Where's my Movie Data?? - Media Management

I know it's been a while since I posted on here, but I have been busy checking out and learning all kinds of things. My biggest time suck lately has been a combination of Windows 7 (Win7) with its Windows Media Center (WMC), Windows Home Server (WHS), and XBOX 360 as a media "extender" of sorts. There are lots of pieces to Win7 and WHS that I have been spending time learning, but I'm going to mainly focus on media content for this post. Future posts will discuss the other, more geeky, features and functions of these two operating systems.

As you may have read in a previous post of mine, I purchased a Roku and have loved that device for playing back Netflix content. However, Netflix's library for instant play is pretty limited, so I wanted something more. I was able to talk my wife into letting me get a 2nd XBOX 360 to place in the living room (the 1st one is in the family room) as a replacement for the DVD player, Roku and then even adds gaming. She bought into it because it let her get the current DVD player for her bedroom and my daughter get the Roku (the other biggest user besides me) for her bedroom.

Now that I have my 360 as my media extender, I started to dig in to see what it is capable of. I have to say I was impressed! The Netflix experience from the 360 is, in my opinion, leaps and bounds better than the Roku experience. That's not to say the Roku experience isn't good, because it's great! That's just saying that the 360 is even better!! However, where my experience kind of fell short, again in my opinion, was browsing my video file library or even using the 360 as a Media Center Extender. This is because, while I may have hundreds of video files of movies, they only show up as names with NO details like box art, rating, actors, genre, etc. While this wasn't necessarily "tragic", it made browsing movie files more tedious and almost impossible for my kids. I figure it would be SOOO much easier to see box art for the movies because it's easier to discern what a movie is or is about by a picture... AND, having the rating information and possibly a description would be helpful in stuff I haven't watched yet to say yes or no to the kids watching it without me.

What I found interesting, or possibly what spawned my search for the solution to this, was that *some* of the titles in my library showed up with ALL of this information in Media Center... and I mean all of it (box art, actors, genre, rating, a description of what the movie is about, etc). My guess is that metadata was added in some way to those files (they all happened to be WMV files in this case), but I wasn't sure HOW it was added or how I could add it to other files I have.

I am still looking for the correct solution to this dilemma, so I will certainly be posting back with more info as I find it. Unfortunately I have nothing to report on this yet, because everything I tried thus far does not work.

I also do not have much to report on WHS and Media Center with the 360 in the mix because I need more storage space on my WHS server to put my many GBs of files on there. I *do* plan on adding more drives and moving my files off my PC to the WHS, so I will certainly reply with that info as well. I can say this... the WHS server is awesome and worth every penny, even if only just for the piece of mind it provides pertaining to PC backups and storage redundancy. I will definitely be creating another post specifically on how I am using it in my home network of 7 PCs and other network devices.

iPhone: Mobile Air Mouse - On Sale

iPhone : Mobile Air Mouse: **Currently (as of 9:20am EDT 8/7/09) on sale for $2.99**
"Instantly transform your iPhone or iPod touch into an air mouse, trackpad, and wireless remote for your computer! Sit back and surf the web, browse your photo library or control your music player from the comfort of your couch. Our air mouse uses the built in accelerometer to translate your hand motions into mouse movements on your screen. It can also operate as a trackpad, allowing you to control your computer with a single finger. Suddenly your iPhone has become an essential part of any home theater PC and a presenter's best friend. Using an innovative application notification system, the iPhone will always know what applications are running at any time and show the appropriate keys for that program, providing you with a single screen for controlling ALL your media and web applications.

Features:
- Accelerometer based mouse
- Trackpad (full screen vertical and landscape modes)
- Media keys & Web keys
- Application notifications - Remote keyboard with modifier, function and arrow keys
- Programable hotkeys (can be set to run a program or keyboard combination)
- Scroll pad
- Multitouch gestures (scroll & right click)
- Password protection
- Custom sensitivity settings
- Foreign language keyboards
- Supports Bonjour or static IP
- No screen size limitation. Works with multiple monitors.
- And much, much more. View our demo video to see all that Mobile Air Mouse can do for you"

You have to check out the demo video to see some of the features of this app. I do a lot of presentations for my job, so being able to have a remote built into my iPhone to control PowerPoint is great... BUT, to even be able to control the rest of my computer as well is AWESOME! You see, I run VMware Workstation with a full blown network of our software solution, and I always have to be sitting at the PC to man that instead of possibly standing off to the side running it and speaking *to* the audience.

I only just purchased this app and haven't had a chance to use it yet, so a review will be coming. But I figured I'd throw this out there while the sale is on so you too can get in cheap. ;-)

Cloud Computing Conundrum

I am listening to the "Cranky Geeks" podcast #174 on 7/8/09 (here's the iTunes link to the MP3 audio only edition... they also have video podcasts as well), and they started to discuss the potential disaster of having your info in "the cloud", as well as the fact that you don't "own" your information in a sense, or at least that these services have access to your information (no matter what the privacy agreement states). One of their comments was that Google has more private/personal information than the NSA.

For the disaster part, they discussed the threat of someone targeting these "mega-hubs" where these datacenters and backbones are located, and the effect this would have on the country. I think there is some validity to this, but I feel like there is a decent amount of redundancy and fault-tolerance in this day and age. I see their point though. If you lose your internet connection, how do you retrieve your data?? If the company you have this data with folds, where does it go??

Because of my mobility and want for having my information everywhere AND always in sync (so one device doesn't have the latest copy when I'm not at that device but need that data), I have started to try and move ALL of my computing data into the cloud with services that allow me to get to that data on pretty much all the devices I want to use. So far I am using Google Apps (Standard Edition) heavily for email and calendaring, Toodledo for my Task Management Solution (which I'm loving more and more as I use it), Evernote for all my notes I want to track or recall at some point, SmugMug.com for my important photographs that I want safe and backed up (and it automatically creates beautiful web albums that I can use to share these photos with family and friends), and I also use JustHost.com (which has an AMAZINGLY low priced "unlimited" hosting plan, I personally chose 3yrs to lock the price in) and GoDaddy.com for my web hosting needs (other than Blogger for this and other blogs, which is another Google entity). I am even looking for MORE cloud based computing to move more data off a single device so it is available to me everywhere, on any device (not just ones that I own). Now that I think of it, I even have some books in the cloud via Amazon Kindle service, which I use on my iPhone to read them. It syncs the books and last page viewed, including bookmarks, to the Amazon cloud, and I can even get those files on another registered device and pick up where I left off (I tested this when I had to reinstall Kindle on my iPhone because I switched PCs for syncing... all my books were under "Archive" and selecting them downloaded them and all their details... VERY slick).

I think "cloud computing" is a huge buzzword right now, and I think it's coming into its own because the connectivity is finally here that allows this to work well (even when mobile). In each of these solutions, I try to have it cache the information locally in case I am in a situation where I am not connected (like on a plane, etc), but that is not always available for all of the solutions. I suppose I hadn't stopped to think about the what-if's enough, most likely because my drive for cloud computing was coming from wanting my data anywhere and NOT wanting to manage my own servers for this at my house (I've been there, done that, and it's a hassle... it's MUCH easier to have other companies with the infrastructure provide this for me... sometimes for no charge! Like Google).

I'm not sure if cloud computing is the right solution going forward, or for how long it will be the solution I want... but it sure feels right right now.

What about you? What are your thoughts on cloud computing? Any fears, faults, tragedy? I'd love to hear them!

IndyCar - Finally Refreshing

Just watching the last IndyCar race on my DVR at Watkins Glen… how refreshing to see these cars have to turn more than left!!

I started watching IndyCar only this year. At first I was truly upset to find them only running on ovals ( I thought they would mimick F1, but on US territory)… I just don't find that much fascination in oval racing, but it was still a bit better than Nascar. I guess it stems from my affinity for motorcycle racing which has ALWAYS been about right AND left turns.

I got into Formula One racing this year as well, as I've found more time to watch recorded TV. I've always benn a *fan* of F1 racing, but couldn't fit it in my schedule. This year has been awesome with Jenaon Button!! Both my son and I try to watch every race(from our DVR).

So, to finally see IndyCar having to race both right and left… it was very refreshing. I like it a LOT!!


-- Post From My iPhone via Blogpress

Moving Notebooks to the "cloud"... trying to do this with Evernote

I have been an Evernote user for a little over a year now, but I never really used it to its full potential. This may have been in part due to the fact that I had a BlackBerry for a while and there was no Evernote application for the BlackBerry (there is now of course). I recently bought an iPhone, and there is a pretty solid Evernote client for the iPhone. I also have been feeling the need lately for better organizing and mobilizing (is that even a word? - looked it up... it's a word, but not the definition I am using here) my notes. I suppose I have simply used email in the recent past, but that's not a great solution and is too cluttered (in my opinion), so searches tend to have a lot of junk I'm not interested in sifting through and wastes time. I have also used Microsoft OneNote for some things, but it's SOOO limited to a PC (or Windows Mobile device which I don't own any longer... and even that mobile app is lame for mobile notes access IMO). My main concern, similar to my Task Management Solution concerns, is that the solution needs to be ubiquitous and work on all of my devices... which dictates some form of web-based backend and syncing.

Evernote seems to fit that bill, and since I have an account and notes already in it, I am deciding to experiment more with it and see if I can make it work better for me. I am trying to find tips and tricks to make it work for me, rather than me working for it. ;-) I intend to list them in posts and revisit this one with updates.

Here is a tip I found on another bloggers site that explains how to create a "Send-To" shortcut to attach files to your Evernote default notebook. Simple enough... but what I found out today is that you can only attach certain files with a free account through Evernote. The premium account will allow you to attach any file to Evernote... but then I'm not sure what those attachments would look like in Evernote... especially on the iPhone app. Meaning: If I attach a MS Word document to Evernote, would I be able to read it and search it like any other note from my iPhone?? I don't know that I am ready to upgrade to a premium account, because I'm not yet sure it is the right solution for me. I still find the interface to be a bit of a kluge to use (more on this further down). Scrolling through notes on the desktop client has been painful to me so far. A premium account with Evernote will set you back either $5/mo. or $45/yr. Because they have a month to month subscription level, I *may* try it out for a month for $5 and see if it's worth it to me (during the course of composing this blog post, I exceeded my free account bandwidth usage and decided no time like the present to try it for a month... so I upgraded for the $5/mo. plan for starters. If I like it enough I will opt for the yearly subscription of $45/yr. If I don't think it's worth it, I'll cancel and go back to free). For now, pertaining to MS Word documents, I simply select all and paste into a new note. This is not a great solution, but it works easily enough. I am also curious about what any formatting would look like in the MS Word attachment in a Premium account... if it produced the same results as my copy/paste method, it would be a huge waste of money. However, if it maintained the formatting and graphics, etc, it may be worth the extra money.

Another nice thing about Evernote, even the free account, is the ability to email notes to your default notebook. Here is a bit of text from that same blogger:
"Email Notes - With your Evernote account comes a custom email address. Anything sent to this address automagically is added to your default evernote notebook (Login to evernote.com, under settings is your email address)"
This can be VERY useful to forward emails you get to Evernote so they can be referenced later. Combine this with a premium account, and I would think it would include the ability to have Word and Excel attachments in the email get into your notebook as well. Again, not sure how all of this would display on a mobile phone app (like the iPhone). May have to play around with this one a bit and report back.

I found this blog post about scanning things in and getting them into Evernote automatically that is specifically for Macs, but noticed in the comments that you can set the Evernote desktop client to monitor folders, so if you set it to monitor your scanning folder it will get the notes automatically. For work, I have to scan in business expense receipts for record keeping, etc, but this will come in handy for SOOO many things. I can see that a bit of management will be required to filter them into the appropriate notebooks and tag them... but the search capability is so good that this becomes less of a concern (IF you know what you are looking for... which sometimes you don't, so refining the number of things to look through is nice). I set it to monitor my expense receipts folder and it started pulling in all my receipts into Evernote immediately... which is what sent me over my bandwidth limit for my free account, so I upgraded to continue and will explore the other features (like attaching MS Word documents and the formatting of these). This post says the following "Choose PNG, JPEG as the format. If you would rather scan to PDF, keep in mind that images in PDFs will not be recognized by our image recognition" which I'm wondering if this is still the case with PDF documents since this post is about 7 months old now. My guess is it is... one thing I noticed on PDFs imported into Evernote is that you cannot select any text within the PDF (unless I'm missing how to do this). So I'm wondering if it makes sense to import these at all? It *does* allow you to search them and read them... but what if you want to grab some text off one and email it or something? If it is a scanned PDF, I don't think even Adobe Acrobat Professional will allow you to select text because it sees it as an image that is not editable... just checked and you can't, so no loss of feature there. ***update - I also tried opening one of the PDF notes on my iPhone... it has to download the PDF, which the one I selected was 2.6MB and therefore took a while to open even over wifi... on top of that, it was sluggish to view and pinch zoom, etc... but it did work. Not sure I want to continue to use PDFs and will look at trying out JPGs or PNGs and see how well that works - /update***

Pertaining to the UI of Evernote, I started using Evernote via the web interface only at first. The web interface seems to have a view option not available in the desktop client... that being the ability to display all your notes as smaller thumbnails, which I felt it seemes easier to quickly visually scan those for what I was looking for... but now, I realize this is pointless with the search capabilities of Evernote. In the beginning, I only had a few notes, so visually looking for the note I wanted seemed to make sense... but now that I have hundreds of notes, this doesn't matter as much. However, I still say this view would be welcome on the desktop client because, let's say, if you do a search and it comes back with 5-15 notes that contain the keywords you put in, if you could see all those as thumbnails with their titles, it would be easy to pick the one you are looking for without having to type more keywords to refine your search. Maybe I'm alone in this thinking.

Since I upgraded to a premium account during the sporadic composition of this blog post (they can sometimes take me days to complete) I tried attaching a MS Word document to Evernote. This worked just fine and, on the desktop, double-clicking it opens it in MS Word... convenient I suppose. I'm not sure what would happen if I tried to do this from a desktop/laptop where MS Word was not installed... but I don't actually have any PC without it installed so I can test this. I did check what this would look like on the iPhone, since MS Word is not present. Similar to the PDF notes, it shows that it is an attachment that needs to be downloaded. Once I did this, it showed the document fairly well. I did not have tables or images or other odd formatting in this specific example, so I'm not sure what it would do with those, but I was impressed with what it displayed. Perhaps the Premium Account in Evernote is worth it just for this feature?? Not sure just yet.

Well, I am going to post this as is and revisit it with updates appended to the bottom as I learn and find more. ;-) Cheers!

Update 1: Just posted and already found something. I just tried to do a search on some text within my attached word document and Evernote did not find it inside the attachment. I'm not sure if this is because I JUST added it and the Evernote servers have not processed it yet or what... but not being able to search inside file attachments would be a HUGE bummer and pretty much a waste. I mean, Windows Desktop Search and Google Desktop can perform this action for me! Hopefully it's just a timing issue... I'll post back if it starts working.

Update 2: I am listening to the Evernote Podcast #5 right now (from 6/5/09) and they said that they are writing a brand new Windows Evernote Desktop Client from the ground up and it will address many of the things that people have been requesting... such as thumbnails of the notes and quick view. WooHoo!! They said it should be out sometime later this summer (so maybe August??). Hopefully this will make the desktop client more user friendly for me.

Update 3: Thought I'd share this post about using Evernote for "Getting Things Done" (GTD). I saw this and gave it some thought before finally developing my Task Management Solution. My problem with using Evernote for GTD is that it doesn't offer me the ability to pop-up reminders or easily/structurally specify a due date to sort/filter on, etc. I think it's a great idea, and if someone can make it work for their needs, that's awesome! It just wasn't "enough" for me and my wants/needs. BTW, I think there are some things to be learned from this that could be helpful in organizing notes. One thought is to create a notebook called "Inbox" and make that your default notebook. Then, all notes get placed into this bucket by default, and you can schedule time each day or week to parse through the information and move it to the appropriate notebook or add tags... just a thought. Not sure it's worth much.

Update 4: This one's pretty cool... you can link your twitter account to Evernote so that you can send tweets to Evernote. All you need to do is go to http://twitter.com/MyEN and follow the directions. Once you link your account to Twitter, all you need to do is include @MyEN in a tweet and it gets added to your default notebook.

TomTom for iPhone en route | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld

TomTom for iPhone en route | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld:

"There are also logistical issues. For example, because the iPhone doesn’t support background processes, any navigation app must shut down during phone calls, making real-time tracking difficult—something that doesn’t happen on a dedicated GPS unit, even one that includes telephony features."

This is the biggest drawback I've had with ANY phone based GPS application. I had the Verizon VZ Navigator on one of my phones in the past, and while it was a great GPS app, if you took a call or were on a call, GPS no workie. One time, I was on a conference call and wasn't familiar with where to exit on my trip. A while later I realized I MUST have missed my turn and had to hang up on the call and wait nearly 7 minutes for the GPS to reinitialize and find my location to then tell me that I essentially went 30 minutes out of my way... extending my trip by 1 HOUR!!! Ugh! I will never forget that mistake, and since have purchased a Navigon 2100max stand-alone GPS. The Navigon is truly awesome (none are perfect as far as I'm concerned) and has some incredible features. However, Navigon is pulling out of the US for both sales and map updates at some point in the not-too-distant future. They will be honoring the remaining subscriptions for map updates from their customers, but then that's it. What does this mean??? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing I still have about 3 years of (up to date) life left in my GPS. Past that I have no idea, but technology changes pretty fast anyway and something better may come along by then.

For now, I will be staying away from any phone based GPS system/app. I think the Tom Tom package looks promising... but if it still means taking a call stops the function of GPS telling you where to turn, I don't want any parts of it.

Going Greener (Electric Push Mower)

My gas-powered push lawn mower started to give me problems recently. I got it for free from my in-laws a while back and it's served me well (nice and light). The wheel adjustments were a BEAR though, sometimes requiring a hammer to adjust some of the wheels. The throttle seemed to have some issues as well, but it worked at any rate. Recently it ran out of gas, sputtering to a stop (normal) and I went to refill it. I accidentally over filled the gas tank by a little, and when I started it up, it was sputtering... almost identical to when it runs out of gas. My guess is something (dirt, whatever) was in the gas tank and got into the line or carb and is blocking the flow of gas. I tried slightly to see if I could track down the problem, but had no luck.

My wife and I have wanted to get away from a gas powered lawn mower for some time now, and even went as far as increasing the landscaping in our front lawn to minimize the use of the lawn mower. So I saw this as an opportunity to possibly go greener (I was also thinking of getting the gas powered mower fixed). I started to look around to see what a new mower might cost in case it was not much more to buy new instead of getting it fixed. I saw electric mowers for hundreds of dollars (like $350+) and kind of wished we could get one, but just couldn't see putting out that kind of money. Then, I happened upon this Task Force Electric Push Mower at Lowe's for only $208!! So, I asked my wife, "What would you be willing to pay to go to an electric mower?" She started off saying we couldn't afford it... it would be great, but we just couldn't afford it. So I repeated the question with, "What would be your top $ we could afford?" She said, "$200." I said, "SOLD!" She couldn't believe it, and I couldn't either. So I went and bought it, and I have to say it's pretty slick. The wheel height adjustment is the envy of all my neighbors because it is literally ONE lever and all four wheels adjust at the same time and VERY easily! It also goes all the way up to 3 3/4"!! I used that setting on the backyard where we don't spend much time and gets direct sunlight pretty much the ENTIRE day.

I was a little worried about electric cord management at first, but it turned out to be a non-issue as long as you pay attention to the way you cut the grass. The best thing I say on this is, cut laterally up hills and away from the cord. Doing this completely made it a non-issue. There was one hill that I was cutting parallel down a slight grade (still away from the cord though) and the cord tended to get into the outer edge of the uncut grass so I had to stop every so often and swing it out a bit. Even that wasn't terrible.

The quality of the mower itself is fair. It's certainly not the best, but I also wasn't expecting anything incredibly awesome for $208! I would say it's "good enough". The fact that it comes with a generous bag (holds more than I was expecting based on looks and my old bag), as well as a side spout AND mulching plug... I was impressed. The motor seemed quiet enough... honestly I think the noise comes mainly from the spinning blade... but it was similar in sound level to my gas powered mower (a bit quieter though). Startup was a TOTAL breeze, and it stops almost instantly. I also love the fact that there is no gas smell or pollution coming off it, and my shed now only smells of cut grass. I bought the 3 year replacement warranty for $40 thinking that would make up for any lack of quality in the unit.

To go greener, I was thinking about getting the exact same thing our next door neighbor/friends have which is a Task Force Reel Push Mower (at about $140), which is pretty much as green as it gets since it is based on human power. The problem with it that my wife doesn't like is that it doesn't do well with tall weeds, leaving them in place and requiring you to then come back around with some form of scythe. Not that it's impossible to get a good cut, but it certainly doesn't seem to look as good/clean as the gas-powered or electric push mowers where the blade is spinning much faster. I would guess that I could possibly produce a better cut than my neighbor, simply because he doesn't seem to care as much about having a nice even cut and just does it so the lawn isn't out of control.

Now that I bought and used the electric, I posed the question to my wife on whether or not she is interested in going as far as a reel push mower or not. I await her response. Of course, it will be that is doing all the physical work... but it's her aesthetic requirement that I am asking the question for. Also, where my 11 year old son couldn't use the electric mower for fear of him running over the extension cord and properly managing that, he could certainly use the Reel Push Mower. We'll see on this one... I may be posting again soon.

As far as my gas-powered mower, I put it up by the street behind our house. It didn't even last 5 minutes up there before someone snagged it. In fact, I'm not even sure if I had a chance to start up the electric mower to make sure it worked or not! ;-) I gave my almost full gas can to another neighbor and my move was complete. I STILL feel great about making the move... but now I am thinking I may even want to go as far as the Reel Push Mower.

Are YOU doing anything to be more green? Share other things we can all do to help out our planet!