Loving the USB HD Tuner

Yessiree folks, the Eye TV Hybrid arrived about a week ago, as did the little indoor Terk antenna I ordered.

I tend to behave like a child whenever I get new electronics; years of buying stuff hasn’t dulled that enthusiasm. I barely managed to open the boxes without ripping them apart, and within 10 minutes, I was watching the local HD channels. The only disappointing aspect is that after the fun of watching stuff in high definition dies away, one realizes it’s just the same programs, the ones you like, and the large number you don’t.

However, I think it’s going to be fun for quite a while. I’m amused at how much I like watching HD. I work in the broadcast industry… I’ve seen tons of HD over the years, hosted TV programs shot in HD. But I’m not jaded by it. Until this week, you couldn’t have paid me to watch ANY American network news. The past few days, I’ve been watching Brian Williams because Nightly News is now in HD. I’ve watched several PBS specials in HD, all of which I’ve seen before in standard definition.

I’m definitely watching more TV, for the first time since I got the Internet at home 12 years ago. Even the various DVR’s I’ve owned haven’t had this effect; with them, I’ve watched less TV. All of this new viewing is still mainly PBS, but even that’s saying something, since my viewing of PBS had dropped to new lows in recent years.

Maybe it was like this when people brought home their first color TV sets. I didn’t experience that. I vaguely remember when my parents got cable thirty years ago. So, unexpectedly, HD is my moment of wonder.

Google Desktop for Mac

Personal Search Nirvana achieved.

Apple and DRM

All the rumors were true – at least the ones about EMI dropping DRM. The stories are everywhere, but here’s a good piece from TechCrunch and here’s the WSJ (subscription required).

Cliff Notes version:
* The entire EMI digital catalog will be DRM free on iTunes
* Songs will sell for $1.29 apiece, $.30 more than the DRM versions
* DRM-free songs will be encoded at 256 kbps, compared to 128 kbps for DRM versions
* The price of entire albums will remain unchanged, even though they will be DRM free, and available in the higher quality

WSJ digs into the story a bit:

Privately, most labels rejected the idea out of hand, but EMI, the world’s third-largest music company by sales after Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, already was quietly exploring dropping DRM. EMI has struggled to overcome poor results and a laggard digital strategy, potentially contributing to its willingness to take a bold stance on DRM.

EMI temporarily shelved plans to drop DRM after various iTunes competitors declined to guarantee significant “risk insurance” payments designed to offset potential losses from the move. It is unclear whether Apple has guaranteed any such fee.

So… will you culling your iTunes collection to replace purchased EMI tracks with the new DRM-free versions? I might…

Happy Third, Gmail

Three years ago today, many people thought Google’s announcement of a new mail service was a hoax. It wasn’t.

I won’t celebrate my third year using Gmail until July, but the past 2 years, 9 months, has changed how I use and access my email. Yes, it’s still in beta and bad things happen occasionally, but along with Mail.app, it’s the best email service I’ve ever used. It was a game-changing innovation, in the best tradition of Google.

Gadget Mania: USB TV Tuner

I think it’s either because it’s spring and a man’s fancy turns to gadgets… or the same is true regardless of the season. I’m in need of something new to play with.

Enter the Elgato Eye TV Hybrid USB card, along with a new Terk HD indoor antenna.

Ever since they started making those little sticks with the TV inside, I’ve wanted to get one. I ordered said items yesterday and expect them in the next week. Since I have a 15 month old Powerbook that’s just sitting around most of the time, why not – the thinking goes – use it to watch and record analogue or digital television?

In a few days I’ll have to figure out a way to justify it to the boyfriend who is forced to tolerate my gadget mania. We watch very little television, and almost none of it is “over the air.” Yes, some of it does get transmitted from tall towers, but we see the version that gets fibered from the TV station to the cable company. I can plug analogue cable into the USB stick, but my primary reason for buying it is to watch HD and the SD multicast channels. We haven’t bought a new TV yet – that will happen sometime in the next couple months. So the Elgato will introduce me to… well, HD versions of shows we don’t watch plus scintillating SD options like… continuous local weather information. Oh, the joy.

My local PBS station offers some multicasting. There’s the nearly useless 24 hour PBS HD feed, which one can barely begin to care about. (Nothing against my local PBS station; I work there.) And there’s the Create channel, which finally gives me access to interesting food shows that my PBS station doesn’t offer: Lydia Bastianich, Jacques Pepin, and Charlie Trotter, among others. Eventually, there will be up to 4 multicast channels, including one that offers interesting lectures and events recorded around the state. I’m looking forward to that. Until then, at least I have the tools to feed my need for Jacques and Lydia.

I want to see what I might do with this little stick. Will I use it, and the software that comes with it, as a second TV/TiVo? Will I take it on trips to DC or elsewhere and watch TV in my hotel? (packing the required Terk antenna seems a bit much) Will the stick end up attached to a Mac Mini, feeding my new TV? The last option seems most likely.

I’ll say more about it in a week or two.

The Replacement Treo 700p…

… is working. When I push the on button, it turns on. It hasn’t locked up, requiring a reboot. I’m not missing calls anymore, whereas it used to lock up while in the standby position; I would assume it was working, wonder why I hadn’t received the expected call, try to turn the phone on, and discover it needed a reboot. Following the reboot, I’d find the voicemail from the missed call.

Reboots? No more. I was accustomed to up to nine of them a day, so the new reality is much preferred. Did I mention that I haven’t been able to sync my Treo successfully since December? Until now.

Do I think my Palm Treo is the best thing yet? No. Am I glad to finally get regular, daily use out of it? You bet!

A New Home for Montreal Notebook

it’s here.

Saturday Morning: Not Among the Snowbound

11am: Sunny 18 degrees

Chilly and windy, but a pleasant day, otherwise. It’s so odd to think that just to the west of the city, Interstate 80 is still closed because of snow. Interstate 35 north of the city is closed, too.

The latest.

It’s odd because we got off so lightly here – somewhere around 3 inches. An hour north, 10 inches. Drive an hour and a half to the northwest and west, 17 inches of snow. To call this blizzard a minor inconvenience to us is overstating it by a long shot, but just over the horizon, this feels like the storm of the decade.

After the Snow

:
It won’t upload properly to my Tumblog… so here it is: home, post-blizzard, at 11:10 am this morning. We got less snow than expected. Officially, the city got 5 inches, but it’s hard to judge because of the high winds. When you’re out and about, it looks more like we got an inch or two of new snow.

Apps I’m Waiting For

Scrybe
Virtual Ubiquity
Offline Gmail

Can You Hear Me…. Hello?

The past week in Boston has been great for all the reasons I’ve enumerated elsewhere, but one continuing annoyance has been the troubles I’ve experienced with cellular reception – both for the phone and for my broadband card.

FYI: I’m a Sprint customer, and perhaps I should do some research on user comments about Sprint reception downtown and Back Bay. (Probably won’t get to that soon.) I had trouble all week with dropped calls, and a broadband card that wouldn’t ramp up to EVDO. This is on the 33rd floor of a hotel, so I wasn’t exactly buried in the weeds, even though it felt like it. The conference floors had somewhat stronger reception but it was still fringe reception – dropping in and out of EVDO continually.

It makes me flinch because I spend $60 a month to access Sprint Wireless Broadband, and most of the time it’s fast, reliable, and it saves me lots of connection charges at places like airports, Starbucks, hotels, etc. I tried my cell card for a day in the Powerbook, then gave up and spent $10 a day to get Marriott’s ethernet connection. Kind of defeats the purpose to pay the equivalent of one month’s access to Sprint broadband to get 6 days of hotel internet, especially when the Sprint card is in my bag.

Well, that’s as close as I’ve come to a rant on a blog since 2001. I’ll go no closer.

But let me give a shout-out to the DLink personal wireless router I bought a couple years ago for $60 or thereabouts. No more dragging along a 25 foot ethernet cable so you can sit on your bed and surf the web. Even with cellular wireless and wireless in hotel rooms more common, I still get great value out of this.

You know I never think to take that kit with me to meetings and stuff… it would be an excellent wireless solution for everyone. hmmm…. now what should I charge for that?

CBC Google Maps Tuna: It ain’t pretty

via Amber Mac: CBC has used the Google Maps API in this interactive map showing high concentrations of mercury in canned tuna.