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

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.

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.

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