I <3 @tivo

A friend on Twitter was complaining this week about their cable company provided DVR and it reminded me of the couple months when I first got HD after having a standard res TiVo for many years. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it was the worst two months of my life; okay maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit.

At this point I’m going to assume that everyone knows what a DVR is, but if you don’t then just quickly it’s a device that records your TV to a hard disk so that you can either watch it later or to give you the flexibility to pause or rewind live broadcasts.

What sets Tivo apart from cable company DVRs is ease of use and extra features. Tivo is so easy to use that even my mother can do so (hooking it up to her television is a different question, but I digress). The people at tivo have really taken the time to understand how people want their digital content presented to them and the organization of the entire menu system just makes sense. Nice little touches like organizing a show in its own folder that you can either navigate into to pick particular episode or play all in chronological order (can you say “90210 marathon”?).

Now, that might not sound much different than your standard DVR, but prepare for me to blow your pants off. If you hook your tivo up to your broadband service you open up a whole world of online content. Subscribe to video podcasts, watch youtube video, rent videos from Blockbuster or Amazon, or watch movies from your netflix instant queue. All this is presented in an easy to access manner too.

Tivo does have a bit of a price to it. You’re gonna pay around $300 for one of their new “Premier” series boxes, though you can get older machines for discount the stuff I’ve seen with the new interface is really impressive. You also pay $12.95/month for the service, and if you have cable through someone like Mediacom you’ll need to get a cablecard so that your tivo can decode your digital signal. On the plus side the rental fee for the cable card is actually cheaper than the rental fee for a set-top box; last I checked it was $10/month for a box rental vs. $5/month for the cable card.

Really the thing that makes tivo stand out for me is just how it really changes the way you watch visual media. I don’t even know what time or channel shows are on anymore. I watch my programs whenever I want to and if I need to pause it to go do something then I just pause it and save the program for later. Now if I could get Tivo and Hulu to work together I’d die from sensory overload.

Do you have a tivo or another dvr? What is it about tivo that turns its users into evangelists? Am I just crazy?

unemployed no more

Wednesday May 5th I start an exciting new direction in my career as the lead developer at Catchfire Media. (sidebar: what was I thinking when I set my start date as Cinco de Mayo?) Instead of working for a slow moving and massive insurance company, doing what they tell me to do, I’ll get to work with a team of smart people that love what they’re doing and really work together to come up with some great stuff.

Thank you for this opportunity Catchfire Media. I think we’ve got great things in front of us and I look forward to the challenge of growing together.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-11

• @sharr love to hear your thoughts in a week or so. I was looking at one to compliment a new 13" machine I'm getting with severance. in reply to sharr #
• @LateNightJimmy I'd lick it in super sexy slow motion. Keep the $10 in reply to LateNightJimmy #
• Dear @viacom, I miss @StephenAtHome and The Daily Show on @Hulu, but not enough to watch TV or go to your website. #doinitwrong #
• @iowastyle I give it 18 hours. After that it's either garbage or dog treats. in reply to iowastyle #
• It's noon on saturday and I'm just getting out of bed after a long nap after a bloody mary and breakfast. #thisiswhyIdon #039;thavekids #
• I'm enjoying some family time @hoshisushidsm with @sueqdsm and her mother and brother. #
• Figured Bob and I would be the only guys ridiculed by The Untamed Shrews at The Funny Bone, but it's actually about 50/50. #

android twitter shootout

Since I recently got my android phone back I thought it would be a good time to take a closer look at the apps I use and see if there were better options out there. The first app I decided to look at was my twitter client of choice. For a while now, since I gave up on Twidroid, I’ve been using Seemic. I like Seesmic, it’s got a nice clean interface and does what it needs to do, however after seeing some reviews of other apps I thought I’d give something with a little more flash a try.

The first thing you see with any twitter client is the timeline. Right away I notice that each developer has decided on a different color for their background. Seesmic takes the traditional light background with dark text approach, while touiteur and twicca go with dark backgrounds and light text. To me touiteur is the easiest on the eyes. In addition Seesmic’s choice of a tab like interface and refresh button gives up a lot of screen space that could better be used for real content.

Timeline Winner : touiteur

Next up lets explore how each app lets us interact with a someone else’s tweet. Here each app takes a very distinct approach. Seesmic takes you to a whole nother screen with just that tweet and interface elements to reply, retweet or DM the author, touiteur slides down a panel of buttons with the various ways to interact with the tweet, and twicca pops up a nice looking menu with various options. All three approaches are valid, and I’m not sure I can really pick a winner. Seemic’s approach seems to be the least useful because you need to hit the back button to return to your timeline, but I don’t think that’s a big enough deal to detract from it.

Interaction Winner : 3 Way Tie

When I click on a tweet the main reason is because there’s a link in it or someone else is mentioned. So, how do each of these three apps handle links within a tweet? As you’d expect from the previous comparisons, very differently. Seesmic simply exposes the links like a normal hyperlink in a web page. Touiteur has a special link button when you click on the tweet and it pulls up just the @. #. and http links in a popup. Twicca simply throws the links into its normal click menu. Again it seems like different strokes for different folks, however I think Seesmic’s and Touiteur’s approaches are more user friendly right away. Once you understand all the icons in the Twicca menu though it does make more sense and is certainly a valid presentation.

Links Winner : touiteur

Of course the main reason to have a twitter client on your phone is so that you can tweet out the minutia of your life where ever you happen to have a cell signal. You’d think that presenting a text entry box for you to type 140 characters into would be pretty straight forward, and for the most part you’d be correct. Seesmic and Twicca take a very simple approach, click on a “Compose” button and you are presented with a new screen dedicated to recording your every thought or witty comment and sending it out to the world. Touiteur takes a little bit different approach by adding a pulldown tray to the top of the interface. In this case I think touiteur is a bit too cute for its own good; half the time I pull down the normal system menu when I mean to tweet. Also, touiteur is the only client, at least in the free version, that doesn’t present a geo-location tool.

Compose Winner : Twicca

Finally let’s take a look at how each client presents a user’s profile. It’s pretty hard to mess this one up, but for some reason I feel like Twicca did. Too much space taken up by the empty blackness. Seesmic and and Touiteur both take a pretty similar approach, shoving as much content as they can into the screen while still staying readable. Once again Seesmic loses points because of its intrusive interface.

Profile Winner : touiteur

Overall these are all very usable apps, and your personal preferences may lead you to chose one that I don’t think is the best. I’m sure I missed some of the things that make each app shine, for example Twicca opens image links (at least twitpic ones) within the app, where as the other two clients defer to the browser. As far as free apps go all three of these are incredible, none crashed while I was using them and they’re all pretty lightweight, which on my aging G1 is an issue. Since they’re all free you might as well download them all and give them a spin for yourself. I do, however, have to pick a winner, and in my mind it’s pretty clear. I think I’ll be buying the pro version of touiteur just to see how it could possibly be better than the free version (and at under 2 euros it’s worth every penny)
Overall Winner : touiteur

Download the winner via the market here

dumb phone

This weekend was my first without my beloved G1. After many drops and a cracked screen, that it somehow lived through, the final straw was Wayne pulling it off of my nightstand, by the recharging cable, and dropping it to the hardwood floor three feet below.

Since I still have a few months on my contract before I can get a decent upgrade price on a new Nexus 1 or similar smartphone and I needed something to at least receive and make calls I went to my local store and asked what the cheapest phone they had available for me was. It turns out that the Nokia 1661 was their answer. While certainly not a pretty phone it’s at least small and quite thin. I barely notice it in my jeans pocket, however after using it for a few days I’ve discovered that I don’t really have much of a reason to notice it in my pocket anyway. Gone are the days of instant gratification via web searches, location based applications, and any of the benefits of social networking. What will happen to my mayorships? How will I get those new stamps on my passport? How will I see people’s responses to my snarky comments? At least I still have Google via SMS. Sadly my T9 skills have withered since being spoiled by a full qwerty keyboard, so even the simple queries of gooSMS take forever.
I thought that losing my smartphone might be a bit freeing; no longer tethered to the internet. However in the first few days, at least, that is not the case. I have at least a week before a friend sends me a replacement G1 (thank you Aero), so maybe by then I’ll have discovered the joy that is the retro mobile phone, but right now I’m just not feeling it.
Pros:

• Small
• Thin
• Built in Flashlight (I’m serious)
• FM Tuner/Radio

Cons:

• Everything else…

buy your own (different strokes I guess)