For several years, there has been a small but dedicated group of people experimenting in the world of what has been dubbed home automation. Until now, this field has been fragmented with clunky, often expensive products that don’t integrate well and often make the consumer jump through multiple hoops to even get them to work.

In a recent article I talked about installing a Nest remote-controlled thermostat in my house. The Nest thermostat has so far proven to MORE than live up to the promises made by its manufacturer. The Nest thermostat was remarkably easy to install and makes it amazingly easy to remotely monitor and control my home heating/air conditioning system via iOS or my Android smartphone. Once installed, the Nest simply works. The Nest is worth every penny of its $249 dollar price tag.

Now that I’ve lived with the Nest a while, I’m more excited than ever about the possibilities of remote monitoring, remote control, and home automation.

What I want next is a remote camera system that works with the absolute ease of the Nest thermostat and Nest app combination. The ideal remote camera system would offer at least 4 network-connected weatherproof cameras along with a controller/app system that could be set up with the no-muss, no-fuss ease that the Nest thermostat offers. I want to be able to open an app on an iOS or Android device/smartphone and have my remote camera views simply show up, perhaps with the ability to pan, zoom and tilt individual cameras if I wished right from within the app. Furthermore I don’t want to have to worry about firewalls or port-forwarding to try to get past my home router or ISP firewall

I would also like to be able to use my iOS device or Android smartphone to be able to remotely monitor my refrigerator.

Now that most of us are equipped with smartphones, I see a huge opportunity for a company or companies to step into the home automation/remote monitoring arena and fill the void. The standard to meet revolves around ease-of-use.

download.com

Today we have application stores up the ying-yang. But 15 years ago, trying to find applications for your computer was a lot harder. We did have two decent sources: Tucows.com and download.com (a CNet company, now owned by CBS). Since then, these two sources have grown to better catalog Freeware, shareware, and paid applications. This week, we say Happy anniversary to Download.com.

While the domain was registered on February 24, 1996, Download.com will officially launch on October 23rd, 1996 (Reference via CNet article). Since then, the website sees almost 10 million downloads of software a week. The top downloads being AVG and Avast antivirus software. A long cry from Hey, Macaroni (the dancing macaroni meme), WinZip 32 and Duke Nukem 3D – which was the most downloaded in 1996. WinZip is still one of the top 5 download pieces of software on the site.

For 15 years, download.com has kept a great archive of software, weeding out the obsolete, malware producing items. They have been sued for some software downloads, most notably the free music download program LimeWire. While download.com did not promote the download of mp3 music or movies, the peer-to-peer software is another way to download legally shared items. Of course, this has always been the conundrum of file sharing.

In retrospect, TuCows has been in operation since 1994, offering the same services. Other services have come and gone, but download.com has stayed strong. So happy 15 years to a source that I’ve personally used many a time from my IT career.

Tweaking Google Latitude With Latify

Google Latitude is a nifty, fun add-on utility for Google Maps that can be very useful for tracking friends and family. With Latitude, it’s possible to share real-time location information from devices such as supported Android and iOS phones and tablets. Location sharing is by permission only – any mutual Latitude friends must specifically grant permission for location information to be shared.

I’ve been making use of Latitude for a few years. I’ve got a number of friends and relatives that follow my location as I travel around the country as an over-the-road truck driver. Even after all this time, I’m still surprised that some people are curious enough about my location that some of them will check on me multiple times a day.

One of the things I’ve long wished for in Latitude is much greater control over the sharing. Most of the time I want my shared location information to be as accurate and real-time as possible. Thus, it becomes possible for Latitude friends and family to track me as I drive down the road in real-time.

Recently I purchased a $2.89 program available in the Android Marketplace called Latify. The Latify program works in conjunction with Latitude to provide a lot of extra control over Latitude and its sharing capabilities.

With Latify set to push out the most accurate, real-time location information possible it does use more battery power, as it is making more intensive use of the phone’s GPS chip. This isn’t a problem for me, since most of the time I keep the phone plugged in when I’m in my truck. In those instances when the phone is going to be running on battery power for hours on end, I turn off automatic data synching. There are also a number of power-saving options available within Latify itself.

If you want a way to share the most accurate, real-time GPS location of your phone with Latitude friends, at $2.89 Latify is worth the money.

Evernote is probably the most popular online note-taking application.  With versions for computers (both Windows and Mac) and mobile versions for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and WebOS, the app is virtually everywhere.  There is a free version and a Premium version, but the free version previously limited users to only being able to include text, image, audio and PDF files in their notes.

Today, Evernote announced that the restriction has now been removed and free account users can include any type of file in their notes.  “The reason we lifted our file restriction is that we want to allow our users to store everything related to an experience or memory in a single, visual, searchable place.”

The other restrictions for free accounts still apply – there’s a 25 MB file size limit for notes and a 60 MB upload limit per month.  Evernote is promising that there are a lot more innovations “in the works”.  If you aren’t familiar with, or haven’t tried, the service, you can visit Evernote to check it out.

If you or a friend have been conned into installing one of the fake anti-virus tools that has been doing the round recently, you’ll be delighted to hear that G Data are offering a free tool to remove the most prevalent type of scareware, “System Tool”.

Many of us will have seen those pop-ups claiming that our PCs have been infected and most of us will have dismissed them for the scams that they are. However, some people are taken in and G Data has seen an increase of 35% over the past 15 months in this type of fake AV. And if you are taken in, it’s a double whammy, with the criminals getting your credit card details while your PC remains under their control for further malicious activity.

“The development and deployment of scareware has become a highly profitable business. Fake antivirus programs have a double benefit for cyber criminals: they receive money from users who purchased a ‘full version’ of their useless tools and they get hold of the victims’ credit card data. To make matters worse: the fake AV programs often also put online criminals in a position that allows them to download additional malware onto their victims’ computers”, explains Eddy Willems, Security Evangelist at G Data.

The instructions for running the cleaner program is:
1. Download G Data FakeAV Cleaner from the G Data website: http://www.gdatasoftware.co.uk/support/downloads/tools.html. It’s down at the bottom of the page.
2. Run the G Data FakeAV Cleaner setup file. The G Data FakeAVCleaner “System Tool” has to be executed with the Windows user account that is infected. As the FakeAV “System Tool” shuts down all user initiated programs which do not have any kind of reserved name, like explorer.exe, winlogon.exe or svchost.exe and many more, the file name for the G Data FakeAVCleaner is svchost.exe
3. Reboot the computer to finalise the installation.

If you are interested in the background to this kind of threat, G Data have a complementary blog post discussing some of the issues and demonstrates a scareware infection.

Up until today I had sort of discounted Chrome OS as a potential game changer, but after spending an hour watching their keynote tonight I can honestly say it is quite amazing to look at all of the pieces of the puzzle come together in a multi-billion dollar chess match that has Apple and Microsoft lined up against them.

But one thing in my household has really changed what I think of Cloud computing. I can count on one hand how many times my wife has had to use her Mac Book Pro in the past year since I purchased her a iPad. She simply loves the device and even canceled her phones data plan and only uses the iPad for the high majority of her computing needs.

My bet is the Chrome OS echo system is going to explode over the next 12 months and that a huge number of start-ups are going to get funded that do nothing but build applications for Chrome OS.

While I doubt that I will ever be able to walk away from using a powerful desktop or laptop but even I find myself in the cloud a lot more than I used to. This video is very compelling. But I can tell you what I will be buying on June 15th and it will be a Chrome OS laptop.

One thing as well Chrome OS developers are going to be very busy!

Since the advent of the VCR, the adage has been to look to the pornography industry to see what would happen – which formats would take off, what business models might work, etc., etc., etc. While the pornography industry did seem to be the first on the block to figure out how to make e-commerce work, do they still lead the way today when it comes to the future of video?

While there is a certain profession that perhaps lays claim to be the oldest, right up there with it is the art of the sale, and the pastime of shopping. The shopping experience itself if done well can be a pleasure.

QVC, HSN and other home shopping channels excel at making the shopping experience itself the content. They make no pretense – they are right up front with the fact that their channels are all about advertising.

Many people claim to hate ads, but I’d contend I that it’s really bad ads that most people despise. Advertising that is well done is informative and entertaining and can even be enjoyable. Watching QVC, HSN, ShopNBC, etc. product presentations (particularly electronics, gadgets and sometimes cooking) can for me easily fall into the guilty pleasure category. These people are masters at the art of the sale. Who doesn’t enjoy (or cannot learn from) watching a master ply his craft?

So how are the home shopping channels handling their all-important online presence? QVC and HSN both have iOS and Android apps that make it possible to watch their current live video streams, as well as easily search their catalogs, as well as place and track orders. The ShopNBC app is a fail in that it doesn’t allow you to watch the live video stream. I’d give the nod to QVC’s app as being the most advanced and usable overall.

My team at RawVoice this morning released version 2.0 of the PowerPress Podcast plugin for WordPress. The work committed to this update was well over 1 month of coding. I have been running the beta here at Geek News Central for several weeks, and many of you have already commented on the new video player experience as being superior to what you have seen on other podcasters websites. Now that the update has been made available to the 80,000 podcaster worldwide we are excited to watch the implementation across the web.

Folks making video will want to check out the new HTML5 video player, WebM support and Embeds feature! PowerPress 2.0 provides an optimized viewing experience for the widest spectrum of hardware/software including  web browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari), mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Android), and TV’s (e.g. Google TV, Roku, Boxee).

Some of the new features and enhancements include:

• HTML5 video player
• HTML5 audio player
• Embeds your audience can take with them just like YouTube.
• WebM video support
• Ogg audio/video support improvements
• MP4+WebM (for mp4/m4v video, a new alternative WebM URL field is available. This is ideal for supporting all browser based HTML5 video players)
• Flow Player Classic can now play m4a audio and mp4/m4v video
• New Video Player settings page added
• Settings pages enhanced with new options such as location, frequency and T.V. options
• Episode Entry box enhanced with new ‘isHD’ option when video entered into Media URL box
• Episode Entry box now includes option to configure video player width/height on a per-episode basis
• Upload image option added to supplement the video poster image field. Images are uploaded to the built-in image gallery in WordPress.
• Plus a number of improvements

I have created a short video on some of the coolest features and hope you will take a few minutes to overview the update. Please note that the video embed below is from the actual posting on our official PowerPress site. No longer do we need Blip or YouTube we can share our content from our sites with the embed feature.

Make sure you Upgrade today!

One of the challenges with creating video in this day, is that you have to encode several formats of video to cover all browsers and devices. I have worked very hard to minimize the number of encodes I need to make each week due to the time involved. While there are several online services that I could upload master media files to for encoding, it is generally very expensive, and who wants to upload a 6gb file, just to get the media into their encoding queue.

Over the past couple of years my media work flow, required my master file to be re-encoded so I would have distribution files, that would be optimized for the web and viewing on devices like the Apple TV, Roku, iPad, iPhone, Android etc. All was well with my process until several months ago, when Google pulled the rug out from under everyone, and said that the next version of chrome would not have native HTML5 support for H.264 encoded media.

This posed a dilemma as I wanted to be able to support HTML5 at GNC to the fullest. Also in part because I am sick and tired of having YouTube and Blip video embed files on my site. Blip.tv video embed playback performance has been crap. The videos that I push to YouTube seem never to be as nice as I want them to be after YouTube has had their way on the uploaded file.

When Angelo my CIO at RawVoice, put in a provision in our PowerPress 2.0 plugin that not only made our player 100% html5 capable across all browsers and mobile devices, but also made it so that we would support .webm as well. I had to figure out how to start providing a .webm file for browsers that are supporting the format.

Finding a .webm encoder is like finding a needle in a haystack. Note to Google, you better make available a good encoder for Windows and Macs if you want this format to take off. Of those available I tried Miro, it was a piece of crap with no way to adjust settings, and it simply could not handle big master files, the firefogg.org plugin for Firefox, while free was so slow that it would take 2-3 days to encode one of my show files.

So as I was searching, Sorenson Squeeze 7 kept coming up and was reportedly the best commercial .webm encoder on the market. Seeing that I am not a command line Ninja anymore, and the thought of having to waste 2-3 days dealing with the command line using  ffmpeg to come up with a solution, was not the stick in the eye pain I was willing to endure.

So I downloaded the 30 day free trial of Sorenson Squeeze Version 7, and while gasping for breath over the potential $800 price tag, I figured anything this expensive should be able to do one heck of a good job.

Now I will be honest this enoder lives up to it’s reputation, and I spent 4-5 hours testing a variety of encoding settings  and a whole host of its options. My computers 8 cores definitively got a workout, and I think I am dialed in on what encoding templates I am going to use for my show publishing.

The best part is that this software happily automates several processes I used to do by hand. Everyone that knows me knows I am into automation and saving time. Sorenson Squeeze is going to save me many hours each month, by not forcing me to handle the files a couple of times before I get the finished product uploaded. More on that in a moment.

Lets look at the Interface

As you can see you can Import, Capture or setup a Watch Folder. The Watch Folder is where the magic happens. When I finish my show, then edit the recording and created the master file I would usually have to do more steps by hand. Now when the master encode is complete that file is saved in the watch folder, Sorrenson Squeeze then goes to work automatically on my video. Through preset on the watch folder, I have it create two .m4v files, and one .webm. When Sorenson Squeeze finishes an encode the software through the preset automatically uploads the files to my cdn where they are ready for distribution!  This all happens, while I am asleep or doing other things. To top it off when the media files are ready for publish the software notifies me the job is complete by email or sms.

If you do not want to use the watch folder option, you can manually add the files, apply the encoding presets and let it encode.

The real power of Sorenson Squeeze, lays in the media encode presets options. If you are clueless on what settings to choose, they provide you with about a 100 presets on a variety of file formats or you can go to their website and download ones submitted by other users. I modified my own.

Typical Preset:

As you can see the preset lets you change a unusual high number of settings so that you can tweak your videos encodes, just the way you want them. Within the preset you can change, video and audio encoding settings, you can alter the media through a huge number of filters and even drop a watermark on your media, you can setup custom publishing locations and it will notify you by sms or email when the file has been published.

The Sorenson Squeeze encoder will take a source file and create .aac, .ac3. .swf, .flv, .m4a, .mkv, .mp3, .mpg, .mp4, .m4v, .ogg, .mov, .webm, .wmv format so it has you covered on what every media types you want to encode. I tried a variety of media files as the source file all with great results.

Is it worth the $800.00 price tag? Well until something else comes along that will do .webm easily yes. The software will pay for itself in simply not having to re-handle the encoded media.  Having that process automated cuts my video production time by at least 2 hours each week.

As you remember in the beginning of this review my goal was to create .webm files. Here is what I have learned about .webm so far. Encoding time is much higher than .mp4/.m4v on a scale of 2 to 3 times longer. Encoding video is never a super fast process, but it beats me why it takes as long as it does, as compared to other media types. File sizes are typically a little bit bigger than a h.264 encode. The video quality delta between the H.264 media and .webm media is not even worth talking about at this point.

Finally the folks at Sorenson have documented the encoder well,  even after a couple of years of heavy video encoding I am still learning, and some of the menu items had me digging into the help section of their website to understand what certain functions did.

I did break out my credit card and paid for the software, as it is a tool I need. While still very expensive for an encoder the software will pay for itself in under 6 months…Check out a 30 day demo yourself and let me know what you think of Sorenson Squeeze 7

For some time now, when it came to desktop and laptop computer hardware, innovation has seemed to be somewhat stagnate. After all, what more can be done with word processing software? How can spreadsheets possibly be improved? How can the browsing experience be made better? Can email be made more effective or efficient?

Form impacts function, but function often defines form. The popular form of the day is the smartphone and the tablet, both popularized thanks to Steve Jobs and his team at Apple. Today’s smartphones have processors that are as powerful as desktop machines were five years ago. However, the smaller capacitive touch input screens as well as always-on Internet connections have ended up making possible convenience, ease-of-use and sheer simplicity paramount features. That new software design/interface aesthetic is now traveling back to it’s larger computer counterparts.

Some time back, I downloaded the App store on my Macs, but gave it no more than an initial cursory look and promptly forgot about its presence. This evening while waiting for some files to upload, I noticed the Mac App Store icon and decided to look it over again now that it’s been around for a while.

I must say, the Mac App Store pleasantly surprises me. I ended up downloading a few free apps. The Mac App Store browsing and download experience replicates the iPod/iPhone app store experience. The process couldn’t be easier. By putting all of these apps together in one coherent place it makes it much more likely I’ll end up finding software that (a) I might never have gone looking for in a search engine and (b) gives me a place to look for specific types of software when I might need it. While it’s by no means a complete list of all possible Mac software, it is a welcome addition that will likely spur additional future software development.

Can desktop/laptop operating systems become more useful? There is always room for improvement. Basic business software – word processing, spreadsheets, etc. likely cannot be improved beyond what they are. On the other hand, other computer functions such as photo editing, video editing, etc. likely still have dramatic gains that can be made, particularly as hardware speed and throughput continue to improve.

In this video we take a look at ways to solve some quality of life issues for older or disabled people.  In particular, this is the Lean and Zoom which takes advantage of a person’s natural tendency, when at a PC, to lean closer to the screen if they are having trouble seeing what’s on it.

It’s a software product that can work with any built-in or external camera to sense the person looking at the screen and their position relevant to the screen.  It retails for the low price of $27.99.  Check out the video below to see how well this works and you will probably find a use for it for yourself or someone you know.

Interview by Carissa O’Brien for Geek News Central.

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Anand Iyer and Chris Bergstrom of Welldoc, Inc. (www.welldocinc.com) present Welldoc Coaching Software for phones that helps patients with chronic medical conditions such as diabetes report their ongoing self-monitoring statistics and other relevant data to their physicians, thus helping the patient remain in compliance to their medical treatment program with an eye towards better patient outcomes.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of The Geekazine Podcast and Tom Newman of The Fogview Podcast.

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One of the most useful features/services of today’s smartphones is the ability to take advantage of the integrated GPS chip in combination with an always-on data connection, facilitating location-aware apps.

Priced at $1.99, “Allstays Truck & Travel” is an app that is available for Apple iOS and Google Android. It’s part of a larger suite of different types of location-aware mapping apps available at http://www.allstays.com/apps/.

The “Allstays Truck & Travel” app concentrates on showing locations for truck stops, truck scales, truck dealerships, truck washes, low clearance overpasses, Walmart locations, public rest areas and other places with truck parking.

The list of data points of interest seems reasonably complete, and the producer of the app seems to encourage as much user feedback as possible.

One potentially useful feature of the app is the ability to set up automatic alarms to give notification when one is within so many miles of an upcoming exit with specific types of favorited business.

Making the switch to Mac OS/X a few years ago as my primary computing platform was not without its sacrifices. Among these was Adobe Audition. Sure, I could use Audition in a Windows virtual machine, but it just wasn’t the same thing and entailed its own sacrifices.

Sacrifice no more. Adobe finally heeded the call for Audition for Mac OS/X, and has released a public beta that can currently be downloaded for free available at

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/audition/

After a cursory look at this new beta, I’m impressed. They seem to have succeeded in bringing the Adobe Audition user interface I love in Windows to OS/X. I’ll be buying the final product once it is released for sale to the public.

Before she retired, my Mom used to be a nurse. She typically would always keep around a few current medical books describing diseases and other books listing prescription drugs and their uses. While these sorts of books can make for rather dry reading, they can also be extremely interesting to thumb through from time to time. They can be particularly useful if you need to look something up.

The need to have printed reference books such as these has been rapidly fading over the past few years. A useful and interesting smartphone app to have installed on your Android phone is called “iTriage.” It contains an extensive list of medical symptoms, diseases, and treatments along with the ability to help find medical treatments and practitioners.

The iTriage app contains an extensive list of diseases and their related symptoms and treatment. Coming at it from the other direction, iTriage also contains an extensive list of symptoms and causes.

Mom may find herself wanting a smartphone.

dtSearch recently distributed a review copy of version 7.65 (build 7907) which I have been using for a few days.  If you aren’t familiar with the product, it’s a desktop search engine on steroids.  It does, not just the desktop, but your entire network.  The idea is to make any text document available to you in a flash, not matter what drive, or even what PC, it’s located on.

It’s actually pretty powerful stuff and may not be necessary for the casual computer user, but the techie it’s pretty cool, and for business this type of tool is really a necessity.

For a single home user the price is $199, but volume licenses are available and the price goes down as the amount of seats in the business goes up.  Beginning at $160 for 5-24 users and going all the way to $60 for 2000+ users.

Let me take you on a quick walk-through of my experience.

The download was 42 MB which isn’t too bad compared to some bloated software that’s out there today.

Installation took only a couple of minutes.  There’s an option for a Custom Install for those who like to tweak.

It creates the usual Start menu entry.  As you can see from the below screenshot, it is 64 bit compatible.

Once you have it set up then your first order of business is to tell it what files you want it to index.  The first time you click on dtSearch Desktop you will be prompted to do this.  You can always go back later and easily add, remove, or change choices you make here.  You can also choose certain file types to include or exclude.

After that was done I did a test search of the word genealogy, which is a hobby of my family and appears in quite a few files.  Here is the start of a search.

And, the results.

The Preferences, which can be found under Options in the main menu, allow for a lot of customization.  Enough to make almost any IT department happy.

Since I have been using it for a home network I have not had occasion to test all aspects of what this program can do.  And for the average home user, a free product such as Google Desktop Search would probably be sufficient, but for business (which this is really geared towards) this product could be a real productivity tool and time-saver.

Have you ever downloaded some data off the ‘net only to find it’s in a compressed or archive file format that your PC doesn’t have a helper app for? Or you’re fixing up a friend’s PC, you download some drivers and ditto, you can’t get them unpacked?

If so, you’ll be interested in WobZIP. It’s a web site where you can upload an archive file and it will uncompress it for you.  Once uncompressed, you can either download the files one by one, or else the site will bundle the files back up into a zip archive for you to download.

The site is still in beta but claims to support the following archive formats – 7z, zip, gzip, bzip2, tar, rar, cab, iso, arj, lzh, chm, z, cpio, rpm, deb and nsis.  Obviously quite a few of those formats are Unix and Linux, but there’s a fair collection of DOS / Windows ones too.  As it’s a website, it doesn’t care what OS you’re running either. From the FAQ, WobZIP uses the open source 7-zip program as the decompression engine.

Cleverly, there’s also a feature to unpack or uncompress from a URL so you don’t always have to download to your PC and then upload back to WobZIP – you can just enter the URL and it will go and get the file for you.  Also, it will scan the unpacked files for viruses.

Put this site in your bookmarks.  You may not need it right now, but you will one day.

Adam Curry is a clever guy. Back in 2004 he was working on the concept of podcasting. Now he is pioneering smartphone apps.

About 6 months ago, Adam Curry came out with a free iPhone application called “The Big App Show.” Each day, day in and day out, Curry records a new video of himself demonstrating an iPhone app.

The Big App Show is now available for Android. The concept is the same, except with the Android app the apps Curry demonstrates are obviously for Android and are available in the Android Marketplace.

The Big App Show is a very witty app that really takes advantage of the power of Android and iPhones. Curry is adding value by demonstrating the apps right on the screen as he talks rather than giving dry descriptions. He puts out a new app video on both the Android and iPhone platforms every day of the year.

Bravo Adam! I think you are on to something!!!

I’ve been using Android for a while now and feel I’ve been using it long enough to make some meaningful observations.

I like Android. It’s quick. It’s powerful. It has some astounding voice recognition capability built right in that even the iPhone can’t touch. For example, hold down the search button and when the voice search box pops up say “navigate to” and then speak either a street address, the name of a business or a business category, and watch what happens. The results are something right out of science fiction and nothing short of amazing. Try THAT with your iPhone.

In other areas, Android seems to fall rather flat. While it’s possible to create, name and populate folders, the process seems clunky and rather counter-intuitive.

How about allowing me as an end-user to rename application icons to something useful? Many apps have names that don’t bear any relationship or give any hint as to what their functionality is as an app. If I could just rename the text under the app icons it would help me out as an end user quite a bit. Either give me a direct icon name that describes functionality succinctly, or give me the ability to rename an icon myself just like I can in Windows or OS/X.

Another area that falls somewhat flat is how to discover great apps. There are a ton of apps, but it’s often difficult to find the best ones. I’m willing to spend money on apps, however I want the best bang for my buck. How can I be assured if I buy an app I’m buying the best possible one?

I just finished listening to the unabridged Audible audio book version of “The Man Who Lied To His Laptop” by Clifford Nass and Corina Yen.

After many years of working as a software interface design consultant, Clifford Nass has developed the theory that human brains cannot completely and fundamentally distinguish the difference between interacting with people and interacting with devices. This book details nearly 30 experiments Nass has performed that back up this revolutionary theory.

Remember “Clippy” from Microsoft Word? Chances are, the mere mention of the dreaded Microsoft Office animated paperclip brings up wildly negative feelings. Clippy’s main flaw was that he couldn’t learn and kept badgering Office users over and over for carrying out repetitive tasks that were not mistakes. Even though users “knew” that Clippy was just an animated character, part of their brain actually related to Clippy as a real, despicable character that lived in their computers.

Similarly, BMW had a big problem with male German car owners complaining loudly about the integrated BMW GPS units. It turns out that German men objected over and over again to BMW’s help line that the BMW GPS units came equipped with a female voice, and that just wouldn’t do, because it just wasn’t “right” to take driving directions from a female voice. “Knowing” that mostly male engineers had developed it wasn’t enough to eliminate the problem.

The book is filled with some rather amazing results of experiments that indicate just how suggestible the average person really is. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I’ve had my HTC Evo for a couple of months or more at this point. When I first turned it on, there was an update waiting. The update installed. So far, so good.

Over the next few weeks I heard there was another update available, but it turned out there was a problem with the update. It took HTC and Sprint about a week or more to fix the problem update, but since the Evo was still in very short supply, I chose not to update it right away. What if there was a problem with the update and it bricked the phone? How would I get an immediate replacement? Better to wait.

A few days ago, Sprint and HTC started releasing the “Froyo” or “Frozen Yogurt” Android 2.2 update for the Evo. I decided it was time to take the plunge and accept the update.

There were two updates. The first one downloaded and installed, and then the second. No problems.

Now I’m asking myself, did the upgrade to Android 2.2 live up to all the hype? Android 2.2 on the Evo might be a little bit more snappy, but it’s hard to tell since the Evo already had excellent performance with the version of Android it shipped with. There are a few changes here and there that improve usability, some of them somewhat worthwhile, but was it really worth the trouble? The phone was a great device before the update. It’s a great device after the update.

Are updates to existing smartphones enough reason for consumers to get really excited over? As I see it, if lots of new basic usability and reliability can be added with a particular update, then it’s likely worthwhile. Smartphones are still evolving devices.

It seems to me that the job of adding new functionality to smartphones falls primarily to apps, and not necessarily the operating system itself. The operating system should be a stable, functional platform that offers basic functionality and services to those apps.

Once smartphone operating system design begins to mature however, the danger of updating and changing things just for the sake of change is always a potential risk. Also keep in mind that on average people replace cell phones about every 18 months, which is a much more frequent replacement cycle than desktop and laptop computers.

In the realm of desktop computer software, Microsoft Office is a great example of mature software design. There are only so many things word processing software can do. Microsoft Word and Excel both had good design and usability for me starting way back with Office 95. With subsequent releases, Microsoft seemed to sometimes arbitrarily change things just for the sake of change, which is a huge usability mistake. Computer software design is not the same as car styling design.

Most of us, at some point, want to create a web page.  Almost everyone online wants to have some sort of presence.  For many it’s simply Facebook, but for some it’s an actual web site and a few of those are for a business.  And let’s face it – if a business doesn’t have a web site today then it may as well not exist.  I also believe that an individual who only has a Facebook account is not much better off than the business without a web site.  You don’t really want them controlling your online existence, especially given their shaky history.  But for many, setting up a web site sounds too hard.  Of course there are dead simple tools available for anyone who wants a very basic blog-type site.  Then there are those of us who want to get our hands dirty and really create something unique.  But, even then, we tend to simplify some aspects, such as choosing a free WordPress template, or maybe even buying a slightly nicer one.  But the majority of us would be lost if we tried to create our own WordPress template, and forget the other, even more obscure content management services that can run today’s web sites.

Enter CoolTemplate.  A fast, easy way to design your own web templates right on line.  They cover not only WordPress, but HTML, Joomla, and ASP.net.

Since my own site runs on WordPress, that was where I decided to take a look and do some testing.  It’s pretty simple as a matter of fact.  There are options for Design, Layout, Colors, Background, Border, Header, Menu, Buttons and Footer.  It’s a very easy, straight-forward interface to design a theme.

Of course, you need a little design skill to make a good template, but anyone can get started here and learn  how web templates work.  The site’s web app works perfectly.  And, beyond WordPress, it does much more complicated web design,  Joomla and ASP.net are not easy to learn – I know I have played with both.  But it does a good job designing both, and an especially good job with WordPress.  So if you are, even remotely, interested in designing your own site then this is a great place to start.

Shortly after getting my HTC Evo phone, one of the initial apps I downloaded from the Android Marketplace was the Amazon Kindle app with the idea I’d probably check it out at some point. Weeks went by, and I pretty much ignored the app.

Yesterday I was talking to a good friend that is in the process of formatting e-books for an author friend of his, including formatting the books in the Kindle format. During the course of our conversation, I mentioned to him once again that I needed check the Android Kindle app out. He pointed out that there were free e-books available in the Kindle format on the Amazon website, including many books from 1922 and before that were now in the public domain, so after I finished his call I went on Amazon.Com with my computer and started digging around in the Kindle Store area of Amazon. Sure enough, there seemed to be plenty of free e-books available, so I started adding them. To get the Kindle app on my phone to synch with my Amazon account couldn’t be easier, I simply entered in my email address and Amazon password into the app. Any books in my Amazon storage area are quickly updated to the app.

Sure, some of the free books weren’t exactly my taste, but I was able to open them on my phone and finally see how well the Kindle app worked. Hummm, not bad – not bad at all. To make a long story short, I ended up finding a current book I really liked and purchased it for $9.99.

What a pleasant surprise I was in for. Reading a Kindle book on my HTC Evo is actually a good experience. The text is quite legible. The surprising part is that twice now I’ve carried the phone with me into restaurants and was able to easily read using the phone while eating. Of course, the HTC Evo has a handy built-in kick stand that allows the phone to sit on its side at an angle. I can eat and then periodically lightly touch the right side of the screen in order to make the Kindle app advance to the next page. The Kindle app even synchs the latest page I’m on back to the server, so if I open the book up again either on my phone or on my laptop, it opens up right at the exact page where I stopped reading.

At this point I have no plans on buying an actual Kindle, however I suspect I will be buying more Kindle e-books in the future. I often carry my phone around with me wherever I go, and because of the way the Kindle app works across all Kindle apps associated with my account, I have instant access to every Kindle e-book in my Amazon account storage area on every associated Kindle installation. There are often times I end up having to cool my heels waiting on something, and it’s incredibly handy to be able to use that otherwise often wasted waiting time reading. Ten minutes here and twenty minutes there really do add up over time.

All of this talk about, “Oh, the iPad has killed the Kindle” is bogus. Amazon has been very smart to put Kindle apps out for as wide a variety of devices as possible. Even if they don’t sell that many Kindle readers, the Kindle format e-book is a huge Amazon win, both for Amazon and for consumers like me.

Our relationship had always been so full of promise and fun. Being gone so much of the time due to my job was certainly a strain. Even so, when I was around, I didn’t make many demands.

Something was coming between us. Lately I’ve been looking elsewhere and slowly began finding satisfaction on the Internet. The thought of divorce has been crossing my mind over the past few months. It was a painful decision, but I knew it had to be made.

Today I decided it was time to sever our ties.

I’ve been a Dish Network customer for about 10 years – until today.

What came between us? I’ve been experimenting with the idea of getting TV content from various sources on the Internet. I’ve tried connecting both Mac with Front Row and Windows Media Center laptops to an LCD HDTV. A full-fledged computer is very flexible in that it can play virtually any file type, but the clunky, complex hands-on Interface is not designed to be operated from an easy chair. I want as much content as possible integrated into one place.

In the meantime I stumbled across some software called Playon TV available at http://www.playon.tv. The software comes with a 30 day trial and works with the DLNA and UpNP network device standards. The software sells for $39.95. Playon TV is designed to be installed either on a computer or a home server on the home network. Playon TV enables streaming of Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Videos, Pandora, etc. to a DNLA/UpNP device like the WD TV Live Plus, X-Box 360, etc. There are also plenty of free third-party plugins for Playon TV that add a mind-boggling and growing variety of content to the Playon TV network share. It works well with my hacked Apple TV with XBMC.

Yesterday I visited my local Best Buy store and bought a Western Digital WD TV Live Plus to connect to the small HDTV in my kitchen. The WD TV Live is a very small set-top box that comes with a small remote control that has an Ethernet port in and an HDMI port out. Straight out of the box it does an excellent job of playing Netflix and is capable of playing back 1080P content. Only the Plus version plays Netflix.

The WD TV Live Plus combined with the Playon TV software convinced me it was time for radical measures. This afternoon I cancelled my Dish Network account and will save $97 dollars per month. I also bought a second WD TV Live Plus unit to connect to my main HDTV/surround sound setup.

At $97 dollars per month savings the two WD TV Live Plus units will have paid for themselves within 3 months.

Can I live without access to Dish Network? I think it’s going to be similar to a few years ago when I dropped my wired phone line. There was a bit of an emotional attachment that I had to let go of, but once I cut the cord it was no big deal.

I always forget about this website.  When I finally go there to check my site amongst OS browsers, I always find one small problem. Quick change in the CSS and everything is all better.

I am talking about Broswershots. They simply take my site and call it up using different browsers on all Operating Systems. Linux, PC, Mac and BSD checking the following browsers:

• Avant
• Chrome
• Dillo
• Epiphany
• Firefox
• Flock
• K-Meleon
• Galeon
• Iceape
• Iceweasel
• Internet Explorer
• Kazehakase
• Konqueror
• Minefield
• Navigator
• Opera
• Safari
• SeaMonkey
• Shiretoko

I can also view the many versions of the browsers. Let’s say I am optimizing for Internet Explorer. I can check IE 4.0, 5.0, 7.0 or 8.0 on a Windows format. Check the boxes, enter the URL and away we go.

What Dillo sees of my websites from Browsershots

The process is not instantaneous. The service will set a 30 minute time limit which you can extent, but you have to physically be there to do so. If you checked all boxes, then you will definitely need to extend the process a couple times. It can also really show you how slow your website might load if you have an influx of users. One website I checked came up with all versions in about 10 minutes, yet another website (a little more PHP process driven) took a little more time.

Once your screenshots appear, you can view and download. Of course, this is dependent on the Internet connection at both sides, so you may have to request a new screenshot if you don’t see the proper results. For instance, IE 8.0 came back with a blank screen. I then told Broswershots to retry and the end result was perfect.

This website is pretty useful in detecting problems. Although I do have a PC, Mac and Ubuntu machine, I am really happy I don’t have to load up every browser on those machines. It’s about 80 different browsers and their versions to choose from. I am hoping soon they will also check across phone browsers. That will be a perfect addition to Browsershots.

In the past month I have been getting out of my office and working remotely. Being I live in Hawaii sometimes working remote means working at the beach. Seriously I have needed to get out an among people a bit more,  having the chance to get out of the office has been great.

For several years now I have been diligent in putting documents on our Jungledisk S3 storage account so regardless of whichcomputer I have with me I have access to all of our documents traveling the way I do it is critical as I never know which computer I am going to be using..

Last week I had a large number of media buyer meetings, some of which I was finishing up Request for Proposals along with a variety of other paperwork. On Friday I was scheduled for a pretty important meeting.  This is where I was saved by GotoMyPC. I was in my CX9 which has awesome wireless for my hands free, and I am parked in a starbucks parking lot with my laptop out and connected to the net via sprint. I am scheduled to have a GotoMeeting session with a client in less than 5 minutes, and I cannot find the document I need on my computer or in the Jungledisk S3 storage network..

In a panic now because im on a tight timeline. I fire up GotoMyPC, login to my home machine that is 23 miles away, find the file on my desktop, download the file to my local machine, close the GotoMyPC session, then load Gotomeeting just in time for the appointment. Not missing a beat I complete the meeting and thank my lucky stars that I could access my machine at home at a moments notice, and not come off as an idiot with the client.  Between GotoMeeting and GotoMyPC these are two tools in my business and personal arsenal that I could not live without.

Note: GotoMeeting is a sponsor of this site and my podcast, I manage other podcasters on GotoMyPC and GotoAssist ad buys, but this is the first time that I have talked about my personal utilization of the GotoMyPC product in a blog post.

Here is the point I want to make Citrix makes a fine line of products and the $19.95 I spend each month on GotoMyPC is worth every penny. I would not give it up for nothing and it is one of several tools I use that allow me to travel the amount that I d,o and still run a very successful company in the new media space. Get a free trial of the product on me.

On Saturday I was part of our monthly Tech Podcast Network Round Table and we had the CEO of Connectify in to do a demo of Connectify.me

Connectify is pretty amazing, it allows a Windows 7 machine to become a Wifi Hotspot in about 60 seconds. In fact one of our round table participants set it up while the presentation was underway and was pretty blown away.

You have to watch the demo. I am linking you to a Flash Video of the event the demo starts about 5 minutes into the Video it is worth the time to watch this. As Andy McCaskey says, what connectify.me has brought to the table is going to sell a lot of copies of Windows 7 and when you see it your going to want to upgrade you computers.

Yes as the image portrays it truly is that simple!

As a followup to my post from yesterday, I wanted to talk about customer service being done the right way. As tech-geeks who work directly with users, doing customer service the right way is something we should strive for.

Along with my trouble yesterday over and old purchase order, I had another one to follow up on. This one was for a software upgrade to an existing piece of software our audio/video engineer uses. His job is to take mountains of videotaped events and turn them into usable bits of digital uploads. One piece of software he uses is called Trapcode, from the folks over at Red Giant Software. The engineer needed to upgrade the product we already owned, and I put in the purchase order to do so. Turns out, the company only takes purchase orders for anything over $1000, anything less than that, and you need to use a credit card. Our purchase was going to be under $100. Well, this is a giant bureaucracy here, and we don’t have credit cards, or access to credit cards, so we were stuck. I explained the situation to the customer service representative I was talking to, and quickly received an email resolving the issue. They were offering us a complimentary upgrade to our existing product, since we weren’t able to purchase with a credit card. Of course, the email came with a little sales pitch at the end about how we could use the software in an academic environment, but I can’t complain about that.

The fact is, my problem was resolved, within minutes, without excuses, and with a resolution better than I could have ever hoped for. Resolving issues quickly, and satisfactorily, should be the goal of anyone serving an end user of any type. I now can go about my day worrying about other things, than waiting for an email or a phone call to resolve an issue. As of this moment, my request to the vendor from yesterday has not been answered. Guess which company I’m apt to be spending more money with in the future?

I spend a lot of time at my daily J.O.B. following up on orders with software/hardware companies. Most of the time, my experiences are good enough, even pleasurable, although I’m not really big on having to make phone calls in the first place. But today when following up on an order, I ran across something I thought was a bit unusual.

Two months ago I placed an order for a piece of software. It was relatively inexpensive, but highly recommended to me by some colleagues in my industry. I decided to give it a try, and sent off the purchase order per their website instructions. Two months later, I still don’t have the software, or anything from them saying that there is a delay or any other issue. So I trot off to their website and look for a customer service number I can call. To my surprise, there wasn’t one. Instead, on the page with their mailing address, was a clickable statement, “Why our phone number is not listed here.” Of course I clicked it, to be taken to a page that, in five paragraphs or so, said to this effect: We would love to talk to you but we are too busy and it costs to much to talk to people on the phone. So, email us, and we’ll get right back to you. And this quote pretty much sums it all up for me: “We think you’ll agree once you’ve tried us, we’ve decided to offer the best email support on the planet. Every email is answered within 24 hours.”

This does not bode well for me trying to figure out where our order is. It also does not bode well for me recommending this company, or their software, to others. Ironically, I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews for the product, a text-to-speech software that can be used by disabled (or non-disabled) people to read email, web pages, text files, etc. I can give it no such reviews, as I’ve not yet been able to try the product, and don’t know when I will be able to. I don’t care how small you are, if you are offering something for sale, then you’d better be able to back it up with at least minimal customer support, and not some long, drawn-out excuse for why you won’t provide that service. As a busy tech-geek, I don’t have time for excuses when I’m trying to get the job done. It’s unfortunate that this company can’t see that their behavior now can hinder their future success. They’ve already lost me as a future customer, and I won’t be able to say anything good about them to anyone who asks, either.

It isn’t always about the product; sometimes it’s about how we get the interaction we need as we’re going along.

So here I am working on a side web design job.  As I look at the programs I am using to get it all done I realized they were, for the most part, all from software bundle purchases.  If my memory serves me correct I have taken part in 3 different purchases from MacUpdate and Macheist.  The price was never above $59 and I usually received 8-12 different titles.

“What is so golden as you certainly cannot have found all 30 programs as useful?”  I can read your mind and you are correct.  I am probably only using six or seven of them on a regular to daily basis and another ten of them occasionally.  Six of them I use all the time.

1. 1Password (Retail $40)
2. Vector Designer (Retail $70)
3. Pixelmator (Retail $60)
4. CSS Edit and Espresso (Retail Package $80)
5. Task Paper (Retail $30)

The total retail cost of those alone would be $280.  By my calculations that would mean by participating in the promotion I saved about $130 off retail of just these six programs. That does not include the programs I use occasionally such as AppZapper ($13), Snapz Pro X ($69), and a bunch of others.  Golden, I tell you golden.

All of the promotions send a substantial portion of the income to charities.  I am not trying to avoid paying for great software.  The developers chose to participate either to help the charity or to get the word out about their products.  So why not take a shot and try one out?

Please know that I do not participate in every promotion.  I look closely at the titles being offered to see what I have need of.  If the cost benefit is not at least the equivalent of 2 for 1 I don’t buy.  Chances are I can get along without it for a while.  But I must admit it is hard to resist such a golden deal!