Gadget Wisdom

Guru is the editor of the Gadget Wisdom blog and the voice of GadgetWisdom on Twitter.

I have gotten addicted to Twitter. It wasn’t my idea. I got onto Twitter to promote the blog, initially, and didn’t think I would have much use for it. But like many Twitter has mostly replaced the RSS feed for me. I want to keep up on what is going on, and I want that information delivered to me.

So all of the sites I used to follow in my RSS reader that offer a Twitter feed, I unsubscribed to the RSS feed. I’m hardly alone in that. There is too much to go through out there. And the nice thing is that in addition to straight blog->twitter feeds, there is some human filtering. If Tweeter A shares my preferences, the things they link to and retweet are likely to be ones I want to know about. That also creates a social element, as there can be commentary/dialogue about these things.

I am also on Identi.ca/StatusNet, also at GadgetWisdom. It is the same philosophy, but has a significantly different set of people, and fewer of the news sources I’m looking for, so I use it less frequently. It does offer a higher percentage of tech people though, so it has its place.

The Gadget Wisdom blog auto-tweets new blog entries, and I do try to comment on what other people are saying to get involved in the conversation. But ultimately, my problem is finding the right Twitter client.

I am a Linux user. The most popular Twitter clients that will work on Linux are Adobe Air based. Adobe Air is nice in that Air programs will work on any OS you can successfully install the software onto. But Adobe software can be difficult, although to Adobe’s credit, they do maintain the software and try to improve it.

I’ve been using Twhirl, which has not been maintained since Seesmic acquired it. Seesmic has its own Desktop software, which they’ve spun off into a variety of other social networking products, including one for Android. Twhirl is not ideal, but it has several features I want. I am trying to find the Twitter client that does everything I want. So, here are my parameters for a Twitter client. Note: This is a discussion of desktop, not mobile clients.

When I return home after a few hours away, I want to catch up on my tweets. This is where the problems come in. For one, with any client, if I don’t leave the client running, then I can only retrieve an hour or two of tweets. What if I’m gone for the day…6-12 hours? Some programs even have a maximum number of tweets they’ll keep even if you do leave it running, causing you to lose some. And even using the web interface, it is hard to go back more than a certain number of hours in your timeline.

So, this is what I want in a Twitter client

• Lightweight – It’s Twitter. I don’t need it to take up that much memory. I wouldn’t mind if it saved my Tweets locally in realtime. I could afford the hard drive space.
• Keep Track of Read Tweets – When I go out, or even when I’m in, I want it to keep track of where I left off reading and make sure everything from then on until I return is retained.
• Prioritize Mentions – When I return, I want to know if anyone said anything to or about me to reply with before I read through hours of tweets to catch up.
• Multiple Account Support – I have to monitor more than one account.
• Backup – Why can’t the program save my tweets locally as a backup? My IM client can. Is there a single Twitter client that can do this?

So, let’s take a look at some Twitter clients we’ve tried…We mentioned Twirl, and it isn’t maintained, so we’ll skip it for now…

TweetDeck

Tweetdeck is perhaps the most commonly used Twitter client after the Twitter web interface itself.

• It uses a column based interface… It has a lot of good features.
• No Status.net/Identi.ca support
• Multiple Account Support, but you cannot combine/group information from multiple accounts together.
• Online sync option, but only for column information, not for position or account information.
• A dot appears next to Tweets to mark whether or not it is read or unread.

Seesmic

Seesmic Desktop is the most serious challenger to Tweetdeck.

• Multiple Account Support
• Either single or multiple column format. Offers a filter/columns to group information from multiple accounts or separately look at each feed.
• No Status.net/Identi.ca support.
• No Online Sync, despite the fact Seesmic offers a web-based product.
• No good way to keep track of your place, except by clearing your read Tweets.

Seesmic Web is an online version of the Desktop client, with similar features.

Gwibber

I needed to cover a native Linux client. I want to love Gwibber. But it has a few showstoppers.

• Multiple Account Support, including Status.net/Identi.ca.
• Offers a singe column input, but offers the opportunity to filter the column to a specific stream, ie account, mentions, etc.
• No way to keep track of read Tweets.
• No support for Groups or Twitter Lists

A lot of the above is on their roadmap for future improvements, but it isn’t quite there yet. Of course, I’m running the latest testing version for Fedora, which is not the most current. Ubuntu Linux users would have a more current version.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a web based client, and very popular. But it has that same showstopping problem we can’t find a solution for. Keeping track of where we left off.

I’ve looked at other clients, but cannot find anything that works for me. So tell me, what do you use? What works?

If you’ve read this blog before, you know we have some very legitimate issues with Apple products, while accepting that they have some useful and popular designs.

The iPad is essentially a giant iPod Touch, with a 10 inch screen, and the ability to run iPhone applications. There are criticisms, many of which are legitimate, but like many things, many wlll accept it because they’ve drank the Apple koolaid and because it has those good features.

Some think it may challenge the Kindle, but while the Kindle certainly has its problems, the iPad uses a conventional LCD screen, which may create readability issues for some over high-contrast E-ink screen of a Kindle or any of its current challengers. As part of the launch, Apple will launch iBook, their own online book store. We look forward to seeing how this plays out.

Can the downsides, and Apple’s unwillingness to respond to public feature requests be overcome by the fact that it is a cool giant iPod Touch with a new E-book service? We’ll wait and see.

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The Carousel of Progress was created by Disney for the 1964 World’s Fair. It features an animatronic show that shows how the American home has changed over four scenes, the turn of the 20th century, the 20s, the 40s, and finally, the most updated piece…the future. Right now the future was determined in 1994.

In a recent trip to Disney World, surprising as it may seem, the Carousel of Progress, despite its lack of popularity, ranked as one of the more interesting rides. Sometimes, simplicity really does just work. But we want more.

In the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the ride uses a randomized pattern of movements so the ride is not identical each time. Why can’t all rides be different every time we go through them? Epcot’s Mission: Space offers a more mild version of the ride for people prone to motion-sickness. Why not ten different versions they can rotate through? Even if it doesn’t change for each passenger, the recordings could change once a day, or once an hour.

Systems like this, ones that adapt and offer a variety of options, are present in computer gaming and a variety of other fields. What do you think? What is the future of theme parks?

For a long time, we wavered on the issue of whether to buy an e-book reader. However, after we got a lot of money this holiday season in Amazon gift cards, we wavered and considered reversing ourselves, even though we have major issues with the Kindle.

This holiday season, for the first time, Kindle books outsold traditional books on Amazon, the Kindle itself was the site’s bestselling product.

But even after this, we don’t think the technology is open enough. We didn’t get into music downloading until Amazon released a DRM-free store. It is all about the freedom.

Our latest contemplation, with the delay of purchasing an e-book reader, is to replace our physical classics with free books from the Google Books project, as they are now available in EPUB format, which can be read using the free and open FBReader. What do you think?

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Officially, Gadget Wisdom is not a pro-Apple organization. We admire many of their products, some of us even own them, but it is the issues that keep us from going out and embracing the Apple lifestyle, the fatal flaws for us. We like to bring the issue up every so often. Tonight, we were watching a documentary called MacHeads on Hulu and thought we’d justify ourselves again.

To be fair, we parted ways with Microsoft, except for rare occasions, as well. Many of those reasons are similar. It is an unpopular view to reject these companies in favor of…well, in our case, Linux.

It began many years ago, with the Macintosh Performa. We spent many an hour with a Performa. One time, as was apparently common on this system, the CMOS battery failed. Replacing it could only be done by an Authorized Repair Shop. It was a battery, not a hard drive. So, after several failed attempts, we did replace that battery, voiding our support, and…the thing never fit back together right after that. And after a while, we just let the computer think it was 1969.

But that was years ago. The Performa is generally considered one of Apple’s bigger mistakes. Apple computers have come a long way. They run OS X now, which is a UNIX-based system. They have some user replaceable hardware, which was an issue we always had with them. There is a lot more openness in many areas.

But Apple is a company committed to maintaining its control. It released the iPod, and the features of the iPod were so unique at the time that it was a game changer. Same with the iPhone. But other companies are producing good products too.

Apple’s attitude is epitomized in their ad campaign. In it, John Hodgman plays the older, somewhat goofy PC, versus Justin Long’s hip younger Apple. We have no problem poking fun at the competition, in moderation, but we’ve never liked the tones. Meanwhile, adoption costs for Macintosh products are significantly more than those of the PC. One could say this is because quality comes with a price.

Which brings us back to the iPhone. The iPhone, a great network-connected handheld device with millions of apps in its app store. Here, we praise Apple for its openness. Anyone can submit an app…if you pay for the development kit and have the equipment to develop it on. So, Apple is making some money there. But, from all reports, what the iPhone is less than satisfactory at is actually being a phone. Some of that may be attributed to the AT&T network though. A problem with the Apple app store is the long approval process, even for updates. Check back with us when we try a Droid(we’re Verizon people). Apple, like many companies, wants to control what we do with their products once they’ve left the Apple Store. The Android OS for mobile phones offers an open platform.

Same thing with the iPod, which ties you to iTunes, which allows more Apple control of your lifestyle. Of course, we’re willing to hand parts of our lives over to Google, so we suppose we shouldn’t talk.

Fed up with the inefficiency of Windows, and the problems there, we, like many Mac Users, left that environment. We went to Linux. Linux, in our opinion, is the operating system for the DIYer. It has its problems, but if you are pissed off at how something works, you have the right to change it yourself. Edit the code, write your own. Conversely, it gives you very little standing if you want to complain. We could have gone to Mac. Some of our correspondents did.

Not long ago, we tried to get someone who would write us a review of their new iPod Touch. The Touch, which is essentially the iPhone minus the phone part(which may be an improvement), as a wi-fi enabled device is something you can advocate giving for people who don’t need the phone functionality, but want a pocket internet device. We’re hoping someone tries this with the Android OS, if they haven’t already. So far, no such review has been submitted to us, however.

So, what it amounts to is a choice. We admire much of Apple’s innovation, but we think it comes at too high a price. Not financially, but when factoring in the restrictions that chafe at our desire for freedom. That is our opinion. What’s yours?

Many years ago, we owned a hardware DVD player. Then, over time, we dropped the extra device in favor of playing movies back through our Home Theater PC.

But Blu-Ray is a bit more complicated. We use Linux, and a group of intrepid individuals reverse-engineered the DVD standard, as no one would offer a licensed copy. At least until this past July, when Fluendo released a licensed DVD player for Linux. They have not yet released a Blu-Ray player.

Which leaves the reverse-engineering road. The latest versions of mplayer now support most of the Blu-Ray codecs. But that isn’t playback of the disc. That means you still need to rip and encode the disc for it to work. Which is where the problem comes in. There is a limited guide available for Ubuntu that offers some updates on what you might do.

MakeMKV has a Linux version, which apparently works for ripping Blu-Ray discs, even many BD+ encrypted titles. It will take them directly to the Matroska(MKV) container format.

A Blu-Ray rip will take at least 50GB, before post-processing down to a smaller format, which is a lot of hard drive space. Especially if your goal is to merely watch the disc.

Am looking forward to testing all of these methods someday, but will need a Blu-Ray drive and a sample Blu-Ray disc. Will likely choose to wait. Although we may choose to try a hardware Blu-Ray player to dip our feet into the world of Blu-Rays. We don’t really need to watch HD movies, as much as it would enhance our experience, but we want to slowly phase out purchasing DVDs in favor of Blu-Ray for new releases. Not that we buy any movies regularly. We save purchases for special titles.

We’d like to hear what other people think on the subject.

LightScribe is nothing new.  It has been around for years, We like the idea. After all, no one can read our handwriting anyway. And we want something that looks nice, but it easy to generate. A simple label making program that allows us to type the information and have it burned to the top of the DVD or CD seems ideal.

There are problems though. Lightscribe discs shouldn’t be stored in direct sunlight. It is recommended they be stored in polypropylene disc sleeves rather than PVC sleeves, and even certain residual chemicals on your hands can cause discloration.

For the record, the same technology, but not compatible, is available in the competing standard of  LabelFlash, which has some of the same problems. Neither of them offer color…yet.

The surprising thing is that this technology isn’t more prevalent. Of course, there is pricing to consider. We went to discounter Meritline.com to check on pricing. A 25 pack of Philips Lightscribe DVD+Rs costs $7.99, or about 32 cents a DVD. A 50 pack of regular Philips DVD+Rs costs $15.50, or about 31 cents a DVD. We picked Philips because they are about average quality. Either way, going Lightscribe isn’t going to break the bank.

Even with that, you can get DVDs for less if you look around. Our last DVD purchase was 100 Sony DVDs at 20 cents a DVD during a Staples sale. We hand label such things. But we keep a spindle of lightscribe CDs and DVDs, and do burn them occasionally.

What prompts us thinking about this again? Fedora has released a complete set of Lightscribe labels. They’ve produced LightScribe versions before, but this is the first time they’ve generated versions of all their labels, regular and Lightscribe, for all of the release versions, the various Live Disks and the Installation DVDs, as well as the blank label so you can add your own text.

Their label isn’t ideal for Lightscribe, which needs high contrast, but they’ve made the effort, and even without the background, the text and Fedora bubble logo made our burn look professional. We will have our Fedora review coming up soon, but we’ve had some trouble with it on our netbook, the first system to receive the upgrade, and want to fiddle a bit before getting to a second computer.

Earlier, we were reading LifeHacker’s Five Best Online Backup Tools. We’ve been in the market for an Online Backup solution. Right now, we use Dropbox.

Dropbox offers a free 2GB account that syncs a directory on your computer to their server. It offers a paid option for a monthly charge of $9.99/50GB or $19.99/100GB, which is a bit too much for our needs. It is a great tool that we use every day, but is, in our opinion, for our most used files…ones often changed. It offers clients for every operating system, which is important.

We need a solution that will work with Linux…our primary operating system. Thus, Mozy or Carbonite is not an option. Assuming we’re keeping to the Lifehacker list, that leaves CrashPlan and Jungle Disk.

Jungle Disk will be changing its pricing scheme this week, according to its blog.

• Jungle Disk Simply Backup: $2/month, with 5GB of free storage
• Jungle Disk Desktop Edition: $3/month, with 5GB of free storage
• Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition: $4/month, with 10GB of free storage
• Jungle Disk Server Edition: $5/month, with 10GB of free storage

The new plan includes a minimum 5GB of storage. Beyond that, you have your choice of cloud storage providers, either Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files. Both charge 15 cents per GB used, but S3 charges for bandwidth as well.

CrashPlan offers unlimited storage, either an individual unlimited plan for $3.50 a month if you purchase 3 years worth, or a family plan for $5.00 a month if you purchase 3 years worth. It is $4.50 or $8.33 if you buy a single year plan.

At the moment, while we like the idea of online backup, everything we have that is critical fits into the 2GB Dropbox partition and beyond that may not be worth it. Everything else…well, try encrypting it and sending it somewhere safe. Like a safety deposit box…the house of a friend in a different state, or even have your parents store it for you in your childhood home. Mom is certainly a cheap option.

If your friend/relative is willing to trade with you, you can store their emergency backups too.

But what do you think? Should we go for online backup?

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We like Hulu. We think it is a great service, and like any services that offer good content at the wonderfully low-low price of free. However, Hulu is considering adding a premium product…where they could offer things they don’t offer now at a premium.

Some people, despite its free nature, don’t like Hulu. And it hasn’t exactly made a great deal of profit. Mark Cuban wrote today on the subject of Internet Video vs the Cable Company DVR. As the owner of HDNet, a television channel offered on cable, he may be biased though. But the fact that content providers, cable companies, and the other organizations involved just don’t get the possibilities is not one we can argue with.

Cuban makes the case for better cable hardware with better improved features and remote access so you can enjoy your programs on the go. Beyond that, there is also the network DVR, where the videos are stored on a cable company server, instead of in the house. The library of On-Demand programming offered by all carriers continues to increase.

Cuban makes the point that with the current limitations of Internet based video, cable may be the more popular option for the foreseeable future. At least, in that regard, we agree.  If you are paying for something, you should receive good quality service at a good price.

Hulu, the online movie streaming site, released a version of its Desktop software for linux.

Now, we’re Linux people, so we love that a company has released Linux software. But we can’t help but think back to how this affects Boxee. Hulu asked them to remove support, then unveiled their desktop app, and have now extended it to every OS Boxee supports, even going a step further, because they offer both Fedora and Ubuntu options in both 32 and 64 bit, where Boxee offers only Ubuntu 32.

Since we use Fedora 64, we’re pleased by this and will be testing the product and have a review soon. The lack of stability under Fedora and/or 64-bit has limited our use of Boxee, which is the point. We want to use Boxee regularly, but we can’t.

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