| Uses for a Smart Watch |
[Apr. 17th, 2012|08:14 am] |
Lately smart watches have become a thing. These are watches you wear on your wrist that can do so much more than tell the time. Certainly they have more built-in processing than other watches, but what really separates them out is that they connect to other services, usually through your cell phone. This has gotten me excited because ever since I was a little kid I was always accidentally looking at my wrist for information that wouldn't be there, but now it could. I think I've always worn a watch, and I've gone through a lot. I've had calculator watches, diving watches, and I even have one right now with a GPS in it that I use for running. They say that watch usage is fading because now everyone carries a cell-phone that can tell the time. I can't imagine having to take my phone out of my pocket just to check the time, and I hope soon I won't have to take my phone out of my pocket to check a number of other things. It's really only a matter of time until I get a smart watch. The only thing really holding me back is deciding just which one to get.
( Read more... ) |
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| Music Streaming Service Comparison/Migration Tool |
[Nov. 13th, 2011|02:56 pm] |
I've been a Rhapsody subscriber since 2003. Although it was one of the earliest music streaming services, it never really got a lot of attention. Lately, though, a bunch of new services like Rdio and Spotify have been getting a lot of attention and new subscribers.
One advantage of on-demand music streaming services like Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG, Spotify, etc is that monthly subscriptions means there's no investment to lose if you decide later to switch to another service. However, one thing you do have stored with the service that you'd have to give up if you left is your personal library of tracks, playlists, and ratings. Since all the services store similar information, why doesn't there yet exist a tool to allow you to copy your library and playlists from one services to another, not by actually copying any music but by automatically setting up identical playlists from the new service's catalog.
Along with this functionality comes another incredibly useful feature. When deciding between music streaming services one of the prime points of comparison is the size and makeup of the catalogs. Comparing these things in general is tricky with reviews saying things like "service A has the biggest collection, while service B's somewhat smaller collection is still pretty large but with certain glaring holes." Without them specifying what these holes are, I have no idea if they would be a deal-breaker for me or not. However, as an existing subscriber of one of the competitors, there is a very straightforward way of showing me whether the catalog gaps would be significant to me. Any tool that could migrate my library from one service to another could also do a side-by-side comparison of potential new services to my existing service by showing me which tracks from my existing library I would lose after the transition. |
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| TV-synced Watches |
[Sep. 10th, 2011|03:47 pm] |
Use of watches may have seen a decline since everyone started carrying cell phones everywhere which also have clocks. However, I hear they're making a comeback. I always wear a watch as my phone in my pocket isn't nearly close enough when I want to know the time. For a long time I've had an unfortunate habit of checking my watch for all sorts of information that it doesn't contain. I think it could have the potential to have more of that, but more about that in a later post about my thoughts on the upcoming smart (meta) watches.
One specific idea I've had for a while is a way for my watch to show me the time in the TV show or movie I'm watching. ( Read more... ) |
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| More than 140 Characters Can Say |
[Aug. 2nd, 2011|11:39 pm] |
It has been almost 2 years since I posted on this blog. It was always a pretty sporadic thing. Part of the trouble was trying to balance all the things I wanted to write about, but filtering for things that would be interesting publicly and writing in a way fit for the public. That was back when lots of my friends were using using LiveJournal and microblogging hadn't taken over. The last 2 years, this has been replaced by two things: Twitter and OhLife. I, like most of my friends, have moved public updating to Twitter/Facebook/Google+. It's a lot easier and in-the-moment than writing out a whole blog post.
( Read More about OhLife )
Well, I realize that the time has come to shift the balance back towards public. There are just some ideas that are too interesting to keep private and too long for 140 characters. My new goal is for some of my OhLife rants and idea to make it here when I think they are worth sharing. I'll be starting that with a few I have queued up shortly. |
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| Famous Last Words |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|01:55 pm] |
I like making lists of things. The latest is Statements which mean you're about to do something stupid. So far the leaders on this list are:
- "What could possibly go wrong?"
- "I can't believe this is actually going to work."
- "Watch this!"
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| Droid |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|09:56 am] |
In other news, I bought a Motorola Droid. Yes, I finally gave up my stone-age cellphone ways and embraced the smart phone revolution. Android is the platform I like and Verizon is the carrier I refuse to leave and Motorola is even the manufacturer that I have preferred up until now, so if I was ever going to like a smart phone this was going to be it. I'd never know without taking the leap and trying it, and so far it has been good. I'm still a fan of separate devices like a separate camera, gps, and portable game system, but having the internet everywhere is good and you're only going to get that with a phone. Even those tasks for which I prefer the separate devices, the built in ones will come in handy at times when I wasn't prepared to have the separate ones.
And a side-effect of having the new phone is finally jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. I never did it before because it was another website I didn't want to waste time in front of, both reading and posting, but the phone makes it casual enough to be worth it. |
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| Sparky Awareness Month |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|07:53 am] |
Some crazy stuff has been going on with me lately and I thought now would be a good time for a quick update to let people know (meant to do it last week but I'm lazy). April was a very busy month. It started with trips to see my family for Passover and the usual trip to Pittsburgh for booth. We missed Hirsch but that gave me the current longest unbroken streak of 10 years. Then last week happened.
First, last Monday I ran 8 miles of the Boston Marathon. ( details )
Then on Tuesday I started a new job at Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Heroes 1 and 2 and currently the Rock Band series. ( details )
On Thursday I got a pretty shady invite to see a sneak preview of the new Star Trek movie. ( details ) |
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| Frightening tale of (lack of) airport security |
[Apr. 13th, 2009|11:06 am] |
My sisters told me to post about this so I will. Yesterday I was flying back from visiting my family for Passover. I checked in to my flight online from my laptop, but since I couldn't connect to the printer at my aunt's house, I "printed" my boarding pass to a PDF on my flash drive and then printed it off of their computer. I don't know how, but somehow I managed to accidentally print another copy of my outbound boarding pass from Wednesday instead of the return boarding pass for yesterday. I didn't even notice this until I was waiting in line to board the plane. Yep, the lady who checked my boarding pass when I checked my bag and the one who checked it at the security checkpoint both failed to notice that it was for the wrong day and airport. At that point I decided to pretend I hadn't noticed either. The gate agent also failed to notice that the boarding pass was for the wrong flight even though she tried to scan it (unsuccessfully?) before letting me on the plane. On the plane they called my name and asked my to press my call button, but once I did, they didn't even come talk to me. Presumably they were just checking that I was on the plane (since I had checked in, but not been correctly scanned at the gate), but it could have been anyone that pressed that call button. I guess now I almost understand how those people who were supposed to be going to Miami got on our flight bound for London a few years ago (luckily we told them before the plane left the gate). |
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| My New Favorite Thing |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|02:22 pm] |
For some reason I'm currently in love with Palladia. It's an HD digital cable TV channel that I get. I used to just use it as my go-to demo of my HD setup when people would come over. It was great for this because it was always showing beautiful crisp HD footage, usually of concerts. It is better than finding some show because you can watch it for a just a few minutes without getting wrapped up in the show. Lately I've realized I could enjoy watching it. It is amazing because it is a music channel that actually plays music 24/7. Even better, a lot of the time it is live music (concerts) instead of just music videos. It's funny because I was never even someone who liked watching MTV, music videos or anything. |
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| Impulsiveness |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|12:42 am] |
Lately I've lamented the lack of other people (and specifically, girls) impulsive enough for me. More and more I realize how much I love adventures. Even failures/disasters can be great if they make a good story. I love the excitement in doing something unconventional, especially on a whim, just for the sake of doing it. I think this goes along with my philosophy of "doing the thing that is hard" and never backing down or shying away from a challenge. Doing things for the sake of an idea.
( Read More ) |
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