All posts by Jim Trottier

Android, Technology

New Amazon Appstore for Android

The new Amazon Appstore opened up this week for Android users, and it’s great!  They’re giving away a paid app of their choice every day too.  This means that if you visit the Appstore once a day you can “purchase” their free app of the day and it’s yours just as if you purchased it for its full price!  Download it any time, uninstall it, or reinstall it whenever you like.  This sure is an awesome way to get everyone to use their new service.  I’ll certainly be stopping by once a day, no doubt.

Much like the Android Market, the Appstore shows you categories of apps, you can search for specific ones, or browse through their sections.  It also has a nice “save for later” option that remembers a list of apps for you so you can come back later and look at them some more.  The Android Market doesn’t have anything like this.  Google should consider something similar though, it’s a great feature.

Installing the Appstore itself was a bit tricky though.  It’s not an app you can just download in the Market.  I guess maybe because it’s a direct competitor to Market itself..?  It’s easy to find though, if you google it or search Amazon’s website for it on your Android.  You won’t be able to download it at first though, unless you’ve changed a setting on your phone to allow downloads from unknown sources.  This is located in Menu >> Settings >> Applications >> Unknown sources.  Check this option to allow installation of non-Market applications.  Then you can download the app (apk file) from Amazon.  I’m not sure if all Androids act the same at this point, but mine simply allowed me to download the apk file.  After that nothing happened, so I loaded up a file browser (I use Astro) and opened the apk file once I found it on my SD card.  It then prompted me for the install.  After that, everything was back to normal though, with a new app called Amazon Appstore on my phone, read for me to consume a new free app every single day!  Just remember though, Androids have limited memory.  You can install most apps to SD, which saves a ton of space, but they still eat a little main memory for each application (or game) installed, and they will eventually fill up your phone.  This is why it’s so nice to still have the free app available to re-download and reinstall, even after you uninstall it.  I constantly juggle apps I want to just try out, or just play once in awhile.  Since it’s a cell phone, a network connection is always there anyway, so it’s very convenient to do anywhere.

Audiobooks, Entertainment

Book Quandary

1 Comment

I just got a new credit for an audiobook at Audible.com, and I’m stuck.  I currently have 17 books on my wishlist and I can’t decide which book to get next.  I always figure each month I’ll get one of them until my wishlist is empty, then I’ll have everything I want.  Nope, it doesn’t work that way.  Throughout the month I get regular e-mails about new releases, specials, etc., and it never fails that every month there’s at least one or two books that look really good that I want to read (listen to).  So here you go.  Below is my wishlist.  If you can suggest one, perhaps that you liked yourself, I’d really appreciate your input.  Or if you can suggest something that ISN’T on my wishlist, go for it.  I can always add it to the list if it sounds good to me (which would actually defeat the purpose of this post, but what the heck–I’d hate to miss a good book).  The top one–Physics of the Future–I just added recently.  It sounds fascinating, based on the preview listen.  But then again, so do many of the others.  Help!

Audible Wishlist 03-20-2011

 

News

More updates

Anybody here use Google Chrome?  I didn’t think so.  Turns out, users got a blank page when viewing my other theme in Chrome.  Nice.  I think that’s actually worse than being able to see the site and the latest post being a few months old!  So I’ve switched themes again.  Something simple this time, so it’s quicker to load.  And less stuff in the sidebar, again, so it’s quicker.  Got any complaints?  If so, I’ll reconsider.  For now though, I’ll keep it as-is.  It’s pretty much a one-sided “place for our stuff” thing anyway.  Comments, forums, and shoutboxes always end up getting spammed and being more trouble than they’re worth.   You can still add comments, I’ll get them directly, and I really appreciate your input.  They just won’t appear right up-front for everyone to see all the time.  I’ll change the big banner graphic occasionally too.  Something to match my mood, the season, the holiday… whatever.  I just enjoy playing around with it.

I’m primarily using Chrome now, after seeing what it is now capable of, and seeing what some of its addons can do, especially the “Checker Plus for Google Calendar”, which adds a ton of great features I like that integrate my calendar into the browser very nicely.  My calendar is now with me at all times, on my Android in my pocket, on my desktop at work, and at home, all synced together as one.

Update on George: He’s out of the hospital now, and at a nursing home for rehab.  Once he’s strong enough, hopefully he’ll be able to move back home with in-home care nurses and aides.

Computers, Technology

Sometimes things work out

Dual Monitors (sorta)This week one of our monitors died.  No big surprise—EVERYTHING has been dying or breaking lately… Over the past couple weeks, Sandy’s cell phone broke, our laptop died, the PS3 died, and our expensive Harmony Remote died.   It’s like Karma knows we got our tax refund checks and wants to just eat that money up as fast as possible.  The thing is, we need that money to fix up the house in the spring so the city doesn’t fine us!  Yes, the neighborhood inspectors nailed us last season, and we have a big list of things to fix on our house and property now.

Anyway, back to the dead monitor.  I can’t stand seriously working on a PC with just one monitor.  There’s just so much I do at once, I can’t fit it onto a single monitor, or, even if I could, it gets too confusing switching back and forth between open applications and windows.  With 2 screens (minimum) I can separate things enough to work smoothly and get things done efficiently.  Just ask Randy Pausch from Carnegy-Mellon University.   Once monitor on a PC just doesn’t cut it.

So anyway, it died.  The backlight constantly flickers and repeatedly goes black, rendering it useless.  Yes, it was very old, so it’s not worth fixing.  It was just a standard, cheap 17” LCD monitor that I had broken the base off of so it would fit into the little right nitch on my desk to use as my right monitor.   So I scrapped it.  Not sure what to do next, I took some measurements and checked many vendors for monitors that would fit in that spot.  It’s not an easy task to find the FULL dimensions of a monitor (including the stand) when you need it.  Some sites provide it, but most don’t.   What to do?  I found a few monitors that came with removable stands, which would be perfect, but their size without the stand attached was then questionable.  Arrggh.

Well, another completely unrelated task that Sandy had during this whole dilemma was with a client of hers.  She needed an inexpensive TV and wanted to know if it was possible to get a new flatscreen LCD TV for as little as $100.  So I looked around and found a couple at Best Buy—one for $89.99 and one for $99.99.  She ended up choosing the $99 one, which was on sale from $150, so Sandy had to pick it up for her.

Yesterday, while the TV was sitting at home waiting for Sandy to deliver it to her client, I got an idea.  I wondered how something like this would fit into our desk cubby.  So I carefully removed it from it’s box and did some measuring.  It looked pretty close!  So I attached the stand and set it in place.  It fit PERFECTLY!  All of Best Buy’s smallest monitors (18”-19”) were around the same price, but none of them would fit in this space on our desk.  This TV was on sale, $50 off, so it was normally $150.  It was a 15” screen, so it was a bit smaller, but it had all the right ports—a VGA port, HDMI, and all the others.  I even had an extra AT&T box I could use on it that I haven’t used since 3 PCs ago, because I didn’t have a TV antenna or HDMI input on any of our replacement PCs.  The only other issue I could foresee would be with its resolution.  I know TVs are not quite up to the specs of monitors, so I expected the resolution to be lacking.

I went ahead and unboxed the rest of the package and set everything up.  I connected the cable box to the HDMI, and the PC to the VGA input.  Everything worked perfectly, and it has quite a nice image!  Yes, the quality is a bit less than a monitor, but I was expecting as much.  Surprisingly, however, the specs say it has a maximum resolution of 1366×768, but when I set that resolution in Windows 7 it told me that it’s not optimum and recommends 1920×1080 as the optimum resolution, and when setting the TV’s resolution to 1366×768, the monitor went black and displayed a “Not Supported” message!  I tried other resolutions, but only 1920×1080 and 1600×900 would work, so I compared the two with a standard web page displayed.  1600×900 is what my main monitor is at as optimum, and it turned out that looks exactly the same on the TV, but leaves about a 1” border around the edge of the picture area, resulting in a LOT of wasted screen space and simply eliminates the extra pixels from the 1920×1080 resolution instead of “stretching” to use the full screen.  So 1920×1080 it was.  It’s kind of bizarre that this TV is actually smaller than my main monitor, yet I have to use a higher resolution on it.  It worked well enough though, fit perfectly in its spot, and I can now optionally watch cable (or our DVR recordings) on it by simply switching from the VGA port to the HDMI port on the remote.  That’s awesome, especially since a lot of the time I will drag a Netflix browser window over to my right screen to watch a movie while I work anyway.   And 15” isn’t as small as it sounds sitting next to my 20” main display.  In fact, there’s only about a 2” height difference in the actual screen displays.    So it really goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I then had to return to Best Buy and pick up another of these TVs for Sandy’s client.  Sometimes things work out in strange ways.  But after having so many things die unexpectedly, this seems like little consolation.

Photography

Snow Sculpting Championships 2011

Snow Sculpting 2011We went to the Snow Sculpting Championships today, as we do every year.  This time Sandy went with us for the first time–and it was Kevin’s birthday.  This year’s contest seemed to be a little lacking in content though.  Probably because we heard that a few of the teams didn’t make it to the competition because of the blizzard.  Their planes didn’t make it in time.  There were still some really good ones though.  Unfortunately, most of them weren’t named and described very well, as they were most other years we’ve attended.  So I have named them by their team states and block numbers.  Once the official winners are published and the names of the actual sculptures are given on the official site, I’ll update this posting to let you know exactly who won 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.  For now, see if you can pick the winners.  Click here or on the thumbnail to view all of the photos.

Update: Winners Announced:  I have renamed and re-sorted the photo set, so the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners are first in the set.  Here are the winners:

1st Place: Wisconsin – “Mercury Racing Pegasus”

2nd Place: Wisconsin – “Davy Jones’ Locker”

3rd Place: Alaska – “Dance of Axcagon”

Family News

Cold Weather, Packers and Bears…oh my!

Well, we’re in the deep-freeze part of Winter here in Wisconsin, when we’re lucky if we see no temperature at all outside—a.k.a. “0 degrees”, and everyone debates the differences between “Wind chill” and “Feels Like” calculations.  The Kenosha Unified School District has a strict policy of closing schools when “Either -20 degrees Fahrenheit sustained temperature or -34 degrees below zero or lower Fahrenheit sustained wind-chill,” so there’s something to look forward to.

Socks got stuck in the backyard the other day.  He ran out to the back fence to argue with the neighbor’s dog, and when I checked on him he was walking back to the house and halfway across the yard he started slowing down, slower and slower, then he stopped, looked up at me sadly and just whimpered.  I called him a few times and he couldn’t move.  I put on my shoes and went out there and carefully pulled his frozen feet from the icy snow, then carried him inside.  It only took him a few moments to recover though, and he was back to normal again.

Our forever-crumbling sidewalk around our house constantly fills with melted snow water when the temperature gets a little warmer in the daytime, then freezes to a solid, smooth surface at night, causing us a lot of problems with trying to walk across it, and worrying that someone (either us or a stranger walking by) will slip and fall, causing an injury.  We salt it daily too, but the salt washes away when it melts in the daytime.  We’ve sure spent our share of money on 10-lb. bags of salt, and have even had to use table salt as a last resort once in awhile.

At least both cars have started every time so far this season.  The colder it gets though, the more we long to make our move to Arizona.  It’s going to happen, we just haven’t set a date yet.  It’s like getting married.  There are so many things that have to be done first, so many plans to make, and it’s a real commitment.  Every winter and cold day brings us closer to it though.  It will not only be a lot warmer, but it will greatly improve our health and well-being.  It will also be a completely new chapter in our lives, so I’m already excited about it.Sackboy and the Packers-Bears Cookie

For now though, bring it on winter! Let’s see what you got! And Go Pack/Bears.  I’m on the fence.  I have family members on both sides of the fence for the Championship, but I’m not a football fan, so I’m neutral.  We’ll be watching the game Sunday, but what I’m looking forward to the most is Sandy’s snack menu–Mini Pigs in a Blanket, cocktail meatballs in barbeque sauce, cheese & sausage & crackers, ham-cream cheese-pickle rollups, a giant Packers-Bears cookie, and chicken wings!

Android

Launcher Pro Plus

My Launcher Pro Plus Home Screen
My Launcher Pro Plus Home Screen

Here’s an app review for the Android.  It’s actually an interface aka “Launcher” for Android, so it’s not really an app I guess.  It’s LauncherPro Plus, by Federico Carnales.  The version I’m currently using for this review is 0.8.2.  LauncherPro is based on the standard Android Launcher interface, which is included with all Android phones, though most of them also include an alternate interface designed by the phone manufacturer or cellular carrier you have.  My phone is the HTC Desire from US Cellular, so it came with the HTC Sense launcher preinstalled and set as the default launcher.  The original Launcher app is always in there, but rarely is it set as the default when you get a new phone.

Anyway,  Launcher Pro is based on the original interface, and Launcher Pro Plus goes even further by adding a lot of nice features on top of that, basically creating a third level of enhancements.  Many of these enhancements are “HTC Sense-like” too, so if you like some elements of HTC Sense, but long for something better, this might just be the interface for you.  Basically, LauncherPro is like Launcher on steroids.  There are a ton of options behind the interface, including the ability to increase the number of home screens to 7, rearrange your screens easily, “pin” any screen as the default “home” screen, change scrolling speeds, customize your doc icons, etc. etc., most of which are available in the free LauncherPro version.  What “Plus” adds, however, are several features I really like, and am really addicted to now.

The vertical-scrolling app tray
The vertical-scrolling app tray

These include all of the fancy HTC-only widgets that were previously only available on phones with the HTC Sense interface.  Federico has basically copied the interface

and functionality of Sense’s widgets, enhanced them even more, and put them in “Plus”!  In addition to these, you also get many custom doc icons–several with the ability to display “counts” on them–which are round red balls with numbers in them.  These numbers alert you to the number of new G-mails you have, text messages, and/or missed calls you’ve received.  So at a glance you instantly know what’s waiting to be checked.

As do most other launchers, it also offers full support for themes–of which there are plenty to choose from in the Market–and the ability to backup all of your screens and settings at any time.  In addition, there are also some experimental and memory-intensive options which can further enhance (or degrade) your experience, depending on the model, memory and processor speed of your particular phone.  It’s great that these are all optional too, so you can choose exactly how you want your own phone to work.

Widget options
Widget options

Overall I’d have to say that I haven’t had any real issues with Launcher Pro Plus since installing it, and it hasn’t crashed for me at all.  Its speed is great, it’s very vast, and never lags unexpectedly.  It can slow down a bit when I’m doing a lot of multitasking ofmultiple apps, but that’s to be expected.  It certainly performs tons better than ADW Launcher, which I previously purchased and used before I found Launch Pro Plus.  ADW had some nice features as well, but it crashed frequently and was pretty sluggish most of the time, so I eventually gave up on it.  I really like Launcher Pro Plus, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to HTC Sense.

Kenosha, News

Kenosha House Explosion

3 Comments

12:00am – We were just getting into bed tonight, turned out the lights, then saw a bright flash in the window and the house shook with a BOOM! Turned on the scanner right away and at first they thought it was a transformer that exploded. A few minutes later they began getting calls of a house that exploded at 2115 55th Street. That was corrected shortly after to 2113 55th Street. And as the information kept coming in, it sounds like approximately 10 houses were heavily damaged as well as 2 commercial buildings, according to police. I heard one of the officers first on the scene say on the radio that “chance of anyone inside the house surviving, ZERO.” I’ll keep updating this post as I hear more.

12:04am – Mt. Carmel is open as a shelter right now for those forced from their homes. In the scanner chat, “User342767” says “Heard they left the stove on. If anyone was inside there’s no way they made it”.

12:09am – We Energies is on the scene now. People are also reporting heaving smell of gas at Johnny Midnight’s.

The very first early 911 calls that came in stated a house had exploded, half of it had collapsed, and a woman was trapped in a bedroom. No further information was given about that, and it quickly changed when they arrived on-scene stating the house was fully engulfed and totally destroyed, with no chance of anyone inside surviving. My guess is, the half-house that collapsed probably WAS the initial address–2115–because I doubt any calls ever came from the actual house that exploded.

12:29am – They’re reviewing the original calls now – first call was from 2113 55th Street, and said “a MOTHER was trapped in a bedroom.”

5510 23rd Ave – Large piece of plywood about 40 feet up in a tree – they’re concerned it may fall and injure someone.

12:41am – They’re reporting the media is now on-scene. They’re looking for a PIO.

Kenosha resident Michelle Pulera said she was sitting in her chair watching TV when she heard what she thought might have been an explosion. When she went outside to investigate the noise, other neighbors were also outside looking for signs of smoke. “A neighbor and I were walking to 60 Street, Pulera who lives on 37th Avenue, said. “We thought it might have been a gas station.”

1:11am – Engine 3 is leaving the scene, fire is out. I’m heading off to bed, thanks for visiting. There’s supposed to be live Chopper 4 video here, but I’ll be darned if I can find it. G’night. Oh yeah, I posted a Google Streetview shot of the house here, if you want to see what the neighborhood looked like before the explosion.

5:15am – Live News report on TMJ4 – There was no one in the house at the time of the explosion, it was being renovated. There were also no injuries as a result of the explosion, which is amazing after listening to all the chaos on the scanner last night! The investigation continues today as they try to determine the cause of the explosion and assess all of the surrounding damaged buildings.

Family News

Dylan’s 2nd Birthday

Dylan's 2nd Birthday SignWe attended Dylan’s 2nd Birthday Party at Monkey Joe’s today. This was our first time there. Compared to Chuck E. Cheese’s, I would say Kevin had more fun here. There are fewer arcade games and more inflatable bouncy things in this place, and he seemed to get a good workout out of it. Darn it though, they wouldn’t allow adults on any of them though. Of course that probably would have meant certain disaster for them after MY visit, if the did… Kevin had a great time though, and it looked like all the other kids did too. We took a bunch of photos using only our phones this time–this was the first family event we’ve ever attended without bringing a regular camera–sort of a first for us. It worked out fine I think. We’re very happy with our Androids. Click here to view the photos.

Website News

New Year, New Website!

New Website Snapshot - 01-01-2011Happy New Year!  Welcome to the new jimtrottier.com site!  This time I’m trying something completely different.  It’s much simpler.  Just a blog (WordPress) instead of a whole content management system.  There’s nothing wrong with Joomla, don’t get me wrong, it’s just way more that what I need for my website at this time.

The site’s still being built, but I thought it would be great to bring it live on January 1st, 2011 to ring in the new year instead of hiding it until it’s fully ready.  Consider it as you would a Google feature… It could be in “beta” for years as it continuously changes… So you’ll see some very old posts (only my favorite “oldies” this time) popping in from time to time as well as new features as I add them.  You can  read the “About” page for a little more info, and be sure to register for an account for access to some upcoming additional features you might enjoy.

That’s in for now.  Please let me know what you think.

Family News

Happy Holidays!

We”re having a great holiday season!  It’s the day after Christmas and this is my day to recover enough to be able to go back to work tomorrow and be productive for another week.  I woke up early this morning to find Sandy already gone off to work–or so I thought.– I looked out front, and there she was, trying to shovel about three feet of snow out of our plowed-in driveway!  I dressed quickly and went out to help her.

Looks like we got about 8-10 inches of the dreaded “lake effect” snow here overnight.  So it really was a White Christmas after all.  After the driveway was cleared enough, Sandy was able to leave for work, and I finished the rest.   I’m a little sore right now, but recovering with a hot cup of coffee (it’s no Vente Quad White Mocha, but it’ll do) and sitting at the desk next to the radiator.  I’m uploading 170 Christmas photos to Flickr right now. Here’s the link. Kevin got the Playstation Move AND the X-Box Kinect!  Sheesh, was side of Santa’s naughty-and-nice list was HE on?!?  The Move was pretty easy to setup, just pair the controllers and go.  The Kinect, on the other hand, was one of those projects that just didn’t want to go right.  It uses NO controllers–YOU are the controller.  Instead, it’s a big bar that sits above or below your TV and includes a high-def camera and a bunch of sensors.  It also moves on it’s own to find the best position to track whoever is playing at the time.  It looked easy to setup at first–and it probably is for people with large living rooms–but for us it was tough.  Apparently our living room is just a little too small for it, so placing it above or below the TV wouldn’t work.  After some thinking and a playing around with it, we ended up having to mount it on a shelf on the wall behind the TV.  This gave us a few extra precious inches, which was apparently just enough to allow it to function properly.  After that, Kevin and Matt had a blast tubing down the whitewater rapids and bouncing in zero gravity in Kinect Adventures.

We had our traditional great Christmas dinner with Mike, Rick, George and the family, a great ham, and some great homemade Au Gratin Potatoes that Sandy made.  And this morning, since Socks absolutely refuses to go outside at all, it looks like we’ll be doing another of our traditions–the annual Doggie Deck Toss–where we throw the Chihuahua off the back deck and into the tallest snow bank in the backyard, then watch him tunnel and hop his way out.  I’ll try to grab a picture.

Update: We had a successful Puppy Launch this morning.  Here’s the photo.  See the flying Chihuahua!

Android

Google Maps 5 coming soon to Android devices

Version 5 of Google Maps has just been announced for Android.  It will be released “in a matter of days,” and most Android users should be able to download it free, at that point.

Coming with the Maps update will be the end of tiling.  Whoohoo!  It will use vectors, which brings the ability to see maps in 3D (see screenshot). For anyone who has used Google Earth on their Android device knows, Maps will now let you tilt and rotate any map with your fingers.

Equally as notably is the addition of offline caching, making those long trips to areas with data deadzones less scary. Besides keeping the map/route on file, the offline cache will also be able to reroute if you miss that exit and don’t have continuous data. The update will be available for all Android devices with 2.2, and possibly for all with 2.1, as well. I have a 2.1 device, so I’m a little nervous at this point… I REALLY want to be able to use this update!! I use Google Navigation daily.

Thanksgiving

Awesome Thanksgiving

Thanks to everyone for making our Thanksgiving wonderful this year!  The food was awesome, and Sandy did an amazing job for cooking her first Thanksgiving turkey!  I think it was the best I’ve ever had!  The stuffing was (I guess I should say “Is”, since I’ll be eating it all weekend) great too–Rick’s special recipe.  The company was great as well, and I hope everyone else enjoyed the day as much as I did!  Thanks again everyone!  Click here for a few photo highlights.

Android, iPhone/iPod Touch

Going Subsonic

Ok, MOG is out.  After a thorough analysis of the app and the service itself, I have decided to drop it.  I have found several services now that offer the same “on-demand” music streaming, all have millions of songs, and offer their own variation of the same features.  These include Rhapsody, Napster, and a few others.  So there really isn’t a lack of this ability available, and they are all around the same price, about $10/month, so they compete fairly evenly.

One of the hitches with MOG (and probably the others as well) is that you can only be logged into one device at a time. Since all of our family’s devices use the same accounts, I set it up on all of them, but if I start MOG on my phone and Kevin happens to be listening to it, Kevin gets bumped off the service, and vice versa. Very annoying. At least one of the other services offer an upgraded tier of $15/month for use on up to 3 devices at once, so at least there’s an option out there, but still pricey.  Also, the MOG app on the Android seems a bit buggy. I often get bumped off of the service when I know Kevin and Sandy aren’t using it, and other times it just stops streaming mysteriously and hangs.

Since I’m a long-time Slacker subscriber, and still am, I’ll stick with it for awhile and see how their on-demand service works when it finally comes out (if ever).  Meanwhile, I’ve discovered an amazing alternative! SUBSONIC! It’s a music streaming server (yes, I said “server” not “service”) that you install on your own computer, and it streams your entire music collection (and much more!) to any of your devices! Since everything is served from your own PC, you don’t have to rely on any other service for your access.  And the price?  Free for 2 weeks, then you have to make one small donation (of any amount) to get a permanent license.  That’s it, and you never pay another fee.  The Android app is free too, and written by the same developer who wrote the Subsonic server itself.  The iPod apps (there are two or three currently available for the iPhone) are around $4.99, but that’s a one-time fee as well.  These were written by other developers, and I think they may support a few other services and/or servers as well as Subsonic.  The one we’re using on our iPods is “Z-Subsonic”.

So Subsonic gives us all full access to everything we have on every device we use, for a total of a few dollars!  It works great, and I have yet to see the apps crash–on any device.  The apps give you a lot of options too–you can adjust the amount of space to reserve for your cache, you can set how many songs to pre-cache, etc., and even subscribe to Podcasts on the server and it handles downloading those automatically and serving them up on your devices.  You can even setup as many user accounts on the server as you want, each with their own restrictions (or full admin freedom), and use those accounts on any device as you want to.

It is really nice (and comforting) to know we can be anywhere–even right at the desk on our home PC serving up the music–and we can drop an iPod into a sound dock and stream any album or playlist we want, instantly.  No more sync’ing, iTunes, or space issues on any of the devices!

Android, iPhone/iPod Touch

The Woz Picks Android to Beat the iPhone

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak thinks Android will eventually beat the iPhone as a mobile-phone platform in much the same way Windows computers squeezed Apple’s market share in the PC market, he said in an interview with a Dutch newspaper.  In an interview with De Telegraaf reporter Alfred Monterie, Wozniak said that Android will become the dominant smartphone platform. He didn’t write off the iPhone completely, however, saying it “has very few weaknesses” and that, “when it comes to quality, iPhone is leading.” While he admitted the quality of Android phones hasn’t been consistent, he championed the platform, saying “Android phones have more features” and that eventually the quality of the experience will match iOS. Full story

Android

Why Netflix isn’t on Android yet

I’ve been drooling for Netflix to finally come out for Android. Today I found out why it’s not out yet. I guess Netflix is concerned with how “open” the Android platform is. They are now working with different solutions based on each of the different handset manufacturers. Which means, when it DOES come out, there will be a different version for each different Android phone, which, in turn, means it will take much longer to come out than expected, depending on which manufacturer they release it for in what order. Sounds pretty messy, and could hurt Netflix in the long run. I hope not though, we’re enjoying their services on every OTHER platform we have. Here’s the article.

Android

MOG

This weekend I discovered MOG.  MOG is a streaming music service similar to Slacker and Pandora, with a few big differences: With MOG you can search for and find specific songs and albums and even download them to your device! I have been waiting since March, when I heard Slacker was going to come out with this type of “On Demand” music feature, but they never did.  I hear it’ll be coming out “any day now” for Slacker, but I’m still waiting.  Apparently MOG has been around for several years, I guess I just never heard of it.  Ironically, I found it while reading the Slacker forums today, to find out when Slacker will be releasing their version of the service.  I couldn’t find a date, but several users mentioned that they were using MOG now, and hoped to switch to Slacker when Slacker On-Demand comes out.  It’s a relief to know it’s been out a long time too–it makes me a little less nervous about paying for a service I haven’t used much yet

So for now, MOG is it I guess. It’s $9.99 a month, so it isn’t cheap, but having instant access to virtually everything out there is exciting for me, and probably cheaper than what I normally spend on regular music throughout the year.  They have millions of songs, albums, and radio stations, and it’s great when an artist or song just pops up in my head and now there’s a place to go to instantly find and play that song or album.

They have apps for iPhone, iPod and Android, so I’m using the iPod and Android apps on my two devices and Kevin has the iPod app on his iPod now too.  The ability to download albums and songs is great too–especially when I’m somewhere (like in the basement of a hospital) with no cellular connection.  Though I have been a huge Slacker user for awhile, it looks like MOG is going to be my new main player for now, at least until Slacker finally releases their version if this service.  At that point I’ll have to compare feature sets and decide which to keep and which to cancel.

For the next two weeks, however, I’m in a free trial of MOG though, so it’s even sweeter knowing I’m not paying for it yet.  I’ll be giving it a thorough workout too, making sure it’ll do everything I need it to before I start shelling out any money for it.

Android

My Photos Live

Time for an app review.  This week I found “My Photos Live” by “Sandroids” for the Android.  This is a great app for displaying your photos, whether they are on your Android phone, on Flickr, on Facebook, or even spread out on all three of these sources!  I had been looking for something like this for awhile and I tried several apps that do this in different ways, but I think this one has done it right.  It offers many transitions to choose from (used when changing photos in the slideshow) as well as a “random” setting to choose a random transition every time it changes, but the feature I love the most is its ability to make this slideshow your Live Wallpaper!  I set the change slide time to very long (which, on this app, is one or two minutes) and make it my Live Wallpaper, so whether the phone is locked, or I’m on one of my screens, the wallpaper changes to any one of my thousands of photos on Flickr every minute or two.  You can even choose a specific photoset from your Flickr collections if you like, or simply select all of them, as I did.  Another nice feature is “Slideshow Mode”.  This simply sets the app to automatically start the slideshow whenever you plug in your phone.  Nice, since your phone usually isn’t doing anything anyway when it’s plugged in for charging (besides playing your music, as I do with mine), so it’s nice to have an instant mini “photo frame” going while it sits on your desk.  This app is available for free, without any restrictions I believe, but a 99-cent “donate” version is also available to support the developer, Sandroids, which is what I did after trying out the free version for awhile.  I highly recommend the pay version of ANY app that you find useful, especially when they’re as good as this one and they’re only asking for a very small amount, like 99 cents.