It’s incredibly easy.

Plug it in. Connect one cord to your Television. Turn it on. It finds your WiFi, asks for your password and connects to Netflix central.

You log into your Netflix account, activate the Roku box and begin choosing among 10,000 videos.

It takes less than a minute from the time you select the video till the time it starts playing.

Better still, the TOTAL time that elapsed between me taking knife to the box it came in and watching the opening credits of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” was 7 minutes.

The box costs $100. A plan that costs $9 a month provides unlimited viewing.

I repeat: wow!

Share This

Popularity: 13% [?]

Share This

Having problems installing that Realtek/Soundmax HD audio driver for Windows? Here are some suggestions:

1. Install the updated Microsoft UAA HD Bus Driver via Microsoft
2. Remove the UAA Bus driver and your existing sound drivers and install them again.
3. Get the updated driver here: KB888111

Version 1.0a of the Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver for Microsoft Windows has been released. This release supports the High Definition Audio and Modem implementations that are known to Microsoft as of August 1, 2004. This is the second version of this driver.

Version 1.0a of the UAA High Definition Audio class driver does not work on High Definition Audio implementations that were disclosed to Microsoft after August 1, 2004.

You must uninstall version 1.0 of the UAA High Definition Audio class driver before you install version 1.0a. For more information about version 1.0 of the UAA High Definition Audio class driver, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Share This

Popularity: 19% [?]

Share This

Every now and then, I’ll read a glowing review of a new TV show and think, “I should record that series and take a look.” Unfortunately, I almost never remember to do it (or I’m just too lazy) so I rarely watch anything but sports and reruns of “Cheers.”

I wouldn’t have this problem, however, if I lived in Chicago and subscribed to TiVo’s DVR service.

This week, TiVo announced a new service available for free to about 100,000 customers in the Chicago area. If a customer signs up, his TiVo will automatically record shows recommending by Maureen Ryan, the TV critic for The Chicago Tribune.

Ryan’s choices probably won’t appeal to everyone, but this strikes me as a pretty good idea.

TiVo and other DVRs have made it easy for people to record the programs that they know they want to watch, but no one has really figured out yet how to help people sort through the enormous number of programs available and figure out what they’ll like best.

TiVo has actually been working on this problem for years now.

All TiVo boxes notice what users watch, analyze patterns and automatically record shows they think users will watch. This service, dubbed TiVo Suggestions works terribly at first, but it gets better, particularly when viewers rate programs by using the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” button on the TiVo remote.

But machine intelligence still has severe limitations, so it makes sense for TiVo to augment it with a human critic. The best TV shows get more exposure; TiVo customers get more enjoyment from their televisions.

If I lived in Chicago, I’d definitely sign up. Barring that, I really wish that DirecTV would install more software that helped my TV pick good new shows for me. I think my wife is getting sick of “Cheers.”

Popularity: 15% [?]

Share This

While Mac addicts have Steve Jobs and a new iPhone to look forward to at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco on June 9, Personal computer fans can salivate over hundreds of new products to be unveiled at Computex in Taiwan next week.

“Computex is kind of the world’s number-one hardware geek fest,” Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president, told me before flying off for his opening keynote speech at the show.

Intel’s low-power Atom microprocessor is expected to feature in dozens of new small-format notebooks, known as netbooks, at the show.

The category has developed quite a buzz. Michael Dell was spotted this week toting a new Dell netbook that could turn up at Computex and excitement increased when photos of a new Acer netbook appeared on the web.

Asustek, which started the craze with its best-selling eee netbook, is expected to show an updated version with Atom inside.

Jerry Shen, Asustek chief executive, told the FT last month he expected a severe shortage of Atom processors due to the level of demand from netbook makers following Asustek’s lead.

Mr Maloney admitted Intel had received more orders than expected for Atom:

“We’re ramping it strongly and are still catching up with the demand,” he stated.

“In the next six to eight weeks, it’s still going to be [in] pretty short [supply], but I don’t expect that to last long.”

Share This

Popularity: 21% [?]

Share This

It’s never simple to do but its a necessary evil. Sometimes you’ve to open up and tell the people what’s going on. This is something that Twitter has learned recently. With all of their downtime and problems, they’ve found that simply notifying their users that something is wrong makes everyone feel a bit more comfortable that their favorite micro blogging service will be around.

The IT folk out there could really learn from this. Inform, don’t shelter.

Tags: blogging, evil, gapingvoid, inform, it, support, twitter

Share This

Popularity: unranked [?]

Share This

Popularity: 20% [?]

Share This

OK, All you iPhone lovers out there…I’m going to be attending the Apple World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco and I will be blogging from the keynote address where Steve Jobs is widely expected to introduce the new iPhone.

So, Monday June 9, at noon Dallas time you can read it as it happens right here.

I’ll be reposting this throughout the next week.

Tell your friends.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Share This

But, as the survey authors note, 13 percent of men and 13 percent of those under the age of 30 said they’re “comfortable reading books in other formats, such as online or with an e-book reader or PDA.”

I’m not sure whether there’s any kind of trend here, since it seems to be the first time this survey was conducted, but I’d be surprised if e-books ever become more than a niche product until the hardware is dramatically improved.

The Kindle seems decent, but I won’t be tempted to make the leap until paper-thin bendable displays go mainstream, like the newspaper in Minority Report.

Speaking of the Kindle, though, Simon & Schuster just announced today that it will make 5,000 additional e-books available for Amazon’s reader this year.

So there must be some demand out there for the technology.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Share This

Here are their picks:

• Tonium Pacemaker, A pocket size DJ system
• email Stripper, Freeware to clean e-mails
• LappyMats, Laptop screen protectors
• Popuload, RSS reader for news
• Zecurion Zlock 1.3, Security software for Vista networks
• Emoze, Freeware for push e-mail

Those are bad, but when you think about it, most tech names are pretty silly.

iPod, Zune, Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Eee PC, Nintendo Wii, they run the gamut of the absurd.

Of course, there’s value in a distinctive name that’s easy to remember, and many tech firms with odd names or oddly-spelled names (Joost, Hulu, Flickr, etc.) are specifically chosen because the resulting Web sites are easily available (joost.com, hulu.com, flickr.com).

If you’re a startup Web company, good luck nabbing, say, photos.com, books.com or sex.com, one of the most famously litigated URLs of all time (don’t worry, the link is safe for work).

On the flip side, there are some tech names that are appropriate and cool.

For example, I’ve always liked the name Segway, even if the scooter itself turned out to be something less than revolutionary.

You guys have any tech names you love or hate?

Popularity: 17% [?]

Share This

I generally enjoyed the book-rental program from Simply Audiobooks.

Book rental? Yes. Here’s the gist:

For $15 a month, you get a steady stream of books-on-CD, delivered one by one through the mail. There are no late fees, but you’ve to return old books (Simply Audiobooks pays all the shipping) before you can get new ones.

Dallas residents who want to support the local economy can try a similar service from On the Go Books.

I haven’t tried the service — I hadn’t even heard of it until its general manager saw my review this morning and emailed me — but he makes a decent case for Dallas residents to use the local business:

Because we ship all of our rentals in and out of Dallas, you ought to at least get a tiny faster turn-around with your service.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Share This

Popularity: 15% [?]

Share This

Apple Core is a company which sells Apple Televisions with upgraded hard drives and, until yesterday, a very handy tiny USB stick called aTV Flash.

The thumb drive was a plug and play solution to hack your Apple TV, bringing a slew of extra features for just $60.00 USD. After restoring your Apple TV to factory defaults, you slip in the aTV. It goes to work and installs all the extra software needed.

Because the process is reversible (just do another factory restore) and it doesn’t involve physically opening the Apple Television, it doesn’t void your warranty.

Here are the features, as listed by MacMerc:

• Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more)
• Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them [ripped VOB files]
• Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files
• Browse the web with a Safari b ased web browser
• Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com
• Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers
• View local weather forecasts
• View RSS Feeds
• Enable SSH access

As you can see, a pretty significant upgrade. Yesterday, however, Apple Core stopped selling the device:

Due to questions arising regarding the fair use of a particular file present on the aTV Flash, and conflicting thoughts as to whether or not it falls under the fair use category, we’ve VOLUNTARILY discontinued offering the aTV Flash at this time.

In our interpretation of the fair use doctrine, our software does not cross any lines, but since this is a grey area issue, we have taken a proactive approach and decided to seek clarifcation directly from the rights holder before we offer the product again. We’re working with them to resolve this, and will have updates posted here as they become available.

Interestingly, all of the tools included on the drive are available elsewhere. The aTV just packages them and does the heavy lifting for you.

It’s hard to tell from Apple Core’s statement whether Apple has put pressure on them, or whether the litigious environment in the US made the company jittery (the new version has received a lot of recent publicity).

I imagine the smart thing to do, though, would be to release the software package as a download and let the evil hacking criminal consumers copy it to our own thumb drive

Source: Apple Core, LLC

Tags: apple, Hacking, Technology

Share This

Popularity: unranked [?]

Share This

Popularity: 19% [?]

Share This