ADW.Launcher

I was looking at trying an alternate launcher for my phone.  At first, I took at a look at Launcher Pro, but it requires more permissions than I am comfortable granting for an application launcher.  For example, it requests permission for read and write access to my email.  I am sure that this is required for a Gmail widget, but since I wouldn’t use this widget, and Launcher Pro also has network access, there is a potential for my data to leave the phone.

Instead, it looks like ADW.Launcher does everything that I want in a launcher, without requesting too many permissions.  It also has some interesting features:

  • Support for themes
  • Customizable dock bar and application drawer
  • Support for different sizes for widgets
The main thing I like about it is that it doesn’ t request too many permissions, so there is less of a security concern.
Leave a Comment

May 8, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , , Phone

GameFly

There are many video games that I am really interested in the single player campaign, and I that I only play once.  Often, I end up paying $60 for the game, and selling it back to GameStop after playing it for a month.  Since GameStop doesn’t pay that much when buying used games, playing the game for a month often costs about $40.

Since there are only a few games that I play for a long time, I figured I would try GameFly.  GameFly is essentially a Netflix for video games.  You add video games to your queue, and they send you the games as they become available.  When you are done with the games, you can just put them back in the envelope and drop it back in the mail, and the next available game on your queue will be sent.

With the demand for more recent games, it is hard to get the newest games through GameFly.  But if you want a game that came out in the past 6 months, it shouldn’t be a problem to get it.

If you are interested in trying it, GameFly has an offer, where you can get a month free.

Leave a Comment

April 7, 2011 1 Comment Short URL , , Gaming

Extending Xbox LIVE Family Membership

A while ago, I transitioned to an Xbox Live Family Gold Pack. This allows us to manage our son’s Xbox Live account from a single dashboard, and add Microsoft Points to the Xbox live account that we use on the Xbox in the bedroom.

Amazon had some pretty good deals on Xbox LIVE 12 month membership cards, so I purchased one of these.  But,I was not able to redeem the code.  I expected that I would be able to apply the 12 month Xbox Live membership to extend my family membership, in my case by 3 months, since I have 4 people in the family membership. But I kept getting errors trying to redeem the code.

When I created the family subscription, I was able to add several Xbox Live Gold accounts, and for each Gold account, the subscription length of the family membership was extended by each.  So I figured that I would do the following:

  1. Remove one of the Xbox Live accounts from the family subscription
  2. Redeem the code on that Xbox Live account
  3. Re-add the Xbox Live account to the family account

Unfortunately, this didn’t work.  I was able to complete the first two steps, but when I try to re-add the account, I get an error.  It looks like the account is added to the family, but not that account is not part of the subscription.  So I won’t be able to share Microsoft Points with that that account.

I am hoping that Microsoft starts to sell Xbox Live Gold Family cards (and Amazon sells them for a discount).

Update 5/14/2011: It looks like Microsoft fixed a bug that was preventing this from working. Today I was able to add the account to the Family Subscription, and that extended the subscription by 6 months.

Leave a Comment

March 24, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , Gaming

Is Marty McFly really better than Biff

I shouldn’t have spent as much time on this as I did, but since I did I am posting it.

This weekend we watched Back to the Future I & II with our son.  While watching the second movie something started to bother me.  The main plot of the movie is that Marty had to go back in time to “fix” things, as when Marty returned to 1985, Biff had become a powerful man in the town because his future self, gave him a sports almanac, to allow him to make money by betting on sports.

Why does Marty feel that he needs to “fix” things, when he is arguably his is just as “guilty” as Biff.  At the end of the first movie, his actions changed the time line in 1985.  Biff was not George McFly’s supervisor, and George McFly was an author in the changed 1985

 

Leave a Comment

March 23, 2011 0 Comments Short URL General

Parental Controls in Windows 7 Media Center

Our kids are getting old enough to be able to use our Media Center, so I have enabled parental controls to prevent them from seeing content that is inappropriate for them.  When we had used a TiVo DVR, we had used the parental control and were pretty pleased.  The Windows Media Center implementation of parental controls has several peculiarities:

  • With parental controls enabled, every time you start playing content, that has a rating higher than the specified threshold, you will get prompted for the PIN.  This happens even if you press stop, and then play on the same show.  (I like TiVo’s implementation, where once you enter the PIN, parental controls will be disabled for a time, or until the DVR is turned off.)
  • While in the PIN entry screen, content is playing in the background.  So if you take a while to enter the PIN, you will have to rewind to not miss any of the content.
  • The parental controls setting is not applied to playing Netflix streaming content, even though Windows Media Center has had support for Netflix content for a while.  So it is possible that inappropriate content could be view through Windows Media Center’s Netflix interface.  (One interesting thing is that the Xbox 360′s Netflix streaming implementation respects the Xbox’s parental controls setting.)
Leave a Comment

March 8, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , , , Computer

Roku XD|S

I have been interested in streaming content for a while. I have installed PlayOn and the tubeCore Windows Media Center plugin to view TV content. This is not an ideal experience.

With tubeCore, the user interface to browse the list of shows and episodes is pretty simple. For example, the meta data about the episodes is not shown. Also, I was never able to get reliable streaming though PlayOn and tubeCore.  Often, I would need to try to play a stream twice in order for it to play successfully.

The Roku XD|S looked like it would be a perfect way to watch content that is available on-line.  With the Roku, you have easy access to Netflix streaming, Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu and other content.  I like the hardware, as it is very quiet, and is small enough for me to use on any of our TVs.

The setup was pretty painless, and I was up and running with several of the content providers within 30 minutes of starting the setup process.  Where the content partners provided HD content, the picture quality was good.

(more…)

Leave a Comment

February 12, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , , , , , , Computer, Electronics

Glympse

A while ago, I wrote about On My Way.  This application allowed you to share your location, and that person could see this location updated in real-time.  That application is not available anymore.

Glympse is a new free application that allows you to do the same thing, but it has some interesting features:

  • Ability to set a time limit, where sharing of your location is automatically stopped.
  • Ability to mark recipients as “favorites”, to make it easier to initiate sharing
  • Ability to set a destination, where sharing will automatically be stopped when you reach that location.

 

Leave a Comment

February 8, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , , Computer, Phone

Multiple Chrome profiles on Mac OS X

Sometimes I want to use two different Google Chrome instances, with different sets of Chrome extensions.

This page has instructions for setting this up on Mac OS X

Leave a Comment

February 8, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , Computer

Rumor: Microsoft TV

There are rumors that Microsoft will introduce a video streamer box at CES this year:

I think that this could be a pretty good product that I would like. I think that this could be something that would help simplify my setup.

Announcement hopes:

Here is what I hope the announcement will be:

  • The box will be about the size of a Roku or Apple TV
  • It would run a version of Windows that has been stripped to only allow Windows Media Center to run.
    • Windows Media Center already supports Netflix streaming
    • Windows Media Center plugins would still be allowed to run
    • This would help prevent software conflicts
    • The box would automatically update itself from Microsoft’s servers
  • These devices would also be Media Center Extenders
    • This would allow you to buy a few of them for a house, and be able to watch the same content in all rooms.
  • There would be two SKUs.  One with a hard drive for content, and one that would only stream content from other sources.
    • The SKU with the hard drive would allow the user to store content, and playback from the local hard drive.
  • These would also support Zune Marketplace to get access to video and audio content (as the Xbox 360 does).
  • These devices would also be UPnP AV client.
  • These would support USB or UPnP TV tuners, to allow viewing or recording (for the SKU that has the hard drive) of TV content.

Since Microsoft already has the Xbox, this device would need to be cheaper than the existing versions of the Xbox.  I would think that the version without the hard drive would be $100, and the version with the hard drive would be $200.

Pie-in-the-sky hopes: (more…)

Leave a Comment

January 4, 2011 1 Comment Short URL , , , , , , , , Computer, Gadgets, Games

Jumpscan

Jumpscan is a service that lets you share your contact information with others.  With Jumpscan, you enter your contact information, and some of the usernames for various social networks, and they create an online profile for you.  Then they will generate a QR code for this profile page.

I don’t understand the usefulness of this service. If my purpose was to create a QR code to share my contact information, I would just create QR code that has my information in vcard format.  This would allow the QR code to be useful, even when there is no data connection. Or, if I wanted to include a url, I would just encode that in the QR code.  If I wanted to share my social network information, I could include a link to my about.me page.

Here is the QR code generated by Jumpscan, which only links to my profile page on Jumpscan.

Here is a QR code with the same information encoded within it:

[via Lifehacker]

Leave a Comment

January 3, 2011 0 Comments Short URL , , , Computer

Newer Entries
Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 352 other followers