Geek News: Latest Technology, Product Reviews, Gadgets and Tech Podcast News for Geeks

Tag: review

A Second Look at the Roku XD|S

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 10:52 AM on April 17, 2011

Roku IconI’ve decided that I am going to start reviewing products after I have had them for awhile. I’ve noticed that most reviews are done when the person has just brought the product or they have gotten it for a review. After you have had a product for awhile, problems may come up that weren’t there in the beginning. Also updates occur that can improve products. The first review of this type is on the Roku XD|S.

I’ve had the Roku XD|S about three months now and at this point I’m not sure I did the right thing when I brought it. I do like the Roku’s ability to get online content, which is the main reason I got it in the first place. However one its biggest weakness is  beginning to bother me and that’s its inability to stream media that’s on your home network . They did add the ability to attaching a USB hard drive to the Roku directly since I purchased it. This works great if you you only have one TV. If you have multiple TVs then you are out of luck, because  that hard drive is invisible to the network. I am not sure why the Roku was designed this way, my best guess is it was a way too appease the content providers so they could get the rights to online content, or maybe it was just an attempt to keep the cost down. What ever the reason, it has made a product that could have been great just good. I know what you are thinking but you knew it didn’t have this capability before you brought it. You would be right, however at the time I brought it I was more concerned with getting media from the Internet. I did take a look at the Boxee Box and the Google TV but both were significantly more expense and were still getting the kinks out. At this point in time I am looking at the Apple TV to fill in the missing ability. I also have to admit AirPlay has made the Apple TV more interesting to me.

I wish that someone would combine the capabilities of the Roku and the Apple TV, with the Apple TV UI. Am I sorry I brought the Roku, a little, it does on line media great, but it’s inability to stream media on my internal network is annoying. If you already have something that streams the media on your internal network, then the Roku is a great addition, but alone it maybe lacking.

 

Tags: , ,

Posted in Gear, Media

Comments 6 Comments

My Two Month Review of the Original iPad

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 6:00 PM on April 10, 2011

I have had my iPad for about two months, I decided to get the original iPad even though I knew iPad 2 was coming. There was nothing that the iPad 2 had that I wanted and I was able to get the original iPad for a reasonable price. Am I glad I got it, the answer is a resounding yes, I use it daily. To start with I use it to do the following:

* follow Twitter
* follow Facebook.
* read my email
* watch videos
* play games
* take notes
* read magazines

Could I do these things on a net book, or a laptop, yes but it is so much nicer on an iPad. Using your fingers to slide and flip from one thing to another is so much nicer and more natural than typing. I also find it much easier to carry with me to the local coffee shop then a laptop. It’s the perfect device to hand to someone else and say look at this.

What I have found it is not good at:

* holding it up and reading it for a long time ( it does get heavy)
* writing really long post

What I have heard it’s not good at:

* writing a program
* reading in bright sunlight (not a big problem in the winter in West Virginia)
* editing video

If someone asked me if they should get an iPad I would first ask them what they expect from it, if they expect it to replace a desktop, I would tell them to look else where. If they are looking for a consumption device, that does so much more than I say go for it. I known some people look down at the iPad because it is at its core a consumption device. To that I say so what, there is a lot to consume in the world today and it’s nice to have a device that does it well.

Tags: ,

Posted in Information, IPAD

Comments Comments Off

Poster for WebOS and the HP Palm Pre

Posted by Andrew at 10:58 AM on April 6, 2011

As regular listeners to the podcast will know, the Geek News Central website is powered by WordPress. Until now, I’ve always used the web interface to write posts. “It works” is about the kindest thing you can say about it.

Browsing the Palm App Catalog, I came across Poster for WordPress, an app that allows blogging from the Palm Pre and other WebOS devices. It had lots of good reviews so I paid up and downloaded Poster.

Poster can link to multiple blogs and obviously the first thing to do is to setup accounts for the WordPress sites that you want to access.

After setting up access to Geek News Central, Poster shows the last five posts on the site. More can be loaded if needed.

This is entire blog post is written entirely in Poster. You can embolden, italicise, underline and do all three. You can insert pictures or in this case, a screenshot of Poster’s editing screen.

Poster Screenshot

When uploading images, there a four preset sizes you can choose from. Of course, hyperlinks are there too – here’s a link to the App Catalog. This doesn’t quite work perfectly in-line as the image or hyperlink seems to go at the end of the text. Not a problem if you write and edit linearly. However, if you are like me and write before editing in the pictures and hyperlinks, it’s a bit of a pain.

All is not lost as Poster offers three editing modes – Visual, Visual without images and HTML. So in this instance, you can swap to HTML view and then copy’n'paste to move stuff around.

Work in progress drafts can be saved to the blog but once the post is ready, tags and categories can be set before finally changing the status to Published and uploading it. The tags and categories are downloaded from the website itself so everything connects up.

Although I haven’t explored the app further, it also looks like you can work with comments, which could be pretty handy for the active blogger.

Overall, I’m impressed by this app and provided the end result – the post on GNC – is good, this app comes highly recommended.

Poster for WordPress by Gabriele Nizzoli is available from the AppCatalog for £1.59.

Update – I was pretty happy with way the post came out but to be upfront with the review, I added in a few extra links using the web interface and made one correction to the formatting.

Tags: , , ,

Posted in application, blogging, HP, review, smartphone

Comments 1 Comment

A Review of the Apple Magic Trackpad

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 10:06 PM on March 5, 2011

I was using a Microsoft Wireless Mouse and it sudden died on me. I had replaced it temporarily with an old Logitech Mouse , which is at least ten years old. I think it came with my first computer. It is so old that it has a base with a USB cable that has two ends. One which is a regular USB head and the other has some kind of pin connection which at one time connected the keyboard to my old PC. The base connects to my mac mini thru the USB port, and then sends a signal to the mouse. It worked, but it meant that one of the USB inputs was taken up and lets face it was pretty ugly and very unMac like.

So yesterday I headed down to my nearest big box store to pick up a new mouse. After looking around and playing with various mice and not being really happy with any of them. I started looking and playing with the Apple Magic Trackpad and I liked the way it felt, so I picked it up instead. I have had it for about twenty-four hours and so far I believe I have made the right decision. It was super easy to set up. Turn on Bluetooth in System Preference of the Mac, make the trackpad discoverable and within two minutes or less you are ready to go. You can set how fast you want the swipe and track to be. You have presets for one to four finger swipes,. which you can turn on or off based on your likes and needs. The available set up is as follows:

My Favorite swiping methods is the two that involve using four fingers. Which trigger Expose and Switching apps. I don’t use those two things as much as I could. I know they’re there, but I tend to forget about them, now I can trigger them with just the swipe of four fingers. My least favorite is the three finger swipe, which I find difficult to work.   I am also discovering it does matter where you place and tap on the trackpad and that is something I need to get use too. Finally I might need to get a small wrist pad. Despite these small complaints, after 24 hours I am happy I got the Apple Magic Trackpad.

Tags: , ,

Posted in Accessory, Apple, Information

Comments Comments Off

Netgear NeoTV 550 Review

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 6:00 AM on February 24, 2011

About a month ago I received a Netgear NeoTV 550 for review.  I am an avid Media Center PC user, which meant I was immediately skeptical of any replacement for my beloved HTPC.  Initially I found my skepticism warranted, but over the past month that changed.  It changed for two reasons – one was my own network setup problem and the other was a Netgear update.

First Impressions

A few weeks ago I posted a brief unboxing tour of the device.  As with any new electronics that show up on my doorstep, I was excited and intrigued by it.  I hurriedly set it up in test mode – which means I didn’t take the time to pull out the media cabinet, take the back off, and hook it up properly.  This setup was quick and dirty – plug in  the device, composite cables to the TV for sound and video, and an ethernet cable (Cat 5E) for access to the home network.

The NeoTV 550 will not do WiFi, in case you’re wondering, but since I have wired access to my home theater, that wasn’t an issue.  This may be a deal-breaker for some users though.

As for the 2 issues I mentioned earlier – the first was on my end.  The NeoTV found my Music folder, but always said it was empty.  I thought it was the box, because both my desktop and laptop found it fine (it’s stored on the Media Center PC in the living room).  But, when I started using another Windows 7 device and it gave the same message, I looked closer and discovered a network sharing issue.  Once I corrected that the NeoTV found the music just fine.

The second issue was in Videos.  We have a lot of TV shows stored on our HTPC and they are all in folders by show name, then further divided into folders by season number.  In short, it’s easy to access any show from Media Center.  The NeoTV took all of these videos and put them in one folder – hundreds of shows that had to be scrolled through to find what we wanted to watch.  This was solved by a software update and now all of our folders are intact and easily accessible.

The Interface

The interface for the NeoTV is clean and simple.  The menu is very succinct – you have Video, Music, Photos, Browse Folders, Internet Media, Streaming TV and Movies, and Settings.  There’s a remote included that makes accessing all of these menu items simple and fast.

Internet Media contains such favorites as YouTube, RadioTime, Shoutcast, Flickr, News, and Weather.  In News you have many favorites like ESPN, Wired Science, and CNN.  You can also add your own RSS feed.

Streaming TV and Movies, when clicked on, gives the message ”This feature will be coming in a future firmware release”.

The Video option allows you to drill down through the menus on your source PC – we can choose from TV show, movies, home video, and everything else that’s in the video section of our HTPC.  File names are on the left and cover art is displayed to the right.  Again, it’s a clean, simple interface.  You can change the look to get more of a Media Center My Movies look with cover art only across the screen, allowing you scroll from one movie to the next.  For more on what you can do with your movies see the Tech Specs below.

Music and Pictures work the same as video – folders and titles to the left and artwork to the right.  Or, you can choose an alternative look.

The only thing I found lacking here was the absense of a Search option.

Settings

Under the Settings option in the main menu you will find Setup Wizard, Audio / Video, Media locations, Parental Controls and security, User interface, Network, and System.

Options inside of these include:

Audio / Video – Display, Audio, Playback options, and Blu-ray options

Parental Controls – This allows you set set a password, lock the system, enable or disable HTML access, and a few other things.

User interface – Change language, skins, and set a screen saver.

System – Set your time and location and enable weather, check for updates, manage files, and much more.

The Remote


The remote control, which is included, measures 8.5″ x 2″.  It includes the standard Play, Pause, Stop, FF, and RW buttons along with others that include Home, Menu, Subtitle, Repeat, and Popup Menu, to name a few.  Featured at the top are 4 colored buttons that allow easy access to Video, Music, Phot, and Web.

Tech Specs

As for tech specs, the NeoTV 550 comes with an infrared remote, ethernet cable, and a composite a/v cable.  It has 2 USB ports, an SD card slot, eSATA port, 10/100 ethernet port, and an HDMI 1.3a.

It supports AVI, Xvid, MOV, MP4, MPEG2 PS, MPEG2-TS, DVD ISO/VOB/IFO, MKV, ASF, AVCHD, DivX, WMV, M4A, M2TS, MTS, MP1, MP2, MPG, DVR-MS, and Blu-ray.  Personally I was surprised by the .iso support.  A lot of our DVD’s are stored as .iso files to preserve all of the menus, extras, etc., so that was unexpected.  Incidentally, playing the .iso movies on the Netgear box allows the same options you have when playing an .iso on a PC.  YOu can click the Menu button on the remote and jump straight to the DVD main menu.  That is killer for me.

Conclusion

Can the Netgear NeoTV 550 replace a Media Center?  Well, no, but it does make a good extender for someplace like the bedroom.  It won’t pull MC extras like Netflix, but it can play pretty much every media format stored on your Media Center – or home server or any normal PC.  The interface is clean and simple and remote works great.  The setup is simple – anyone who can click My Computer and navigate to a file can easily tell the NeoTV where to look for music, pictures, and video.

Playback of all media is very fast and I encountered no problems with video stutter, macro-blocking, or any other common problems that are associated with video.  If you plug into your receiver then music playback will sound every bit as good as any other component (plug audio into your TV and you get what you get – with any device).

The big question is do I recommend it?  Yes, but with a couple of caveats.  For a complete technophobe it may be too difficult, but for the average to advanced user it should be no problem.  If you currently use an HTPC I wouldn’t replace it with this, but I would use this with a second TV.  Finally, if you’re not an HTPC user, but have a bunch of media stored on your everyday PC or server then definitely yes.  The OS is solid, the setup is pretty easy, and playback is smooth.  And they will updating the software so it will only get better.


Tags: , , ,

Posted in Music, Set Top Box, video

Comments Comments Off

Nokia E5 Smartphone Review

Posted by Andrew at 5:01 PM on December 15, 2010

The Nokia E5 is a non-touchscreen smartphone with a split personality, bringing business features to the social networking crowd.  It’s an interesting idea but are the features let down by lack of touch?  Let’s find out.

The E5 is a candy-bar phones with a 320 x 240 2.4″ screen above an alphanumeric keyboard.  Separating the two is Nokia’s trademark arrangement of softkeys, four-way rocker and answer / reject keys.  There are also two additonal keys for “home” and “email” in the middle.  The phone is 11.5 cm by 6 cm by 13 cm (ish) and weighs in at 126g according to the specs.  Consequently, it feels solid in the hand and appears to be built to the usual Nokia high standards.  I found the “chalk white” colour of this model attractive and a change from the fingerprint prone glossy finishes.  The E5 is available in four other colours.

Earlier on I referred to the split personality of the phone.  Fundamentally, there are two modes, one called Business and one called Personal.  Each mode can be configured independently so that, for example, you can have a serious workplace view with corporate greys and a sensible background in the Business mode but wild colours and a risque image for your Personal mode.

With regard to the basic functions of a phone, everything that you’d expect is there.  Call quality was good and the contacts database was comprehensive with lots of fields.  It’s possible to sync with Ovi Contacts, storing your contacts on the Internet and making it easier to switch between Nokia phones.

Email-wise, Nokia provides connectors to Exchange, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and generic POP3 / IMAP accounts.  Unfortunately, it only seems to be the email components provided by these services – it didn’t seem to be possible to pull contact or diary information.

With regards to media, the E5 comes with a radio, music player, video player, the ubiquitous camera and a podcatcher, which I was pleasantly pleased to see. There’s also a Facebook client which is quite usable and you can easily see what your friends have been up to and respond to them.  YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster and hi5 apps are also installed for your pleasure.

On the business side, QuickOffice provides the requisite Microsoft Office compatibility and there’s also a .pdf viewer from Adobe.  There are other apps such notes and unit converters.

There’s a whole section devoted to Ovi Maps, which is a basically a GPS with maps and navigations.  I didn’t severely tax it during the test but it appeared to be competent enough with directions and didn’t get me lost.

Other useful features are the wizards that take you through the steps to, say, setup email accounts or connect to WiFi.  However, if you do make a mistake, such as a mistype which you don’t notice during the wizard, can be difficult to correct because there are just so many settings scattered across different areas.  Case in point, if you want to delete an email account, it’s not in the email app, it’s in Control Panel, Settings, General, Email.

Surfing the web…..not so good.  If you’re on a website such as the BBC, where the content is specially formatted for mobile devices, it works fine.  Going to a general web site, such as GNC, it makes an fair attempt to render the page and there’s a kind of zoom view that allows you to see where on the overall page you are. Not great but not bad for such a small screen.  Surprisingly, you can have multiple web pages open at the same time and you can switch between them quite easily.

Acknowledging that people sometimes use their smartphones as torches, you can actually toggle the camera flash by holding down the space bar in the Home screen. Great feature which I hope other manufacturers copy!

The battery life was good – I used the phone for a couple of days and never had to the charge the battery which I thought was pretty good.  Obviously the smaller screen helps and it has a fair sized battery (1200 mAh).

There are loads of other features that I simply didn’t have time to play with fully – Home page customisation, chat, push-to-talk, the ovi store, downloading apps, 5 megapixel camera.  There is a lot to this phone.

In terms of money, in the UK it seems to be selling on contract for about £15 month on a two year contract or £200 on pay-as-you-go, which is probably where it needs to be priced to have any chance of success.

Overall, this is a competent phone with plenty of features at a mid-range price. The business and personal modes are a nice touch and give it some differentiation. However, I wonder where a non-touchscreen smartphone fits into the world of iPhone and Android, especially when trying to appeal to the social networking crowd.  To me, it just feels out of date. Anyway, if you are looking for a non-touchscreen smartphone, the E5 packs plenty of features and is definitely worth considering for the apps, connectivity and ovi maps GPS at a fair price.

Thanks to Nokia for the loan of the phone.

Tags: , , ,

Posted in Information, Nokia, review

Comments 1 Comment

HippoRemote Pro

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 5:12 PM on September 19, 2010

A mouse that I use with one of my computers died and I decided to try the Hippo Remote Pro as a replacement. As a mouse replacement it has both its strength and weaknesses. However if you have a computer set up to play media, it works great.

HippoRemote Pro can be downloaded from Itunes, for $4.99, you can get Hippo Remote Lite for free, too try out the basic functions. You can set up the remote to be use either with Windows, Mac or even Linux. There are easy to follow setup directions for each, on line and also on the application itself. HippoRemote Pro, can be used as a simply desktop remote, but its real power is within the different profiles that are available. Different applications and website have their own profile which are created to get the best out of that application. There are about twenty profiles that come with the remote and there are also user created remotes that are available for downloads. If you want to make a profile, there are instructions available on the website.

As might be expected the remote works best with those websites and applications that you would normally use a stand alone remote with, such as YouTube, Pandora, Hulu, among others. It works less intuitively with applications like Google Chrome or Gmail, and takes sometime to get use. There are macros that come with each profile to add to there ease of use. For example there is a Gmail profile and it has macros that include, go to inbox, go to task, and go to starred. If you want to go to your starred emails for example, you simply hit the “go to starred macro” and you are there. HippoRemote does have a keyboard, which is available at the touch of a key to be used when it’s appropriate. It is strictly for entering in a small amount of texts and should not be seen as a replacement for a full size keyboard, at least not the Iphone version. The Ipad version maybe a different story, I am not sure since I don’t have one.

I would love to have the opportunity to try the Hippo Remote Pro on the Ipad, on the Iphone it feels cramped at times. Even with this complaint, it is great to be able to sit back in a chair and play some Youtube videos. Then when I am tired of them, I can go to Hulu and choose which video I want to play, hit the play button all without leaving the HippoRemote. If you are looking for a good remote control on either the Iphone or Ipad I highly recommend the HippoRemote Pro, it is easy to use and can be customized to your needs.

Tags: , , ,

Posted in Information

Comments Comments Off

The Man Who Lied To His Laptop

Posted by tomwiles at 4:36 PM on September 19, 2010

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in audible, book, Microsoft, office, review, Software

Comments Comments Off

Seesmic Desktop 2 All in One

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 8:40 PM on September 14, 2010

Seesmic released an update of its desktop platform last week on both the Windows and the Mac platforms. It had been in private beta for a while but was finally released to the public and its clear that Seesmic has grown far beyond just another Twitter client. The first time you open it up, it will take you directly to your account page, where you can add any of the following accounts: Facebook, Foursquare, Google Buzz,Google Reader, Last.fm, Linkedin, Ping.fm, Twitter and YouTube. There are also more sites available through Plugins and the sdk is available for developers to add more sites in the future. It will be interesting to see if developers take advantage of the opportunity.

Once you’ve add the sites you want, then you can set them up the way you want. Each application can be use to its fullest within Seesmic. You can go through your Google subscriptions, view YouTube videos, keep up with your Facebook friends and Twitter without ever leaving the Seesmic desktop application. When you write a post, you can easily choose which client or clients you want to send it too. You can also keep up with Twitter trends and do searches.

There are a couple of problems I have run into while using the application, first I haven’t been able to get the Last.fm application working. I just set up a new Last.fm account recently, so the problem maybe on my end, I am just not sure. The second problem is you do have to install Microsoft’s Silverlight to use it, so Linux users are out of luck at this time. It is also not very practical on a small screen, unless you like to scroll back and forth. It would be interesting to know how many people actually use multiple sites within the Seesmic application. Is this something that people want or are they looking for something more simple. I think a lot of people would see this as a clear case of information overload and a bit overwhelming. I am not one of those people however, I love having everything right in front of me, I do wish that the applications Identi.ca or Status.net were available within Seesmic, hopefully they will be soon.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the revamped Twitter website, will effect third party Twitter clients like Seesmic. I think that Seesmic saw what was coming and has begun to develop for a future, where it will no longer be dependent on Twitter for its survival, Clearly Seesmic has grown past its Twitter roots and is blazing its own trail, with Twitter only being part of its service.


Tags: , , ,

Posted in Information

Comments Comments Off

Dragon Dictation for the Iphone

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 2:06 PM on August 29, 2010

I have had Dragon Dictation on my Iphone for about a week now and have started to use it more and more. Dragon Dictation is made by Nuance Communication which also created Dragon Naturally Speaking, Jott Assistant, Jott for Salesforce and MacSpeech among other products. Nuance Communication is actually fairly new to the Apple market, they started as a PC product with Dragon Naturally Speaking. They launched Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search shortly after the Iphone came out. In February 2010 they purchased MacSpeech. I downloaded Dragon Dictation for the Iphone, because I was looking for a way to put text into the Iphone without having to use the keyboard.

Dragon Dictation fits my need very well. The first time you open the application up, it will ask you for permission to scan your address book for names. If you give it permission it will remember the names only, no addresses or phone number. If you change your mind later, you can go in settings and revoke the permission. While in the settings menu, you can also decide if you want to have Dragon Dictate automatically recognize the end of sentences which is how it is by default. If you do it manually you have to say period at the end of each sentence, which does take some getting use too. Dragon Dictation also recognizes other common punctuation, such as commas, question marks, and the at sign just to name a few. It also recognizes commands such as new paragraph and new line. It works best in a quiet room or by using headphones with a microphone. You can do it by using the Iphone internal microphone, but the results are not as good. You want to speak clearly and in your normal voice, it will learn from you overtime. I found it works best when you speak in short bites. Then stop let it translate and then dictate some more. It does not like non dictionary words, such as Boxee, which became Boxy. I did notice that the first time I used the word Mac, it interpreted it as Max, but after I corrected it the next time I said the word it interpreted it correctly. If you get an error, there are a couple of ways to correct it. The first is too highlight the word that is wrong and in a drop down menu it will give some possible substitutions. The second is to use the keyboard that comes with the program and correct it that way. Finally you can highlight the word or phrase and record right over it with the correction.

Once you have done the dictation, you have the option of sending it directly to Twitter or Facebook from with in the application. It does have the option of emailing or texting the information, however you have to enter the email or text address in manually. Finally you can copy what your results and paste them into any other Iphone application you want. It would be nice if this application was integrated right within the Iphone , so that you could use the capability within any application. Until that becomes available, this maybe the next best thing. Dragon Dictation is free and is available for both the Iphone and the Ipad.

Tags: , , ,

Posted in Information

Comments 1 Comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »