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Gadget Wisdom

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Can a Tablet be your Primary Computer?

Asus TransformerHarry McCracken, who write the Technologizer blog, wrote a story in December entitled: “How the iPad 2 Became My Favorite Computer.” In it, he asked whether or not an iPad can replace a PC? Being as we’re Android people, we decided to look at that from a broader perspective.

The simple answer is no. The distinction between a tablet and a full-fledged personal computer is being blurred, but they are still very different animals.

The primary built-in input of tablets is the touch-screen, which is not conducive for creation of long form content. The occasional brief email, but even that can be a chore.

Having acquired an Asus Transformer, we know there are markets for tablets that offer an optional keyboard dock. For other tablets, there is the option of a variety of bluetooth keyboards, which is what Mr. McCracken uses for his iPad. These keyboards, dock and other tools add the typing ability needed to turn a limited device into a full device.

Once you have the keyboard, you can start long-form typing. As pointed out in our referenced article, “You’re typing into a radically different set of apps than are available on a notebook.” You have to find out how to perform everyday tasks you would use a computer for normally.

Tablets and their lower power processors allow for hours of battery life, and the manufacturers are always searching for better battery life..So, you pair a screen the same size as a common netbook with an optional keyboard, long battery life, and functionality equivalent to many computers…What is missing?

When you add a keyboard to a tablet, what you essentially get is a netbook. But a netbook that costs more and has limitations in comparison to an actual netbook sized computer. In the end, what is missing is the larger screen and increased flexibility. But, maybe it can’t be your primary computer, but could it be your primary travel computer? What about on the go?

We’d like to hear your opinion? Where is the line and what do you do?

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Published on January 22, 2012
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A Few Quick Thoughts on Thermostats

Energy StarWhen we started reading about the issue of thermostats, someone commented to us that programmable thermostats were impossible to use.We can’t seem to get this right ourselves. So, let’s check in with the experts.

We started with Energystar:

For heat, the presets are:

  • Wake and evening: less than or equal to 70 degrees
  • Day and Sleep: Setback at least 8 degrees

Keep your thermostat set at energy saving points for long periods of time(at least 8 hours). This should include during the day when no one is home, and throughout the night after bedtime. You use more energy if you constantly override the pre-programmed settings. Cranking your thermostats up or down will not heat or cool your house any faster.

Energysavers, also a government site, recommends setting your thermostat back 10-15 degrees, setting it to 68 when you are awake.

It is not an easy thing. We’ve covered what the government recommends for programmable thermostats, but what else is there? Do you want a touchscreen thermostat? Do you even need a programmable, despite what is recommended?

And let’s go the ultimate in control…a wi-fi enabled thermostat. You can control your thermostat from anywhere in the world. But, unless you are in frequent need to change your settings on the go, this seems unnecessary. The new NEST thermostat is actually a wi-fi enabled learning thermostat that learns from your habits and from weather forecasts to make adjustments.

But, as nice as NEST is, it doesn’t seem like something we’d get. We are upgrading our thermostat after this reading, for a different reason. Programmable thermostats come in a few varieties. 7-day programmable, 5-2, 5-1-1, etc, based on the complexity of the program. We are replacing ours to go from a 5-2 to a 5-1-1 with a special vacation mode for when we go away, to override the normal program. And that upgrade cost us less than $40.

What are your thoughts? Do you have trouble setting your thermostat? Did you give up on even trying?

 

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Published on January 18, 2012
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Downstreamer’s Realization

TV Guide Network 

It’s been a while since we’ve updated our Downstreaming series. The concept of downstreaming was one of simplification, and how you can downgrade your paid cable

 

bill and look at internet based alternatives. Some people talk about cord cutting…but it is clear the alternatives aren’t quite there for everything.

 

The Wall Street Journal featured an article which was written as a tearful goodbye to the author’s cable service.

 

“Everyone’s getting their shows and movies through the Internet these days. I’m sorry. It’s just the reality of things… Yeah, I’ve changed, but you know what? You’ve changed more. I mean, come on. How many shows about housewives are there? I like chefs, but I don’t need to see them on television 24/7. Ghost hunters? Dancing celebrities? Talent shows? “Shark Week”? Celebrity ghost-hunting talent shows during “Shark Week”? It’s too much of too little. You’re full of a lot of inescapable crap.”

 

And we have to agree. Television is catering to someone, and it isn’t us. The Sci-Fi Channel is SyFy, and where’s the Science Fiction? The TV Guide channel no longer shows a tv guide. The Learning Channel….what the heck are we supposed to be learning on it now? There are so many channels, and how many of them do you actually want.

 

In a recent appearance on the MythTVCast, our editor was commenting on how hard it was to figure these things out. Too many channels, not enough package choices, and a resistance to changing with the time. And our own conception continues to involve. We continue to realize things about ourselves and our habits that we want to use to change what we do.

We’ll be back with more on this, including an analysis of how much cable we actually watch. Have you downstreamed? Cord Cut? What has your experience been? What realizations have you come to? Are you just emotionally hanging on to your cable?

 

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Published on January 11, 2012
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The Responsive Developer

John "maddog" Hall - Linuxcon2011
Image by Beraldo Leal via Flickr

Twice in 2011 we had the pleasure of attending a speech by Jon Hall, who is the Executive Director of Linux International. In both cases, he told a story of the early days of software, about companies that were small enough that the service department was the programmer himself.

As these new small startups, and this 1-2 person software companies spring up to make mobile apps, or cloud apps, or what have you, you have the same situation. You can contact a developer of a mobile app, in many situations, and get them to work with you, or have them seriously consider feature requests.

The developer of Poweramp for Android, a popular music player, was recently on Twitter asking people for feature requests to consider, for example.

We recently have had a lot of luck in this regard. We emailed a developer, and they looked into an edge case issue to see if they could address it. We made another suggestion of another, and today they sent us a beta to test and give our opinion of. And these are mobile apps. Most mobile apps are less than five dollars, more are less than ten. That a developer is willing to take you seriously when their profit from you might be less than a fast food meal is also very inspiring.

Compare that to another medium sized company that took two days to explain the status of a shipped item, or the large company that took three days to arrive for a repair appointment. Some companies have grown to the point where the service staff are barely able to support their product.

Is smaller better? Can these small companies provide good service and make a decent profit? Either way, it is worth considering. At the least, before you leave a bad review, contact the developer and discuss the matter.

What do you think?

Published on January 11, 2012
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Choosing a Cloud Photo Service

How things change over the years is astonishing. A few short years ago, the idea of storing so much of your personal information on remote computers would be

Flickr buddies rememe 2.0worrisome. In fact, the ability to get all that information in the cloud would be limited, with slow internet connections.

Now, everything is Cloud Cloud Cloud. Now, as we mentioned before, never put all your eggs in one basket. always keep copies in multiple places. But backup services are a separate issue for another day.

What we were looking for in a photo service was not what everyone was looking for in such a system. Some people want their photos to be social.

Flickr,, for example, states that its mission statement is twofold…to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them, and enable new ways of organizing photos and video. There are tons of great images on Flickr, and it has a great community if your goal is creating a community around photo sharing. There are a lot of serious photographers on Flickr who want to share with other serious photographers.

Flickr offers a free service, and a $25 a year Pro account. The Pro account gets you unlimited uploads, storage, and bandwidth, and ad-free browsing. But Flickr is run by Yahoo, and Yahoo’s performance of late has been less than stellar.

Google’s Picasa is also popular, and is transitioning to Google Photo, which is part of Google’s rebranding of their services with an eye toward social. As part of its integration with Google Plus, the service now allows unlimited photos, but the terms of service allow Google to use the uploaded photos to display, and for promoting services royalty free.

Facebook has become one of the most popular places to store photos. However, it suffers from the same pitfalls as other services. It is free, but the quality and organization is limited by Facebook’s desired function.

So, we went to Smugmug. It is the most expensive option, but with that comes reliability and control. Most serious photographers agree that it may not be a place for sharing, but it is a place for photographers.

Smugmug offers unlimited uploads, a variety of privacy and safety options, prints, customization, and is ad-free. You can use your own domain name(Power Account) and customize your gallery theme. All photos are backed up, and you can download your entire collection easily. They offer three levels…Basic($40/yr), Power($60/yr), Pro($150/yr).

The Basic account allows for most of the functionality you could want. The Power account adds the ability to use your own domain name and further customize the site, and it adds video support for clips of 20 minutes or less, and right click protection to prevent people from saving your images. The Pro account is for those who sell their photography.

And if you like to share your photos, Smugmug supports sharing to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, and WordPress. If you don’t want people to share from your galleries, this can be turned off. You can also turn off external linking of all kinds. So, you keep control of your photos, but you have the power to do whatever you wish with them. It has given us a chance to take our photos out of an archive where they were never seen, and start getting them in presentation order.

What do you use for your photos?

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Published on January 9, 2012
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30th Anniversary of the Commodore 64

Long life Commodore 64 !!! (1)
Image by JaulaDeArdilla via Flickr

The Commodore 64 is still a computer that has a special place in our hearts. The original 64 launched at CES thirty years ago this week in 1982 and was the successor to the VIC-20.

This was the machine we used to first play with programming, using BASIC and classic sprite graphics. It lasted until 1989, but there are still people who remember them fondly, and there is even a reproduction Commodore 64 being sold now with modern hardware.

So here’s to the C64, and days of playing Space Taxi, Mr. Do’s Castle and Tapper, and Reader Rabbit. here’s to 5 1/4 floppies…it will never come again.

 

 

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Published on January 5, 2012
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Firefox vs Chrome

Chrome Needs Color Management
Image by wabisabi2015 via Flickr

We’ve just recently returned to Firefox after some time with Chromium, Chrome’s open-source brother.

In the time since we’ve left, Firefox has iterated so fast. In the last calendar year, it has gone from Version 4 to Version 9. It did so mostly by eliminating minor version numbers. Every version is now a major version.

Over the last year, there have been a lot of changes. Firefox 4 was the first to bundle Firefox Sync, which syncs browser settings. The speed of Firefox has increased sevenfold, and the memory usage, a common complaint about Firefox, is down 50%.

The Browser Wars are an arms race to see who can make their browser faster. Recently, Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time. But it has issues, despite its features.

Chrome creates a separate process for each tab, which protects against any single failure bringing down the whole browser. However, this can have pros and cons. Both Firefox and Chrome have reputations for memory issues, although Firefox is more famous for this, the two browsers use more or less memory at different times, because of this design. Firefox has made a good push to reduce its memory usage.

While our situation might not be typical, the new Firefox is definitely seeming more snappy than it once was. There are things in Chrome that are not currently available in Firefox. One of the nicer ones, although Chrome unfairly calls it an App, are the large bookmarks of commonly used programs on the Blank New Tab menu. We’ve been able to reproduce this in Firefox, however, using a plugin called Fast Dial, which creates the same sort of visual bookmarks.

We aren’t the only ones who enjoy Firefox, while looking for some, but not all, of the features of Chrome. We located a Firefox extension to enable the HTML5 desktop notifications according to the API Chrome implements. This allows an open Gmail window, for example, to pop up a notification.

So, in the end, Chrome and Firefox both offer compelling features, and we’ll keep them both installed, but we keep running back to Firefox. It just suits us. And it suits many others.

What do you use and why?

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Published on January 1, 2012
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Google Music vs. Amazon Cloud Drive – Some Limitations

Amazon Cloud Player
Image by pmsyyz via Flickr

Out of the various online music lockers that are springing up, Google Music seems to have the best interface for metadata. This is especially important if you intend to be able to sort through your music. This is why, despite supporting Moozone, we decided to upload our music to multiple clouds. In terms of user experience, Google wins hands-down.

Amazon Cloud Drive, by comparison, seems to offer no ability to edit the metadata, which affects playback and search. It makes the experience a bit harder. Their web player is not very feature filled and their Android app is equally lacking in aesthetics. Google Music could use more functionality, but it offers a compelling set of features.

Amazon makes it easy to download files, Google does not. You can make files available offline in the Android app, but you can’t download them. So it isn’t a backup solution.

Neither company offers a public API, so third-parties can expand their offerings, however. Amazon Cloud offers a free and paid product. Google has yet to offer a paid product, and it may or may not.

We’re still on the fence about this. Ironically, we prefer the Amazon music to the Google Music store, but Google has the better interface. And neither supports OGG, unfortunately. But, so far, in this battle, Google has won. But we often find ourselves using Amazon’s MP3 App for Android right after we’ve bought a song. Something to be said for ease of use.

What do you think?

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Published on December 30, 2011
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Making and Receiving Calls Overseas

Image representing Google Voice as depicted in...
Image via CrunchBase

For many of us, our phone usage has migrated from voice to text and data. Few phone calls are made. So, this means, either the higher costs of making a call are not an issue, since you will not make many calls, or you need an alternate solution.

Enter…at least for Android users, GrooveIP. (Market Link) GrooveIP, in conjunction with Google Voice, lets you make and receive calls using data on your phone. You set your Google Voice account to forward to a Google Chat account.

Google Voice is currently free to use for calls to the U.S. or Canada and will remain so through 2012. Rates to landlines in other countries are reasonable at less than 10 cents. To Cell Phones abroad, it is somewhat more costly.

For us, on our recent trip, we were able to use GrooveIP and Skype to make and receive calls as if we were in the United States. Some people, aside from some tinniness on the line, had no idea we were even out of the country.

The common international alternative is Skype. Skype offers pay per minute and subscription plans. However, like Google Voice, the charges to mobile numbers in countries other than the U.S. or Canada are more expensive, and not included in their subscription plans.

To be fair, we have to remind you that neither of these are 100% alternatives for landlines or mobiles, as they do not provide 911 emergency support. But most carriers, even if you do not pay for service, allow emergency calls.

For text messages, Google Voice also offers free text messages sent and received. There are similar apps that can be used elsewhere.

It is why the future of voice for cellular phones, as has been gradually shifting for landline phones, is VoIP. But, like in many other industries, carriers will do the best to hold onto their business models instead of pivoting into new ones.

More on this to come…

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Published on December 27, 2011
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The Last Nail in the Boxee Coffin

“In an Internet/on-demand world your primary concern is the quality of your content, since you are held accountable by the consumer.” – Avner Ronen, CEO, Boxee, 2009

Version 1.5, just released, of the popular media software, Boxee, will be its last for the PC.

Image representing Boxee as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

“We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs / Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones. While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives. People will continue to watch a lot of video on their computer, but it is more likely to be a laptop than a home-theater PC and probably through a browser rather than downloaded software.”

Boxee started with community support. We showed up at every Boxee NYC event. Nearly a year ago, we asked if Boxee had ‘sold out‘. They had slowed their PC development to a crawl, and now they are releasing a final version, after which they will focus solely on their embedded hardware. There are complaints about numerous firmware issues on their hardware.

We threw a lot of support behind Boxee early on, because they seemed to understand the HTPC hobbyist. They started with trying to create a seamless and social experience based on top of XMBC, an open-source media center with extensible plugins. We understand the needs of a business to make money, but each decision has been a nail in the coffin. There are many less expensive options for streaming. Roku boxes start at $50. Many of these features are integrated into TVs and Blu-Ray players.

Boxee may have missed its chance, and is floundering for a way to succeed. We can say we are very disappointed. We still remember when Boxee CEO Avner Ronen had a very public debate with Mark Cuban about the future of video, from which the quote at the top of this article appears. Ronen was referring to cable providers, but he should remember his own words:

The concern should be quality, for you are held accountable by your consumers. 


 

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Published on December 27, 2011
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