’nuff said.

Kung Fu Leftovers performs their hit, Presidents’ Day.

Geek that I am, I wanted to start playing with it right away.  It’s pretty quick to set up the hardware.  An HDMI cord from the cable box to the Revue, and another HDMI cord from the Revue to the TV.  Immediately, the GoogleTV setup program starts running.

After I told the system the make and model of my cable box and TV, and a two-step setup of the WiFi, I was done.  The keyboard was fully controlling the TV and cable box.  I was pleasantly surprised how effectively the Logitech keyboard worked as a Universal Remote.

Of course, GoogleTV is much more than a glorified Universal Remote.  I tried out what I consider the most important feature: The Quick Search Bar.  The keyboard has a dedicated search button which puts a nice big search bar at the top of the screen.  I typed in ‘Saturday Night Live” and immediately saw two live TV results, as well as NBC’s online video hub. Switching between live TV and Web results is quick and surprisingly smooth.

I tried the web browser and was happy to see that websites rendered nicely and when I needed to make the text larger, there’s a nice keyboard shortcut to increase / decrease text size.  Browsing was zippy and just worked well.  The Revue even has a slick picture-in-picture feature which allows you to watch TV in a small corner overlay (you can move the video to any corner) while you browse (or use apps) full screen.

GoogleTV offers apps in addition to TV and the Web.  For now, there are just a few included apps, but GoogleTV is built on the Android OS, and conceivably could support the full Android App Marketplace via a future update.  I quickly tried out the Netflix app, which works and looks very similar to the Wii or PS3 versions of Netflix.  One thing I noticed is that Netflix offerings don’t seem to show up in Quick Search Bar results.  If that was supported, the Quick Search might become my standard option for finding entertainment.

Right now, I’m writing this blog post on my TV from the couch, while watching live TV.  My first impression is very good.  Things just work, with very little set up, the user interface is clean and responsive, and the keyboard remote looks and works great.

This time it’s the Cr-48, the Chrome OS laptop.  In short, Google made a netbook that’s pretty much just a web browser.   The concept of the netbook came about as a cheap laptop alternative for people who just wanted to be able to browse the web, edit a document or spreadsheet every once in a while, and maybe share some photos with the family.  No big 3d rendering applications, home recording studios or video editing suites.  Well, manufacturers began producing these small, underpowered netbooks with low price points to satisfy that market.  Google saw a huge flaw in the system.

Netbooks still run fully featured operating systems.  Your netbook can run all the software that your desktop runs, it just wouldn’t run it very well.  With Chrome OS, Google’s engineers figured, if you’re not going to want to run all that software, and you’re just using the thing for web browsing, why not ditch all those unneeded parts of the operating system?

What you’re left with can hardly be called an operating system.  Chrome OS is essentially just the Chrome web browser with a very thin layer of additional functionality.  What it means is that every bit and byte in the machine is dedicated to making the web work, and work quickly.

Right out of the box, I opened the lid and the thing was fully booted in less than 30 seconds.  Zippy.  I entered my WiFi password, punched in my Google account info and was greeted with a familiar Chrome window (complete with all of my bookmarks and browser add-ons waiting for me) in no time.  Even without WiFi, I’d have been browsing almost immediately, because this machine has a built-in 3G antenna (with 2 years of free Verizon data service). Google really delivers on their promise of zero-to-browsing in no time.

I’ve been using it for just a few hours now (incidentally, without having noticed any drain on the included battery which came only half full) and I can say it’s a very capable, though flawed, piece of hardware.  The trackpad has click and sensitivity issues.  Browsing is generally quick and and websites look great (this is after all, the awesome, and once again, highly recommended Chrome browser) but Flash player has some playback issues.  Videos can be pretty choppy at times, and downright awful at others (HTML5 video, however, plays much smoother).  It comes with a built-in web cam, but won’t allow Skype (which, at the moment, has no web app version).

Kelly asked, after I geeked about this thing for a while, “What does it do that your other computer can’t?”  Well, precisely nothing.  In fact, there are a great many things that this one can’t do.  However, in this case, it’s addition by subtraction.  I have a feeling this will be my main travel computer (at least for non-working trips).  And, when I’m home, it may well stay put in the kitchen, for the quick recipe reference or useless trivia lookup.

For the user who lives life in the cloud, Chrome OS could be a great alternative to the netbook.  Especially if it comes for free

Update: Wired says it all.

Internet TV, as a concept, is solid.  TVs, especially in the HD age, are really just large computer monitors.  There’s no reason why we can’t throw the content that makes us drooling morons in our office chairs (read: pictures of cats, videos of people getting hit in the crotch) onto the device that makes us drooling morons in our living rooms.  The web is just another big source of entertainment, right?  Internet TV should just be like adding 50,000,000,000 channels to your on-screen channel guide (though, most of those are undoubtedly porn [which is probably the main use of internet TV, now that I think about it]).

Of course, we know this isn’t the case.  In fact, I’ve been able to browse the web on my TV for years (since the minute I set up my PS3), but I’ve probably spent a total of 5 minutes browsing the web that way.  There’s too many stumbling blocks.

• I need to be using my PS3
• Sites look like crap  and JavaScript and Flash support are iffy at best (Sony really dropped the ball on their browser, which is some proprietary bit of junk which it seems like they’ve never updated)
• Input methods stink (Ever try typing on a virtual keyboard using a game controller?  You can connect a keyboard/mouse, but then you have to sit a cord length away from the PS3.  I eventually bought a wireless keyboard, but its hidden away somewhere out of sight and now I always forget to turn it on before I want to use the internet.)

Google TV seems to have addressed most of these concerns.

• The device is integrated with your normal TV-watching technology.  That is, it works in conjunction with your cable or satellite box.
• The browser is a version of Google Chrome (my browser of choice on the desktop) with excellent support for advanced web techniques (Flash, JavaScript and a bunch of HTML5 features)
• Logitech’s out-of-the-box solution is a wireless keyboard/remote which isn’t as big or ugly as my old wireless PC keyboard, so it may stay out in the open. Of course, the even better solution is the Logitech Harmony iPhone app which will let me control the whole thing from my phone.

So, my main complaints with the TV web browsing experience are addressed, but there is another major obstacle before we can proclaim TV and Web happily married.  The way we watch TV is very different from the way we “watch” the web.  TV is something you turn on, and then generally don’t interact with for about 30 minutes (at least).  There is no web site on the whole of the internet that could keep you engrossed for 30 minutes without interaction.  Of course, with more sophisticated controls (smartphone / keyboard / Xbox Kinect) may come easier interaction, and a more seamless experience and sites like YouTubeXL and Google Reader Play have tried to minimize the ratio of interaction to entertainment (unsurprisingly both Google enterprises).

The biggest obstacle of a good Web experience on a TV is the Web design itself.  TVs sit 10 feet or more away from the viewers, whereas computer screens are less than 3 feet away.  Designs that work well at one distance might not (likely will not) work at the other.  However, this is something that web designers will need to become increasingly familiar with.  The number and variety of web-enabled devices is huge and growing rapidly.  We have smartphones, tablets, e-Readers, televisions, gaming consoles, not to mention the tons of different computer monitor resolutions.

And of course, that brings us to the reason I won this device.  Google wants as many developers and web geeks out there playing with this stuff so they can have it in mind when they create apps and sites.  I’m cautiously optimistic that their plan will work.  I’d love to come up with an app that works well from the sofa.  Any ideas?

If you’re anything like me, you find these guys hilarious. Mostly, it’s the accents.

So, what is Google Voice

Short answer: It’s a virtual phone number that rings through to any number of real phone numbers. A slightly longer answer is that it is a suite of phone-related services which can be accessed and managed through a web browser or a smartphone. The features you get with google voice include Call Forwarding, Free Text Messaging, Visual Voicemail (with transcribed speech-to-text, giving you an email-like view of your voicemail messages) and very cheap International Calling.

What it isn’t

It’s not Skype. You don’t make computer-to-computer calls. This is an actual phone number that other actual phone numbers dial into. It’s just that once someone dials your google voice number, you have a bit more control over what happens. You can block numbers, send all callers to your voicemail, screen the messages, or you can forward the call to your phone and answer it (and even record the conversation at any time by dialing 4).

And this is just what I’ve discovered after a few minutes of playing with it. Which brings me to this:

I have a google voice phone number now. It’s (313) 444-4825. It’s not that I really want to be in the Detroit Area Code, but I managed to grab the only available number that spells out GIGITAL, my on-again-off-again business name (It’s on again now).

Personal Update

I just returned from a 10-day trip out to the Cincinnati area with my buddy Dave. We drove out there to spend time with his baby and baby-mama, and his baby-mama’s mama and papa (I even met his baby-mama’s mama’s mama and papa). We had a whole mess of fun (boating on the lake, playing disc golf, cornholing [this, not this], going to a Reds game, eating the local deliciousness, being entertained by a ridiculously cute 4-month-old, and of course, a healthy dose of drinking), and I still managed to stay ahead of my work.  That was a pretty big test for me.  One of the main reasons I wanted to be self-employed was to maintain the ability to work and travel at the same time.  I’m confident in my ability to keep that delicate balance in check.

Software Updates

WordPress made a big jump this week up to version 3.0.  To you, the blog visitor, it doesn’t mean too much.  Slightly faster load times, perhaps, but really the updates come on the admin side.  Frankly, for BenMyerson.com, I probably won’t use too many of the new features, but in my work using WordPress as a Content Management System for my clients, I’ll gain huge benefits.  Custom Post Types, great Menuing options, and multiple user/site support all go a long way to making WordPress my top choice for most clients’ CMS needs.

The other big news is that the brand-spankin’ new iPhone operating system (now called iOS4, since it’s also for iTouch and iPad) is out.  There are tons and tons of minor additions and improvements in this update, but the big news is that iPhones now support multi-tasking of 3rd party applications.  Two huge benefits of this are being able to listen to my Pandora station while performing other tasks on the phone and being able to stay logged into Skype all day.  Many developers have already pushed out new versions of their apps to make the most of this update, but I’m sure we’ll see dozens of new versions hit the app store in the next few weeks.

Hardware Update

I purchased my very first Mac this past week.  I’m now the proud owner of a MacBook Pro.  This doesn’t mean I’ve “switched sides” or become a Steve Jobs lovin’ Apple zombie, it just means I’ve added another weapon to my development arsenal.  This will allow me to develop and distribute iOS4 mobile apps as well as create full sized Mac Applications.  It’s also a great tool for testing any web sites and applications I develop to make sure they look right across all platforms.  I’ve used Macs before (mostly old school ones from the computer lab at Edson Elementary) but never particularly extensively.  I’m still getting used to the slightly different keyboard shortcuts and the VERY different user experience (dragging an icon to a folder just doesn’t seem like software installation to me) but I’m sure I’ll grow to love it.

I’ve linked to My Mets Journal before, but this post shed some more light on it’s author, Joe Petruccio.  Turns out he designed the Mets’ iconic 1980′s racing stripe uniforms!  This is some serious Mets awesomeness on a day-night doubleheader day which should bring more Mets awesomeness.

Double Dork Dose.  Looks like we’ve got more renderings coming from Marvel.  This one is covered by Collider, and features images of Marvel’s next big screen hero, Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

Click them images to see them bigger.  In my opinion, the Thor costume doesn’t quite work as well as Cap’s.  In the comics, Thor had a pretty iconic, bright colored costume for years, but recently has had a bunch of redesigns, including the one above, which looks to be closest to the movie version.  So, for me, never having been much of a Thor devotee in the first place, I’m not that into it.  But, that’s purely the costume aesthetic.  I’m still pumped for the Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor, due out next year.

Original Post

Jeez, I try to be a reasonably mature adult, but these people keep making comic book movies (and someone keeps making me check any blog that promises any kind of news regarding them).

Latest bit: images of what Captain America’s costume is going to look like in the upcoming Captain America:The First Avenger. As someone who has always been skeptical of how the heck they were going to make the super cartoon-y costume look reasonable, I’m pretty jazzed about these images.

There are better images if you follow that link, but I wanted a side-by-side comparison with an action shot. The goofy buccaneer style boots are gone, as are the little wings above the ears. They’ve turned a silly looking spandex outfit into something reasonably realistic (if not particularly well-camouflaged).