Looking back to yesteryears
Yet looking forward to tomorrow
By LL Cool C
When the pairing of Netflix instant queue and the the new Xbox 360 dashboard was announced, I was more then a little excited. I have never had the Netflix subscription service, though I did subscribe to the Blockbuster plan which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I knew what to expect. Since I already had an Xbox 360, all I needed was the Netflix account.
This morning I hopped on the 360 to see if the new dashboard, sometimes called the New Xbox Experience, or NXE, was available for me to download. When I booted up it asked if I wanted to do a system update, just like I wanted it to. I clicked yes and around 5 minutes later I was all set. I also because a statistic because I signed up for Netflix today, after the update. I’m sure this will be a closely watched metric for them.
There are many new enhancements with the NXE, but the feature I was most interested in is the new Netflix Instant Queue. The instant queue allows you to watch movies, TV shows, and documentaries instantly on your TV through your Xbox 360.
So far my experience with the Netflix instant queue has been great. While I was in the other room adding movies and TV shows through the Netflix website, my 4 year old was in the living room watching all of them pop up on screen and was excited each time one popped up for him. Adding them to your instant queue is super easy and quickly done. The selection is quite a bit smaller then the full Netflix library, but there are many quality movies and TV Shows available to watch instantly.
Tonight I fired up the ol’ Xbox 360 and was all set to watch Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. If you have not closed down the article after reading that last sentence thank you. After a short 10 to 15 second quality check on my connection I was greeted with a status bar that looked like it was loading up. After waiting the 10 seconds for it to buffer, it was Pee Wee time. And there I was, watching Pee Wee Herman in near DVD quality streaming from Netflix to my 360 and onto my TV. I thought to myself, this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship
By LL Cool C
The updated Google Mobile iPhone app with voice search is out now and is a great little tool for on the go searching. The best part is the voice search feature. I searched for a few things and it seemed to work out well for me. I’ll admit I was in a quiet place where noise was not a factor. I’m sure the results in a noisy place could be quite different.
For my first search, I said “I used to be cooler.” What it heard was “It is to be cooler.” Not exactly what I 
wanted, but still there are probably some cool results for that. The next time I spoke very clearly and pronounced every word as if someone was trying to read my lips. This time after the little robot voice bee bops while searching, it found exactly what it was supposed to. It heard me correctly this time.
For the next voice test I said Maegan Cook, which sounds a lot like Megan Cook, so when it heard me it recognized what I said as Megan Cook. The Maegan Cook I was searching for is known for all of her zany YouTube video’s so I thought that might help the results show Maegan instead of Megan. Instead I got Megan Cook who as of right now is not a YouTube star. Megan is the way most people spell that name, so I was not surprized. I searched Maegan Cook one more time emphasizing the May sound but it still found Megan Cook.
Just for funzys I searched “Ahhhh Yeahhhhh.” In the rap scene this phrase is usually followed by “boyyyyyy.” I decided not to say the last part and keep it the elongated two words. Try as it may, it errored out, told me “Didn’t get that.”, and was not able to find this urban dictionary words in the search. I was not disappointed, though Google just lost a little street cred with me.
Over all I am pleased with the voice search feature and think this will come in handy for on-the-go searching when my hands are tied up with other things or driving. It is worth the free download.
By LL Cool C
A friend at work has been raving about a program called SugarSync, the online storage and sharing program for all of your computers. SugarSync allows you to back up your home, work and laptop computer all through their manager. This is a nice feature to have all of your files protected in the “cloud.” Sugarsync takes this technology a step further by syncing all of the computers and on top of that being able to access your files from any of your computers through an SSL protected website.
Just those features would make it a great program to use, but it doesn’t stop there. They turned the awesome up to 11 by offering mobile access as well as a free iPhone app. You can download files from your computers to you iPhone through the nice little app. Another great feature is being able to open the files on your iPhone.
Let’s take a step back here and go over all that again in one sentence. You can backup and sync files between all of your computers and be able to access them on you iPhone. This sounds like one of the most convinenent things around and it is. I have not currently been at a place where I say, “You know. I sure wish I had that recipe off of my computer.” The bad part is that I don’t have any recipes on my computer so that would be useless, but the good thing is that if did I would be saved.
I’m still in the early stages of using it, but I really like the SugarSync manager and the iPhone app is great. The newest feature where you can stream your music from your SugarSync back up to any other computer or iPhone. I want to dive deeper into this feature. I will have more feedback and update this post when I have spent more time with it.
By LL Cool C
Two websites with similar goals have just been released to the public. The sites http://www.ivoteddemocrat.com and http://www.ivotedrepublican.com are their to sell you t-shirts when your words just don’t say what you need them to. The great part about the sites is they are not tied to a particular candidate and/or year. In talking with the creator of the site he said, “The great thing is that if either party slips up or does something good, we will be their with a t-shirt for it.”
I Voted Republican
I Voted Democrat
By LL Cool C
Today at 5pm CST the Oklahoma City will have the name of their new team officially announced. Too bad I just announced it early. In this picture from the NBA Store shows what the new logo will look like. Like me you are probably saying “Surely this is for the non-existent WNBA team or is there to throw people off of the real logo design.”
Because of the few slip ups that have happened on the NBA.com website and pictures that have been 
circulating it looks like Thunder is the name and this is the logo that will be used. It is all the rage to have a new logo to sell more merchandise, so hopefully this one will only be around for a few years and then they can get another one done. I hope the drafts of other logos that were discarded because of this one are never released because I will probably like those a lot more.
I am hopefull that the jerseys will make up for the bad logo. I really want to like this logo. I just can’t. Anyone else have these same feelings?
By lostinchina
Posted at Global Notions
The unthinkable happened yesterday at the National Stadium and hundreds of millions of Chinese fans across the country were finally brought back to reality during what has been an Olympics marked by national celebration. Not only has China clearly dominated the individual sports (minus swimming) which has provided them an insurmountable lead in the gold medal race, but the Games themselves have been an overwhelming success to both their national and international audiences. Air quality is great, volunteers are perfect, no spitting, no pushing, taxis are clean, food is splendid, venues are spectacular, no protests, greatest Olympics ever, the last iconic Olympics; all comments one can read in the news or hear in the streets around Beijing and throughout the world. Yet, in the midst of all the good, China’s sport’s god will not be performing miracles this Olympics.
Liu Xiang had the weight of a nation on his shoulders leading up to the Beijing Olympics. I posted this advertisement that has been running in China all summer as a reminder of the heights one can rise to (or be thrust to) in the rapidly modernizing, individualizing China. At the end, the viewer sees a Chinese athlete being lifted by the nation to the top pedestal of a medal stand. The athlete remains faceless, yet there should be no doubt. He is Liu Xiang, China’s famous hurdler, a national hero. If you watch the advertisement again, you might notice that the first three athletes all play in team sports (basketball, soccer and volleyball) and that the nation is helping them only to perform various skills required by their sport. However, the country is lifting Liu Xiang, an individual, to the gold medal pedestal. This is a powerful image in a country where rapid social change is the norm.
During an interview after Liu Xiang failed to run his preliminary race, a journalist asked why the public had not been warned about the chances of Liu Xiang not being able to compete. His coach replied that they never had doubts. While I find this hard to believe, it is indicative of a society that is beginning to accept individual success as THE true measure of success. Liu Xiang had been hurt most of the running season with a hamstring injury and it’s highly unlikely his Achilles problem suddenly appeared the day of his race. Yet the general population was allowed to continue to place the hopes and dreams of a nation on an individual athlete, despite reality. When his body failed, and thus him in relation to the Olympics, it is not surprising that one would see a national outpouring of sorrow and disappointment.
By LL Cool C
Not since Michael Vick’s dog Boom-Boom won back-to-back Atlanta dog fighting championships has one man or beast lived up to the hype of Michael Phelps. Winning eight Olympic gold medals is impressive, but to do it in one Olympics is simply amazing. Jason Zimdars, a local celebrity, said “Wow that is neat, did you hear Brett Favre got traded?” when asked about the feat.
Phelps had everyone watching the Olympics this year. They wanted to know if he could do it. Stephen Vandervort said, “I Brightkited right when he won so that I can look back in the future and remember where I was at that moment. See, here is a picture of the T.V. I was watching.”
During an interview after the race Phelps was asked his 
favorite memory and he was speechless. He said that the Olympics as a whole is what he would remember. Justin Boeckman said that he already had a Phelps website made that has in his own words, “Michael Phelps hidden in white text at the bottom of the page written 46 times so that I can get it ranked really high!”
It could be shear talent or talent and technology combined that has helped all of these world records to be broken by Phelps and company. The new Speedo Racer suits seem to be helping everyone. “Those suits are simple, black and real clean,” stated Dustin Evans, “I was yelling Git-R-Done at Phelps the whole time.”
This may be a feat we never see again in our lifetime. I am glad Michael Phelps lived up to the hype and won 8 Olympic gold medals in one Olympic games. Congrats, and thanks for making this a fun Olympics to watch.
By LL Cool C
A fan of Brett Favre just created a website to help show the Green Bay Packers it was a mistake to trade away Brett Favre. The site says, “Let’s show Packers management that they made a mistake, trading away the best player in franchise history.”
The premise behind the site is to get people to buy a New York Jets Brett Favre jersey and wear it to the games. There will still be green all around in the stadium, but it will be the wrong green.
As the http://www.favrefanprotest.com website says, “Together we can change the green in Green Bay!”
By LL Cool C
Many of you have heard of Shazam, the little iPhone app that will tell you the song that is playing on the radio after listening to it for ten to fifteen seconds, but little has been said about Midomi. It offers more features the Shazam, but is it really the choice for you when you need a song guessed?
Midomi has added features such as saying an artist’s name or saying the name of a song, but the feature they really want to set it apart is the ability to sing or hum a song and let it find it for you. They suggest singing or humming ten seconds or more for the best results. I decided to do a little testing of this. I sang Lodi Dodi by Slick Rick, and later covered by Snoop Dogg, for a good 24 seconds . As you can see in the image below not one of my results have anything to do with Lodi Dodi.
The next feature I tested was Midomi’s search based on a saying a song title. I had a little more success with this. I simply said Lodi Dodi and it searched around for it. You can see it found a live version of Lodi Dodi by Slick Rick, but it is misspelled, the second and third results are not correct, and there is no Snoop Dogg version in sight. I could however listen to the song right here from the results. I am impressed by that feature.
I decided to give Midomi a shot to go directly head to head with Shazam when listening to music playing from iTunes. I played the first 20 seconds of the Lodi Dodi by Snoop Dogg. I was surprised that it brought back no results.
I decided to test this same clip of the song using Shazam. It has one simple feature and it does it well. It listens to the music and then tells you what it is, simple as that. I played the first 10 seconds of Lodi Dodi and Shazam, pun intended, it found it.
Midomi has a future, possibly a very bright future. The best part about it is that if it does find the song you are looking for you can play it right there from the application. With a little more time and updates I think Midomi will become a better app and could surpass Shazam in popularity simply because it offers more. For now Shazam is still the program to get to guess your music from the radio or TV.
By LL Cool C
Now I have not tried this out yet, but there is a new app out for the iPhone that allows you to update you Wordpress blog from your iPhone.
Here is what it is described as:
“Robust but simple to use, the WordPress for iPhone Open Source application allows you to create and edit content on your WordPress blog(s) with support for offline use.”
I am really interested to test this out as I was a little jealous of the Typepad folks who had an app. Has anyone tried it out yet?
http://iphone.wordpress.org
