Eddie and the iPhone…

My friend and fellow technophile, Eddie, has a fantastic post over on his blog, Practically Efficient.

His feelings pretty much sum up my own. Apple has done some amazing things for mobile technology, but for me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to jump full-on into the Apple ecosystem.

Check out this fantastic post in full.

Back from Exile…

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve been absent from the blogging scene. There have been a couple of reasons for that. The excuses range from summer to running to kids to work. They aren’t good excuses, but they are there nonetheless.

What I do want to share is what I’ve been up to and what I’ve got loaded up for you.

• WordPress 3.0 – If you don’t know what WordPress is, don’t be too concerned. It is simply the behind the scenes stuff that takes all this information that I have a makes it all pretty for you to look at. A new version is out and I’m going to be upgrading soon. Hopefully it doesn’t wreck my site!
• Sprint HTC EVO – So I’ve been a staunch BlackBerry guy for years now. But for years, BlackBerry has been standing still while new mobile operating systems like Android and iPhone OS (now known as iOS) have been making huge leaps and bounds. The iPhone is firmly planted at AT&T so that is out of the question, but Sprint, my carrier of choice, recently got a major Android phone called the EVO. I’ll fill you in on all its amazingness soon.
• Friday Night Links – This has been the thing I’ve been missing most over the past month or two. I’ve got a bunch of great stuff that I’ve been saving but just couldn’t get put up because Friday nights have been busy, busy, busy.
• offcolortv.com – So this isn’t anything coming up but my Biggest Loser blog over there had a huge thing happen. Fan favorites Sunshine and Oatmeal ended up answering questions over there for everyone. It was pretty amazing to have them there to do that. On a secondary note, I’m going to be doing admin stuff for offcolortv.com, so that would include making improvements and upgrades as well as tweaking the look. I’m trying to figure out how to put each author’s picture in their post, so if you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.

That is about it for the moment, but expect a second post tonight about my low-tech obsession as of late.

Friday Night Links (4/23/2010)…

I’m going to tear down the four or fifth or twelfth wall (or whichever one we are on at this point) and let you in on a little secret: I don’t have to be present to hit the ‘publish’ button to send these posts into the wide open internet. Thus, I am actually typing this post up on Thursay night, but it will be published without my intervention at around 4pm EST on Friday. Crazy, I know, but it is totally true.

Alright, enough of these shenanigans, let’s get some links.

• Crazy Chess Story – Of course it SEEMS like an oxymoron, but this chess champ actually had an amazing journey trying to get from Frankfurt, Germany to Sofia, Bulgaria. When not watching Lord of the Rings: Super Extended Directors Cut edition, they were dodging countries requiring travel visas, getting pulled over, and avoiding some of the worst potholes in Eastern Europe. It’s an incredible story.
• Compound Butter – Next time you bring home a nice salmon fillet or spicing up some veggies, make it quick and tasty with some compound butter. Just add some spices, garlic, lemon, or a plethora of other flavors to butter and – BAM! – compound butter.
• Medical Toys – I am a sucker for a good gadget and I’m also a health nut, so when those two things cross paths, you can be sure I’m there. My two favorite items mentioned are the sleep monitoring alarm clock with the silly headband and the wifi scale. I bet you readers can’t wait until my scale starts posting the ups and downs of me standing on the scale. Yikes.
• You’re Doing It Wrong – Mrs. Digitante and I bring up those commercials where the person is trying to strain a pot of spaghetti, but the noodles all dump out in the sink until they get that handy-dandy pot with the lid that has holes in it. The terrible acting and mock frustration the “doing it wrong” people show is pure hilarity. Now you can watch a wonderful tribute to all those suffering souls – giant red X’s included. If you can’t see the video below, click right here.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/08xQLGWTSag&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

TQT: Queue YouTube to a Specific Time…

Ever have a long YouTube video that you want to share with others, but the good part is at the end? Well here is a nice little fix for you.

Since I gave my iPad the boot last week, I thought it was only fitting to demonstrate this technique with a Blendtec video of an iPad getting bent in half, shoved in an industrial blender, and pulverized into a powder.

The link for the video usually looks like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko

If you click that link, you will end up watching entire 1 minute and 40 second clip. It’s very entertaining and you should definitely watch it.

If you want to get straight to the good stuff, you would want to start the video at the 55 second mark. You can easily have YouTube do that for you by adding the following to the end of the link:

#t=0m55s

You can modify the 0 and the 55 to whatever you want. The final link will then look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko#t=0m55s

Bam! iPad demolished!

If you want to watch another cool video starring The Digitante In Action!, check out the video below. If it doesn’t show up, click here to watch it at the YouTube site.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/JC5Qyqy7Pyg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

Friday Night Links (4/16/2010)…

I’m teetering on the edge of a food coma after filling up on heavy Italian food at Buca di Beppo. Whatever! I’m still bringing you two food links tonight in the FNL. Get ready to be hungry.

• Make Your Own Sriracha – This is the sauce of the gods. Instead of being fiery hot just for the sake of being fiery hot, Sriracha sauce adds some fantastic garlic flavoring. If you want to tweak it even further you can add your own flavors. Personally, I’m thinking some sesame oil might be great.
• Cool Stuff – If that description sounds like it is generic and non-specific, then you obviously haven’t clicked on the link yet. I linked directly to the gadget section, but there are some amazing things in the other sections. How about these hotel rooms?
• Earthquake Notification – Live in a subduction zone? Not sure what subduction means? Well, if you live on the West Coast or along the Mississippi River, there’s a chance you are at risk of encountering an earthquake. The US Geological Survey actually has a text message or email notification service so you will know if an earthquake hits your area. It requires an email address, but you can actually have an email sent to your phone via text message by following the instructions at this link.
• Food Porn – Don’t let the name scare you: this link is safe for work. It is just ridiculously awesome looking (and tasting, I’m sure) food laid out in all its glory for you to lust over. On recommendation of my wife and regular Digitante commenter Jenny, we clicked through for about 15 minutes and our living room was filled with constant ‘Ooo’s and ‘Ahh’s. See? It’s sounding more and more like porn now, isn’t it. Do yourself a favor and click though the pictures. You won’t regret it.

iPad: Here and Back…

About a week and a half ago, I stood in line for about an hour and a half waiting for an iPad at the local Apple Store. I brought it home and Mrs. Digitante was very excited, as was I.

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out and I’m going to share with you why. First though, let me tell you that this is my opinion of why it didn’t work for ME. However, it may fit your needs great and I already know of a number of people who have an iPad and love it and are spending many hundreds of dollars buying apps and accessories for it.

The Pros:

• The screen is amazing. You really haven’t ever seen a screen that is this crisp and pleasant to look at.
• It is super fast. Granted it can only run one application at a time, but I never had to wait for anything other than webpages to load.
• Simplicity is the name of the game. One button on the device, little icons on the screen, and minimal options to change are all Apple hallmarks. There really isn’t much thinking or learning involved.

The Cons:

• Lack of Flash video. Honestly, I didn’t think this would be a huge deal, but the problem is that it ruined my flow of work. I enjoyed reading Twitter on the iPad, but during a reading session, I would come across at least one or two videos that I wanted to watch, but wasn’t allowed to. This means that I had to mark the tweet as a favorite, get on my laptop later, and then watch the video. It just wasn’t convenient.
• Basic staples such as a file system are missing. I purchased an eBook in pdf format on my laptop and put it in my Dropbox because I knew there was a Dropbox app for the iPad. I was sorely disappointed when I found that I couldn’t just save the pdf to my iPad and open it with the default pdf program. Instead, I had to purchase an app that would allow me to access the files in my Dropbox app and open it in the pdf reading app. I only knew this because I know other techies that have had to do this. Otherwise, I would have been stuck. For all the simplicity Apple loves, this simple task was really complicated.
• The iPad costs $500. Over the last week and a half, I’ve tried to come up with $500 worth of usage scenarios and I just can’t do it. If this thing was $300, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about buying it, but $500 really makes me hesitate.

So after a couple of days of both me and Mrs. Digitante playing with it, I asked her what she thought. We were on exactly opposite ends of the spectrum but came to the same conclusion: it was more than she needed and it was less than I wanted so we decided to eat the $50 restocking fee and return it.

When I say “it was more than she needed” she was looking for an eReader like the Kindle. Having all the apps and other features weren’t appealing to her and really over complicated it for her. When I say “it was less than I wanted” I wanted to be able to pick up a device and have it do everything I required. Type a reply to a  Wordpress forum post? Nope, no text boxes were editable. Watch video linked in Twitter? Nope, sorry, Flash doesn’t work. Install any number of applications that I wanted? Nope, only what Apple approves through the App Store using their clandestine and inconsistent rules.

Will I miss it? Most likely not. It’s been sitting in our bedroom, unused, for the last three days. Normally I get all giddy and can’t put gadgets down, but this thing turned old hat very quick.

Did you buy an iPad? What was your opinion? Let me know what you think of the iPad, even if you don’t have one.

FYIJSYK: ZERO Charger…

You’ve got your phone plugged in for the night after a long day of yapping on the phone. The next morning, you hop out of bed, grab your phone, and head to your job at Uncle Ted’s Used Bubble Gum Emporium. You may think that after unplugging your phone, no more electricity is being used, after all, your phone isn’t plugged in.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true. That plug that charges your phone is actually a bit more complex than you may think it is. It changes alternating current (like the electricity in nearly all outlets) to direct current (like all batteries). Part of that conversion process produces heat. This heat is a sign that not all the energy is being put toward its intended purpose. In the end you are left with an electric bill that is higher than it should be.

And it’s not just your phone charger either. TVs, stereos, and computers are other examples of electronics that use electricity when they are off or on standby.

Enter the AT&T ZERO charger. When nothing is plugged into it, it uses no electricity. The savings of that electricity could be huge, especially if this technology moves into other appliances and gadgets. According to the AT&T ZERO website, the US uses (wastes!?) about 12% of its annual energy usage on these so called ‘vampiric’ chargers. Cutting all that energy usage could result in an annual savings of $120 billion.

Another reason this charger is terrific is that it has a USB socket on it, allowing you to plug in your iPod, cell phone, digital camera, or any other device that charges using USB.

At this point I’m tempted to pick up a handful of these. Anyone interested in a contest that gives away some ZERO chargers? Do you plan on picking one up yourself?

Load an iPod Shuffle Without iTunes…

Before we get started, note that this tutorial is for the iPod Shuffle only. We’ll get to other iPods later, don’t worry.

It is fairly well documented around these parts that I’m not a huge fan of iTunes (read here and also here). It is easy to find a new music player and manager (I mostly use foobar2000), but it much more difficult if you own and iPod.

Apple loves making beautiful, functional products, but then they manage to lock you into everything Apple. In order to use your Apple iPod, you have to use Apple iTunes. Want to use the gorgeous and simple OSX? You can only use it on a Mac (well, almost ‘only’).

I bought a iPod Shuffle because I loved that it was super compact, had good battery life, had a durable aluminum shell, and was nice and inexpensive. When I first got it, I used a program on Linux called gtkpod since iTunes isn’t made for Linux. I no longer have my Linux PC around so I was searching for a way to load music on my iPod Shuffle without iTunes and I found an amazingly simple way: iShuffle.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure you’ve either uninstalled iTunes from your computer or be sure to uncheck the box that automatically launches iTunes when you plug in an iPod.
2. Go to the iShuffle site and download the ‘iShuffle-without-iTunes.zip’ file. Open it and move to Step 3. We’ll use this zip file for Step 4.
3. Plug in your iPod Shuffle. Now click on “My Computer” or “Computer” and you should see your iPod showing up. Go ahead and double click on the iPod to view it’s contents.
4. Go back to the zip file from Step 2 and open it. Extract the file labeled ‘iShuffle.exe’ on to your iPod Shuffle. It should go on the iPod directly (in the root), not in a folder. In the above example, it should go in E:\.
5. You will need to create folder named Music to put in that same location. After you create the folder, its location should be E:\Music in the example above.
6. You can now load any music you want in the Music folder. After loading the music, double click the iShuffle.exe file to build the playlist and finish up the process!

Note that if you make any changes to the music located in the Music folder, you have to re-run the iShuffle.exe file to re-build the playlist.

If you are lacking some decent music to listen to on your iTunes-free iPod Shuffle, be sure to head to Amazonmp3.com to download some new tunes.

We’ll discuss Floola soon for managing iPods other than the Shuffle soon, but do you have any other media managers that you use in place of iTunes? I’m looking for some new running music, so be sure to let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions!

Gadget of The Day…

At The Digitante HQ, we recently had a new addition to our ranks. No, its not a new little baby. It isn’t a car. Regardless, it has changed my life. I look back and think, ‘How did I ever live without it.’

A waterpik.

A little back story may be in order here. The reason we got the waterpik is because Mrs. Digitante recently got braces. In order to keep her breath nice and fresh and keep her teeth cavity free, we decided to get a waterpik. When purchasing a waterpik, you basically have two options: the one pictured above (which we got) or one that hooks directly up to the sink using an attachment to the faucet.

While that one would have been less expensive and perhaps more economical, we decided to go with the version that could easily be packed up and tossed in the cupboard or a suitcase.

Now I’ll tell you a few things about the waterpik:

• It has a stop button so you can pause your teeth cleansing at any moment to listen to your daughters screaming “DADADADA” at the top of their lungs.
• The sharp jets of water go up under the gums and get the stuff that toothbrushing doesn’t get. Warning: Your gums will bleed the first couple of times you use it, but on the upside, I found that I didn’t have nearly the morning breath that I usually do. And usually it is BAD.
• It comes with multiple attachments including the orthodontic attachment for cleaning around braces, a sharp attachment called the pocketpik for between teeth, and a tongue scraper that looks like a spoon with a hole in it that squirts away the gunk while you scrape, scrape, scrape away.
• Mrs. Digitante’s favorite thing is to blast chunks of dinner out of her braces. If that sounds gross, just imagine if she left them in there for a day or two.

Mrs. Digitante has also decided everyone is getting Waterpiks for birthdays, wedding, child births, bar mitzvahs, confirmations, coronations, anniversaries (4th anniversary is water, right?), Christmas, Thanksgiving, and bachelor/bachelorette parties.

If you would like to get a Waterpik as well, hit up my link to Amazon below.

Waterpik Ultra

Anybody have a silly gadget like this that gets them all excited? Got any gadgets that you thought would be awesome and turned out to be duds?

Two Front Teeth? No Thanks…

What I did get for Christmas was exactly what I was hoping for: a wireless keyboard.

Not just any keyboard though – I got the Logitech diNovo wireless keyboard. The keys are a dream to type on. It is super solid. It has all kinds of media buttons for adjusting volume, fast-forwarding, and one-touch access to email, internet, and tons of other features.

Up until this point, we had a keyboard with a cord strung across the living room from the media center PC to the couch. If you’ve read my site, you would know that there are currently two 11 month old girls crawling around at a furious pace throughout the day. These girls were constantly unplugging, eating, and tugging on the cord, so I’m glad we took care of that situation.

Here is the ironic part: those same little mischievous girls were the ones that got me the new wireless keyboard. By making their father happy, they officially retired one of their favorite toys.

Will they find something new to get into? Looks like they already have…