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9/11 Remembered by Schmidty
The 11th of September, 2001 was a very emotionally draining day for me, and the attack on our great nation was only the half of it.
I had woken up early and I got a good breakfast, for today was my first day of work at McLoed USA. It was my first full-time job since getting home from an LDS Mission; up until then, I had been working many temporary jobs. I can’t remember if someone dropped me off, or if I took the bus, but the building itself was less than 5 miles away from my home. I waited nervously in the lobby with about a dozen other new employees as we waited to be escorted in on our first day. It was about 6:55 am MST, when someone had opened the door for us to enter the call floor, and we were routed into the training room.
Upon entering the training room, the trainer and a couple other managers were sitting aghast with their eyes peeled toward the television hanging in the corner of the room. I couldn’t see the TV yet, so I quickly sat down at a front-row seat on the opposite side of the room so I too could see what they were looking at so intensely. By now it was about 7:00 am MST, and as I sat down, the image on the screen had numbed me from the inside. Was this a movie they were watching? There’s no way this is real! I was looking at a live video image of the World Trade Center and smoke was billowing out of one of them. Before I could figure out what was going on, I screamed as we all watched the second tower get hit by a 767.
After the initial shock had worn off, and after marveling at the images we had all seen on the TV, the managers had decided to close the call center and let us all go home to be with our families, as we didn’t know what to expect for the rest of the day. I didn’t really think about much as I walked home. It took me a while to get home, and when I did, I had quickly learned about the attack on the Pentagon. Then it wasn’t long before the first tower of the World Trade Center had collapsed. Watching it was very surreal. I would replay that clip over and over in my mind for many years to come.
For the rest of the day, I was in sort of a trance. I didn’t really understand everything that was going on; I didn’t really know what the future would hold for me; I was racked with the horror that there might be more attacks, and I had the idea that they would never stop, and that this was the beginning of World War III.
I met up with Dr Squishy for lunch and we just sat there in Burger King for what seemed like forever contemplating what could happen to us. Were we going to be shoveled off to war to fight whoever has picked this fight? Things were uncertain, and that was depressing.
The rest of the week was business as usual, or at least it was attempted business as usual. It took a couple weeks for me to feel less uneasy about the attack. I will never feel completely at ease about what happened. I will never fully recover from the live footage that I witnessed that day.
Ten years later, and we are a stronger nation. We have learned from the attacks, and have made ourselves a better nation. A nation that does not take crap from anyone!
My deepest condolences go out to all of the people directly and indirectly affected by the terrorist attacks on that day. May we survive another ten years without pain.
Google I/O 2011 – Day 2
The second day of Google’s I/O developer conference seemed to lack in content compared to the first day. It seems as though the first day was geared more towards the direct consumer where the second day was more Developer-centric. However, there were still some items of note that I’d like to mention in this summary.
Google Chrome
Opening up the Keynote was a demonstration of Google Chrome and its upcoming improvements. There is a definite performance boost with more HTML5 and WebGL support. This was demonstrated by running the Fish IE Test on a non-WebGL version of Chrome vs. a WebGL-laden Chrome. This test was created to show off the speed of IE9, and was used yesterday to show off the speed of WebGL with Google Chrome. We see an immediate performance improvement when 1000 fish are rendered at 25 fps. WebGL also opens up the possibility for 3D rendering; we may start to see more graphically-intensive games in Chrome.
Chrome OS
We can’t talk about Google Chrome without also talking about Chrome OS. There are major improvements to the browser’s OS brother and it is starting to look and function more like a real Operating System according to what we are used to. There is now a File Manager so you can browse the local file system, as well as USB flash drives and external hard drives. However, there was no mention on whether or not you could browse network drives.
Native Music and Video playing was added and media will play in a separate window as you continue to browse. This is separate from Google’s Music cloud player that was demonstrated the previous day, and it wasn’t clear if the native music player supported the Google Music Beta or not.
Chrome OS also supports famous web streaming apps out of the box: Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc.
Chromebooks
Google Chromebooks were announced to be released June 15th. Currently, there are two manufacturers that have models being released on that day. Both Samsung and Acer will be offering Wifi only and Wifi + 3G models, with Verizon stepping in as the 3G provider. Both manufacturers are powering their Chromebooks with Intel’s Atom Pine Trail platform with a dual-core N570 processor. They both come with a 16GB SSD mSata hard drive and they both weigh 3.26 Lbs. They both come with an HD webcam: Samsung’s is 1MP, Acer’s is 1.3MP. Samsung is touting a 12.1″ WXGA display with a resolution of 1280×800 and Acer’s has an 11.6″ WXGA screen with 1366×768 resolution. Both models will boot in about 8 seconds and have a battery life of about 6 to 8 hours.
With what they are offering, and with the improvements to the Chrome OS, these Chromebooks appear to be powerhouses for cloud computing. It may be a while before we see this hardware being bogged down.
Chromebooks for Business and Education
Google is offering a subscription model for Businesses and Schools. With a 36-month commitment, businesses can purchase Chromebooks at $28 per month per user, whereas schools can purchase them for only $20 per month per user. This subscription includes full warranty support and free hardware upgrades. Since this if offered by Google and not the Manufacturers, I believe that this subscription model will apply to all future Chromebooks that are released.
Angry Birds
We can’t forget the most important announcement of them all. Angry Birds was released for Chrome and is now available in the Chrome Web Store. It includes a special Chrome level, so if you use Chrome, and you are an angry bird, then you MUST check it out.
Conclusion
The Google I/O conference definitely left me feeling overwhelmed. There is so much to take in, and I probably missed a chrome-load of announcements; I’ll try to make up for that with upcoming posts.
Here are a few other items that were talked about during day 2. Let me know if you’d like to know more about any of them:
- New Google Tasks API
- In-App Payments for Chrome Web Store
- Java Port of ROS
- Google Chrome Box
Google I/O 2011 – Day 1
Wow. Yesterday was quite the day for Google. I’d like to quickly summarize everything that was announced yesterday, but there was so much, I might miss something. So let’s get started and hope I get it all:
Google Music Beta
Google’s music cloud service was not only announced, but released yesterday (go here to request your invite). Those of you who listen to our podcast know that I was excited when Amazon announced their MP3 Cloud Player, so it is no surprise that this really has me going. However, unlike Amazon’s service, Google does not offer a way to purchase music (… yet).
Initially, this beta is only available for invitation, of which I have not yet received, so I am forced to sit by the wayside and read reviews until I’m blue. Once I get the invitation, I will be able to write a full review. The idea is that you upload your entire music collection (up to 20,000 tracks) and never have to worry about managing your music physically again. It comes complete with a web interface for playing music and creating playlists, which eerily resembles a famous competitor’s interface, plus there is a music player available for download on the Android Marketplace for mobile devices.
On the downside, from some reviews that I have read, the upload time is really slow; about 50 tracks per hour, which works out to about 4 MB per minute; to upload 20,000 tracks would take you more than half a month. Also, once you upload your music, you have no way to download them again. So if you lose your local copies, and Google’s servers get wiped out, you’re out of luck.
On the bright side, 20,000 songs is roughly 60 GB to 100 GB of storage, which greatly trumps Amazon’s initial offering of 5GB free.
More on Google Music later. Moving on…
Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0?)
Up until now it appears that Google has split it’s Android OSs between mobile phone devices and tablet devices. According to the key-note yesterday, Ice Cream Sandwich will resolve that apparent issue. This version of the OS will target both handheld and tablet devices and eventually also be supported on netbook and laptop devices.
Ice Cream Sandwich will include Honeycomb-like features, zippier multitasking, a new launcher, and more inherent features for home screen widgets.
There’s really not much more to say about Ice Cream Sandwich except for… HURRY UP!
Android Open Accessories
This was another exciting announcement. The Android Open Accessories API will add support for USB to Android devices. This API will be included in the Honecomb 3.1 update, as well as the Gingerbread 2.3.4 update. This will allow many types of external devices to directly interact with the OS, including but not limited to audio devices, input devices, storage devices and communication devices.
Along with this, we get…
Open Accessories ADK
The new development kit for Open Accessories will allow developers more control of their software’s interaction with hardware. Google teamed up with the Arduino open source hardware interface which also opens up the avenue for more custom hardware to be built for android. This kit is currently only offering USB support, but will soon support Bluetooth protocols.
Android 3.1
The Honeycomb update was also released yesterday for Motorola Xoom customers and comes with a few hefty upgrades. The biggest hitter in this upgrade is the inclusion of the new Android Open Accessories API. Other upgrades include native resizing of homescreen widgets and support for the Google TV upgrade coming later this year (see below for info on this).
Google TV to Android
It was announced yesterday that Google TV will become a fully supported Android device. Currently, it is based on the Android platform, but does not have access to the Android Market, and does not support most Android apps. This summer, current Google TV devices will receive an OTA update for Honeycomb 3.1 and will include access to the Android Market. We will also see new Google TV devices from Logitech, Samsung, Sony and Vizio.
YouTube Movies
Last, but not least, the ability to rent movies on YouTube was released yesterday. They opened with 3,000 movie titles and will continue to add more each week. Rental prices range from free to $4.99, with most new releases priced at $2.99. Google has signed license deals with Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, Universal and Lionsgate. You can even ‘pin’ a rented movie for offline viewing later on. Android device viewing will be available shortly and will come to tablets first.
Conclusion
The first day of Google I/O was indeed a whirlwind of information. Here is a quick mention of all the other items that were covered during the 1st day:
- Preview of Google +1 button for publishers
- Google App Engine 1.5
- Google Books API
- Android @Home
- Project Tungston
- Style maps and more customization for Fusion Tables
- Google Storage for Developers
- Google Plugin for Eclipse 2.4
- ChromeVox screen reader for Chrome and Chrome OS
- New charts and features in Google Chart Tools
- Improved Google Prediction API
- Announcement of upcoming P2P NFC protocol
- Google Places API
- Improvement to Google Web Fonts
Let me know if you’d like me to write more information on any of these topics.
Hulu Plus for Xbox 360
Xbox 360 styled menu for Hulu Plus
As the world of media is seemingly shifting more to online streaming and digital downloads and less from cable companies and physical media, another small shimmer of light shines through for Xbox 360 owners. Up until now Xbox 360 owners who were also subscribers to the Gold Membership could, for extra fees, enjoy large amounts of content from Netflix and Zune Social. Now, the long-awaited Xbox 360 Hulu Plus has been released, and with a tasty promotion deal as well. Until May 6th, they are offering new registrars to test drive Hulu Plus; I believe that is more than enough time to get hooked onto what Hulu Plus has to offer (unless what you’re looking for is not offered on Hulu Plus). After the promotional period, you can continue with the Hulu goodness for only $7.99 per month.
Hulu Minus
First off, I’ll get the disappointments out of the way.
SELECTION – The first one that everyone seems to mention, but it’s more a licensing issue, is that there are shows that aren’t available on Hulu Plus, but that are available on basic Hulu online. And they are quick to remind you of that, by still showing it in your queue, with an icon that reads “Web Only”. Honestly, I’m not sure why this is even an issue, but I won’t get into it here, because if I do, you’ll never hear the end of it.
GUI NUANCES – One small feature (or lack of a feature) that really bugs me is that the horizontal menus don’t wrap. I had around 70 TV shows in my queue, and the one I wanted to watch (Bones) was at the end. I couldn’t simply navigate left to wrap to the right side, I had to scroll all the way to the right. As I am writing this though, I am remembering that if I had used an Xbox controller, I probably could have pressed the right trigger or right bumper to quick-jump to the end, but I’m not sure that is the case. I’ll try it later and post an update. Eventually, I stopped scrolling, went up two lines to the Popular menu and Bones was right there, saving me navigation time.
Another feature that appears to be lacking is a simple search feature. Every app with content should feature this simple function. It’s almost required if your catalog is more than what can be displayed on one screen. I can’t imagine that this would dissuade people from using the app altogether, since the Web Only content (and lack of other popular content) might hold more weight in gaining or losing customers. Without the search function, you are forced to either drill down from the menus to find what you are looking for, or make a visit to your computer to complete your search query and add the result to your queue.
KINECT – Since I don’t have an Xbox Kinect (yet), I was unable to test this feature. The word floating around is that the reason why this app took so long to be released was that they were polishing up the Kinect navigation. Honestly, I believe that they would have done themselves a greater service to release the app ealier, without Kinect navigation, then offer it later in an update. The reason being is that many of the reviews I am reading about the Kinect nagivation aren’t giving that many praises, and there are more people that wanted the app sooner. So, delaying the app for a feature that doesn’t work that well anyway was probably not the greatest idea.
Hulu ++
Aside from the negative, this long-awaited app is very welcome in my home. Up until now, we have used a Roku box to deliver Hulu Plus content to our TV. Now we have two devices that deliver that content, so I am able to move the Roku box downstairs and extend coverage, so to speak.
SPEED - The Xbox 360′s quick GUI response seems to translate nicely into the Hulu app as I wasn’t finding myself waiting for the GUI to catch up. There were times when the content itself had to buffer up, but that’s more network related and less in the control of the app developers. I did notice, however, that wen firing up an item from my queue, that it did start up a bit faster than other non-queued content. This makes me wonder if Hulu Plus is doing some kind of pre-buffering in the background for the queued items.
GUI - The interface is just elegant overall. Granted, it is the Xbox 360 interface translated into the Hulu Plus app, but one is inclined to agree that it’s sleek design and lack of clutter leaves one feeling at peace. Unlike the web interface, you are not bombarded with large amounts of data, and are allowed to browse to your content without much interruption.
CONTROLS - The controls during playback are intuitive and fast. They appear to respond faster than the controls of the Netflix app (again, going back to speed), and while fast-forwarding or rewinding, you are given a thumbnail preview of that that frame looks like so guesswork is eliminated.
Overall
After all is said and done, some people will accept Hulu Plus for Xbox 360 really well, and other’s may not. I think that the biggest factor whether someone subscribes to Hulu or not will be based on content. And the biggest factor whether a Hulu Plus subscriber will use Hulu Plus on Xbox will be the cost of the Gold membership on Xbox Live. If you don’t have a Gold Membership, and Hulu Plus does not have the content that you want, then this is not the app for you. But, if Hulu Plus is your staple, and if you already have a Gold Membership, then using Hulu Plus on your Xbox is a no-brainer. And moreover, if you have a Gold Membership, and haven’t tried Hulu Plus, then try it out for free until this Friday. You have nothing to lose except for the regret that you’ll feel if you don’t.
UPDATE: There IS a search feature. Not sure why I didn’t see it before. The search allows you to drill down alphabetically to the title you are looking for. It is especially helpful if you have a chatpad on your controller (which I do). I would like to know how well the voice recognition works with the Kinect; has anyone with a Kinect tried that out?
App Highlight #2
Greetings. Welcome to my second app review. Today’s app is also an Android only, app (sorry iOS users), and it’s one that I have been using ever since I’ve been an Android user. It was among the first apps I downloaded and I haven’t seen a reason to try any competing apps yet (though I probably should just for review-sake).
aCar
This nifty app allows you to track your vehicle(s) fuel usage, maintenance, and expenses of your vehicle. It will show you very detailed statistics of each vehicle you are tracking including: Running cost/day, Distance/day, Total distance, Avg MPG, Total Gallons, and many many more. It gives you informative charts showing you trends of gas prices, your car’s MPG and more. aCar helps people like me by reminding you when you need to change your oil, rotate your tires, and when to do standard or yearly maintenance. Now I can’t blame my dying car on my forgetfulness anymore; the blame will have to go to my negligence and blatant ignorance of clear notifications. And if this app isn’t user-friendly enough, it allows you to import your cars’ stats from many other car tracking programs such as Gas Cubby (iOS), MPG (PalmOS), Fuelly.com (online), FuelFrog.com (online), Vehicle Manager (Windows), just to name a few. Along with the ability to import your data, you can also export everything in full, or choose to just export your statistics if you’d like. You can even export your statistics to an easy-to-read HTML format. The only thing this app doesn’t do is do your car’s maintenance for you. I guess that will have to be in a future update.
Android Market Links:
Free Version: http://goo.gl/XgUp3
This app is not currently available for iOS
If there are any apps you want me to review, drop a comment here, or email [email protected]
App Highlight #1
I am going to start inserting my reviews of certain mobile apps. I will try to do one at least every day. Currently, I have a Droid X, so most of my reviews will be for Android-based apps, but I will try to cover iOS apps as well when I can.
Akinator
This app is a very clever remake of a game that most of us are already familiar with called 20 Questions. Akinator is a confident genie that comes with many mannerisms to accentuate his personality. If he is getting closer to the person you are guessing, he will appear to get more confident. On the other hand, he will start to get embarrassed or angry if he isn’t putting the clues together yet. You can then post the results of your game to Facebook if you are feeling social. Aside from the nice cartoony graphics, and the clever sarcasm that Akinator displays on occasion, this is just another 20 Questions game and appears to only be limited to people or characters, whereas other 20 questions games may focus on a more broad range of subjects. Akinator does require an internet connection to play, and just errors out if you try to play it without. This allows most of the processing to be done on a server, or gives it access to online databases such as imdb.com or tv.com for its character base.
Today, the paid app is free on the Amazon market place, so go pick it up for free!
The free version only allows you to play 5 times per day.
Amazon App Store Links:
Paid Version ($1.99 or Free today only): http://goo.gl/WbctB
Free Version: http://goo.gl/hwdfZ
Android Market Links:
Paid Version ($2.13): http://goo.gl/35pfv
Free Version: http://goo.gl/GmbcG
This app is not currently available for iOS
If there are any apps you want me to review, drop a comment here, or email [email protected]
Google’s Doing Social Again, Google +1 Review
Google +1 Icon
Those of us who have tried Google Buzz may cringe when we hear that Google is still trying to make this Social thing work. There may be many reasons for that, but one observation was that it wasn’t user-friendly. They just plopped it into our gMail accounts whether or not we wanted it, and made it difficult to disable. And even when you disabled it, somehow you still had a Buzz stream available for others to see.
It appears that they have learned somewhat from their mistakes. Their newest social product may be a bit more friendly. Google +1 was officially announced via Google’s Blog on March 30th, 2011. It is slowly being rolled out to the public, but if you are anxious to try it out before it is rolled out to you, you still have the option to enable it as an experimental feature. Even when it is rolled out, it seems that you need an active Google Profile in order to use it. Google Profiles isn’t new, but they have been slowly shape-shifting it over the past few months, and now it very closely resembles a Facebook profile page, minus the Wall, and minus the notifications of wandering cows.
Logitech Harmony 890 – Pure Beauty
Beautiful, isn't it?
Okay, I know that Zohner posted a few months ago about his Logitech Harmony One, but I have to add to the hype because I am a long time fan of Logitech, and I just upgraded from the Advanced model (for Xbox 360) to the 890 model
Now, on top of all of the Harmony’s hype, this model includes an RF Extender. This means that the components I don’t need direct physical access to, I can hide. I can also control my entertainment center without worrying about line-of-sight, or I can be in a different room.
Another feature that I like about this one that I didn’t have in the last one is that I can set favorite channels with customized icons. When I am in the “Watch TV” activity, for example, I have quick access to my favorite HD channels: History HD and Discovery HD.
This model also feels sturdier. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to break if I drop it (and believe me, it has dropped many times). The charging station also eliminates the need for batteries.
Now, to reiterate a little bit about what Zohner said in his post about the Hamony One, it does take a while to set up. But it is all worth it. The software it comes with is pretty self-explanatory and does a pretty good job at working out any kinks you may have in your setup. I would recommend a Harmony Remote (any model) to anyone that is juggling more than one remote to control their entertainment center. It is well worth the investment.
In addition to controlling all my entertainment center units, I have also installed quite a bit of X-10 hardware throughout my house. With this technology, I am able to control lights, appliances, and eventually even my thermostat and sprinkler system, all with my remote. What could be better?
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Google Chrome (BETA) Review, Part 1
I have been feverishly playing with Google Chrome for about six weeks now. One of those weeks I dedicated exclusively to Chrome, where I didn’t use any other browser. In that one week, I not only found out more about Chrome, but now, Chrome and I are BFFs! The only time I use the other browsers is to test web pages Iam developing. Well, and to play on Facebook, since Facebook and Chrome don’t play nice yet (more on that later). So here is a simple, watered down, not-so-short, preview of Chrome and Chromium (it’s open source counterpart). Some of this content may be a bit biased because I’ve been pro-Google since GMail was introduced, and I’m voting for Google 2008.
Okay, on with the review. After each feature review, I will also rate that feature on a scale of 1 to 10…
