Looking for the perfect gift for that geek in your life? Look no further.  The linksys NSLU2, aka the Slug, is a device that allows you to attach two USB devices from the factory, and that can be upped to basically the USB hardware limits any linux box would be subjected to with some hacking. This little device uses 10 watts of power and comes equipped with a 133MHz processor, that can also be “overclocked” to 266MHz with a pair of toe nail clippers. This thing has as much processing power, actually more, than the first Dell computer I bought back in the day for over $3,000.  All of this comes in a case that is smaller than most home routers.

From the factory, the NSLU2 is setup to support two USB hard drives. While this is “ok” for many people looking for a cheap NAS device, it is not enough for the average geek. If you spend $20 and a few hours, you can have a full blown Debian install on a flash drive and have a linux box that uses 10W and takes up no space….incredible. There are detailed instructions on how to install Debain on an NSLU2 and they work like a charm. Currently the Debian installer, they have official Debian support for the NSLU2 (crazy), but there are detailed directions on how to install it manual style.

If you don’t want to go that far, you can install any number of different pieces of software created by users for the NSLU2, by visiting NSLU2 Linux. New firmwares and other pieces of software enable the NSLU2 to do just about anything you can think up, without much work.

Conclusion? The NSLU2 by Linksys is the best piece of hardware a geek can own for under $100.

[tags]NAS, NSLU2, Linksys, Geek, Gift[/tags]

I just got done writing up a nice review of NewsHosting’s binary newsgroup server packages.  I have been using them on and off for the past few years and amazingly, they have really provided nothing but great service. Imagine that.

[tags]Usenet, Newsgroups, Binary, Hosting, Review[/tags]

Saw this little bad boy on the plane tonight and thought I would post it here so I don’t forget about it. I don’t really have a need for it right now, well of course I do, but apparently you can’t get one anyway. Belkin has made a wireless USB hub so that you can connect up to four USB devices in a remote location (up to 30 feet away). Pretty cool if you want to put an array of USB drives in a hide-away location so that you can keep them from getting ripped off or to free up some desk space. Pretty spendy at $200, but I am sure that will change in the near future.

By the way, I sold my Tivo Series 2 with a lifetime subscription for $375 plus shipping.

For those of you who don’t know, Speakeasy is the best kept secret in broadband access since…well, they are the best thing going by far. Not only do they offer DSL packages that make sense (what is included in the bundles), they offer rock solid service at great prices.  But, even better is that they are based here in the US and you can actually get a real, English speaking person who knows what they are talking about, when you call their tech support department. I have nothing but great things to say about all of the guys I have spoken to and dealt with at Speakeasy.  They are truly a class act.

With that said, I have to say that I am happy and sad at the news this morning that Best Buy has acquired Speakeasy. I received an email that started like this:

I am pleased to announce that Speakeasy has been acquired by Best Buy, an innovative and growing Fortune 100 company and the top consumer electronics retailer in North America. This is a significant milestone for our company as our new relationship will help us realize our goals of becoming the No. 1 provider of voice and data solutions to small businesses. It is important to note that though Speakeasy will now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy, we will continue to operate as a standalone, independent operating division with headquarters in Seattle.

I am happy for all of the people at Speakeasy and that they have probably been able to put some well deserved cash into their pockets. However, I fear that this may mean that over time, things will change…but, maybe not. So, we will have to see how that goes. For now, congrats to the Speakeasy team and good luck going forward.

[tags]Speakeasy, DSL, Best Buy, Acquisition[/tags]

Ok, so I have not posted here as much as I would like, but I have been doing a little work getting the OTA HDTV going utilizing the 2 USB DViCO HDTV tuners that I purchased a few months back.  I built an array of HD antennas using the included Philips HD antennas that came with the DViCO tuners as well as another I had from the POS ATI HDTV Wonder that I have sitting around.  That worked here in San Francisco a little bit, but the reception was not good enough for Windows MCE to tune them in consistently.

Enter the best HDTV antenna that I have come across. The Radio Shack HD antenna works like a champ.  At this point, I am able to get 95%+ signal on most of the local HD channels but am not able to tune in the KQED channels for some reason (even though they are supposedly located on Sutro Tower as most of the others are). I read the reviews on the Radio Shack site and was impressed. Then I spent a week waiting for one of the stores here in San Francisco to get one in stock. As soon as I plugged it into a one-to-two splitter, and then fed the outputs into the two tuners, I had 100% signal on most of the local HD channels and many other channels that did not have enough signal for MCE to tune in, now had plenty.  Now, if I can just figure out how to get kQED tuned in…better yet, why the hell doesn’t Microsoft make it so that we can use a cable card already to tune in cable supplied HD channels?

[tags]HDTV, MCE, HTPC, Microsoft, DViCO, OTA HD[/tags]

The xBox 360 could be the best thing that Microsoft has ever built.  I don’t want to be one of those Windoze, M$ guys, but sometimes they make it too easy to be that way.  Danielle made herself the best wife ever by purchasing an xBox 360 for her husband this year.  However, things are not like they were in the good ‘ole days of bachelordom and restraint is needed when playing games.  Once I realized that, I decided to hook up the 360 as an MCE Extender on our living room television.  I had built a stand-alone MCE box (P4 Shuttle barebones system) with some good parts (aside from the crappy Shuttle board), but things were just not working out. I simply don’t think the Shuttle’s mobo is up to the task of working as a high-performance video serving system.  So, I decided to give the xBox a try.

Well, it worked like a champ right out of the gates. The 360 is fast, stable and my only complaint (like many others) is that there is no ability to play DVDs from the remote MCE system. I am not sure who the genius behind this was, but it is something that should really be changed ASAP by Microsoft.  It plays live television (ala Tivo) via one of the tuners installed in the mothership MCE box, videos, recorded tv, etc. The only thing it doesn’t do is the DVD action.  The kicker was that the MCE remote I bought for my stand-alone MCE box works on the xBox 360 without doing a thing.

My only advice to Microsoft would be to make some open forums that MCE users and project managers actively participate in on their website. One where users can get honest answers to what will and will not be included in upcoming releases. I know this sounds silly to suggest that MS should tell everyone including their competition what they are planning on doing in the future, but they should not be afraid.  If anything, it will put everyone on notice how serious they are about this home media / home integration stuff.  Plus it will allow them to build the systems as the end-user really wants them to be…that is what this is all about, right?

[tags]xBox, xBox 360, MCE, Extender, Media PC, Media Center[/tags]

Stay tuned boys and girls for a review of my two new DViCO Fusion HDTV5 USB HDTV tuners that arrived last night.  I don’t have much time today to mess with these and the machines that they will be installed on, but I did have time to get one setup on my main Media Center Edition box. All I can say is, THANK GOD, someone has put some time and effort into software and drivers. Per the full-color glossy manual that comes with the HDTV5 USB tuners, I went to the DViCO website to download the latest software pack for the USB Gold tuners.  I installed the software first, was prompted to reboot and plugged in the tuner when windows came back up. The computer recognized the new software and two times I told Windows where to find the drivers, per the manual.  Done. I fired up the software and it autoscanned 44 channels (~32 DTV/HDTV channels here in San Francisco).  When it was done with the auto-scan it tuned in channel 2 in HD. I can honestly say, none of the ATI based NTSC or HD tuners I have went that smoothly when I installed them.  I have not fired up MCE yet as I want to get the antenna situation addressed BEFORE I let MCE know I have the HD tuners installed. I will use the DViCO software to do that as it is quite nice.  BTW, the OG “stick” antenna that comes with it outperforms the ATI/Philips HDTV antenna that came with my ATI HDTV Wonder and these tuners (Snapstream.com included them as a “freebie”)…funny.

[tags]HDTV, DViCO, ATI, MCE, Media Center, Tuner[/tags]

Well, I just got an email from Vonage letting me know that they released their new V-Phone.  Cool, but here is my one-and-only question.  Can you use your existing Vonage phone number when travelling about with the new V-Phone. I poked around for a few minutes on the Vonage site, checked out their “Help” section and here is my conclusion. They do not mention what phone number you get to use, so I will assume that means that you have to get a new one. That seems to be the way that companies “tease” you into using a product that does not work exactly as it should these days.  In my head, the way it should work is, when you plug your new V-Phone into your computer and it is connected to the internet, it let’s the Vonage system know you are in mobile mode and it routes all incoming phone calls to your Vonage number or numbers you specify to the new V-Phone. When it is not connected, they get routed as they normally do.  Done.

Vonage, V-Phone, VoIP, Telephone, Mobile

Ok, so I mentioned in my post about the Parrot Bluetooth car kit I purchased along with the appropriate harness for my 2001 Chevy Tahoe a few weeks ago. Actually, I recieved the car kit as a gift, but purchased the harness myself.  When I was first looking into the Parrot 3400 LS-GPS, I looked on the Parrot website as well as most of the bigger online stores that sell Parrot car kits.  Installer.com was one of the sites that I checked what kit costs were as well as what kind of items I would need to install it in my Tahoe. I am not a professional car electronics installer. I am not even an amateur, but I am not afraid to get into things and I am a little handy.  So, rather than taking the literature on the Installer.com website as the end-all be-all of what I needed, I called the phone number on their website.  I got someone on the phone right away and explained what vehicle I had, that I had Onstar and the Bose stereo and what I wanted to install.  No worries, the voice on the other end of the line told me that I needed the Parrot kit, and two harnesses to plug right into my factory stereo.  This would allow me to use the Parrot bluetooth kit as a factory installed bluetooth speakerphone, playing audio through my speakers and muting the stereo when a call comes in or is made.

Anyway, the unfortunate part is that the items that I was told I needed were not the ones that my car required. Ok, not the end of the world. I gave a call back to the guys at installer.com (which is a stereo shop in Houston I believe) and got one of the installation guys on the phone this time. He asked me what vehicle I have and what parts I have. He told me that I had the wrong parts and that I needed one harness, not two.  So, I would need to send them back and then they would send me the correct one when they received mine back.  Of course, the kicker is that I would be on the hook for all of the costs associated with shipping things back and forth. Swizze. I paused and then told him that I thought that was kind of a silly policy.  Apparently, installer.com’s position is that there are different systems installed in different vehicles and that one car might use one of 5 different harnesses. “Some people order 4 or 5 harnesses and then send back the ones they don’t need,” I was told.  I told him that I understand that, and it made sense to me. But, the thing was, I called in and the guy I spoke to told me, with no uncertainty, that I needed the kit and two harnesses and never mentioned that these might not be the right harnesses for my Tahoe. He just told me that these were the ones I needed…he even offered to plug them in for me if I didn’t mind “open boxes” or packaging.  I thought that was cool, btw.  Anyway, after telling him that I thought this was a silly policy he asked if I would like to talk to the owner about it and I said sure.

Let me say that the tone of the conversation up until this point was super calm and everyone was cool as pie. Not that things ever really got far away from that, my level of frustration would rise dramatically very quickly at this point.

So, now I get the owner, who you can see a picture of on the installer.com website.  We talk for a bit, and not to bore you with all of the details, the point he made to me was that at the bottom of just about every page (FYI, none of the product pages of the items I purchased), is a disclaimer that says something to the effect that there may be more than one harness for a particular vehicle. While this disclaimer did not appear at the bottom of any of the product pages that I purchased, I told him that I thought that was pretty silly to think that anyone would read some small print that is the last legible item at the bottom of a page.  Not only that, if you want someone to accept certain terms or conditions or understand something that is critical to the use of their purchase, then making them positively accept those terms or aknowledge those terms is what you should do…not stick it/them at the bottom of a page that would take you about 20 page downs to get to the bottom of.  Our conversation really went nowhere and surprisingly I did not lose it, and I told him thanks for listening and hung up the phone. The listening part was a bit of sarcasm…he didn’t listen to a thing I said…or so I thought.

Since I still did not know if the harnesses that I had were the wrong items for my Tahoe, I went down and pulled the radio from the dash.  Indeed, I did have the wrong items and I would have to send them back. Since Installer.com does not accept any returns without a return authorization (RA or RMA number), I called in to get things going.  When I called, I got the person I first spoke to when calling for what items I needed for my application.  We spoke for a minute and he let me know that the boss told eveyone that when they are telling people what they need, that they have to tell them this is what “should” fit your vehicle. Pretty funny in the end I guess. 10 years ago I probably would have written my congressman about this whole deal, but at the end of the day, there is really very little to get that angry about.

It would have been nice however if they met me half way and picked up one or two of the shipping charges, but the guy told me that the boss was not going to do it.  Whatever, I am not going to get angry and into a pissing contest over $20.  So, about 5 days later, I had the correct harness for my 2001 Tahoe and I called back and made sure that I was putting everything together correctly.  I spoke to the same guy I spoke to when I called them to make sure I was putting everything together correctly the first time and he told me how to plug things together.  We even talked about the weather in Houston and here in SF.

So, everything went in as smooth as silk.  Installer.com did not make the car kit or the harnesses, but at the end of the day, they did have the parts in stock and the expertise, ahem, to tell me what I needed for my application. I do however think that they have some work cut out for them as far as making right by their customers and making sure that people are satisfied when they make a mistake.

Would I recommend buying something from Installer.com? I would. Hopefully, anyone who buys from them will have read this and understand that there are a lot of variables involved when purchasing electronics to integrate into your factory systems.  I don’t think that Installer.com is going to go out of their way to make sure that people understand this when they are talking to them on the phone or they are purchasing items from their website. So, if you do plan on ordering something from them, I would give them a call and ask them which items, if any, might be the right ones for your application. Good luck.

[tags]Installer.com, Reviews, Sucks[/tags]