Archive for the 'Tech' category
The Netflix Player by Roku – BOUGHT
May 20, 2008 7:54 pmAfter reading one press release today off of Techcrunch and checking out the Roku website, I was sold. What is this thing anyway? Well, if you happen to be a member of Netflix, you may be aware that they offer free streaming movies and TV shows to your PC. That is great if you want to watch TV at your computer. What this little device does is connect to your TV and internet connection (wired or wireless!) and stream that Netflix video to your Television.
The best part, in my opinion, is the price point. Really, can you go wrong for $99 one time charge and no other fees other than your usual Netflix montly fee? Plus, they are offering a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee in case you hate the thing. One could say that this is a response to AppleTV or an AppleTV Killer if you want to go crazy. Could that be true? That is yet to be proved.
So, I placed my order around 10am ET this morning and got my order confirmation 15 minutes later. Total charge to my credit card was $109.98. It was $99.99 plus $9.99 standard shipping. There is a 2 day shipping for $19.99.
What’s great about it?
- Small footprint, includes remote control
- Supports ethernet, wireless (802.11b/g, WPA, WPA2 and WEP)
- Integration with the Netflix website. According to their website, “Use the Netflix website to browse a growing library of over 10,000 instant movies and TV episodes. Add as many as you like to your Netflix Instant Queue, and add more whenever you want.”
- Autoupdates its firmware/software over the internet
What could be the downside?
- Doesnt support HD
- There is a limited library of streaming media from Netflix. They cite 10,000 movies and shows available. This is roughly 10% of their entire library and the streaming choices are mostly older movies and lack new releases. This is a problem but hopefully will get better as time goes on
- You need a fast connection. I hope that wireless will be fine as I don’t want to run cat-5 to the TV.
To learn more check out their website
http://www.roku.com/netflixplayer
For the Gizmodo review which includes plenty of screenshots and pictures
http://gizmodo.com/389698/first-netflix-streaming-box-review-100-and-unlimited-downloads
Whats next? Well, I guess I will sit around and wait for it to show up. Once I get my hands on it I will give a proper review. Stay tuned for more!
Review: CellarTracker
January 5, 2008 3:20 pm
If you happen to know me, you are aware that I really like wine. I’m no wine snob or oenophile, but I do happen to prefer wine as my drink of choice. I started getting into it a few years ago. I’d go to the store, pick up a few bottles and enjoy them with food and friends. As time has gone on, I’ve become a bit savvier. I’ve taken some tasting classes, read books, and visited Napa a couple of times.
While I dream of one day having my own wine cellar, I manage to get through now by keeping 12-18 bottles on hand in my Brooklyn apartment.
I was interested in starting to track my purchases, wines I liked/disliked and storing general information. I started putting together a spreadsheet and even tried tinkering with phpwims, which is a web application that I installed on my server, but it was lacking in features and function. Maybe there is an online app that could fit the bill?
I then queried the great Interwebnet for such an application. I stumbled upon a great online app called CellarTracker. So rather than storing this information on my computer, I could use this service to host it online and have my data available from anywhere.
So what is CellarTracker anyway you ask?
It is an online cellar management and tasting notes application developed by Eric LeVine.
CellarTracker is suited for collections of any size. So if you have 3 bottles or 38,409 (the largest cellar on the site!), it’s all good. It’s free to use, but if you have a large collection or wish to use some premium features you should make a $30 per year payment (which I have done to support the creator’s efforts)
As far as a list of features, here are the main ones (taken from their site):
Cellar Inventory Management
- Report and search by producer, vintage, varietal, drinkability, etc.
- Purchase price and valuation data (locale settable)
- Consumption history
- Barcode support
- Restaurant-quality printed wine lists
- Per-bottle location & bin tracking
- Personal tasting notes
- Uploadable label images
- Wish lists and shopping lists
- Track pending deliveries (a.k.a futures)
- Premium feature: Automatic valuation of your cellar (read more)
- Express import tools for existing spreadsheets (read more)
Tasting Notes
- Record your own notes
- Group a series of notes into tasting events
- Read community tasting notes
- See what others say about wine in your cellar
- Automated integration with Stephen Tanzer’s IWC (for co-subscribers)
- Store other professional reviews and scores (in compliance with copyright)
- Community bulletin board
The great thing about it is the community of other users. You can see other peoples tasting scores and notes, inventory, and even what others have paid for their wine (with paying subscription to the site). There are RSS feeds which allow you to stream your reviews or other data to your blog or anything that uses RSS. There is a mobile site so you can access from your smartphone while on the road.
The reports are really cool too. There are tons of reports and even the ability to create custom ones. I personally like the “Print a wine list” report. You click on it, select your options and presto! You get a restaurant styled wine list:
There are so many great features on this site that I could go on for days. I suggest, that if you enjoy wine and want to document your experiences, you should hop over and try it for yourself.
It’s located on the World Wide Web at: http://www.cellartracker.com
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