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In: Reviews
With: 38 Comments

About 6 months ago, I started my search for a wireless network camera that would allow us to watch our little girl while she slept (or didn’t sleep) in her crib.  My list of requirements were pretty simple: I wanted it to work in complete darkness and I wanted it to work with the Firefox web browser. My search turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated, as pretty much every camera from every major vendor (such as Linksys) was Windows Internet Explorer-only and most of them didn’t have Infra-Red lights for night-mode usage. Additionally, many camera models had very negative reviews due toRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 5 Comments

I’m astounded that Microsoft has not figured out that people take photographs with their camera rotated 90 degrees. Not every photograph is in landscape mode. However, Windows Vista thinks that they are. All modern cameras contain a sensor that detects whether a photo is taken in portrait or landscape mode and the picture is tagged accordingly. Most software auto-rotates the photo accordingly. But not Windows Vista and not Windows Movie Maker. You have to manually edit/rotate the photo yourself. It’s time for Microsoft to become more customer-focused and start including these features in Windows.Read More →

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In: Reviews

I’ve read many glowing summaries of the new iPhone 3G. And I agree with all of them. I can’t wait to get one myself on July 11. However, despite Steve Jobs claiming that Apple listened to customers to incorporate everything missing from the first generation iPhone, there are still a few misses. Here’s my list of what I wish would have also been included in the Apple iPhone 3G. MMS – It’s still not possible to send pictures to other cell phones. Sure, you can e-mail pictures, but the iPhone is a cell phone and should include the ability to send picture messages to otherRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I’m very annoyed by the fact that I spend $30+ to purchase a Blu-ray movie and yet still forced to watched advertisements, trailers, and FBI warnings. Several years ago, SlySoft released a version of AnyDVD that allowed users to overcome these User Prohibited Actions for regular DVDs. Today they announced version 6.4.3.2 of AnyDVD HD that gives users the same features for Blu-ray. AnyDVD is a program that runs in the background on your Windows computer. When a DVD or Blu-ray disc is inserted, it dynamically re-authors the content of the disk so that when you use your favorite DVD or Blu-Ray software player, allRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 33 Comments

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Solution) is a great way to store (and optionally share) large amounts of data. It’s cheap, fast, and reliable. If you’re a casual user, you may not know that you do much more than just store and sever data of HTTP, as long as you use an advanced application such as Bucket Explorer (or read through the S3 documentation and code it yourself.) Here’s a list of 9 features you may not have known about. Torrent Tracking and Seeding: Amazon S3 can server as an ultra-reliable torrent tracker; share/seed the files from your local PC and let S3 act as theRead More →

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In: Home Theater, MBA China Trip
With: 20 Comments

Windows Media Center can automatically download the metadata (cover art, movie name, cast, plot summary, etc.) for DVDs. If you place a DVD in your drive, this occurs automatically. However, if you backup your DVDs to a server and access the moive via Windows Media Center, this data is not available. But there is a work-around and it involves creating a DVDID.XML file when you back-up the DVD to your media server. Here’s how you do it. The easiest way to do this is to use My DVD Settings, a program created by Gelano over at TheGreenButton forums. Unfortunately, Gelano and his program have bothRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 3 Comments

I’m used to companies offering less than stellar customer care in this age of low-cost, low-margin business. So when a company goes above and beyond to take care of their customers, it gets my attention. Most early-adopters suspected that the High Definition Disc Format war would end and either HD-DVD or Blu-ray would one day become obsolete. Which is why I’m surprised that Busy Buy and Circuit City are both compensating customers who chose the now obsolete HD-DVD format. Best Buy will be giving a $50 giftcard to anyone who purchased a HD-DVD Player prior to February 23, 2008 (just go to BestBuyTradein.com and register.)Read More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I firmly believe in paying for the movies you own. By doing so, I believe you should be able to move them to your media server and play them back however you please. BD+ protection (DRM) prevented this with recent Blu-Ray titles, but latest version of Slysoft’s AnyDVD HD overcomes this limitation. Here is the update notification: 6.4.0.0 2008-03-19 New (Blu-ray): Removes the BD+ protection from Blu-ray discs! (for increased compatibility with titles released by Twentieth Century Fox 🙂 ) New (Blu-ray): Added option to enable / disable BD+ removal New (DVD): AnyDVD ripper no longer uses the Windows filesystem, it has now its ownRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 1 Comment

Update 8-Apr-2008: Chris Lanier just posted about the program MC Menu Customizer, which automates editing of the start menu. A great alternative to what is posted below! I recently posted about automatically launching plugins within Vista Media Center. I just came across another improvement that allows editing the order and contents of the Vista Media Center start menu. This, combined with automatic plug-in launching, goes a long way toward giving whatever startup experience you desire. Quoting bluebucket on The Green Button forums: I’ve found a way to edit the standard start menu items in Vista Media Center, but its a hack. Using this hack I’veRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 0 Comments

For me, Brian Binnerup’s My Movies plugin is the most important function of Vista Media Center. It’s so useful that I want it to be the default start page every time I turn-on my Vista Media Center PC. I couldn’t figure out how to do that, and this I came across this post on TheGreenButton forums. Here are the details on launching a Media Center plug-in from via the startup folder or from a key on your remote control. Associate Media Center Plug ins with the Media Center Application: Open My Computer or Explorer and navigate to: C:Program FilesMCEMy Movies Right click on the fileRead More →