Hello. My name is Jim, and I’m a weather addict. I drool for the latest and greatest weather gadgets and apps. My Roku screensaver is an awesome weather app that gives me tons of weather information. But the Roku app isn’t why I’m posting right now. I found a new Android weather app that’s pretty cool. It’s called “Arcus“. It’s very “granular” and provides weather information in very clear terms, broken down to the next hour, next 24 hours, next week, temperature and precipitation graphing, etc. When it was mentioned on TWiG (this week in Google) they even said it will give you details such as “Rain will begin in 8 minutes.” I haven’t seen anything THAT granular yet, but it does give me almost everything I could ask for in a weather app…except animation! Those I get from Accuweather — another great weather app. Both apps are available in free and paid versions, offering a few more features and faster updating in the paid versions, and no ads. I highly recommend the paid versions. Click on any of the thumbnails to see a few screenshots.
Category Archives: Technology
Great Ingress article…including nostalgic photo
Check out this very good article on Ingress. After I viewed the big photo at the top, however, I noticed it’s just a “little” outdated. It brought back a ton of memories though–check it out–the gamers on an Atari 2600 playing Pac-Man. There are also a bunch of full-sized 33 RPM LPs stacked on top of the (probably 300-lb.) dinosaur console television. You can even see the slow refresh-rate of the TV screen captured in mid-refresh in the photo. Ah, the memories! I just can’t quite make out exactly what product is on those blue and white shopping bags everyone is carrying in the background though… any idea?
Launcher Widget Issues
I’ve used a lot of different Android launchers over the years, and even purchased several of them, but I always end up coming back to the stock launcher for one reason or another. Lately, EVERY launcher I try has failed miserably at the same thing: Displaying a 4×4 calendar widget I use very often. If fact, I have even purchased a second calendar app that includes a completely different 4×4 calendar, hoping that it might not actually be the launchers, but the calendar app I was using (Jorte). Well, THAT one has the same issue in every non-stock launcher!
So now I’m very confused as to exactly what causes the issue. All I know is that they both simply work in the stock launcher on my Galaxy SIII. They’re always there when I scroll to that home screen. With every other launcher, after a day (and usually less than that) I scroll to that home screen and I get the “Problem loading widget” error and no calendar. I always have to restart the launcher app to get it working again (on the launchers that DO include a restart option). Has anyone else experienced this issue? I’d be curious to know if it’s just the Galaxy SIII, or if the same issue exists for other phones using non-stock launchers. I had a different phone a year ago, but do you think I can remember if I had this issue then?? Ha! I’m 50 now…I’m prone to a lot of CRS issues.
Anyway, the two apps I use that both include a 4×4 monthly calendar widget are Jorte (free) and Business Calendar (paid). I always configure them to display all of my calendar events as text. On the launchers that allow resizing, I usually stretch the calendar to the edges of the screen to maximize the info displayed on the calendar, but I’ve tried just leaving it the default size as well as making it smaller–the same issue always occurs either way.
The big 5-0, Ingress again, X-Box, and Spam
OMG! I turn 50 this weekend! The horror!! I just wish it was past already. My wife’s got something planned and she keeps insisting it’s nothing big, just a small get-together at the house… I sure hope that’s accurate. I hate all the “Over The Hill” gifts and parties I’ve seen others have over the years. It’s just another day, take it easy.
I’ve been obsessed with Ingress lately (see my previous post if you don’t know what Ingress is). I finally made L8 – the highest level in the game, and it only took 4 months! Now I am changing my focus from leveling up to helping other teammates level up–primarily Kevin, Tyler, Matt, and Eric. Having a nice group of L8’s in our area will give the Resistance some serious power in the game. It’s fun, very addicting, and I’ve met a lot of nice people who play the game.
Microsoft introduced their new X-Box recently–The X-Box One. Really? One? This is Three, right? I don’t know about you, but when I refer to the ORIGINAL X-Box, I call it the X-Box One. Hello confusion. Are we going to get one? Probably. Just like the PS4. Eventually. Everything changes. Gotta keep up.
Finally, I managed to find a excellent plugin for my website that totally eliminates the spam I’ve been getting! This is exciting for me, because it was such a pain to keep cleaning up hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of spam messages each month. Now I can focus on other things more… like hacking portals, or posting a little more often…
Amazing new discovery…and Ingress progress
I just discovered this awesome coffee warming technique! It really works! When ripping DVDs, the fan runs at high speed constantly, blowing the heat out of the laptop. This is even more useful than the built-in coffee cup holder…which is only available on the laptop when I’m NOT ripping DVDs… 😉
This weekend we made a lot of progress in getting more “blue” on Kenosha’s Ingress map! Before it was nearly all green, with the Enlightened consuming large chunks of area. Last night we had a few large areas covered in blue, but this morning I see that most of our areas are back to simply links, so I’m afraid the Enlightened are becoming just that, and are working on re-acquiring their portals. We have made great progress, however, and are working with a few other key Resistance allies in the area to build up our portals and hammer on the enemie’s as much as possible.
My daily walks really help our progress a great deal, allowing us to attack and gather from each portal we encounter, both on the way out and on the way back. I’m only a few hundred points from level 3 now, and Kevin is well into level 2. We are getting so addicted to the game, it’s ridiculous.
Ingress
Kevin and I finally got our Ingress invites last week. Matt got his a couple weeks earlier, so he sparked our interest. Yesterday, while on our usual walk with Socks, we went through the training, built up some XM energy and learned how to hack a portal. Ingress is a “walking game”, like “Zombies, Run!” but with a totally different concept to get you out and walking around. In Ingress, you gather “XM” as energy and find portals, which are usually represented by real-life public objects, such as sculptures or monuments. You learn how everything works as you start playing the game, gathering energy and finding resonators and other components to help with your hacking and taking control of these portals. It looks like an interesting game, and so far we’re only a tiny bit into it. The only problem I can see is that you have to keep your phone screen on to run the program, so you can’t just put on your headphones and put it in your pocket–it requires you to be viewing the screen most of the time. This can be pretty dangerous when you’re out walking around in public–especially if you’re walking a dog or walking out in the street! Constantly staring at your phone instead of watching where you’re walking could get you killed! For real–not just in the game.
I can see this is unlike other games in popularity already though–we’ve already noticed others in real life playing it. One guy with a tablet at a monument in downtown Kenosha was actually hacking the same portal as us. Turned out he was on the other side–one of the “Enlightened” while we are on the “Resistance”. He asked what side WE were on, but I “mistakenly” said I was also on the Enlightened. We found several portals near the lake–almost all of the metal sculptures along the new lakefront contains a portal. This not only gets you out and about, but also informs you about the monuments and public displays around you! It’ll even show you a photo of the object containing the portal, it’s name, and more, a little like the “Field Trip” does. In fact, FieldTrip was created by the same company.
This week I’ve been hacking the portals that are located between home and work, trying to gather what I can and weaken those of the enemy. It’s slow, but effective. This week I also found a wealth of information on the web, including the global Ingress Map, which details every found portal, who owns it and it’s makeup, a great instruction page, and even instructions on how to SUBMIT a site as a portal! I’ll be submitting a few preferred sites of my own soon. This game is great–too bad it’s still only in beta. You can only get in by invite, so if you’re interested, please sign up as soon as possible on their website. It took Kevin and I a couple months to get an invite, but Matt got his sooner by other means–he found someone else with an extra key.
Review of the Wii-U
After a few days of playing with the Wii-U (once I managed to pry it out of the hands of my 14-year-old) I thought I’d post my thoughts. An HD Nintendo console has been overdue for quite some time, so it’s a relief to finally see them catching up (somewhat) to the “big boys”–PS3 and X-Box 360–though new consoles from both of those companies are now in the works as well. But Nintendo reminds me a lot of Apple in the way they evolve. They’re slower in movement, but over time they do get it right for their particular audience. Anyway, the Wii-U is an excellent replacement for the Wii. I am very relieved to see that we can still play our old Wii games on it, so we can get rid of the old thing completely. It was a pain to have to bring the TV down to a standard definition video image to use the Wii. Now everything can remain in full 1080p HD.
The Wii-U comes with a huge “GamePad” controller, which is much like a small tablet combined with a Wii controller. It has a decent-sized touchscreen–at least it’s bigger than the Nintendo DS screen–and feels very comfortable in the hands. It’s nice and light, with nice finger grooves in the right places underneath and a stick on both the left and right sides. Many games allow their gameplay to run on either the Gamepad screen or the TV screen, and some allow both simultaneously. Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to all games–and doesn’t apply to the old Wii games at all–but hopefully this will change in the near future with an update. Being able to play on just the gamepad–even if you can only go up to 40 feet away from the console–is HUGE for our household. To Kevin, it means being able to still play the console games he wants when he has time, while we can still watch the TV shows we want. If Nintendo adds this feature into the classic Wii software, I think this feature alone could justify its price for a lot of families!
The good ole “Mii” universe is alive and well on the Wii-U, and there are always hundreds, if not thousands, of other users visiting our system and posting comments about all of the games. We even see posts from others as we finish levels of some of the games, and I’m always wondering if the comments are actually directed toward OUR game or just generic comments… Can other users watch our gameplay?? Can we watch theirs?? I haven’t found this out yet.
For the old Wii games, there’s a “Wii” option provided as a separate app, which takes you to the classic “Wii Menu” and provides the exact same interface as the old Wii system. In fact, you have to put down the Gamepad and pick up a standard Wii controller to play any of the Wii games and use the Wii menu interface. We did the “Wii system transfer” before completely taking our old Wii out of service, and that was pretty flawless, once we got it going. This was a lengthy process though, probably because we had accumulated a lot of game save data, Mii’s, and games from the Wii Store over the years. The process is fully animated once you start it, and kind of plays out like a little cartoon, with “Pikmin” characters (from what Kevin says they are) carrying your data through the old Wii systems, out to a rocket ship and loading them up for the transfer. One little pikmin character almost gets left behind, ala “E.T”, but they realize it before blastoff, and re-open the ship’s bay door and let him in at the last second. Once the data is saved to your SD card, the ship takes off and your’re ready to insert it into the Wii-U, switch to that system and continue the process where the ship then lands and the pikmin unload the data into the new system and setup the icons. It’s an amusing little cartoon, but pretty monotonous if you have a lot of data like we did.
The Wii-U also has “TVii”, which I originally thought would be a streaming TV service from Nintendo, but unfortunately it’s not. All it is, is a “remote” for your existing TV and cable box. You select your TV remote by answering a few simple questions based on whether the TV responds to the signals the Wii-U sends, and it sets up the remote for it. This is definitely the simplest “universal remote control” setup I’ve ever seen, by far. Totally painless. Then it does the same for your cable box and cable provider. Once that’s done you can completely control your cable box and TV with just the GamePad, replacing your two remotes. Unfortunately, WE have much more than that to control, including our stereo, PS3, X-Box, etc., and the Wii-U doesn’t go any further than the two devices. If someone could just make a 15-device universal remote app for the Wii-U, I’d gladly pay for it…that would be bliss!
Other apps included with the Wii-U are Netflix and HuluPlus, which both work great. I’m currently using both services and comparing them. Using the Wii-U interface, Netflix easily outshines HuluPlus, in my opinion. In the Netflix app the interface on the Gamepad screen matches the TV interface, so you can use either one to select a movie or TV show and watch it on either the TV or the GamePad. Excellent! But in HuluPlus on the GamePad, it only shows you the currently-selected option, very large, in the middle of the GamePad screen. You have to look at the TV to scroll and select what you’re looking for. Unless you memorize the layout of the menus, you can’t use just the GamePad to find a movie or TV show to watch, so it’s rather limited. I’m guessing Hulu will fix this in an update though. In comparing the Netflix and Hulu services themselves, it’s pretty much a draw. They both offer little of the same content. They seem to each have their own contracts for the content they offer, and both have good solid YV series offerings and movies. It’s a tough split. One minus on Hulu is the fact that its TV shows include “limited commercial interruptions” throughout its TV shows. Sometimes this seems like a bit much, with hour-long TV shows sometimes having numerous 3-commercial breaks. And there’s no fast-forwarding through the commercials either–you’re stuck with them. I did find, several times, when I did several fast-forwards and rewinds to rewatch a part of an episode, that it can get confused and then lets you fast-forward through commercials, but then thinks a later section of the actual TV show is the commercial block! Then later it seemed to realize it was messed up, and when I went to fast-forward or rewind the show it reset it back to the beginning again. Pretty irritating, but it didn’t happen often and I couldn’t repeat the glitch at will. Most of the time it worked fine. Both Netflix and HuluPlus also have an autoplay feature for TV series playing, so you can seamlessly watch a series without manually having to start each episode. But since HuluPlus has a commercial block before every episode and after, you have to site through a huge block of commercials (usually 6) between each episode. A big PLUS with Hulu, however, is with current TV series playing. Hulu gives you the current episodes of TV shows, while Netflix only provides you with previous seasons, only releasing new seasons of a show long after the next season is airing or long after the series is completed. I guess you have to weigh the value of this with whether you watch a lot of currently-airing series’ or not. Both services are $7.99 a month, so it makes me wonder if Hulu is worth it for all the ads when Netflix is ad-free. But, like I said, there are enough differences between the two services to warrant having both of them, for those who can afford it and are avid movie and TV buffs.
But back to the Wii-U: The Wii-U store currently offers a very small selection, but that’s just because it’s new. They haven’t added any of the classic Wii games to the store yet, so only Wii-U games are there at the moment. When they finally get the games from the old Wii store into the new one, there will be a much better selection. And it’d be even more awesome if they also add all of their classic “boxed” Wii games as digital downloads as well! They would certainly make a fortune, especially on those hard-to-find classics. I know they can do it–they already offer most of their new “boxed” Wii-U games as digital downloads, and the classic Wii games are much smaller in size, I’m sure.
We played a bit of Mario & Nintendoland for the Wii-U as well as a couple of the new downloadable Wii-U games that were on sale this week in the Wii-U store, and what does Kevin come back to the most?…. wait for it…. a cheap download called “Little Inferno”! This game is just plain “WRONG”. It teaches kids how to burn their toys. It’s aimed at older teens, obviously, and always warns you not to play with fire, but it provides you with a safe environment to do so, allowing you to burn everything from all kinds of toys imaginable, to batteries, to a school bus full of screaming children, or an angry elf (yes, Jay–an Angry Elf) who has a belt of dynamite strapped around his waist. It’s totally wrong, but I must admit it’s very addicting to but everything and see the way each item responds to a flame. How this game got past the Nintendo approval process I have no idea–I guess it’s a good test of the parental controls on the Wii-U–you can block your kids from playing it if you want. But, if they gotta play with fire, I guess doing it on the Wii-U is tons better than anywhere else!
I think Nintento has a great start here. As long as they get busy with updating and keeping on top of the issues in a timely manner, this will turn out to be an awesome Wii system. The GamePad features alone can make it almost as useful as a full tablet, if they make the right improvements. We’ll see what happens.
Rick and Sandy made the paper…and other treats
Wow, Christmas is getting close. The holiday cheer is here. Three nice things just from this morning: Rick and Sandy made the paper (see photo–click it to see it full-size in a new window), then, when I went to Flickr to upload it, Flickr presented me with a gift of 3 free months of Flickr Pro–that’s a whopping $6.00 more in my pocket… then when I went to Facebook to catch up on family and friends I found that Jelly Bean was released today for my Galaxy SIII! I hit the trifecta today!
DSub opens my eyes
Today I discovered a weird convergence of the two big issues I posted previously. It started when I discovered DSub, an Android Subsonic client that ROCKS! The regular Android Subsonic client–called simply “Subsonic” was decent, but lacked some crucial features and functionality that made me lean more toward Audiogalaxy when they were both excellent streaming music server options. DSub is (and looks a lot like) the Subsonic client on steroids! It’s open-source, so I’m guessing it’s the same client at it’s base, just customized to be much better. It’s like the “full version” of the Android Subsonic client! It costs $1.99, but it’s well worth it! Anyway, one of the big features of this app that just punched me in the face and woke me up today, is an option in its settings called “Temporary loss of focus”. It has 4 options under it: “Always Pause”, “Pause and lower volume when requested”, “Always lower volume”, and “Do Nothing”. I didn’t realize what this weird function was until I clicked on it and saw these 4 options…. then it hit me–THIS is the feature than an audio-heavy app needs, to know what to do when another sound plays on the Android device!
So now I was on a mission. I set it to “Always Pause”, threw on my winter coat, and hopped in the car for a ride around the neighborhood. I turned setup Google Navigation to take me to work, started up my DSub music, then drove around the neighborhood while Google Navigation kept interrupting my song to give me directions. It was FLAWLESS! DSub paused every time when the Navigation started talking, and all is right with my (Android) world again! So next I started up an Audible book and drove around some more… Bummer. Audible isn’t working that way, and keeps playing now, blending the two voices of the book and the navigation into something very confusing (and potentially dangerous if I were relying on actual directions while driving). So I came back home and send a support e-mail to Audible. They responded very quickly to another question I had previously, so I am anxiously awaiting their response to this one. Here’s what I wrote:
I listen to my audible books heavily on my Android phone during my daily commute, along with Google Navigation. I’ve been having a problem recently, however: The audible application no longer pauses when Google Navigation speaks–they both talk at once, which can sometimes make me miss a turn or direction unless I’m constantly watching the GPS directions on the screen.
After some research on the web, and finding other apps that still work ok and pause for the navigation, I have realized that it might be something that has changed in the Audible app.
I also found this explanation on Audible regarding a slightly different issue:
“We have received reports from users of the Audible for Android application, that the Audible application pauses at random. Upon further investigation, we have found that other applications may ‘steal’ the audio focus for no apparent reason when running in the background. The Audible for Android application respects audio focus requests to pause or stop playback. At the current time, the only means of resolution is to uninstall the offending application from your phone.”
To me, it seems like the Audible application used to respect the audio focus change, but now it no longer does. Can I get this ability back? Maybe if I uninstall and reinstall the app?? Or was something actually removed in the app so that it will no longer auto-pause like it used to?
Please let me know if there’s anything I, or Audible, can do to resolve this issue. I’m afraid I would no longer be able to safely listen to audiobooks in my car (with Audible) if this can’t be fixed, and I’d have to seek another alternative.
Thank you.
That’s it. I’m pretty sure they took this ability out of their app, but we’ll see if there might be a way to correct it’s behavior and make it work. It worked properly ever since I first subscribed to Audible and started listening to books in the car. I’ll post the response I get.
UPDATE:
Wow, Audible is quick. About an hour after sending that support message to them this evening, they responded. They gave me a $10 coupon for my trouble, apologized, and said there’s an update for the app, and I need to completely uninstall, delete the Audible folder, then install the updated version. So I did all of this, but was unable to completely remove the application, since it came pre-installed on my phone. I could only uninstall the updates. So I did that much and deleted the folder. Then ran Audible, signed in and downloaded a book. I played the book, then started Google Navigation. Sure enough, it worked great by pausing the book when driving directions were spoken, then resumed the book again right after. Next I installed the latest update from the app store and did it again. Crap! It went back to having the issue again by completely ignoring the driving directions and playing the book right through them. Back to the drawing board!
This definitely proves it’s something in the updated versions though, so it helps. I e-mailed support again, as a reply, so they have the entire history of the issue. I asked that, if they don’t want to have the auto-pause feature due to a lot of users having the “random pausing issue” they talk about on their help page, why not add it as an option that the user can toggle in the app’s settings? I’ll let you know what they say.
For now though, I’m back to listening to my books in the car–I just can’t update my Audible App beyond the version that came with my phone.
App Crap
What’s with all of the Android app issues all of a sudden?? First, Google Navigation–the absolute best (and totally free) navigation app available for Android–pretty much threw in the towel recently by removing the ability to control the voice volume for the navigation while integrating a very natural and human-sounding internal speech engine. Now, whenever I use it I can’t hear any of the navigation announcements because my music volume is apparently louder than the new voice engine! And since the eliminated the separate volume control for the navigation, there’s no way to control it! Turning down the volume turns down both the Navigation volume as well as the music, so I end up having to choose a no-music (or audiobook) drive or a music-only drive without navigation at all. Unacceptable, Google!! I’m trying to work with Waze right now, which has made some big improvements lately, from what I’m seeing. It does pretty good navigation and includes “crowdsourcing” features, constantly including traffic, accident and other updates instantly as you drive, from all of the “Wazers”. You even earn points for everything to report in the app, to increase your Waze score and earn better ranks. It has it’s issues, doesn’t look as “Pro” as Google Navigation, and the voice navigation is a bit muffled…but at least it has a separate voice navigation VOLUME CONTROL!!! Are you listening, Google?!?!?!? It works ok for me for now, until something better comes along (or Google fixes theirs).
Then today I find out that Dropbox acquired Audiogalaxy!! Now Audiogalaxy isn’t accepting any new accounts, and their “Mixes” subscription service is ending on 12/31/12. Yikes!! They go on to say “previous users with accounts can continue to stream their music collections”… but for how long?!?! Audiogalaxy is the best Android music streaming server I have ever found, and nothing compares to it!! I sure hope they eventually decide to keep streaming and start accepting new accounts again, even if it becomes branded as a Dropbox Music Streaming app–as long as they DON’T start requiring everyone to upload their music collection to Dropbox though–THAT would suck! I have such a huge collection of music, it would cost me quite a bit of money each month for a dropbox account big enough to hold my entire music collection. Hmmph. Time to start looking for something better anyway, I guess.
Happy Holidaze
The season is getting pretty busy. Yesterday we finished up cleaning and emptying the final bit of stuff left at the old house, and we’re finally fully out of it. The bank is finally making some headway, and we’re moving forward. Today Sandy and I did some shopping during the Packers/Bears game. It was the perfect time for it, since all of the area’s football fans were busy watching the game. No lines, no waiting. Afterward, Kevin, Socks and I took a walk with a twist: Matt recommended an app called “Zombies, Run!“, so we tried it out. You play it like an audiobook while you walk and/or run, and the story unfolds as you progress. You also collect items during your walk, and when you get back home, in the game you “return to base” and apply the items to your compound and level up the various sections of it, like the hospital, your housing, and the armory.
It’s a neat game, and encourages you to walk more. In fact, I think today’s walk was one of my longest in awhile at just over 1.5 miles. At one point, walking on the sidewalk next to Towerline Park, Kevin picked up 4 different items together, all at once. I didn’t get them, so I stopped and went back to where he said he picked them up… Sure enough, I also picked up the 4 extra items! That doesn’t seem to work all of the time, but did work once, so there might just be something to it. We’ll see as we move forward in the game. The object is to build up your base to defend against the zombie hordes I think. As you walk, a story unfolds as you try to reach different destinations, like a hospital for supplies, etc., and hordes of zombies chase you at various times. You can hear them coming as they approach, and as you walk for run from them, their distance increases until you lose them again. It keeps you occupied, like reading a good audiobook. We’ll see how it works out.
Just one week till Christmas–wow, that’s soon. I hope everyone has a great holiday season! Thanks for visiting!
Burn, Forrest, Burn! (music, I mean, burn music!)
I just watched Forrest Gump tonight. I had seen it 3 or 4 times in the past, but this is the first time I watched it on Blu-Ray. Now I’m on a mission. The awesome soundtrack is one I am drooling for, and the internet is not making it easy for me. According to Wikipedia, there was a soundtrack CD released–first with 32 tracks of the original songs (not the musical background score–which was released separately–but the actual songs in the movie), then, later, a “Special Edition” version containing two more songs for a total of 34 songs, on two CDs. So it is out there, but I’ll be damned if I can find an MP3 version! Amazon doesn’t have it, so I doubt it’s for sale anywhere. It makes no sense. I have everything I need to convert a CD to MP3’s, but in today’s day and age, I shouldn’t have to. I’ll dig around some more, someone’s gotta have it somewhere. I hate to have to purchase a silly plastic CD case with two more plastic CD discs, then burn them to MP3’s and just let the CDs rot in their case forever. It’s such a waste. But then again, this could be an awesome quest–even the 34-track set is still missing 16 songs that were skipped for some reason. So I could attempt to assemble the ULTIMATE Forrest Gump Soundtrack of my own! I’m sure I already have several of the songs in my collection, so there’s a start. I’ll add comments to this post as I progress. Stay tuned.
Black Knight for Android WORKS!
I am so excited. I just discovered that they fixed Black Knight for Android. It’s part of Pinball Arcade, an awesome collection of real pinball machines for Android. Black Knight has been available in Pinball Arcade for several weeks, but I was never able to get the Magna-Save magnets to work for the game, and they’re a critical element in the game. Plus, the magnet buttons–which are right above the flipper buttons in the real game (which I mastered and personally owned for several years in my younger days)–were placed at the very top of the table, making it virtually impossible to actually use, even if they DID work. But they didn’t even work, so I guess that didn’t really matter much. I was very disappointed, and since I never saw any complaints from others I was beginning to wonder if it was just me having the issue.
Today I loaded it up to see where was was in the standings. I was as high as #15 in the world for awhile, with my best game being about 3,500,000 points. Now my same score is about #36 in the world, and dropping. So I started a game, and was shocked to see that the magna-save buttons had been moved near the bottom of the screen, just above the areas you normally flip the flippers in! Seeing this, I wondered if they actually worked now. So I dropped a target bank and then tried using a magnet when the ball got near it… BAM, they work! FarSight Studios has totally redeemed themselves–this game ROCKS! I can finally unplug my Wii… I won’t be using it again… I can comfortably wait for the Wii-U this winter.
Essential Android Apps
We’ve been very busy the past few weeks since Sandy’s dad George passed away. He left behind a great family of three kids (if I can call them that) and a pretty darned nice house, if I do say so myself. We’ve been busy getting things in order, cleaned up, shuffled around, and legally situated, and we’re almost ready to “Git ‘er done!” as they (Larry the Cable Guy) says. Since I’m not willing to discuss anything regarding this in detail yet, and I still feel like writing, let’s talk apps.
There are a few apps on my Android that I just can’t live without, and I’d like to discuss them. The first one is Evernote. Evernote is free, and it’s awesome. It’s very simple to use, and you can use it just as a basic note-taking app if you want to. Once you write and save a note in Evernote, it’s on your account and will automatically sync with every other device you have (if you have Evernote on that device) and this way your notes will be available to you everywhere you need them! This has become priceless for me at work–I often take notes before going offsite to other faciltiies. I used to write up a quick Word document, print it, fold it up and put it in my pocket. Now I simply type it up in an Evernote document and I can head out the door knowing when I take out my cell phone, it’ll be there for me to read whenever I need it. Evernote also does much more. It lets you attach files, insert images, and documents such as PDFs and docs, and it’ll even OCR your images and will find the text within them instantly whenever you search for something!
Another must-have app–for me, anyway–is Cardiotrainer. I won’t walk without it. It GPS-tracks your walks (or hikes, rides or drives), providing you with an excellent map of your journey as well as complete calorie-burning details and much more. It even allows you to set optional goals for you trip, such as a specific amount of time you’d like to walk, a certain distance you’d like to travel, or a certain amount of calories you’d like to burn off, and it will prompt you accordingly at the intervals you set, as you walk, so you know exactly where you are and how close you are to your goal all the time. This is one of those smart talking apps too–none of of beeps and ringtones, it talks plain english to you. It will even automatically play a specific playlist of your music as you walk, if you want it to. I prefer to listen to my audiobooks on my walks though, which encourages me to walk even more–so I can get further through each book I’m reading. Cardiotrainer is free for basic use, but the “pro” version is the version I use, which include all of the features I mentioned. It’s $9.99, which is actually pretty pricey for an Android app, but believe me, it’s worth every penny! Especially if it helps you live longer and healthier, as it has me…A one-time $10 fee is a no-brainer!
There are many more apps I could mention here, but it’s time for breakfast, so I’ll only mention one more: Handcent. Handcent is an SMS texting app replacement. It replaces your stock Android texting app with a fancy-shmancy “bubble-type” texting app, akin to the iPhone texting app. It includes a TON of options, so you can pretty much customize it exactly how you’d like it for everything from popups when you get a text to exactly what ringtones you want it to play for a specific person or for the default text-received ringtone. It even has “skins”, which opens it up to hundreds (maybe even thousands) of user-created and custom skins you can use while texting. You can even make it look and act just like the iPhone–if you want to keep it simple.
So that’s about it for now… breakfast time!
Amazon MP3 ROCKS!
Wow, Amazon MP3 just blew my mind! When their service started, I was pretty disappointed that they didn’t grandfather in all of my old MP3 purchases. Instead, from the day their cloud player went live and forward, it would store your music. Bummer for me, since I had spent hundreds of dollars on music on Amazon since they first started selling MP3’s. I didn’t lose any music though, I still had it stored on my own drives. Well, today they’ve finally included all of my previous MP3 purchases into my Amazon Cloud collection! I had just under 100 albums on my cloud drive before, and now, as Amazon continues to scan my old purchases, it is importing 1,936 previously-purchased albums! Wow. Luckily, NONE of these albums go against my GB storage limit, since they were purchased from Amazon! So now this gives me another streaming option in addition to Audiogalaxy and Subsonic.
Up until now, Audiogalaxy has been my preferred streamer. It’s completely free, streams much smoother than any of other option I’ve tried, and it even works great at work. Subsonic has the added benefit of downloading as standard MP3’s so I can use standard media players on my devices to play the music, but it doesn’t want to play at work. I’ll have to see how Cloud Player stacks up, now that I have all my music back on it.
My first look at the Samsung Galaxy S III
This is my dream phone. (The HTC Desire was my Nightmare!) For starters, the 32GB of memory is fully open to your apps, data, files, music, photos, whatever you throw at it. (The HTC Desire, after all of your updates from a fresh wipe of the phone, had about 80MB available. That’s about 1 or 2 apps you can install, since you’re “supposed” to leave 30MB free so the phone will run properly). With Andoid 4, like I have on my tablet, there’s no arbitrary 1GB or 2GB app memory limit, it’s wide open for whatever you want, giving you all of the memory in the phone, whichever way you need to use it. Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is very smooth and functional, and it means I can install the Apex Launcher and get all of the benefits I only previously had on my Motorola Xoom tablet on my phone now! With the same OS and launcher on both of my devices, it also makes things so much easier to deal with all the way around. If you end up getting an SIII yourself, save yourself a lot of frustration and re-learning, and install Apex Launcher as one of the first things you do. It’s really worth it! If you wait until later, you’ll end up having to re-learn how to use with the menus and functions, which are much different (and very enhanced and expanded) in Apex Launcher, and you’ll also have to completely setup all of your home screens from scratch, of which, by the way, you can have nine, and I always increase it to the maximum, just to I have an extra home screen or two to play around with, or view the wallpaper cleanly at any given time.
The camera has some nice improvements over my Electrify–it has a great HDR photo mode that takes awesome shots, has a 20-frame burst mode (the Electrify could only do a 6-frame burst), and a very cool addition to burst called “Best Shot” where it will take a burst of photos, analyze them, and suggest the best one for saving. You can even look through them yourself and choose one, but, as expected, the phone probably chooses the best one correctly every time…unless you WANT some blur in your phone. There are many more new camera features as well, but I leave it at that for now.
Siri is even included on this phone! Well, actually her name is “Galaxy” on this one, but it’s virtually the same as Siri. Double-click the only button on the phone and she makes a tone and says “What would you like to do?”, and waits for you to talk to her. She reminds me a lot of “Eliza”, the old artificial intelligence program that started the whole “AI” revolution just after PCs came out and started to do speech synthesis. She’ll make smart remarks to silly questions, just like Siri. She’ll give you the weather when you ask if it’s going to rain, and answer all those questions you would normally use Google for. I asked her “What’s the population of Kenosha, Wisconsin” tonight. She said “99218 people”. It’s like you’re talking to web. And that’s about what it is. If Google or Wolfram Alpha can give you the right answer, Galaxy can…while incorporating a little “AI pizazz” to make it seem more human.
The S3 runs on a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, which is even faster than my tablet. It has a larger screen size that previous Androids, yet it’s much thinner than all of my previous phones (a whole two of them).
Complaints? Sure, I have a few: Since it doesn’t have an NVidia Tegra graphics processor in it, I can’t play my Zen Pinball tables! I guess I’ll have to keep playing those tables on my tablet…aw shucks. I also have a problem with the location of the volume buttons in relation to the power button. They’re exactly opposite each other on the phone, and I tend to squeeze the phone when I need to power on, power off, or adjust the volume, causing the other side’s button to push as well. This results in me either turning the volume up or down when I try to power the phone on or off, or vice versa. I think I just have to get in the habit of holding the phone properly in my palm, so that my thumb is always higher than my other fingers. And, lastly, at US Cellular, the only 32GB Galaxy SIII that they sell is WHITE. It’s not my preferred color–far from it–but I put it in a nice blue case, so it looks much better to me that way. The area around the screen is white, the bezel and back are blue…now, if I can just find a way to add a RED touch to it somewhere… “U-S-A!! U-S-A!!”
So, even with those negatives out there, none of them are deal-breakers for me. I love the phone and highly recommend it. Price? I paid $199 (after a mail-in rebate of $100) on an existing US Cellular plan (no contract).
Amazing Alex! – a mini review
Amazing Alex, Rovio’s new game, just came out this morning! For those who don’t know Rovio, they’re the company who created the wildly successful Angry Birds game and all of its incarnations. Amazing Alex is their first non-Angry Birds game. I played several levels of it this morning to check it out. Do you remember the board game Mousetrap? Or the old “Incredible Machine” game for the PC? It’s just like that! It’s a physics game where you have to setup a chain reaction to accomplish a goal–like getting a basketball to drop into a basket. I thought they went a bit too far in giving you the answers to many of the early levels just to teach you how to play though. The entire first section is VERY easy, and it seemed like only the last few levels of it I actually had to think a little on my own to complete. That’s as far as I went so far though. I’m guessing (hoping) there are tons more levels to come, each one more complex than the last. There was also a hint that there’s a level creator in it too, though I haven’t even looked for it yet. Hopefully they’ve thought of everything and created a whole community sharing element so everyone can share their creations with their friends. It sounds like it’s the start of another awesome game! The ad-free version is 99 cents, and worth every penny!
PC Support Scam hits close to home
A good friend of mine was scammed yesterday. Fortunately, she didn’t allow it to go far enough to give them any money, but they did have some access to her computer. Someone cold-called her and explained that he is calling everyone using Windows, and said her computer may be infected with viruses. She asked several more questions, thinking it was someone from Microsoft Windows at first, then eventually found out it was a company called “PC MARV”, a computer support company. The person identified himself as “Kevin” , and they offered to help her by walking her through executing a few commands which would show her that she has infections, then, as a further step, he gave her a code and had her go to a website, which turned out to be a LogMeIn remote support site, where they took control of her computer to “assist” her in fixing her “problems”. She was reluctant, but did feel her computer might be infected with something, since it’s been slow lately, and acting erratic, with some things not working right, so she let them look at it after realizing they had taken control of her computer. (YIKES! ** red flag **)
“Kevin” did several things on her computer to show her the infections. He brought up dozens of “WARNING!” messages from Windows 7’s event viewer (this is actually nothing unusual, and these occur all the time in the logs–you’ll get them even for even the slightest things, like a website that isn’t accessible) and told her these were all infections that needed to be cleaned up and removed. He ended up scaring her quite a bit about this, which, I’m sure, was his intention. The last thing he did was bring up a Command Prompt, enter a command to display hundreds of processes running on her computer, and then he scrolled to the bottom of the page and show her this:
She said it was at the bottom of the page instantly and didn’t appear letter-by-letter as if typed. I explained to her that the C:\> prompt is just that–a PROMPT. After that is typed text, and the message “software protection expired..” was pasted into the line by the tech. He probably copied it from his computer and just pasted it into the command line window. I explained to her that this text didn’t come from any application or system alert, they just typed the text in to convince her she was infected. ** another red flag **
She said her neighbor, who is very knowledgeable avbout computers, came over at that point, and she gave the phone to him. He talked to them, or listened to them a little, then explained that he doesn’t know who they are, and he’s hanging up, then hung up the phone.
I gathered as much information from her as I could at that point. The person she talked to was “Kevin”, and the tech who remoted to her was “Donnie Adams”, she said. The company was “PC MARV”, and they gave her their phone number. “Kevin” had a foreign accent, probably Indian. I googled “PC MARV” and there definitely is a website which advertises the phone # she had for them. Based on the details on the site, it sounded like a real PC Tech company that does remote support. It was well after normal business hours, but I figured I’d call them anyway, and see what happens. I called and immediately got a live human ( ** yet another red flag **)!
I asked if they had called a friend of mine, <first name omitted>, today, and remoted to her computer to help her. They said they were having a hard time understanding me every time I asked them a direct question, like “Does your company make it a habit of cold calling people to tell them their computer is infected?” or “How did you get her phone number?” They asked who we spoke to earlier today when they called. I said “His name was Kevin”, and the guy said, “ah, yes, Kevin Smith, I’ll get him…” and there’s some muffled rustling and background talking, then “Kevin Smith” comes on the line and explains that they “remoted to our computer, because we are infected with viruses and they need to be cleaned out and removed.” I asked again, “But how did you get her phone number?” Then, suddenly he was having a hard time understanding me again. Go figure.
After being handed back to the guy who answered my call, he asked who remoted to my computer. I said it was “Donnie Adams”. So there’s more muffled noise, then I’m talking to Donnie Adams, who basically repeats the same things the other two guys said about her having a virus and they need to clean up her computer. I told him “Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it from here, DON’T CALL HER AGAIN.” He started arguing again about not understanding (of course) and I hung up on him at that point.
So, it seems this company, which has a full website for their PC tech services, is most likely India-based, or from somewhere outside the US, I’m sure, and routinely calls people, scamming and scaring them into support contracts or supposed one-time fees for their PC cleanup services. I’m sure they are able to make a lot of money off of people using these techniques. Pretty much every Windows computer is always going to have “infections” and “vulnerabilities” at any given point in time, that’s just the nature of the beast. Whether it’s just a bad link that redirects you to an infected website, or a piece of spyware that gathers your browsing preferences, they’re all considered “infections” and “vulnerabilities”. Her antivirus is always up-to-date, and she scans for malware regularly. She’s fine. But I guess, since “technically”, she is “infected”, they can get away with claiming that, but they should absolutely NOT be allowed to continue preying on innocent people like this, with these totally deceptive scare tactics! What if they had frightened her to the point of having a heart attack?? They don’t know the state of health of the people they’re calling! Something should definitely be done about them, this just isn’t right.
A quick check of the domain showed the small block of details in this posting (click on it to see it full-sized). 
My hunch was correct, it’s based in India… She should have asked if they provide any ON-SITE support!
My hunch was correct, it’s based in India… She should have asked if they provide any ON-SITE support!The big block of details at the end of this posting are the supposed paid services they provide, as listed on their website… Wow, for $50 they’ll basically do nothing for you… How nice of them. The other big text image shown in this article is the domain registration information for pcmarv.com, found in the public WHOIS database… if it’s even accurate.
Finally, here’s a posting on Microsoft Answers regarding someone else’s experience with the same scammers. And then there’s this YouTube video from Symantec, when they actually had someone pose as an unsuspecting user who called the scammers for help with her computer.
As a final side note, I’m sure the names they used were fake… Kevin Smith is an American screenwriter, actor, film producer, and director, as well as a popular comic book writer, author, comedian/raconteur, and internet radio personality best recognized by viewers as Silent Bob–though the first and last name is very popular…in the US. “Donnie Adams” aka Don Adams was an American actor, comedian and director famous for his sitcom “Get Smart” in the late 60’s. –but, again, another popular first and last name in our country… But, then again, if they had identified themselves as “Apu”, “Amir” or “Ahmad”, I’m sure it would raise another red flag more quickly. I also think, just maybe, as I supposedly spoke to three different people at “PC Marv” who sounded very much alike, maybe I was talking to the same person all three times… I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but now I’m wondering… If I called them back and asked to speak to “Kevin Johnson” , who remoted to my PC today, would they put Kevin Johnson on the phone? Since this never happened, and Kevin Johnson is a name I made up, what are the odds that he magically works at PC Marv??
Flickr Backup
This morning I decided I wanted a create a few photo collages for my website’s header using all of the photos from a specific photo set I have in Flickr–“Swimming at Rosemary’s”. Since all of these photos were taken on all different dates and years, I didn’t have a single “local” copy of them all in one place, like they are on Flickr–all of my local photos are organized by date taken, and also include all of my “garbage” photos (bad takes, out of focus, etc.)–which are kept for use in photo mosaics when I need them (they make great fillers). So I set out to find a way to download an entire set of photos from Flickr. Flickr itself has a lot of options, but this isn’t one of them.
Most utilities of this sort that I found are apps–they’re for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. After some searching, I found what I was looking for: FlickrEdit for the PC. I downloaded it, and it’s not even an installer, just an exe that runs immediately. It’s very straightfoward and easy to use. It even connected directly to my Flickr account, only asking for Authorization from Flickr to access my account, which I was already logged into. Once I accepted, it started loading my thumbnails. It displays 50 photos per page, so you don’t have to wait for entire sets to load, if you have more than 50 photos in a set. You can simply select the photos you want to download, or select an entire set, then download it to a specific folder. It’s pretty quick too–it downloaded my entire “Swimming at Rosemary’s” set (302 photos) all at their original sizes, in about 20 minutes.
FlickrEdit is a really nice app, and it’s a relief to know I now have it available for those times when I need a complete set of photos from my Flickr account, and just knowing there’s a simple method available if I need some disaster recovery of all of my photos some day. I added a couple new photo collages to my website header, so you’ll probably see them up there once in awhile. For a few days though, while it’s still super-hot and dry around here, I’m going to leave it on one of them as a static header, just to chill.
PicPlz and Meebo are closing up shop. Who’s next?
It’s so sad to see some of my favorite apps going away. PicPlz – Android’s competitor to Instagram – is going away. I got the notice to download my photos last week. I only had a few dozen pics on it, so I’m now in the process of moving them to my Flickr account. This week it’s Meebo. Meebo was an IM service, but it was unique in that it also logged you into most other popular IM services and combined their features into a single app, so you only had to login to Meebo to connect to all of your messenger apps. Needing only one messenger login but having accounts on many of them was pretty sweet.
I think SMS is getting to so popular now, it’s starting to take over as the messenger of choice. Especially now that you can send pictures through it. Meebo and PicPlz had another major thing in common though: They both required some processing and storage, yet they were completely free services. Whether this factor had anything to do with their demise, I don’t know, but I think it’s an interesting coincidence.
Keep that in mind whenever you start relying heavily on a particular app or service… Do you pay for the service? If not, be warned. The service may not be around in the future, if they don’t have a continuous profitable channel of funding. As for Facebook, it’s not free. As they say, “If you’re not paying for a product, YOU are the product.” Facebook is selling you to its advertisers. Advertisers pay good money to make sure you see the specific ads that appear on the Facebook pages you visit. And when you start playing one of their games…JACKPOT! The advertiser and Facebook both make a bundle!
Don’t worry though, Facebook will probably be around for years. As long as their “products” continue to earn them a lot of money. But as soon as enough people get smart enough to “do their own thing”, get their own blog or find a better service to connect with their friends and family, then Facebook will have some tough decisions to make. It’s public now though, which means it’s owned by more that just one or a few people, so does that make it better or worse? Less likely to fold, or more likely? I don’t know. I just wish I could pay a few bucks a month for an ad-free, game-free version of Facebook. I’d sure feel more comfortable with that than I do with what they have now.
JimTrottier.com 