would FTP files to it to watch on my TV.  Now, my TV is a 36″ LCD HDTV, and XBMC always looked a bit fuzzy on the screen, but it worked.  I also had to use the Xbox remote and have the Xbox sitting out a little bit from the TV to reach the couch so I could choose which file to watch.

Sometime early last year, I picked up a WD MyBook World 1TB Hard Drive, plugged it into the network, and copied my DVD movies and TV shows to it.  I was then able to map the 1TB drive’s Samba share inside XBMC and watch all my media off of the network hard drive.  This was great!  It meant I no longer had to FTP into my Xbox and move/delete files to and from it in order to watch them.  I just had to copy them to the network hard drive over a regular windows/samba share.

Now, last week, I took the plunge and upgraded XBMC to the latest version.  This new version has a LOT more features than the old version I was running previously (which basically let me browse and watch files).  I now have a nice HD skin that is 720p and looks beautiful on my HDTV, AND I now can make use of XBMC’s amazing Library functionality.   I spent a few days renaming all of my files/folders and tweaking XBMC’s config file regex, and then let XBMC rescan all of the files on my network.   XBMC then connected to the internet, and searched sites like IMDB to download cover art, movie and TV show information and categorize my media by Genre and other data.

Now when I want to watch a certain TV show, I no longer have to browse my network to the right file/folder; instead I just go to “TV Shows”  Choose the name of the show, then select the season, and browse to the episode.  Each episode now has screenshots a plot synopsis and even information about the cast of the particular episode!

All of this is great! But what makes it even better is that I discovered an XBMC remote app in the iTunes App Store for my iPhone.  I downloaded it and configured it to talk to my Xbox, and what do you know? I can now browse my entire media collection on my iPhone, and then choose what to watch on the TV, start, pause, adjust volume… all from my iPhone!  This gives me great flexibility and I no longer have to be “chained” to the controller and it’s cord in order to control XBMC.

I love this setup!  There are a few things I have planned for the near future that will further make this my ultimate Home Media System.

– Install Mythbuntu on a spare PC (Mythbuntu is an optimized version of Ubuntu Linux, pre configured to run MythTV, the open source DVR software).   I don’t have cable TV, and I don’t watch broadcast TV even though I have a TV Tuner card.  So why do I want to configure MythTV when I have XBMC?  Well, mythTV happens to have a plugin for mythWeb that will let me stream my media over the internet to other PC’s and devices (Similar to a SlingBox).  This means that I’ll be able to have access to and be able to Watch my movies and TV shows from anywhere in the world that I have internet access.  Oh, and my iPhone has internet access pretty much everywhere I go, and if I’m understanding what I’m reading… I should be able to watch my media from my iPhone via MythTV’s plugin.