About 2 hours ago I tried bringing Google Reader up and was shocked…. Greader received a full UI and functionality update. I’ve been following and using Greader for a little while now. Some of the things that it lacked was the ability to “mark all as read” and the basic feed reading functionality as other feed readers, ie. Ask’s Bloglines. I grew tired of it over time but still held on knowing that they would unleash something that would blow the competition away. By God they did.

I’m not going to write much more about it other than I absolutely love it so far. They’ve combined the beautiful interface, quickness, simplicity (even though the number of features has now almost doubled), and functionality of the old Greader with all the requests made from peeps in the Google Reader forum. I’ll post a more intensive review after I give it a try for the next few days.

Related Linkage:

• Your inbox for the web
• Something looks… different
• Google Reader steps up with a new version

Not too long ago I blogged about the iPod Updater wiping out some iPod Nanos and nothing that Apple provided could remedy the problem. I’m pretty sure that pissed a lot of folks off because my blog received over a hundred comments of praise for the solution. Thanks for all the kind words everyone…

Recently though Apple released a new version of iTunes dubbed “iTunes 7.” Big upgrade for Apple and has been a major pain in their ass and ours for PC users. I’ve heard all kinds of complaints as in uses too much memory (excess of 100mb), songs skip when played through iTunes, and they hate the new Graphical User Interface (GUI). I’ve even just read about someone hating their shortcut icon shown to your above-right. G-damn…

I just want to report (I know I’m late but I wanted to play with it for a while before commenting) that not everyone sees these same problems or feels the same way. To me the GUI is a big step in the right direction. It could be a little better and a lot of peeps have been saying that it mimicks Windows Media Player 11 in a lot of ways. Personally, I don’t see that but in only a couple of ways. GUI wise it’s just iTunes 6.5 tuned up a bit. Both media players are doing their own thing and with the stiff competition and hate for each others’ brands I doubt there’s “copying” going on behind the scenes.

Looking at the pic below you can tell at first glance the the music library view looks pretty damn slick. Same as before but with newer icons and the addition of the album covers. You can also scroll the album covers using your mouse scroll wheel which makes navigation a little more friendly and quick. There have been compaints of this sucking up system memory but mine stays around 70-90mb at all times. I have a total of 1536mb so I seriously don’t care if it used 200 as does Firefox sometimes. *shrugs*

Another nice addition is the radio library. I started counting but stopped when I got to about 200 radio stations. So far I’ve seen speeds ranging from 24kbps to 160kbps. A lot of the 128kbps stations sound great. I sometimes catch myself listening to the radio stations more often than my own media library.

The other slick menu I found (that was long overdue for a revamp) was the iPod management center which used to be located in iPod preferences under edit. Now it gets its own full screen. iPod udpate is now more user friendly because it merged with iTunes. As soon as you plug your iPod in your USB port with iTunes 7 installed you will be brought to the screen below. There are tabs located across the top for easy submenu navigation and if you have the latest iTunes installed you’ll know when to upgrade your iPod software unlike before with the separate iPod updater. When I updated mine the process was streamlined and it presented no lockups like in the past. The GUI also covered my whole update process. The very bottom is another nice graphics feature showing you an updated view of space free, total space, and space left on your iPod hard drive. It also breaks it down into what type of media is present and how much space each is occupying. Clicking on the graphic changes the numbers to how many songs for each media and clicking again brings up total play time.

Another nice addition are movie downloads in the iTunes store. I’m not sure how this is going for them but paying $9.99 for older titles and $14.99 for new to DVD’s is going to keep me away as long as Netflix is in business. Maybe this is all prep for the upcoming Video iPod with wide screen and touch screen (not to be confused with their current iPod w/ video). You can only speculate with Apple.

One last feature that I absolutely loved was being able to download almost all of my album covers through iTunes from Apple’s servers. Most of mine before were missing and some were wrong. So what I did was select all my music in my music library and discarded all my old album covers. Then I right clicked on all the highlighted songs and clicked “Get Album Artwork.” iTunes then checked all my songs with album names listed and downloaded the covers in pretty decent quality. Great small addition.

There have been a few small bugs here and there with the new update but nothing major. I haven’t heard anything from people installing on Apple’s own hardware though so that’s a good sign.

If you haven’t yet then I suggest you grab the latest addition of iTunes 7 from Apple’s site…. only if you’re running over 256mb of RAM and a 1Ghz processor. Otherwise don’t expect to be doing anything quick in iTunes 7.

Startups are the new fad in internet technology as long as Net Neutrality persists and big companies have deep pockets for buy outs.� Recently I came across a new video site where unlike YouTube or Google Videos,� “How To’s” run the show.� What I mean by that is the videos aren’t user submitted.� Users can submitted ideas for future “how to” videos and comment on videos offering their own insight which show up under the videos.� I really like this site because every single video is informative, entertaining, and are straight to the point.� VideoJug hails from London, England and their domain name has been registered since March 2005.

Here’s a few lines from their About Us page:

VideoJug is every aspect of life explained and illustrated through an ever-growing number of common sense, informative, helpful and entertaining videos. It�s like having an army of top-class experts at your fingertips 24/7 to �show you how� and to help you out. And you can contribute your own knowledge, experience, wisdom and tips too, as we�re aiming to create a place that people come to share - as well as find - knowledge.

Covering relationships, health, lifestyle, work, finance, fun and much more, VideoJug is the complete visual guide to all human life. Whatever you want to know, VideoJug will have the answer. Initially, we�re offering thousands of �How to� videos, but we�re also developing guides offering deeper insights into more detailed subjects such as planning a wedding or learning a new business skill.

Their site design is a blend from all the older video sites but seems more thought through than like YouTube.� You can also create a account and add your favorites to “My Jug,” which sites like Google Videos still lack.

eHow is in the same category as VideoJug (as far as content type) but pretty soon text wikis will be a thing of the past while bandwidth improve, video creation is simplifying, and it’s more accepted by search engines as Google.� I hope these guys keep making informative videos, maybe accept user created videos, and stay in business long enough so I can finally find out how to tie a tie in a correct Windsor knot.

I included some of my favorites below:

�

When OpenDNS launched I was quite skeptical of their service and wanted to wait till more news surfaced from the tech blogger crowd. So far since their launch in mid July, there hasn’t been any bad news, yet. Yesterday I had to give them a try so I switched my DNS settings to manual on my wireless router and then my desktop and laptop. To tell you the truth I wasn’t expecting much of a difference. After I restarted my browser and brought up my home page (google.com/ig), I was quite amazed. Instead of taking the usual 5 - 7 seconds to load the Google personal page with all my installed modules it now only takes 2-3 seconds. Nice!

I do admit that I have server raping enabled with the Fasterfox Extension so I was already hitting webpages with everything I had. During normal surfing I notice that my times are usually cut in half so I’m pretty happy so far.

OpenDNS claims the following:

1. OpenDNS is safer

OpenDNS can identify and stop sites trying to phish (steal) your personal information or money. The OpenDNS phishing protection works with all operating systems and browsers, and complements any other security measures already in use, such as a firewall and anti-virus software.

2. OpenDNS is faster

Most DNS servers on the Internet are slow. Your computer uses DNS every time you visit a website or send an email, so you want DNS to be blazing fast. Two things make DNS really fast: a big cache and a good network. We have both.

3. OpenDNS is smarter

We all make speling mistakes.We make corrections for common spelling mistakes, on the fly. That means when you are typing fast and type yahoo.cmo instead of yahoo.com you still get there. No annoying pop-ups or evil spyware installed because you made a typo. Things just work.

Setting up is extremely easy. It’s also run by a lot of bright people with successful backgrounds like David Ulevitch (Founder of OpenDNS and Founder of EveryDNS)and John Roberts (led product development and business operations for CNET News.com).

There’s only one thing that I’m hoping will never happen in the near future. OpenDNS is caching everything on the internet and keeping track of your surfing habits by IP so the information collected will be worth millions of dollars to marketing companies around the world. We all know Google for the last 5 years or so has done the same but Google thrives off of trust and their business model is based off of PPC advertisements and not URL user spelling mistakes as OpenDNS is. Until then I’ll cross my fingers and open for the better…. and browse the internet with blazing speed.

Related Offsite Links:

• DNS service promises safer, faster browsing
• OpenDNS wants to change the way you access the Net
• OpenDNS opens for business (and Steve Jobs’ blog?)

I was recently browsing my RSS feeds through Google Reader and came across an article from Google Blogoscoped about Google Video’s new video layout. Looks as though Google finally realized that viewing stretched low quality videos is more annoying than useful. They’re old layout took up the whole screen which would be a great idea except that no matter what size/ quality video you upload you’ll only get the following:

Streaming Quality
Video: 320×240 resolution at 450 Kbps
Audio: 64Kbps Mono

Download Quality
Video: 480×360 resolution at 800 Kbps
Audio: 128Kbps Stereo

during playback. So 320×240 stretched to something like 800×600 on higher resolution displays isn’t very practical even after selecting “Smooth Video” in the online video player menu. I think it’s a good choice as you can see in the screen cap below:

Everything just seems to fit unlike before when they were trying to squeeze all the extra features into the right side panel.

It is only rolled out to a select few but over at the Google Blgoscoped blog it’s noted that if you go to a video page and paste the following javascript function to set page cookie to bring up the choice for the new layout.

javascript:setCookie(’np’,'old’);window.location.reload();

So coming from a Gvideo and a YouTube fan, it’s a change for the better.

well, sitting here in my cabin in the middle of the woods on vacation sparked a mini review idea while playing around with Google’s new Picasa beta. i don’t have internet access of any kind (wi-fi, cell phone, or landline) so this won’t be posted till early next week.

i’ve already uploaded about 800 megs of photos to Google’s new Picasa Web and i absolutely love most every aspect of it except not being able to upload photos privately. this will more than likely be changed sometime in the near future.

just starting Picasa up is a joy because of the well designed fly in application intro screen. after the intro fades out the main menu pops up where you’re greeted with an abundance of features that are laid out in a way that doesn’t over power the casual user.

the directory on the left which houses albums put together by you or folders which were found automatically by Picasa or mapped manually by yourself. at the bottom of the main menu are some quick functions which are only used in the current thumbnail view. photo rotation, starring, and other functions which involve selecting multiple photos are included. going back to the top left you’ll find you’re able to quickly import from external devices, view the selected selection in a slideshow, browse all photos by timeline view, or create a gift CD that’s by far the easiest i’ve ever seen in any photo management software. lets not forget that Picasa was later bought by Google and what do we see at the top right… yep… search built in. the search tool will search any text associated with the photo you’re looking for. what’s also cool is that you can search by timeline and search your online photos uploaded to Picasa Web.

double clicking on any photo brings you here.

the bottom pane doesn’t change much except for a quick zoom button on the right and the blue/ yellow/ red icon which will bring up your histogram and camera information. the left menu pane is the biggest difference that houses all the current photo editing tools available. this menu is broken up into Basic Fixes, Tuning, and Effects. most of the time i never even have to leave Basic Fixes. cropping, red eye reduction, straightening, and “I’m Feeling Lucky” are right at my finger tips. i use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” function all the time because Picasa actually does a very good job automatically adjusting light, color, and contrast to suit my taste.

as for the very top left menu pane with pull down menu selection…. i’m not even going to touch those because there are just way too many functions to list in this mini review. the only function in the pull down menus which was very peculiar to me was the experimental features. “Publish via FTP”, “Show Duplicate Files”, “Search For…” and then your choice of color, and finally “Upload to Google video” are listed. i didn’t get a chance to test any except color and i was surprised that it picked up some and left out a lot. so i see why it would be listed as experimental… fair enough.

Summary: overall a very elegant, refined, practical tool from Google’s Picasa Team. i personally haven’t ever run across another free photo editing/ managing product do both quite as well. for the normal non-power user as myself, Picasa does it all plus more. edits or photo compilation which with other applications would take 30 minutes, i can knock it out with Picasa in 10. Dave definitely gives it a thumbs up!

saw X-Men III: The Last Stand today and let me tell ya… damn good flick. really wasn’t expecting it to be this good. i read a lot of X-Men series comic books when i was a kid so i wasn’t expecting much from the storyline. the movie took a little from each comic edition and also added some of their own twists. there were a couple of goofs that i won’t post because they’ll be movie spoilers that will stick out if mentioned. you could probably find them by doing a quick Google search if you’re interested. the battles are so realistic and action packed. i was on the edge of my seat during every fight scene. seeing humans using plastic guns against Magneto shows that the we’ve learned something from X-Men 2. still no match against all Magneto’s henchmen.

death of Jean Grey (Phoenix), Cyclops, and Professor X… so damn dramatic. couldn’t believe how Xavier died either. didn’t look very painful since it happened so fast but i liked how the scene lead up to the moment. thought i heard a few sniffles in the theatre when Storm and Wolverine find out X was disintegrated or as the comic books said… atomized.

i could go into specifics but i’ll let Wikipedia provide that info. if you do decide to see it, and i really suggest you do, then don’t leave the theatre as soon as the movie is over. there’s a really important scene after the credits that leaves it crying sequel.

Wikipedia: X-Men The Last Stand
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