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In: Home Theater
With: 36 Comments

I just ran across an article on DigtalHome.ca [via Engadget HD] singing the praises of Plasma over LCD. Although I agree with most of the points, there are a couple with which I completely disagree. In fact, both of the posts seem to be overly-biased toward plasma, to the point that it is almost misinformation. Here are the points with which I disagree, which are probably major enough to push most people to pick LCD over Plasma. Screen Glare and Dealing with Ambient Light Taken from the article: LCD superior in brighter rooms – simply speaking plasma is glass with white phosphors behind it. TheRead More →

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In: Web
With: 8 Comments

As you know, my wife and I just welcomed a little girl into our family. Our families ares hounding us for photos on a daily basis so I set out on a quest to find the best way to share with them our digital photos. Here is what I found. RAW Image Support I have a Nikon D40 D-SLR and shoot all of my pictures in RAW (*.NEF) format. I do this because the RAW / NEF format offers much, much more flexibility; you can almost re-shoot the picture if you edit it with the Nikon NX software. Anyway, I was hoping to find aRead More →

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In: Reviews
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Today Sonos announced the release of version 2.3 of their software, which adds support for Sirius Internet Radio. I was fortunate enough to participate in an early evaluation and NDA ends today; here are my thoughts on the latest software update. This is a win-win situation for both companies; the Sonos system becomes more attractive to Sirius customers and vice versa. + Review of the new Sirius Feature First of all, I’d like to state that I’m not nor have I even been a subscriber to either XM or Sirius satellite radio. This is really my first long-term experience. I was never interested before becauseRead More →

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In: Web
With: 2 Comments

Despite being around for years, RSS and Atom web feeds have managed to stay below the mainstream radar; a quick poll of my tech-savvy friends proved this to be the case. This article explains what web feeds are, why you care, and how best to take advantage of them. What are web feeds? According to Wikipedia: A web feed is a data format used for serving users frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation. What’s the Benefit? The benefit to the userRead More →

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In: Home Theater

I’m passing along my good fortune. The good folks at Rocketfish sent me review sample and I’m giving it away to one lucky commenter. Don’t know what a Rocketfish Wireless Surround System is? Well, it’s a 2-part system that eliminates the need to run wires from your A/V receiver to your rear surround speakers. The system consists of the following: the Rocketfish transmitter – connects to the rear channel speaker outputs of your audio/video receiver the Rocketfish receiver / amplifier – powers your existing rear surround sound speakers For any contest to be interesting, there have to be some rules. Here’s the deal: You mustRead More →

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In: Wordpress
With: 0 Comments

My long-time friend Bryan recently described me as “a person who will spend a lot of money on some new electronic gadget and then take it apart before he even uses it.” He’s right; I can’t help myself. I want to make everything “better.” This has extended into the use WordPress Plugins on my site. I’m always looking to add something new and my plugin count has increased to nearly 40. But the list has grown large and I’ve started to debate the usefulness of several of them. I then receive an e-mail from a native Dutch speaker by the name of Ilse, who reverse-translatedRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 11 Comments

THX just announced a new specification for home theater: THX Loudless Plus. My initial thought was, “I bet this means yet another new THX equipment specification.” Well, yes, it does. The benchmark specification for all future receivers will now be THX Ultra2 Plus and THX Select2 Plus. But this is not a bad thing; this specification addresses a real need in home theater: consistent surround sound levels regardless of the listening volume.     Currently, the best way to reproduce a movie sound track is to calibrate your speakers to a certain reference volume level and make sure the volume knob is always at thisRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 15 Comments

A few weeks ago, I received a review sample of the RocketFish Universal Wireless Rear Speaker Kit. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with it; here are my thoughts. For those of you not familiar with the Rocketfish, it is a new brand that is exclusive BestBuy. The products range from cables to computer accessories to flash cards. The term “wireless rear speaker kit” is somewhat of a misnomer as it does not include rear speakers, but this is obvious at first glance of the packaging or description. The kit consists of two components: a small transmitter unit that is located at the sourceRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 85 Comments

I’m gleefully excited to have just completed my order for a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad T61 laptop. I’ve been a huge fan since my first Thinkpad 600 in 1999, followed by a T20 in 2001, and a T30 in 2003. They are extremely solid, well supported premium notebooks and are well worth the extra investment versus lesser hardware. Better yet, they were provided by work, so I didn’t have to buy one. Unfortunately, my employer switched to Dell and I’ve been stuck with the mandated Dell D620 for the past year. I’ve gotten used to it, but it’s no Thinkpad. I re-tasked my current desktopRead More →

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In: Wordpress
With: 0 Comments

I finally got around to updating my website to version 2.2.1. The feature I was most looking forward to built-in tagging. I was a previous user of Ultimate Tag Warrior, but I had to stop using it because it broke the WordPress search feature (posts with no tags were not included in search results.) To my surprise, I couldn’t find the tag feature or the Ultimate Tag Warrior importer. After a great deal of Google searching, I found that tagging was removed at the last minute from WordPress 2.2.x and will be delayed until 2.3. Additionally, I found that Christine Davis release a new (actuallyRead More →