But wait… It can’t be used for email? (Google Apps user managed storage)

Google announced user managed storage today. “Hallelujah!” I told my IT manager.

But WAIT, extra storage can’t be applied to a user’s email account?! This is totally puzzling. Is it because one of the primary differences (and drivers for upgrades) between Google Apps Premier and the free version is email storage capacity? Fine, then limit storage upgrades to premier edition customers (who are already paying) and let them expand _their_ email storage.

This is huge pain for us, with 5-10 users who are constantly hitting 100%, whose email accounts then need to be thinned out using various annoying and tedious techniques.

Wasn’t the gmail promise that we’d never have to delete emails?

Control your home A/C with your iPhone for $100

This weekend, I replaced my home thermostats with two wifi thermostats made by 3M and sold at Home Depot (Model #3M-50). Now I can control my home’s heating and cooling from anywhere inside our home or when I’m out of the house, simply by firing up an iPhone app!

Setup was _almost_ as easy as it could have been. The one thing 3M could have done better was make clear that unit requires _wired_ power because of the wifi. Incidentally, getting power to the 3M unit wasn’t hard– they have a video on their site that explains it really well. You simply take one of the unused wires in the bundle of A/C control cables that run from your A/C’s “computer” to your thermostat and you connect it to the power terminals on both ends.

Setting up the first unit, without breaks, probably took an hour and fifteen minutes. The second unit was done in under 30 minutes (because I knew exactly what I was doing).

In general, the unit works really well. Connectivity was one of my concerns because I’ve seen wifi devices that frequently lose connection– but so far it’s worked just fine whether I’m in the house on the wireless LAN or out of the house on another LAN or on my cell phone’s 3G connection. There’s an almost negligible lag time (less than 1s?) from making a setting change on your iPhone to having it show up on the corresponding thermostat.

Only complaint, so far: the physical thermostat device could be more user friendly. The main complaint here is that they stuck an important button (the “mode” button) on the right _side_ of the thermostat. So 1) it’s not self-evident how to toggle the mode (from HEAT to COOL to OFF), I think most people (like me) will have to spend a moment figuring out where it is and 2) once you know where the button is, you still have to check around the side to make sure you’re pressing the right one.

But overall, this product looks like it’ll be a winner at our house. I’m hoping to see a reduction in our gas and electrical bills because this will make it easier to turn down/off the A/C or heating when we go out of the house. We’ll see! I’ll post more as we continue to use this thing.


My old Honeywell thermostat



The 3M-50 wifi thermostat that I bought at Home Depot for $100 each



Here's the 3M-50 Wifi thermostat installed



Here's the 3M-50 wifi thermostat close-up



And finally, the reason I did all this, the iPhone app I can use to control my A/C and heating– here it’s showing the current configuration for my upstairs and downstairs iPhone apps

Notes from my recent trip to Prague, Czech Republic

Food

  • Barock – Food was good, but the whole thing was overpriced, and that was me eating the less expensive vegetarian dishes. No drinks (except sparkling water), a tomata caprese salad and a risotto chantrelles was $50 USD.
  • Bohemia Bagels – low rating on this place. The bagel was stale, the cream cheese was dry and crumbly. And the capuccino was really terrible (they were trying to re-use the ground??). They have Internet, but it’s costs 1 CZK per minute. So that’s $4 / hour. Which is fine I guess, but plenty of places offer faster Internet connections at a better price… ie FREE.
  • Starbucks – Almost all of them have fast and free Internet connections. I had pristine Skype phone calls from two of them and even FaceTime’ed with my daughters from one of them (the staff and others at Starbucks got a real kick out of seeing that). One of these Starbucks is right off the old town square, in front of the astronomical clock. The other was right over the Charles Bridge, on the castle side of the river.
  • Bake shop – Great cappucino and fresh baked goods. Everything tasted fresh, yummy. Nice staff. I paid about $15 for a cappucino, a croissant and two small chocolate cookies (I know, not a very healthy breakfast).
  • Al Dente – Nice Italian place. Also somewhat pricey ($40 / head) but we had a lot to eat. No selection of salads, though they did bring us mixed green salads when we asked for them (which were exactly that — a bunch of mixed greens and nothing else). The entrees were great, fresh. I had one of their pizzas (gorgonzola + pear) and it was really tasty. For some reason, the pizza took longer to bring out. My dinner companions were halfway through their pasta dishes before my pizza got to the table (and that was after they waited for a few minutes, after I told them to go ahead). The staff were apologetic for this.

Other stuff

  • The lookout from the top of the astronomical clock tower was worth it (100 CZH = $6 USD), it afforded a nice 360 degree view of Prague.


    • From the lookout

  • The astronomical clock was… meh. Maybe it’s more exciting if you’re into medivial astronomy?


    • Evidently, I’m not a clock geek

  • One of the more interesting things to see at the astronomical clock were the weddings. They must have weddings scheduled there back to back to back. Some in parallel I think (they must have more than one chapel?). On the Saturday that I was near the astronomical clock, I saw at least 3 couples come out married. One of the grooms came out and had a yoke put around his neck to mark the occasion. 🙂

  • The castle itself (on the other side of the river) is a huge complex and a nice place to roam around. It was a good walk to get there from the old town. Depending on how you go, it can be very steep or a more reasonable grade. I made my way up there from the Charles Bridge and I thought the grade was pretty reasonable. The highlight for me was the Vitus Cathedral there. There are lots of other attractions on the premises including convents, castles, palaces, art, and gardens.


    • St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague at Sunset

  • Cannabis: it would seem that cannabis (aka marijuana) is legal here? I saw places that advertised the sale of cannabis and one place that was even selling cannabis flavored ice cream!

    • Cannabis, cannabis, everywhere!


  • I had been warned about pick-pockets and accordingly was more aware of my wallet than I would normally have been. I kept it in my front pocket on the day that I spent criss-crossing Prague on foot. In the end, I never felt at risk on this — even in busy crowds I found myself in (and there were several such occasions because I was here on the weekend and by all accounts, I was here when the weather was perfect.)


    • A sign on the subway in Prague. I had been warned about pickpockets, but never had any problems and never felt at risk.

  • The Old Town: This is one of the popular places to walk around… it’s where the astronomical clock is located and it’s always full of people and surrounded my shops. Here’s a panoromic photo of the place at night, taken on my iPhone and stitched together with AutoStitch.

  • Palladium: local mall, 200 shops. Nice place, but do you really need to shop at another Sephora? But I enjoy visiting places like this that are more of local venues vs. another tourist destination. A cone of ice cream was 25 CZH ($1.5) while throughout most of the old city, the same cone was more like 80 CZH ($5). The mall had a few grocery stores and drug stores. I picked up a nail cutter I needed to buy and a large bottle of water to carry around with me.
  • Narodni: seemed like a better street for shopping and experiencing more of the local life than the old town square and the streets that emanate out of there. It’s a block or two over from the old town square and I saw some really good coffee and chocolate shops while walking down this street. There are also a few squares off of this street that looked fun.
  • Running: I went running twice while I was in Prague, both times in a park over the river and up the hill from my hotel. So I ran from Parizka, over the Cechuv bridge and then there was a steep uphill (either a ramp or stairs — I took the ramp). Once at the top, there was a park whose exterior made a roughly 5 km (3 mile) loop. The park itself is really nice. It was a playground for children, lots of paths leading in different directions. A lot of locals out rollerblading, cycling. One side of the park leads into the castle complex (so there are some slight upward grades within the park itself). Off of one of the park paths, I found a stadium and an outdoor game field where a bunch of school girls were playing after school lacross or at least something that resembled lacrosse.


    • My running trail in Prague.

  • Walking: I did a lot of walking while I was in Prague. The cobblestone will tire your feet about, but I love walking so I just walked and walked while I was there. Houston’s not much of a walking city between the lack of walking paths in most parts of town, drivers that don’t understand pedestrians and weather that’s not so walker friendly.
  • Shopping: I’m a terrible shopper. I did get some recommendations on places to buy good quality crystal/porcelain (which is something Prague is evidently famous for) but never made it out to these places.
  • Getting to the town center from the airport: I ended up getting a cab. It cost about 500CZH or $30. I got some cash from a Unicard ATM (known as a “Bankomat” in Czech) at the airport so paying the driver once I got to the hotel was easy.

My review of the Picasa “channel” for Roku

For a while now, I’ve been in search of an easy way to browse my Picasaweb albums on the big screen television in my living room. Little did I know that the answer was right under my nose… or under my television, to be more precise!

First some background: I organize all the photographs I take using Google’s Picasa for Windows. And then I upload them to Picasa’s online photo sharing service called Picasa Web Albums (aka Picasaweb). I upload most of my albums with Picasa’s “Anyone with the link” sharing option.

So I’ve had a Roku box for, oh, maybe a year now? When they first added the ability for developers to build their own channels, I was disappointed to see that there wasn’t a Picasa “channel” for the device…. but sometime between then and now, someone added one! Specifically, this guy, Chris Hoffman, appears to be the man behind the Picasa Channel for Roku.


hoffmancs’s Picasa plug-in for Roku on my Roku’s main menu (yes, the plasma is badly burned in)

Setup: the way it works is pretty simple: you first install the Roku channel and then when you go to access it, you’re given an access code to enter in on this page:
http://roku.chrishoffman.org/picasa

You pull up this page on your laptop/netbook/desktop/whatever and then you enter your “claim code”.

Then you’re asked to link the Picasa Roku Channel with one of your Google Accounts, via OAuth (which is much more secure than the Picasa channel asking you to give it your Google username and password).

Then, that’s it as far as setup goes!

Using it: From here, using this Picasa channel, you can:
– browse your albums
– browse your tags
– browse by some other things (that I don’t remember)


Albums menu option in hoffmancs’s Picasa channel for Roku

Some notes from my using it about 30-40 times now:

  • I mostly use the “browse by albums” screen to choose an album and then start playing it back.
  • Playback is automatically in “slideshow” mode, with the default delay being 3 seconds. You can change this on the settings screen.
  • The Roku plug-in also seems to pre-cache four or five photographs — that’s the number of photographs I can quickly clickthrough before the app forces me to wait so it can load another photograph.
  • It displays the entire photograph on your TV screen, so if it’s a portrait photograph, you’ll have large black areas to it’s left and right (which is the right thing for any slideshow viewer to do by default).
  • Assuming you have your Roku hooked up to an HDTV and you have the Roku configured for 720p mode, it displays your photographs in beautiful high-definition (subject, I’m sure to whatever resolution you uploaded them at).
  • It handles video: The Picasa channel for Roku also handle videos you’ve uploaded. Assuming you have an album that includes videos, when you choose that albums, you’re presented with a sub-menu of viewing the photographs in that album or the videos in that album. If you choose to view the videos, you are presented with a list of the vidoes and when you choose one, it buffers it and starts playing. I was surprised at how good the videos looked when played back through the app!

Bottom line? The Picasa channel for Roku is a big winner. The quality of the photographs is great. It handles videos. It nails my core use-cases. I’m already using this thing all the time, sharing photographs I’ve taken with my family, with friends that have come over. It’s great! I’m surprised that this thing hasn’t gotten more attention — the only really relevant google search result for “Roku Picasa Channel” is this thread in the Roku forums.

But like any good early adopter, I have my wish list of things that I wish this app handled:

1) multiple picasa account support: I wish this thing supported multiple accounts. In our family, my father and I take all the photographs — he uploads his to his own Picasa account and I upload to mine. Switching between accounts is a big pain right now (ie I’d have to go through the whole setup process described above). I wish I could configure one account and then another and then have it interleave the albums or even just let me then pick one account or the other. BTW, I noticed that the Picasa Web Albums viewer in Google TV (from when I tried out one of Sony’s new Google TV devices) supports multiple accounts.

2) album & photograph search: I don’t think the app supports searching my albums at this point. I have several years of photographs in Picasa Web Albums so going back to one from say 3 years ago involves my scrolling through a very long list of albums (they’re presented in reverse chronological order).

3) better “browse photographs in album” support: right now, I’m able to browse through photographs in an album, but the interface is a horizontal ribbon of all my photographs. Like Picasa’s web-based interface, I wish I would get a grid of photographs and then choose from a grid. When I have a large album (say 500+ photographs of a family trip to Europe), I may want to jump to a particular part of the album and doing that now, like browsing for an album from a while ago, is painful.

4) more robust account linking: I don’t know if I’ll see this happen again, but for some reason the Roku at my parents house loses it’s connection to the house wifi every so often. If you’re disconnected from WiFi (and Roku doesn’t give you a very good notification of this) and you try to access the Picasa Web channel, it fails and appears to disconnect you from your Picasa Web Albums account. Once you reconnect the Roku, you have to go through the setup process again.

5) better caching of photographs: like I mentioned above, the app appears to cache a handful of photographs but when you get to the end of that cache, which in my case happens after I click quickly through four or five photographs, then it stalls without any feedback that it’s loading the next photograph(s). I’ve figured this out, but I can guarantee this would confuse my Dad.

6) support for viewing other picasa web albums: Other people occasionally share picasa albums with me. I wish I could somehow take an e-mail with a link to a picasa web album and pull that up album up on my TV. I’m not sure exactly how this would work, but it would be useful and handy.

Anyhow, most importantly, thanks hoffmancs for the great Roku app, I’m using it all the time!

Update: here’s a slideshow of a lot of the screens (I took ’em using my iPhone’s camera):

Comparing my Acer 1810TZ to new Macbook Airs

Here’s a quick comparison of my beloved Acer 1810TZ-4174 and the new Apple Macbook Air 11″:

Acer 1810TZ Macbook Air 11″ (new)
Dimensions
length (in) 8 7.56
width (in) 11.2 11.8
depth (in) 1.2 0.68
weight (lbs) 3.1 2.3
screen (in) 11.6 11.6
USB ports 3 2
SD card slot Yes! No*
Flash memory 256MB** 64MB or 128MB
price $550 + $580 = $1130*** $999 or $1199

* This is probably a deal breaker for me. I take a lot of photographs and being able to download them and quickly upload them online, all without any extra hardware is an important use case for me.

** I bought and replaced the 340GB drive that came with my Acer 1810TZ-4174 with a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD). My netbook isn’t instant on, but everything is definitely faster with the SSD.

*** cost of the base laptop + cost of the Crucial RealSSD C300 that I bought to replace the built-in hard drive.

Playing around with Sony’s Google TV product

I had a chance to play around with one of Sony’s new Google TV devices last week on Friday.

Some photographs of stuff running in the TV’s task manager:

Looks like a lot of services that mirror the state of the DVR– so that’s how they do that integration. In this particular setup, they had it setup and working with DirecTV. So I guess the idea that the DVR integration will only work with DISH, that there is some exclusive there, simply is NOT true.

Overall, the device seemed not so cohesive… a lot like early versions of Android felt. It was clear to me, from the 5-10 minutes I spent using the device, that it’s early days for Google TV!

Why Google TV is going to be just fine

Now that Logitech’s Revue product and Sony’s Google TV enabled TVs have been announced (or announced and “leaked” respectively) there are folks that are getting pre-disenchanted with Google TV:

First of all, I disagree with the idea that there’s a bunch of hype around Google TV. There’s not, this comment is just reflects an insular tech community perspective.

Second, yes, I agree with the fact that Sony’s keyboard for Google TV is silly… I joked earlier this week that Brother should sue Sony for copying their label printer keyboards… then again, come on now, be honest, who *hasn’t* thought of using their Brother label printer to control their television!?!

And, yes, I agree that Logitech’s Revue is too complicated (see the What you Need section of this page… consumers do NOT want this!) and it’s priced too high ($299… without an input device!).

So I think Logitech’s Revue is going to flop and Sony’s products aren’t going to sell any better than any of their other TV products (which I would consider a flop, if I were Sony). I’ve seen lots of other companies try and sell “next generation” TV experiences to consumers and Logitech and Sony repeat a lot of the same mistakes (including some of the same mistakes we made at SnapStream with Beyond TV).

But you know what: It doesn’t matter if Logitech and Sony fail, Google TV is going to be JUST fine. Why? Because it’s F-R-E-E, free!! (or, eventually, less than free). The $99 (or less) Google TV box WILL come out. Google will keep improving the software stack, bringing more content into the fold, bringing more 3rd party apps into the mix, making web-browsing on your TV better and better. The price premium for Google TV on your cable or satellite set-top box, your TV, your Blu-ray player, etc. will eventually go to $0. Android’s doing this in smartphones and Google TV will do it in the TV category as well.

Personally, I’m not going to buy a new Google TV enabled Sony TV (even though I’m actually in the market for a new TV right now) and I’m definitely not buying a Logitech Revue. But I will buy the first halfway decent $99 or less Google TV box that comes out so I can play around with it and watch Google make the software better and better.

Has Facebook’s Social Groups feature “worked” for anyone?

(Since FastCompany’s commenting system is terrible and won’t let me 1) register to comment or 2) use my twitter or facebook to comment, here’s my comment to their article)

I think Facebook would say this is an outlier and these guys should just click the easy to see “unsubscribe” button and get out of the group if they don’t want to be a part of it. It’s an outlier because only your “friends” can add you to a group and most people don’t have a gazillion, random people as friends like Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis do.

But on the flipside of things, has anyone has this feature “work” for them? Do people see these wonderful, natural intuitive groups automagically coming into existence? That’s the idea that they talked about… that this would be photo tagging where group creation just kind of happened in a natural and organic way. I haven’t seen any such groups cross my path just yet.

When the Facebook people talk about things that are “social” as a checkbox feature vs. things that are built as being social from the ground up, I have to say that it sounds like a bunch of BS to me. I don’t think the line is that pronounced.

My review of Fonmigo (A Mifi-like device I rented in the UK)

I’ve been using Fonmigo’s mifi-like device while I’ve been traveling in the United Kingdom (aka UK aka England) this week.

It works well and I recommend the service. Of the options I looked at, this was the lower cost one. I think it’s costing me something like $10 per day (you can see their full price information on their website).

So far, I’ve mostly used it outside of London, in Wales. I’ve used it on the First Great Western train and it’s worked well. I’ve used it while in Swansea (a town in Wales) and it’s worked well. I even FaceTime’ed with my Dad from the train!

The device isn’t actually the Novatel Mi-Fi device, which has been popular in the States — it’s something similar, the Huawei E5830. One of the theoretical advantages of this device over the MiFi is it has all of these lights on the front that tells you its status.

The Novetel MiFi, in contrast, tries to communicate all status information through one light that changes colors and blinks at different frequencies. Which is to say, Hell if I ever know what the MiFi’s status indicator is trying to tell me! But the Huawei E5830, isn’t really a lot better: While the MiFi has only one cryptic light, the Huawei has FIVE of them! But the device definitely works, once you figure out how the different buttons make it turn on. Still, there’s an opportunity for some device maker to do a much better job.