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In: Reviews
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As I stated in an earlier post, Google Reader is the best RSS Feed Reader on the Internet. However, it is not perfect. And the more I use it, the more potential for improvement I see. Here is my list of what I’d like to see changed with Google Reader: Lack of Different Default Views for Sites: Some websites (such as Digg.com) have hundreds of posts each day. For them, I’d like the default videw to be the List View, where it shows only the post title and the first 20 or so words from the entry. This is a much more space-efficient view andRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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I received a flyer in the mail yesterday from DirecTV. It was touting their newest MPEG-4 HD receivers or the 100 new HD channels they will be launching in the next couple of weeks. No, it was promoting features that will be available in a TiVo software update in early 2008! This is pretty surprising, first of all that they are releasing new features, and secondly that they once again care about TiVo customers, since they dropped TiVo as their DVR supplier many months ago. My best guess is that they know there are a lot of loyal TiVo users who are more loyal toRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 80 Comments

I received my new Lenovo Thinkpad T61 and I’ve had a couple of days to play around with it. In summary, it is one awesome piece of hardware; this is the best laptop I’ve used. Unfortunately, it’s not perfect. Windows Vista looks beautiful, but it’s pretty slow and unreliable as compared to XP. Also, battery life is shorter than I expected (due to the power hungry nVidia graphics card and maybe due to Vista power management.) Here are the pros and cons: Pros: Keyboard: This keyboard is incredible; it has a great feel to it and the large, white letters on the black keys makeRead 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: Tech
With: 109 Comments

In 2006, a RAID array linking together multiple 500GB drives was required to reach the 2TB (2,000 GB) limit and operating systems were just starting to implement solutions to break through this barrier.  Now, with single hard drives exceeding capacities of 4 TB (4,000 GB), the need to break this 2TB limit is extremely common, and your operating system may not be able to handle it. If you don’t plan ahead, your operating system will only be able to address the first 2 TB and all that extra storage beyond 2 TB will be unusable. Here is an overview of some of the methods youRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 92 Comments

Edit: MoScroll is a great, free, open source alternative: http://codescribes.blogspot.com/2007/02/moscroll.html I’ve recently found myself using nothing but point devices with no scroll wheel: my Mogo Bluetooth Wireless Mouse, my 3M Renaissance Ergonomic Mouse, my Dell Latitude laptop. One thing is missing: the ability to scroll. That is, until now. History: About 10 years ago, when Steve Jenkins was running Windows95.com shareware site (which become download.com), he would select the best software each year and give it a “WINner Award.” One of the software products that deservedly earned that designation was Pointix Scroll ++, a handy little app that sits in the Windows tray and allowsRead More →

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In: Tech
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I decided to post this for anyone shopping for a technology geek. Also, I figured it might be interesting to see what was on my 2006 list several years from now. I should be clear that don’t need one single thing on this list, but it would be kinda neat to have. Here is the ordered list, with “highest-desirability” items first. Garmin 010-00467-00 Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver with Heart Rate Monitor (Amazon link) $270 – I try to make myself go running 3 times a week. It would be great to know how far, how fast, and my current heart-rate, so I can better trackRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 102 Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve build a media server to store all of my music and movies for playback throughout my house. I decided to store everything the original, lossless format. This means that music is stored at full CD bit rate, and more significantly, movies are backed-up with all menus and extras in the original file format. Although I could save a bunch of space by compressing everything to a different format, I want to keep everything in the original format. The drawback is that this requires quite a bit of disk space, more than I originally anticipated. I justed addedRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 1 Comment

I’ve converted my Linksys WRT54GS router over to the newly released DD-WRT v2.3 firmware. I’m blown away. This is so much better than the Sveasoft firmware I was using. I can’t believe people are wasting money on Sveasoft. I’d complained in the past that Sveasoft was not releasing their source code even though it is based on GPL code. Who cares? Their firmware is now obsolete as far as I’m concerned. BrianSlayer has done some tremendous work with the DD-WRT project and I strongly recommend it to anyone looking to improve the capabilities of their Linux-based router.Read More →

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In: Automotive
With: 5 Comments

In preparation for an upcoming road trip, I purchased and installed at PhatNoise PhatBox in my 2004 Infiniti G35 Sedan. Initial impressions: holy crap, this thing is awesome! Why did I wait so long?!? Installation was extremely easy, just plug it into the satellite radio harness and it shows up as a CD changer, controlled directly from the factory head unit. To get it hooked-up and working in the car, total time was about 10 minutes (still need to screw it down though). I know iPods are extremely popular; here’s why I think the PhatNoise blows the iPod away. controlled by the factory head unitRead More →