Category: Technology

My Boxee Review

I had some time over the holiday break to “geek out” and get some things done I never seem to have time to do.  One of the things I finally got around to was connect Boxee to my living room TV.  You may have heard about the Boxee Box which was recently released by D-Link and sells on Amazon.com for $199 at the time of writing.  I’m running the Boxee software which is based on an open source platform on my Linux box at home but it also runs on Mac and Windows computers as well.  So long story short you don’t need a Boxee Box unless you don’t want to mess with running long cables from your PC to your TV or if you don’t have a decent graphics card and processor.  The video review above takes you through the entire Boxee experience and so far I am in love with it (was up until midnight watching Revision3 shows).

Free Your Inner Orangutan

Zoo image

I’m going to give you a scenario and by doing, so I’m hoping to prove a point. Let’s say everyone in the world has to go to prison even though they haven’t committed a crime. Let’s also say there are only three prisons which are an Apple prison, a Windows prison, and a Linux prison, and you get to choose which one you are going to spend the rest of your life in.

The Apple Prison

Steve Jobs with iPhone

You are told and many believe the Apple prison is great, fantastic, wonderful, insanely awesome, remarkable, cool, and many other adjectives in the presentation you see from its warden Steve Jobs. The marketing campaigns for the prison are artistic and sexy, with lots of marketing dollars behind them. Because everything is so sexy and perfect, it costs lots of money to get into it. The prison itself is beautiful, and much of it is made of brushed metal. All the doors and cabinets don’t have knobs because its leader hates buttons and knobs. At this prison you are served fancy foods and everyone and everything is beautiful. It is ruled by one man who says you do things one way – his way because he is the best and nobody can be better than him (although the guy is a freaking rock star). The televisions can only display half the television programs because its warden doesn’t want to use a certain technology called Flash. The inmates for some reason love being dictated to and controlled because everything in the prison “just works” so they never try and leave.

The Windows Prison

Steve Ballmer

The Windows prison is nice but not as beautiful as the Apple prison, but it costs less to get in. The warden of this prison, Steve Ballmer, likes to yell a lot but all in all, seems like a guy you would have liked to have hung out with in college. The inmates of the prison are very compatible with one another, and much of their time is spent developing their own rules. The rules work great as long as you don’t mind following rules created within your own prison, although you hear the other prisons have some better amenities, but you don’t care because your rules have support. Lots of people in this prison seem to still have AOL email accounts, and many worked for very large companies prior to arriving at the prison. The prison sometimes has really large earthquakes which crashes everything. Because of the earthquakes, you have to constantly keep rebuilding the entire prison all over again, which they call the blue earthquake of death. The latest builds of the prison take less time to rebuild and crash less often. The prison is fun because it allows you to play lots of video games.

The Linux Prison

Tux Penguin

The Linux prison barely has anyone occupying it, but everyone has keys to the front gates and every room to do whatever they wanted (heck, they could leave). Everything in the prison is completely free. Sometimes the inmates of the prison don’t have something they need, but they have the tools necessary to build it themselves. Everyone occupying the prison can’t understand why anyone would ever leave, and the inmates are in complete control of themselves, which can sometimes be a bad thing because there aren’t many laws or much support if an outbreak/riot occurs. If you get hurt and need to repair yourself, there aren’t a lot of people to help you, but you can get lots of help online. Although the Linux prison sometimes lacks control it does try to make rules for all prisons, but because most people are satisfied with their own prisons they don’t care much about the more open rules from this prison. Earthquakes occur, but the prison hasn’t crashed in years, so there isn’t much thought given to ever worrying about rebuilding. Everyone in the prison is a genius because everyone who runs Linux is a genius, and that is just how it works. I was doing good until that last point, wasn’t I?

Why Not Free Your Inner Monkey (or Orangutan)?

My guess is because some don’t like to troubleshoot and fix things. Some just want their world to “just work” and I think there is something to be said for that, but I can’t understand why you would sacrifice your freedom because of it. Others like compatibility and the familiarity with their existing operating system because they use it at work or because it is compatible with so many things. Gaming on a PC is fun too, so I get that as well.

Are there some gaping holes and things I haven’t included in my arguments? Yeah absolutely, it is a complex subject, and I’m trying to simplify it, not to mention make it semi entertaining (and attempt to start a conversation). The most interesting thing about it? You might be a person who sits in a prison and does nothing and says nothing all day. Whatever prison you’re in, say something, do something, and be something! People (and orangutans/animals) were meant to live free, so why are so many of us living in prisons and happy about it? Live free and live open, and never forget sharing is caring. Oh, and Mr. Orangutan here says open-source rules and you like orangutans, right?

Orangutan giving thumbs up
FeatureApple PrisonWindows PrisonLinux Prison
CostHighMediumFree
FreedomLowMediumHigh
User ExperiencePolishedFamiliarCustomizable
StabilityHighVariableVery High
GamingLimitedExcellentImproving

Discussion Points

  • Which “prison” do you currently live in, and what made you choose it?
  • Have you ever tried to “escape” to a different operating system? How did it go?
  • Do you think the trade-off between convenience and freedom is worth it?
  • What would your ideal operating system look like if you could create one?

Snake Robot Climbs A Tree

Snake Robot Climbs a Tree

From the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, a snake robot (Snakebot) demonstrates how it can climb a tree and look around.  Please keep in mind that this robot climbed a specific tree with a specific trunk width about 1 meter off of the ground. The researchers working to design, build and program these robots still have much work to do to get these bots to climb taller trees of various sizes and to navigate over branches and wires.

Kevin Rose, This Was Not Your Week

Ladies and gentlemen, when you think “D-Day” you probably think of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 right?  There appears to be another D-Day and nobody is storming beaches, but rather Internet users are storming off to reddit.com (a popular Digg clone) and declaring war on the site and its founder.  Before we get into the war of the geek kind, let’s start with how this all started.  On August 25, 2010, when people started flooding to the Digg site to preview the release of the newly redesigned site, they were angered to find many features its hardcore fans loved had been removed and the front page no longer had sites from individual users, but rather from large mainstream publishers.

A week ago today Digg 4 launched and what a week this has been for Kevin Rose, the Founder and Chief Architect (and at the time of launch, acting CEO) of Digg.com.  Kevin has been a popular Internet celebrity and someone I follow very closely and blog about often.  The longer I’ve lived, the more I’m finding everything tends to be cyclical.  Disney calls it the “circle of life” and I think they are onto something.  In 1990, when Apple was being bailed out by Microsoft, who would have ever thought that in 2010 Apple would be the company everyone talks about and have $40 billion cash in the bank?

I would never have believed that Kevin Rose would become one of the most despised people to his previously loyal Digg followers?  Just look at the picture below, which is a line for a Diggnation live taping which features Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht where they talk each week about stories they have “dugg” on the “social news website digg.com”.

Diggnation Line

One week you are one of the most popular people on the web, and the next what seems like a legion of geeks now hate you.  Easy come, and easy go, but can Digg and Kevin Rose come back from this enormous backlash?  Digg users are voting up, or digging stories from Reddit.com and the homepage is littered with stories from its competing site.  The circle of life happens everywhere around you, so enjoy the highs and do everything you can to survive the lows.

A few months ago, LeBron James announced he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers to join the Miami Heat.  When he announced his decision, many of his fans in Cleveland turned on him, and some were so angry they went in the streets to burn his jersey.  Let’s stop and think about this for a second.  Want to know who your real friends and fans are?  They are the ones who stay by your side when everyone else is turning against you.

People tend to like you as long as you do what they want you to.  They like you when you have something they can benefit from.  They like you when you do something outside the box, but when it fails, they will be the first to berate you over it.  Kevin created Digg and at that time the site was something revolutionary.  I like Digg’s new design, and I can understand user’s outrage over having mainstream content appear directly from the sites as opposed to being submitted by users.  When Facebook did its latest redesign, many users also got very vocal.  If nothing else, I respect people with an opinion, but give people feedback with as much grace as possible.  Elbert Hubbard famously said, “to avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing”.  What Kevin and lots of other Internet entrepreneurs have now hopefully learned is to do everything you can do to make your users happy.  I think Digg is trying to resolve the issues being brought up to the best of their abilities, so good luck Kevin and the Digg team.  Hang in there, Kevin…

Fresh Code Barcodes

Here’s something that every supermarket shopper wishes was currently available. The Fresh Code is an intelligent barcode that doubles up as a graph, indicating the freshness of the vegetable that you’re checking out. The less fresh it is, the less the barcode is displayed, and when you don’t see a barcode, you’ll know that it’s not worth buying. It’s a cool concept, not to mention that when the barcode has disappeared, the cashier won’t be able to tag it to the point-of-sales machine, so they can’t really force you to buy old fruit or vegetables either. Neat huh?  What I think would be really cool is if the price went down with the age of the product automatically.