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Tech Blog – Site Update, “speed it up!” :)

Hi, this is just a quick note to my readers and many of you who have left comments or sent me messages about my tech blog being slow. First of all thanks for the heads-up. I've been working with my hosting partner (Network Solutions) on these issues for the past week and I think progress has been made. There was a combination of two-three things going on which caused the site to run slower than normal over the past few weeks. The first two being my fault. This is a WordPress blog and with WordPress you can have plug-ins that add enhancements to your site. My problem was that I was running too many plug-ins. The more plug-ins you have the more RAM it takes and I was bumping into the RAM limit imposed by my ISP. This is why you'd sometimes get the weird database connection issues. The second problem was having too much content on the blog coming from other sources (like the RSS feeds on my main page from my other sites). The way my WordPress page is currently setup each external piece of content/feed had to be loaded first before you'd see anything. This could cause the page to take 30 seconds to load (sometimes longer). So I've eliminated a lot of the external feeds until I have some time to have the PHP code looked at. Lastly there was a server outage at Network Solutions day before yesterday that caused my page to fail intermittently. That server has been fixed. 

In my recent testing the page is loading in 10 seconds or less (it's a big page) on my hotel connection. So you should see a huge improvement starting  now. I've also installed a new caching plug-in that should help as well. Thanks for your patience!

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The Best Technology Doesn’t Always Win

 

 

If you've followed my blog then you know that I'm a BIG FAN of TiVo HD! I just LOVE the TiVo interface and I have a few of them in my home (ok more than a few). However, I got an email from a few buddies asking if I was going to upgrade to the NEW TiVo Premiere unit. Quite frankly I said "no". I had heard about the New TiVo Premiere and I had read some of the info, but there wasn't anything that jumped out at me as a must have. Now don't get me wrong. If I was in need of another unit for another room or if one suddenly died I'd be getting a Premiere in a heart beat. However, I didn't see anything that would justify the hassle of selling my old one, figuring out a way to transfer/keep the lifetime service and dealing with Comcast to come out and install the new one. 

 

TiVo posted a $10.2 million quarterly loss

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iPad Pre-orders to begin this Friday

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In case you hadn't heard, Apple will begin taking pre-orders for both WiFi and WiFi+3G versions of the iPad this Friday, March 12th presumably via the Apple Store Online. The WiFi model is supposed to ship on April 3rd (or you can reserve one for pickup). No word yet on the actual date that the WiFi+3G model will ship, Apple says in "late April."

 

Speaking of the WiFi+3G Model

I know that many of you hate AT&T with a passion. I have no passion one way or the other for them. However, in all fairness it looks like their claims of having the fastest (no one said most reliable or best coverage in your area) 3G network has some truth to it. PC World's results are in and in fact AT&T comes out ahead in their results.

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Airlines starting to move into the 21st century

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I hear rumors that Airlines have started to have Wi-Fi on their flights. While I have yet to prove this, it's an interesting concept. Of course I'm joking about it being a rumor and yes airlines are working quickly (not quickly enough) to offer inflight Wi-Fi. I fly Delta (formally NWA) probably 99% of the time.Although Delta as a company has been offering Wi-Fi on several flights for months, I have yet to fly one of those flights. This is mostly due to the fact that although Delta has acquired NWA, the planes themselves are still the old NWA planes and will likely be the last ones in the fleet to be upgraded. 

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Review: V-moda Remix Remote headphones

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Although I've been a huge fan of the V-Moda Vibe Duo headphones, I actually kinda went back to using the headphones that came with my iPhone 3GS. It certainly wasn't because of sound quality or comfort, it was solely because of the integrated remote. The iPhone 3GS and the latest iPod touch models allow for volume controls on the remote and the Vibe Duo was lacking this function. That all changed last week when I got my hands on the NEW V-moda Remix Remote Headphones. This redesigned headset has an integrated Mic for handsfree phone calls, play, pause and skip controls for your iPod and YES volume up and down controls. 

 

Wow!

I put them on just for a quick test to make sure the controls worked, and I had forgotten how comfortable these were in my ears. I ended up listening to music for the next hour. I just didn't want to take them off because they felt and sounded so good. Speaking of comfort and fit, I don't think I've ever purchased a set of headphones with this many options for different sized ears. Although I will say that I liked the original carrying case better than this new cloth one:

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They even include "sport clips" for joggers and working out so that they don't fall out easily. I'm very happy with the New V-moda Remix Remote Headphones and as much as I love the Bose Quiet Comfort 2 Noise Canceling Headphones, this V-modas fit in my pocket and are with me on my current trip instead of the Bose.

The V-moda Remix Remote Headphones retail for $99.

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Guest Blog Spot: Benefits of Home Automation

 

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by Richard Moyle
 
Making your home into a smart home can mean a lot of things depending on how far you decide to take it. Some just implement home automation for their lighting; others may utilize it for security. Still others may automate their home entertainment systems or their heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. But, regardless of what you decide to automate in your house, there are definitely some big advantages.
 
Convenience is probably the most obvious advantage of automating your home. Having your home automatically perform routine functions saves you time and effort. Just push one button and you can shut off all of your lights, set the thermostat to economy mode and arm your security system for the night. You can automate your home theater system and push one button to have the lights dim, curtains close, TV and DVD player turn on, phone mute and popcorn popper start making a snack for you to enjoy during the movie.
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Finally! A decent Stereo Mic for my Kodak Zi8 HD camera

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I went in search of something that I thought would be pretty easy to find and that I would have a ton of options to choose from. Boy was I wrong! All I wanted was a simple wired stereo lavalier style microphone to use when traveling with my Kodak Zi8. I wasn't looking for anything super expensive since the camera itself was less than $200. Should be easy right?

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The first Mic I tried was the Audio Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Micrphone and while the sound quality was OK, I hated two things about it. First and most important is that is wasn't stereo.  So I was only getting sound on one channel and while I could fix that in post using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 it would mean doing it every time I used it. The second thing was just bad design of the battery compartment. There is an On/Off switch, but no LED light to tell you if it's on or not or the status of the battery. So you could start a recording and have the battery die half way into it and never know until it was over. 

 

The Sony ECM-CS10 Stereo Microphone

This is the Mic I was looking for. It's a stereo wired lavalier mic that doesn't require a battery, sounds good and just works! I plugged it into my Zi8 and did a quick test. I brought the video clip into Premiere Pro and low and behold I had stereo audio. That's all I wanted from a travel Mic. 

The only thing I would ask for now is slightly longer cord. It's a minor thing, but it would be nice to have to interviews where I want to have the subject a little further away from the camera. So if you're looking for an inexpensive stereo mic that just works without any fuss, this is it! It's "plug-in power" based and therefore it may not work with everything. The cord length (which I dare you to find listed anywhere on Sony's site) is approx. 1 m (39 7/8 in.)

Get it here for about $31 (list price $50)

 

Quick samples here from that first recording. Nothing special just wearing the mic on my t-shirt and speaking at a normal tone:

MP3 sample here. AAC sample here.

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My iPhone 3GS has become my Travel GPS

When I travel I sometimes have to rent a car. Although in the past I had been simply adding on the Hertz Neverlost option (or as my buddy Scott refers to it as Everlost), I stopped doing that once the portable GPS units became good enough. My first one was the Garmin Nuvi 350, then the 360, then the 400 series and finally a Nuvi 765t that I love. I also briefly used the Navigon 2100. They are all great units and I really didn't have any complaints with them. The 765t has performed perfectly for me and never misses a beat/turn. Nonetheless, I was still very intrigued when Apple announced the iPhone 3.0 OS update and that it would allow 3rd party apps to have turn-by-turn navigation abilities. The first one that I tried was Navigon. It certainly had promise, but the 1.0 version was missing key features such as text-to-speech. TomTom also came out with their app and it was also missing many of the same key features in its 1.0 version. This kept me from wanting to go solo with just an iPhone GPS app. Well a lot has changed since then!

 

The iPhone 3G/3GS and even iPod touch GPS Navigation Apps are ready for prime time

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