Category Archives: Site Updates

All site updates and happenings

Why I’m Dropping Boxee for XBMC 2

The Boxee platform had so much promise. Since releasing the Boxee Box in November 2010, Boxee has absolutely abandoned the PC users who brought the platform to prominence. Having waited since November for Boxee 1.0, PC Boxee users (including me) are now in open revolt.  I've been a huge proponent of the platform since the Alpha in October of 2008. The developers have done a great job building a product on top of XBMC, adding streaming capabilities from popular sources such as Netflix and Hulu. The product, overall, is a great idea. Since the Boxee Box release, the PC version of Boxee has been left derelict and is just an afterthought at this point. Hulu content is inaccessible (from what I understand largely due to Hulu) and the other web-content is near-unwatchable due to the idiosyncrasies of each web player and how Boxee displays them. It is only with frequent updates to correct these glaring problems that….

Twitter Blocked in Egypt: A View From Inside Their Network 0

I keep various VPSes across the globe for research purposes. One of those locations is in Egypt. So what happens when I do a normal traceroute? [root@vps01-eg ~]# tracert google.com traceroute to google.com (74.125.230.81), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1  host-x.com.eg (196.x.x.x)  0.033 ms  0.024 ms  0.017 ms  2  host-x.com.eg (196.x.x.x)  0.780 ms  0.883 ms  1.091 ms  3  10.x.x.x (10.x.x.x)  0.691 ms  0.700 ms  0.693 ms 4  172.x.x.x (172.x.x.x)  1.623 ms  1.613 ms  1.603 ms 5  172.x.x.x (172.x.x.x)  1.751 ms  2.060 ms  2.055 ms 6  172.20.2.1 (172.20.2.1)  7.860 ms  7.855 ms  7.846 ms  7  172.20.3.37 (172.20.3.37)  6.387 ms  7.281 ms  6.525 ms 8  * * * 9  * * *10  64.214.151.81 (64.214.151.81)  140.963 ms  140.328 ms  140.305 ms11  po2-40G.ar4.NYC1.gblx.net (67.16.132.174)  140.821 ms  143.027 ms  141.632 ms 12  72.14.198.93 (72.14.198.93)  129.329 ms  129.689 ms  129.658 ms13  216.239.43.114 (216.239.43.114)  187.277 ms  132.211 ms  131.428 ms14  216.239.46.219 (216.239.46.219)  136.966 ms  136.579 ms  136.060 ms 15  64.233.175.115 (64.233.175.115)  136.051….

My Thoughts on the iPhone 4 on Verizon 0

The Verizon iPhone is a win for consumers all around. The competition between VZ and ATT will only heat up with better values coming out of all cell phone plans (the current pricing trend is out of control.) Which will be better for you? Depends on whose network covers the places you frequent the most. On the VZ positive end there will be the ability to turn the iPhone into a network hot spot without jailbreaking (for an additional fee, likely $30/month); on the minus it can not make voice calls and transfer data at the same time. For AT&T’s part, they have grown up around the massive amounts of data the iPhone uses and it is as of yet unseen if Verizon’s network can handle it.  I would recommend waiting until May or June to get the next generation iPhone from Verizon to see how things pan out. If….

Per Channel Cable Subscriber Rates 0

Dear Boxee, Please Don’t Pull a Joost 1

Boxee, you have a lot going for you and I’m pulling for you to win the race for the living room (with new arrivals from Google and an Apple iTV on the horizon). I use you as a centerpiece of my home media setup after ditching my cable plan. My family and myself have fully embraced the whole “TV over internet” model. But we need to have a talk.  The most positive thing that you have going for you is that are an open platform. Developers can write plugins for you, with the only restrictions being the developer’s own ability and dreams. This is a good thing, as it allows infinite development of your platform – and I believe this is where boxee should be focusing its time on: enticing talented developers and content producers to write apps for your interface. With the latest release of Boxee you’ve added an….

The Problem With Twitter 0

Twitter has a problem. I have many different social groups that I interact with. For reading messages from these groups – I have created lists. They work fairly well on the reading side to see what a certain group of people are tweeting about. But what about sending messages? I send out messages on many different topics. Maybe it is the eclectic in me showing. I might tweet about a local traffic problem, and in the next moment about the latest research on geolocation privacy. My shared links to do with the law (I work in the legal profession) may have no interest to many in my group, but will be spot on for other members. So what is the solution? Right now we are presented with only 2 options: – Create different twitter user for each ‘topic’ we want to post tweets on, or- Use external services for sending….

iPhone 4 Crosses the Portable Device Convergence Finish Line 0

It had to be back in 2005 or so when I first started talking about device convergence. I said that within a few years (I originally said 3 years, so I wasn’t too far off) that we would have a mobile device convergence of cell phones, mp3 players, and cameras. You could see it coming even if the current technology in 2005 wasn’t up to the quality of each individual device. Now that the iPhone 4 takes 720p video at 30fps we have a worth competitor which crosses the finish line. There is still some room for improvement that Apple and the other phone manufacturers should take note of.  The first phone I noticed which actually started this convergence was the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones (W series, W580i, etc). The problem with these phones was the interface, which was horrible. You could listen to a lot of music due to….