Mifi Virgin Review

Overview
The Novatel MiFi is a credit card sized device that connects you to the world wide interwebs wherever you are. It connects to your carrier's 3G network and generates a little WiFi network for up to 5 devices.

Update (6/17/2011): Mifi on Virgin seems to be sucking majorly. It keeps booting me off and wedging itself. Not sure why it sucks so bad now.

The Details
Once you turn on the device, you'll see your wifi network, which you can then connect to from any wifi enabled device like your laptop, PSP, netbook, PS3, whatever. Bam, you're on the internet. I've used this device to work from cafes, cars traveling at highway speeds, bus rides, everything, maintaining a persistent ssh connection to work.

The cost depends on your carrier. Currently there are three carriers that carry MiFi, I use Virgin Mobile because they're the cheapest and have no contracts or ridiculous fees if you go over your MB. If you run out of MB, you get disconnected and you buy more, no ludacris fees. I usually go for the 100Mb for $10 for 10 days. Since I mostly use text based ssh sessions with a few visits to company internal websites, I use about 1.5Mb per hour. If you're sitting there watching cat videos on youtube all day, you'll obviously burn through more.

The device itself cost $150 with Virgin. Other carriers are cheaper if you sign a contract, but their MB fees are higher. It all depends on your usage, really. You'll have to do your own math. I use MiFi for 6 hours a day, 2-3 times a week.

The Good
The latency is surprisingly low and the connection stays up. Most of my work involves persistent ssh connections and my user experience is better than any cafe amateur-net.

The MiFi sports all the usual config you'd expect from a wireless router. I wouldn't use the mac id filtering because you could lock yourself out of the device if your laptop craps up. Instead, you can set the maximum number of devices to be one instead of five, this way you know that only you are connected to it.

Once you run out of MB, you can still connect to Virgin Mobile and order more MB. The Virgin site also tells you how many MB are left and when they expire so you're never in the dark. I've run some network usage monitors and their count is pretty accurate.

Since it's pay-as-you go, you can opt to not purchase MB for a span of time (max 1 year), so if you won't be using your MiFi for a week or a month or more, you don't have to pay for a service you're not using (if you go with Virgin Mobile).

The Bad
Website loading isn't that zippy. It's adequate though. The throughput and latency can sometimes be sucky in the same spot that was fine the day before.

The cost is still pretty pricey considering you're only getting 1Mbps. There used to be a 300Mb for $20 for 30 days option but that is no longer available.

The MiFi device will stop generating the wifi network when you plug it into USB. This is a real drag, but I believe it's because USB does not provide enough power. There is a power adapter you can use, but of course you'll need an AC outlet. You can buy a data pinless USB adapter and this will allow you to connect MiFi to USB and fool it into thinking it's connected to the power adapter, but the battery will just run down slower (9 hours vs 4 hours). When connected to USB (with data pins), the MiFi goes into "modem mode", but this is not supported by Virgin and may jack up your computer as it installs a bunch of jacked up drivers onto your computer. I have never been able to connect this way. In fact, it bricked one of my laptops.

The Alternatives
There are usb dealies for your laptop and really fat devices you can plug those into to get a similar MiFi setup, but it's laborious. MiFi is nice because it all comes in a nice little self contained package.

The Verdict
If you're on-the-go and sick of crappy cafe wifi networks, MiFi is for you.

Pioneer Kuro 60'' Review

Overview
The The PDP-6010FD Kuro is a 60 inch plasma TV by Pioneer. It features deep blacks (hence the name Kuro which apparently means black in Japanese), true 1080p, PC input and tons of HDMI inputs.

The Details
I used to have a 38 inch RCA CRT that weighed in at 216 lbs. Including the stand, that's more than me and the little lady put together. The picture was pretty awesome, so I never could justify buying a new TV even though 38 inches is entirely too small. My friend from Philly came out to visit and together, hand-in-hand, we went skipping through the malls, audio/visual stores, and big box outlets. We both have good eyes when it comes to TVs and we agreed on everything we saw. Samsung LCDs had the brightest and crispest screens, but the Pioneer Kuro was the one. It was nice and big and did a great job with the colors and high def signal.

I wasn't sure about the price ($6,500 retail, got it for $4,300), nor was I sure about it being a plasma. I've been hearing all these rumblings about how plasma is dead, long live LCD, and how most manufacturers are dumping plasma and sticking their chickens into the LCD basket. The benefits of LCD are that they're insanely bright and they don't suffer from burn-in. Plasmas are better with fast-moving images and heat up the room nicely so when you have an movie of a flickering fire in a fireplace, you actually feel like you're sitting in front of a real one. It also seemed like after about 42 inches, the LCDs looked crappy. 60 inches seems to be the right point. It's big enough (not really) to justify an upgrade, and the prices shoot up exponentially just AFTER 60 inches. The 70 Inch Sony Bravia XBR is, what, 33Gs ?

I had been researching the brand reputations as well, and Pioneer has a good one. So I bought it and hooked it up. I have my PS3 and Xbox 360 hooked up to the HDMI inputs, my PS2 hooked up to the component video, a laptop on the PC input and then all legacy stuff like Tivo switched through the receiver and then into the RCA inputs.

The Good
It does some magic with the colors, they become richer and more vibrant when displayed on this TV. Even on shitass sources like Tivo Series 1, it looks a little better than my last TV. I was watching some of my Tivo'd shows and was like, "why does he look so much older and fallapartier?". Turns out that the TV is doing a better job of showing people's wrinkles and bags and that's why they look like crap. I should mention that you have to be a few feet away for crappy signals to look good. Up close they look TERRIBLE, but that's because they're terrible signals to begin with.

HD Signals look AWESOMO, even up close. This includes Blu-Ray DVDs, Over-the-air High Definition signals, and the PC input. Speaking of Over-the-air signals, the TV does a GREAT job of picking up signals. With my old TV, I could only get the strongest signals, which was NBC and sometimes Fox and that was only after carefully rigging the antenna. With the Kuro, I don't ever have to change the position of the antenna, it's just magically able to pick up every station.

There are a ton of different display options, both in terms of screen dimensions and brightness. Kuro will remember each one for each input so you don't have to set them each time. I was worried about how dim it might be given that it is a plasma, but no problems there, it's nice and bright without being obnoxious. In fact, I had to turn down the brightness a little.

As far as the burn-in problem, it supposedly has a safety feature called the Orbiter which moves the pixels around. I can't say how effective this is, but I don't want to take any chances.

The little built-in speaker system does a pretty decent job with sound. Why am I using the built-in speakers instead of my receiver and Bose surround sound? See the next section.

The Bad
The TV does not forward the HDMI sound down to the receiver. Apparently, no TV does. This right here is some serious bullshit. In an ideal world, I could plug everything I had into the HDMI ports and then connect the audio-out on the TV down to the receiver. What is the point of having a standard (HDMI) that handles both sound and video if you have to hook up the audio to your receiver separately? I had to use the optical outputs of the PS3, PS2, Roku and Lacie and connect them to my receiver. I then promptly ran out of digital inputs on my receiver so the Xbox 360 had to use the TV's speakers. As I've mentioned before, this is bullshit. The only solution I can see is to buy an HDMI switching audio receiver.

Another gripe I have about the TV is the lack of analog inputs. I didn't have enough, so I ended up using the video switching of my receiver for the analog signals. This was annoying because it took me forever to figure out the best way to wire it up. My old TV allowed you to multiplex the inputs. That is, on input #2, there might be RCA *AND* S-video. If you plugged one device into the s-video and a different device into the RCA, the TV would pick whichever device was turned on and display that signal. As long as you didn't have BOTH on at the same time, things were all good in the hood. The Kuro is fascist about its inputs. You cannot plug two things into the same input, even if one is switched off. I was hoping to use this multiplexing as a way around the analog input shortage.

It's also a little weighty. Although not as fat-assed as my last TV, this thing weighs 130 Lbs. There's no way I'm hanging this on my wall.

Finally, the last small item is the sleep timer. I have a habit of passing out in front of the TV. It comes on quickly. Too quickly to be able to manually turn on the sleep timer countdown in time. Instead of having to manually tell the TV to turn itself off in 45 minutes, It would be nice if the TV would just auto-shut off at a user configurable time, say 2AM. If I happen to still be awake, I could hit the "snooze" button so it would instead shut off at 2:30AM.

The Alternatives
The Samsung LCDs are really nice if you're on a budget and/or don't want to go for a mansized TV.

A more expensive alternative is the Kuro Elite. The most important specs seem to be the same as the regular Kuro, so I don't really know why it's a grand more expensive. Supposedly it streams video off your network, but I wouldn't bother trying this. Usually it doesn't work, and if it does, it only streams gimpy formats like mpeg4 or divx. I ended up writing/creating my own solution for this using mplayer, Perl, the StreamZap PC Remote Control and some old laptops. It actually works and handles every video format on Earth.

The Verdict
If you're in the market for an upper-crust TV, you should definitely check out the Kuro. It rocks my world.

Roku SoundBridge Review

Overview
The Roku Soundbridge is a well thought out streaming music player created by Roku Labs. It plays a ton of different formats like mp3, ogg, wma, wav, m4a, even flac. You can download the simple and elegant open source Firefly Media Server from their site, but it works with just about any UPnP media server application, like iTunes or TonkyVision or Yahoo Music Engine.

It can also play internet radio, so you can listen to any radio station in the world that has a web presence.


The Details
Dude, forget burning CDs or manually loading songs onto some flash or harddrive based music playing device. You hook this bad boy into your network, either with ethernet or with wifi and bing bang bong, it will automatically detect all the media servers on your network. You pick media server, then a playlist, artist, album or song, and it'll start playing all your favorite Hilary Duff songs. All your music is stored in one central place in a neat and tidy format. No more stacks of CDs. Frag that.

You can create playlists either in your media software, or on disk by just listing out your songfiles in a text file ending in .m3u. Pretty handy if you're a scripter type. The device has a built-in web server/web UI as well as two control ports to which you can connect to get system information and control the music playback, respectively. There's even a module on cpan written by yours truly that will let you load up playlists and songs via the playback control port from your commandline. One of the niftier things about the SoundBridge is that you can take control of the display via the system control port and scroll whatever you'd like across the display, ranging from "Time to make the donuts" to "I hope you enjoy your VD" (Eh, that's Valentine's Day).

The device can stream internet radio without needing access to a computer on the network. It has a headphone jack so theoretically you could take it to an internet cafe, plug your headphones in and listen to streaming radio all day long. You'd look kinda silly though.

I have three devices sprinkled through-out my apartment, each with a different setup. One is hooked up to my Onkyo receiver via optical output, the other is hooked up to a boombox via the headphone jack and aux-in and the third is hooked up to powered computer speakers via headphone jack (we're a little short on space in that area). Speaking of space, the unit is a nice little tube shape that can fit into tiny spaces. It's also portable, so when I went to clean out the storage closet in the car port, I took one of the Roku's, and hooked it into my car stereo's aux-in
and voila, my awesome music collection shepherded me through the tedium. Pretty clever, I thought.

If you have a subscription to Yahoo Music, then you can enable music sharing and listen to all your rented DRM'ed music on the Roku. This and the streaming internet radio feature open up limitless music possibilities.

The Good
Everything I've mentioned thus far. I loved the first Roku I bought that I got 2 more matching ones.

The Bad
One feature that is missing that people have been bitching about is rewind/fast forward. You can skip songs, but you can't cue/review. I've learned to live without it, so it really isn't a big deal. In theory a future version of the firmware could fix this (by the way, updating the firmware is really easy, it notifies you that there's a new version and with your permission self updates).

The Alternatives
The competitor to this device is the Squeezebox by Slim Devices. I don't actually own one of these, but I know a little bit about them from talking to people who do. While for the most part they do similar things, there are some fundamental differences. With Roku, all of the logic to play music is in the firmware on the device itself. With Squeezebox, most of the logic is in the open source SlimServer, written in Perl. This allows you to monkey with the functionality more and opens up more possibilities in the future. Incidentally, I believe that Roku also works with SlimServer, so you have those possibilities as well with Roku.

SqueezeBox has Rewind/Fast Forward and it also can act as an ethernet bridge, so if you have a device in your entertainment center that can only do ethernet (like the original PS3), you could plug it into the Squeezebox which is also wireless.

I don't think that SqueezeBox works with rented DRM music (DRM 10), but I could be wrong. SqueezeBox is also taller than Roku, so it wouldn't fit in 2 of the 3 places Roku is now in my apartment.

SqueezeBox is also twice as expensive as the Roku, so it's harder to buy a whole bunch to sprinkle around.

The Verdict
Time to step out of 1998 and buy this thing.

Eye-Fi Review

Overview
The Eye-Fi is a new gadget that just came out for the 2007 Christmas buying spree. It looks and acts just like a 2GB SD memory card for your camera, but it has a secret hidden compartment with a magic teleporter that sends your photos through the ether to your computer and/or your favorite online photo sharing site (Flickr, Smugmug, Costco, etc).


The Details
To the camera, this looks like any other memory card. You can take as many pictures of your cats or your flower garden as you like and it'll be stored just like with any other card. But there's more to it. It's also a wifi card that will connect automatically to your home wifi network when you're in range and start sending your images over to a little server listening on your computer. You can also optionally set up an account with Eye-Fi's service where you give your Flickr (or other photo site) username and password and the photos will additionally be uploaded to your Flickr account by way of the Eye-Fi service. If you're not within range of your home wifi network, the card will store your images until it detects it's within range and then it'll start the transfer.

Setup was a snap, even for the less technically inclined. It has a little USB dongle thing with all the necessary software and drivers on there. You plug that into your computer once and that's that.

The Good
No more wires, no more manual uploading. When the image starts to transfer, a little thumbnail of the image pops up in the lower left corner of your computer. A progress meter tells you how the transfer is going.

The Bad
I'm not such a big fan of the idea of my embarrasing underwear photos flying around through the intertubes through a third party service that may or may not be around in a few months. There are ways around this, of course, like not using the photo site feature and/or setting the default to "Private". But still.

The good news is that if you're just using it on your local network, the photos never leave your network (I think). That is, I turned off my internet connection and took some pictures and they still showed up on the computer. Whether a not a secret copy of me in my underoos is sitting on the Eye-Fi servers has yet to be determined.

A minor thing is that if you turn on both the computer upload and photo site upload, you'll have to sift through 3 copies of your photos (don't forget that they're sitting on the memory card too) when it comes time to delete or organize.

If your camera only has Compact Flash, you may or may not be able to get a converter. I haven't tested this out, but there are some available for about $20.

The Alternatives
None that I know of.

The Verdict
If you hate manually uploading your photos, this is for you. You can pick one up for about 100 wingwangs on Amazon. Check out the Eye-Fi website.

Litter Robot Review

Overview
The Litter Robot is a self cleaning cat litter box made by Automated Pet Care Products. The cat goes in to do his/her business. 7 minutes later, the robot starts whirring and clicking and away goes the poop without smearing all over the place like with other self cleaning litter boxes. No more fighting with your Significant Other about whose turn it is to scoop even though she has 400 cats that crap like it's going out of style and you just have the one.

The Details
If you watch this animation of the litter robot in action, you'll see how innovative the design is. Basically long story short is that a pressure sensor signals the robot to start the countdown after the cat exits. Within 7 minutes, the clumping litter should have done its job and the leavings are ready to be reaped. The robot rotates and sifts out your cats' bundles of joy and then rotates back, dropping them into the bag-lined tray waiting below.

The Good
Scooping litter is a real drag, man. This little robo buddy eliminates that bit of tedium from your life leaving you to enjoy other tedium like doing the dishes and calling your family. Provided you have a good clumping litter (we use Scoop Away), it does an excellent job of sifting out the precious leavings. If you have one cat you'll probably have to empty the tray every two weeks.

The manufacturer gives you a 60 day money back guarantee, so if you're afraid you won't like it, you can always return it and just be out the return shipping.

The Bad
The cats were scared witless when we first installed it (except for the street cat who isn't afraid of anything, not even the vacuum cleaner). We put it near their real litter box and eventually they got used to it being there. Then one day I got tired of them being such fruitbags and I shoved them in there. They scratched around and eventually started using it. It took them about a week or so to defruitify.

It's also a little loud. Sometimes it wakes me up. But then again the bathroom is right next to the bedroom and I'm afraid of robot invasions, so I'm always on the alert. Move it farther away and it'll be okay.

It's a little wider and taller than a regular litter box, so you'll need plenty of clearance.

It's $300, which is pretty steep, but I hate scooping crap so much.

The Alternatives
There's a load of self cleaning litter boxes. I don't have any first-hand experience or anecdotal evidence to offer for any of them.

The Verdict
It's still too soon for me to give it a definitive yes, but so far so good. The litter robot has diligently scooped away our cat crap without revolting against us the way other robots tend to do.

Update - 5/15/2008
Seems like the poo smell has seeped into the plastic and even after a thorough bleach cleansing it returns after a few days. There are some products designed to get into porous materials, so we'll try those.

Panasonic Network Camera Review

Overview
The Panasonic Wireless Web Cam BL-C30A is a self contained network camera complete with its own web server and web UI. No computer needed at all. You connect the camera to your computer one time via ethernet, run the setup software (optional if you know what you're doing) and then flip the switch into wireless mode. Your router will be configured to forward the camera traffic correctly.

The Details
We went to Hawaii in the beginning of 2007 and couldn't find anyone to take care of the kitties, so we bought some automatic cat feeders, a water fountain and a network camera to make sure we can look in our precious little bastards.

The requirements for us were pretty strict. We wanted:

• A standalone camera with no computer needed
• Wireless
• Remote panning/tilt
  
• The ability to schedule periodic jpeg snapshots so we could connect
  and look thru the history of the last day
  
• No ActiveX, flash or any other proprietary gayness to view the video stream

These last two items were critical because I only had my PSP with me which can view jpegs okay, but that's it. The other option we had was internet cafes which usually disable stuff like ActiveX on their computers. Turns out the camera uses java to stream jpegs, so this worked out well.

At least at the time, this was the only camera that satisfied all the requirements. Since I've always liked Panasonic, I bought one and mounted it high on the bedroom wall.

All went well with the trip and now we use it to watch The Cat Show from work.

The Good
The camera works solidly and has a lot of cool features and configuration. You can select different resolutions and different preset positions or you can use the web UI to remotely position the camera by clicking on the part of the image you'd like it to center on. There's a privacy mode button on the camera for when you're scratching yourself in your underoos.

The image looks very good for a web cam and the fact that no computer is needed is just awesomo.

If you want to be able to view the camera from the internet and you have an IP address that changes every time you reconnect (you probably do), you'll have to set up a dyndns.org account. If you're not technically inclined, I think the camera software came with a free account on some site that lets you access your web cam easily. I never tried it though.

The Bad
Zoom would be nice.

Two way sound would be nice so you can yell at them if they're clawing up your stuff again or hiding your socks.

The camera has 2 mac addresses for some reason, and so you have to enter both of them into your router's mac filters if you're using mac filtering. It took me forever to figure this out. If you're not using mac filters, or you can figure out the two mac addresses, this shouldn't be a problem.

The Alternatives
There's a ton of network cameras. I've only used this one.

The Verdict
Granted something like this has a limited audience, but if you're in the market, we're very happy with the Panasonic Wireless Web Cam