Objectified: Ive on MacBook Air

I was so close to Netflixing this documentary (Objectified) over the weekend, but ended up watching Oldboy instead. (Stupid me.) Anyways, stumbled upon this clip here where Apple's lead designer, Jonathan Ive, talks about the unibody design of the MacBook Air. Pretty interesting stuff.

A weekend with Roku

So I streamed a few movies on the Roku XR over the weekend. I watched Audition and Oldboy (my mini reviews of the movies below). I'm pleased to say that the XR works just as well as the previous Roku box (now called the Roku HD Player). Movies buffered up in under a minute on my 802.11n network, there was no hiccuping or dropped scenes, and picture quality was solid.

Now the bad news. The Roku XR costs $29 more than the Roku HD, and yet they both perform the same. Seriously. Ok, so you get 802.11n and a USB port on the XR. But otherwise, it's all the same. For what it's worth, I tried plugging in a USB drive to see if the XR would read my media files, but I got nada. This makes me wonder, what exactly is Roku planning here? What's the point of the XR?

We already know Revision3 is coming to Roku. Leo Laporte's TWiT network is also supposedly coming. But, what else?

The folks at Roku told me they'd have some "new announcements" in the next coming weeks. (They told me this two weeks ago.) But all has been quiet on the Roku front. So for now I'd hold off on buying a Roku XR. There's no need for it. But let's see what Roku has up their sleeves. Something tells me I might be changing my mind very soon. At least I hope.

As for the movies — Audition: Creepy as hell. Loved the first half of the movie. The scenes of Asami sitting by the phone with the large, mysterious bag on the floor freaked the crap outta me and are still burned in my mind (more so than any other scene). I was disappointed in the ending though. It kinda fell apart for me. Oldboy: Why does this movie have such high ratings?? A waste of 2 hours. The plot is all over the place, it tries too hard to be "artsy/shocking," and the soundtrack annoyed me.

Roku Netflix Player now with 802.11n

At the start of the year I did a feature on home-movie streamers reviewing everything from the Roku Netflix Player to the Vudu box. Since then, there have been tons of firmware updates to the players I reviewed and even a few new players.

I've been working on a follow up to that piece, and this afternoon I got the new Roku XR Player from the folks at Roku. The main difference between the XR Player and the previous player (now called the HD Player) is that the XR comes with 802.11n, whereas the previous player had 802.11g.

I never had any streaming issues with the older player, so I'm curious if the XR is worth the $29 upgrade. (They look exactly the same, minus the "XR" label.) I have some HD and non-HD movies queued up for the weekend so I'll give the XR a little test and have some feedback next week.

The smell of a new (e)book

Last month I decided to get back into the habit of reading. I'm not sure why I stopped, but so far I've read:

A Spot of Bother
19 Minutes
The Mole People

I'm currently re-reading Drown by Junot Diaz. I admit, there's a nice sense of accomplishment in seeing the new books I've read join my bookshelf, and it makes me wonder — what do you feel when you finish reading an e-book? I imagine it's anti-climactic 'cause you just load up another book and continue.

This got me thinking. Since I'm not an avid reader (yet), would it be easy for me to adjust to reading on an e-book reader? I don't want one, but at the same time I'm kinda curious. If I were to get one (and that's a big *if*), I'd go with the Barnes & Noble Nook. It has the best features IMO. e-book readers still have a long way to go (the technology/DRM issue, the pricing, the hardware), but I wonder if I'm drawn to the Nook because it's a shiny new gadget or if I really think I can adjust to reading on an LCD? I think I'll play around with the Kindle app on my iPod before delving any further into this e-book reader business. Although I admit, lately I've been very curious.

Droid vs Droid

If anything's gonna stop me from getting a Motorola DROID it's gonna be the HTC DROID Eris. (And I'm not an HTC fan for what it's worth.) BGR got a sneak peek at the Eris and it looks pretty damn nice. Smaller than the Moto DROID and sans the annoying physical keyboard. Now if only it'd come with Android 2.0 (Eclair). On a slightly different note, I wonder if super-size smartphones are gonna become the new trend. So far we got the Moto DROID and the king-size Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

DROID keyboard

I despise the DROID's QWERTY keyboard. I can't say it enough. I despise it. I understand why Motorola included it. It was smart trying to please both sides of the camp (virtual vs real keyboard fans), but man they fell asleep at the wheel with this one 'cause it's probably one of the worst keyboards I've ever used.


1)The keys are small. You have to type with your fingernail.
2)The keys are squishy. Meaning when you type, you don't get an audible click. Just a squishy sound. As a result, it's easy to think you pressed a key, when in reality you didn't.
3)When you press a key, you can see the keys surrounding that key flex a little.
4)When typing, your right thumb must reach out over some dead space (highlighted in my pic above) to reach the keys on the left.

Fortunately, the DROID's virtual keyboard is awesome. In portrait mode, it's easy to make mistakes 'cause the keys are a bit tight. It's still useable, but I personally prefer the virtual keyboard in landscape mode. I also like that in either mode, you can type as fast as you want and the DROID keeps up with you.

How does it compare to the iPhone/iPod touch's virtual keyboard? Well, here's a side-by-side pic of what the keys look like in portrait mode and in landscape mode. That's a 1G iPod touch there btw. The iPod has slightly bigger virtual keys. Just a smidgen. The iPod also has spacing in between the keys, which makes a huge difference. That's not to say the DROID's keyboard is horrible, because it's not. It'll just take a little getting used to. For me, it's been under a week and I've already gotten used to it.

So the bottom line: physical keyboard is a train wreck. Virtual keyboard gets the thumbs up and should be an easy adjustment if you're coming from an iPhone.

Road Test: DROID as GPS

View Road Test in a larger map
So I finally got around to using the DROID's Google Nav Beta app over the weekend. We used it to get from Jersey City, NJ to a restaurant in City Island, NY. It's a 26.5 mile trek that took us about 45 minutes or so each way. In a nutshell, the app is awesome and there's no reason why it can't replace your GPS.

So the app told us to drive from Jersey City, NJ to Fort Lee, NJ and then take the George Washington Bridge (GWB) into NYC. We'd then hop onto I-95 (N) which would take us to City Island. (That's the path highlighted in the map above.) It's probably the quickest way there, but our starting point was so close to the Holland Tunnel, that we took that into NYC instead. The second we veered off course, the app rerouted and gave us our new route.

Once in NYC, we had to take the West Side Highway to I-95. At one point, the West Side Highway passes by the GWB, and we mistakenly got on the bridge and drove BACK into NJ (that was our fault, not the app's). Again, the app quickly rerouted and told us to get back on the bridge and back to NYC. However, we missed our exit and ended up smack in the middle of Fort Lee, NJ. For about 5 seconds, the GPS signal was lost. I'm not sure why since we were out in the open and my Verizon phone had solid coverage. We quickly regained the signal and the app told us to get on the GWB back to NYC. Here's where things went sour for a brief moment. The app told us to make a right on a street that didn't allow rights. This caught us off guard, so we relied on the street signs to get us back onto the GWB. Eventually, the app realized we weren't gonna make that illegal right and synchronized with our driving. Once we were back on the GWB the app was flawless. As we reached our destination, the app switched to Street View and literally showed us what we were seeing with our very own eyes (this was both creepy and cool.)

So overall, we did hit a snag, but I've used other GPS units from Magellan and Mio and they too have fed me wrong driving information.

As for the DROID's 3.7" LCD. Yeah, it's on the small side (compared to a traditional GPS), but it's not horrible. It's more than adequate. The app's voice does sound a little robotic and it mispronounced a few street names, but the names were still recognizable.

We left with a fully-charged DROID (around 12.30pm) and used the GPS to and from. At the restaurant, I used the DROID to take some pics (here's a pic of the restaurant, a little grainy if you ask me) and afterwards we used the app again to find our way around City Island and to pinpoint this bakery (great cupcakes btw). By the time we got back home (5pm), the DROID's battery was down to about 20%.

On the way back, I called my DROID phone to see if it would interrupt the app. It asked if I wanted to take the call and then the minute I ended the call, it immediately jumped back into GPS mode without skipping a beat. (I wasn't driving while doing this.)

So. Would I use it again? No doubt. Would I recommend it to other DROID owners in place of a traditional GPS. Definitely.

Again, the only snags we hit were the brief signal loss and the "wrong turn" instructions. Otherwise I was very impressed with the app.