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Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Got my Nook 3 weeks ago, I wanted to use it for a bit before making a review, so far I must say that I love my Nook, aside from a couple of things I will detail in just seconds, everything just works as expected, this thing feels nice on your hand, not too heavy not too light, it feels just like holding a book.

There are thousands of free eBooks on the internet, including the latest bestsellers! so it is nice to be able to obtain all those books I have been thinking about buying for a while and just having them ready at no cost for reading at my own pace, there are literally hundreds of sites where you can find free eBooks.

One thing I have noticed is that the Nook (and I think eReaders in general) manage to bring us back to the habit of reading books, with the advancement of the internet and so many connected devices these days, it is easy to spend hours looking at a computer, laptop, notebook iphone etc screen entertaining ourselves with new information, eReaders make it easy for us to satisfy our hunger for new information without the eyestrain that comes along with those other methods, the Nook is a great device, in my opinion the best eReader out there,

Just to make it better Barnes & Noble pushed Software 1.3 to the device a few weeks ago, this upgrade fixed a few things that were not working very nicely, besides stability improvements the update added a few new features such as in-store-reading, games and a web browser.

Some people have complained about long boot up times, that’s true ONLY if you totally turn off your nook, by default it has a sleep mode where it can go to sleep or wakeup in just half a second.

The only things I would like to see improved is the fact that you cannot yet go directly to a specific page on your documents, (Though you can bookmark any page for quick access) but I’m sure that will soon be added, it’s not that hard to implement, I would also like to see ways to zoom in or out in .pdf documents.

Oh don’t forget to download and install the Calibre eBook Manager  to sync and manage content on your Nook!"

Hey everybody, I’m still alive! For the last month I have been looking for a good FM Transmitter for my car;  because seriously who wants to be creating CDs to listen to music anymore? my car does not have an AUX audio input, so a Modulator is not an option,  the only way for me to go was wireless, so I went on a quest for a good FM Transmitter, to my frustration none of them worked as they should, with all honesty they ALL sucked big time, but I will go into details about that later… I made some research and came across The Whole House FM Transmitter, I was hesitant at first because – I’m sorry to say – their website does not look very professional at all, first impressions are always important to me, still I decided to research even farther and came up with some really nice reviews about this product on the internet, so I was like what the heck, let’s give it a try and went ahead and ordered this baby, oh boy… to my surprise it worked just as expected, this little device works exactly as advertised, The Whole House FM Transmitter claims that it broadcasts whatever audio source you want up to 150 feet in all directions. This means it can cover more than 70,000 square feet, I have verified and I can bear witness that it does indeed do what they claim.

As an universal FM transmitter, it can broadcast any audio source to every FM radio. The audio sources include TV, Satellite TV Receivers, DVRs (eg. TiVo), Home Stereo Systems, DVD Players, VCRs, iPod, Microsoft Zune, Creative Zen, SanDisk Sansa MP3 Player, Other MP3 Players, Stereo Systems, Satellite Radios, CD Players, Tape Players, Palm Pilots, and Computer Audio (Internet Radio, Streaming Audio, Audio Files & Audio Downloads).

You don’t need FCC license to operate Whole House FM Transmitter. You can power up the transmitter unit via wall outlet, car adapter, USB or 3 x AA batteries. It just takes 10 minutes or less for set up, The Whole House FM Transmitter Gold Edition comes with an FM transmitter unit, 1/8? (3.5 mm) Stereo Headphone Jack, Stereo RCA Jack with Volume Control, 110/220 V AC Power Supply, 12/24 V DC Automobile Adapter, and USB Power Cable.

You create your own FM radio station to broadcast around your house and even outside your house with any FM transmitter. But many FM transmitters don’t work because they are not powerful in broadcasting signal as you will see from my experiences below, and from the experiences of many other reviewers out there, check out the Bestbuy reviews and you will see what I mean.

Before finding The Whole House FM Transmitter I started with the Griffin iTrip Universal; the idea behind that transmitter is great, it is a wireless device that charges through the USB of any computer and does not need to be connected to your car’s lighter charger to work, the charge lasts enough for a decent trip and it also works good at home to listen to your computer tunes through the house on any stereo system, however the problem with this transmitter breaks the whole point of an FM Transmitter, it is not powerful enough, I constantly heard static through my little trips throughout town while I tested it, so I went back to the store and this time I got the none wireless Griffin iTrip Universal, this one proved to be much better, but I still struggled to get a good signal, I kept hearing a lot of noise and static through my speakers, then went back to Bestbuy and got myself The Microsoft – Premium Car Pack for All Zune MP3 Players, I love Microsoft products but come on Microsoft, this? really…..? I don’t want to even get started with this one, even though it was the most expensive of all and that I have a Zune player (I would expected it to be %100 compatible) it was horrible, I could not get a single frequency with a clear signal in the whole FM spectrum with this device, so I returned it in just 2 days.

I was about to give up on FM Transmitters, when I decided to give the Belkin Tunecast Auto FM Transmitter model  F8Z439 a try; this one proved to be a lot better than the previous ones, however after trying it out for two weeks I knew already that it was also sucky, the belkin managed to keep a solid signal most of the time while making trips around town and while going to work etc, however as soon as I got into the freeway, the story changed, I could drive more than two miles without having to change the frequency, that aside from annoying it’s very dangerous if you are driving, yet I had already made my mind to keep it since all my previous experiences were worse and it seemed to me that price made no difference either, I decided to keep the lesser of the 4 evils, it looks like the FCCs regulations along with companies not really caring much to make a good product is killing the quality of probably all the assortment in this category in the market these days.

So I kept my Belkin for a couple of weeks but deep inside I could not believe there was nothing out there that would actually work as intended, and that’s when – Praise be To God Almighty-  lol, I decided to research and came across the The Whole House FM Transmitter, If you are looking for a transmitter that actually works, be that you want it for your car, home, office, or business, then do not waste your time trying out all the worthless crap out there, make yourself a favor and go order one of these babies, you will not regret it, what’s even better, the company has just came up with version 2.0 of their product and this one seems to have been improved over its predecessor, I will be ordering a second one to use as my personal home radio station soon, that way I can stream my tunes all around the house and keep my original one for my car.

One thing I STRONGLY recommend with this device is that you attached the provided extended antenna that comes along with your order inside the package, your experience will be even greater if you do.

NetGear’s WNDR3700 what an excellent router it is! got mine a few days ago and I couldn’t be happier with it because of its great speed, long range, and the ease with which I was able to just hook up my FreeAngent USB drive, thus making my media and files available to me in my entire home network and worldwide via FTP and HTTP, overall it was so easy to setup, I love the ability to create a guest network for home visitors etc, this is an awesome machine, loving it, not one single crash or disconnection in any device throughout the house, oh and finally my Zune finds my home network! The person who gave this router a 1 at bestbuy.com must have some serious cabling or interference issues or simply doesn’t know how to set up a router.
The only downside I noticed is that the setup wizard CD that comes with it is not compatible with Windows 7, given the fact that Win 7 is around the corner NetGear should have taken care of that, however the router can easily be setup manually by going to http://192.168.1.1/index.htm with your browser.

A month ago I had a big storm in my area and all my equipment got bricked, modem, NIC card, external dialup modem (which I only use with Phonetray) and yes my router, I had been a Linksys loyal user for years, but when this happened and my WRT54GX2 gave up the ghost, I had no choice but to start looking for a new router, first I tried the Linksys WRT400N but it turns out that this one did not have Gigabit ports and on top of that the router was crashing whenever I attempted to stream videos to my PS3 with it, so I went for their top of line product the WRT610N which cost me a nice $199 USD, but I was totally disappointed with it, this product could have been one of their best ever, its concept and set of features is magnificent, it did look really feature complete to me, so I went ahead shelled out that amount of money and bought it home, days after using I realized it must be one of the worst products Linksys has ever put out on the market and the certainly one of the worst I have got myself.

I did not pay attention to the reviews, but boy that was a mistake! I had horrible connectivity issues in all my devices, PS3 kept getting disconnected and whenever I tried to access files or videos the Router would crash and reset my internet connection in all my devices on the network, the storage feature (one of the main reasons I bought it for) is a mess, it wouldn’t recognize my created users, I couldn’t change passwords, and while attempting to connect from the internet with an ftp client it always complained that the user/pass was wrong, but IT WAS NOT! the software that comes with the router DOES NOT work and crashes, sometimes it won’t even start! and for the record YES I DID upgrade the firmware to their latest version, Linksys should fire or demote whoever watched over product quality when developing this product, I can’t believe they are charging $200 for it, it’s not worthy $20, get it out of the stores, recall it, it’s giving you a bad name Linksys! I wish I could get v2 but there’s no tell until you open the box, and who knows if it will be same?

I’m now a happy camper with my storm’s nightmare behind me, I only paid $159 for a product far superior and that actually does what it promises, keep up the good work NetGear.

   Finally got around designing my own WordPress theme, and well you can see the results yourself lol, I’m still playing around with it, not totally satisfied with colors etc, so I most definitely will tweak it in the upcoming days, but it was already time for a change, my previous theme was over  a year old and besides nothing being wrong with it however, it was boring already. If you usually visit my site from a mobile phone, you will not see any changes because the mobile theme has not changed at all,  it’s only the main site look that was modified for now.

I still need to update some areas of my blog such as the current look of my desktop etc, heck I don’t even use Windows Vista any more lol, anyway I hope my visitors enjoy the new look and if you have any suggestions please let me know, once again thanks for reading me.

I have seen people in YouTube uploading videos created with this camera and wondering why theor videos don’t show up in HD once uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing sites; I have created a tutorial on how to record and crop videos with your Logitech Pro 9000 Quickcam and make them compatible with YouTube HD.

Super Software website: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Today AOL released an update to its flagship instant messenger client AIM, this time it was version 6.9.13.4, I’m shocked at the little changes made; Looks like they are barely maintaining it; look at the changes on this build:

• Get status updates from your friends on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
• Missing someone from your Buddy List? Find them easily with simple look up tools.
• It’s free! There is no subscription required

LOL Yeap, that’s the official change log, as if the little changes weren’t enough to alarm old time AIM followers, AOL has reverted back to the old AIM logo: that is the little yellow man, yes the red AIM icon is gone, I think AIM is on the way out; I haven’t even felt the need to install it on my computer for the last year or so, Last time I gave it a try it was ugly and felt slow and didn’t look good with Windows Vista at all, most of my friends have migrated to either Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo (Which sucks IMHO).
Hard to believe and sad to see one of the oldest applications on the net, once also one of the most popular ones dying like this, I think this is just a sign of the slow and painful death AOL itself is going through; what happened AOL? how did you let yourself fall from grace like that? you used to own the internet.

Get it HERE if you feel curious about it.

Ok my previous Microsoft Lifecam was giving lots of trouble, specially with audio and it was horrible for recording video so I went ahead and bought a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000; this baby is fitted with a 2-megapixel sensor with autofocus and a built-in microphone. It features Carl Zeiss optics that provides crisp, high-resolution images and videos. Its microphone is equipped with RightSound Technology, which eliminates echo and feedback that is often created by a microphone and speakers that are in close proximity. so I don’t have the need for a headset. I can also add creativity while I communicate with my friends or prepare a video presentation with Logitech Video Effects. It is an application that recognizes facial features and maps them so I could create three-dimensional animated characters or two-dimensional face accessories. It even has downloadable fun-to-use filters that let you add video effects like fisheye, black-and-white effect, neon and more. Taking High Definition 960×720-pixel or 1600×1200-pixel videos with the QuickCam Pro 9000 results to razor-sharp shots whether it is close-up or from a good distance. You can also take photographs with a resolution of up to 8 megapixels.

Taking the web camera outdoors will never be a hassle because it comes with an adjustable attachment, a universal monitor clip for any kind of notebook or desktop PC. It can be connected to your notebook PC through USB 2.0. The Logitech 960-000048 QuickCam Pro 9000 supports 24-bit true color depth and up to 30 frames per second. Aside from the motorclip, the QuickCam Pro 9000 is bundled with a six-foot USB cable, QuickCam Software CD with several helpful tools to get started, and a Quick Start guide.

Here’s some videos I took within few minutes after I bought it, so you know in case you wonder that despite this camera being able to record HD video it does NOT shot videos in 16X9 aspect ratio proper of HD TV and also used by YouTube HD, I had to use a third pary application called Super to crop the video to a 16X7 aspect ratio.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well… a few days ago YouTube closed my channel because of some videos I uploaded, I understand their reasons so I don’t blame them, what I don’t understand is the companies behind it forcing YouTube to shut down channels which contain their material which is copyrighted, what difference does the URL where their content is being played from makes to them? all that matters is that when their content is played they are paid their royalties and that proper credit is giving to the provider and the artists, right? it looks that they are not willing of course to share part of the pie with YouTube though and rather than to make their content available to everyone by other means, they simply in many instances don’t make it even available to the public at all, like in the case of my channel where the offending material was NOT available anywhere else.

Some content providers however do work with YouTube and allow users to post their copyrighted material and simply require YouTube to add a link to the provider and to also include advertisement on the video page, that seems to me like the right approach that every content provider should follow, is it that hard?

Anyway I have a new YouTube channel, which by the way is in many ways better than the previous one, with the exception that I have no subscribers now lol and I lost all favorites and friends, hopefully I will find them again soon, as you probably know YouTube has started allowing the upload of HD files to their site, therefore some of my videos are now in HD (well Near HD) and also some of the videos I had before are now High Quality and I have fixed letterboxing etc. you can visit my new channel at: http://www.youtube.com/ElyOnTV enjoy and don’t forget to post some comments and rate my videos!

After having so many issues with T-Mobile and their unreliable network I have decided to give Sprint a try, I had been with T-Mobile for over 2 and a half years and till a few months ago things were ok, however for the last 2 months or so their signal in my area has become just horrendous, I kept loosing the signal just about everywhere, when in my car, at the movies, at work, even in my room if I was on bed I could not talk on the phone, I had to stay standing up or the call would drop, Fun ah? I called Tmo several times and they were of no help, to top it all up last month I got over charged with txt messages which I don’t think it was fair for them to charge me with since I switched plans in the middle of the month expecting they would make my txt messages from my previous plan retroactive so I would not go over the limit but since I did it on their website it was not good, T-Mobile said: I had to call them instead of doing it through their OWN website! go figure;  anyways to make the story short I switched to Sprint and so far I’m very happy with my plan and their wonderful 3G network, T-Mobile’s Edge on my Dash sucked big time, browsing through perfectly designed mobile sites was painfully slow let alone regular sites.

I like phones with a Qwerty keyboards and I dislike touch screen phones (Except for a few such as the I-phone and some HTC phones) because I consider the technology still not mature enough, I had few choices with Sprint so I went with the Motorola Q9c Smartphone which also looks pretty similar in functionality and looks to my previous phone (T-Mobile’s DASH) the phone looks great though a little bigger than my Dash and the keyboard is not as smooth as the Dash either, it does not include Wi-Fi but I rarely used that anyway and with Sprint’s fast 3G I doubt it I will ever miss that feature, over all I love the phone and it comes loaded with Windows Mobile 6.1 this version of Windows Mobile comes packed with new functionality and it simply looks great, here’s some screenshots:

 For more details on the phone go HERE

Just finished reading the Spanish translation of “Vol De Nuit” (Vuelo Nocturno) by  Antoine de Saint-Exupry as it was suggested to me by an old friend;  Everything the author relates in the book he does with full knowledge of what he writes, Exupry himself was a pilot during most of his adult life, in fact he died while in a reconnaissance mission during World War II.

After having read another work from the same author (Le Petit Prince) which is actually a widely acclaimed masterpiece and not precisely liking the aeronautics topic myself, I have to say that it was indeed a little hard for me to finish reading the book, however the work in my opinion has a great literary value because of its very well organized narrative, amazingly deep created metaphors and a great documental weight. rarely in literature you can find literary quality and documental value along side each other, so this gives “Vuelo Nocturno” a special lift among other books I have read, I believe the book is probably one of the best works in modern french literature, I recommend anyone to read it.