8 days and counting…

That is 3 weeks and 3 days… DO IT!

Check out the crazy pictures and video of the hail storm.   Luckily there was no major damage from the storm. 

After graduating from college and losing my cheap student software licensing privileges Photoshop fell out of favor with me.  I tried GIMP for a while (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which is essentially a Photoshop clone, but the controls are slightly awkward. I also have found for the most part both Photoshop CS2 and GIMP 2.4 to be very feature rich and far to complicated for basic photo editing and processing.

Photoshop finally announced their online Photo Editing suite called Photoshop Express.  The answer to the layman’s photo editing needs.  While the online factor is cool - I think the most important thing is you can get your photos back when you are done with them. Photoshop Express could have just as easily been a desktop install, but that is not the way of the software world these days.

Photoshop Express is still in Beta, but it is available to everybody and you should definitely try it out and see if it is right for you. 

First thing I noticed was the 2GBs of free storage, not bad - but with 7 megapixel cameras being the norm this will fill up fast if you use the service regularly.

However, the 2GBs free is probably just a way to bait you into purchasing a larger ‘digital locker’ to keep all your photos in. A not half bad idea considering then your photos are safe (or safer anyway) from a hardware catastrophe at a reputable location.

Another interesting features - it allows you to login into other Web 2.0 worlds where you may have pictures stored and edit them directly. Currently you can edit pictures from Facebook, Picasa and Photobucket - so you can essentially grow your storage capacity by using external sites that integrate with Photoshop Express.

All the photo editing options are extremely easy to understand and show you 7 ranges for each effect and allow you preview each interval within that range in real time.  Good enough!  Some of the coolest editing features are the ‘Pop Color’, which allows you to create a grayscale image except for one color you isolate and the ‘Exposure’ which lets you quickly fine tune the exposure of your photograph.

There are also some standard Social Networking elements that all web 2.0 sites require. In this case you can share and browse Galleries. Essentially albums you have uploaded and selected as public.  Hopefully - if you don’t select them to be public they are in fact private. (Facebook I’m looking in your general direction….).

The biggest advantage I see is all the processing is on their end, as long as you have a high-speed Internet connection, the age of your computer shouldn’t really affect performance, unlike installing the full blown Photoshop.

For now, I think it is a pretty good tool and so far it is free.  I will continue to use it until I forget about it, which always seems to happen.

Last week I wrote up a blathering chronicle of how Amazon Unbox was the digital media king and had made Blu-Ray and DVDs obsolete with its DRM free (sort of) downloads of all the latest movies and TV.  While parts of my story were true, but I have to digress a little- I take back a big part of what I said.  The downloads are not portable!  Not in the least bit, which is extremely deceiving considering they play in Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and look like good old fashion Windows Media Files.  Not even with the Zune, it is partly Microsoft’s fault for creating a walled garden for the Zune.

And definitely Amazon’s fault for creating another proprietary format wrapped in some ugly DRM(!!!) to keep them from being portable, unless of course you have one of the 8 obscure MP3 players that actually will support them. Basically these players have a mini version of Amazon’s player - which is the opposite of portable and not user-friendly.  Aaaargghh. While Amazon does specify the players it supports (in fine print) I think they should have definitely made this more clear in the Amazon player, when you are prompted to download a portable version of your recently purchased movies or TV shows.

Plus, 12 of the 20 players supported are old and not even for sale anymore, not even on Amazon.  So, unless you own the Archos 404 from 2006, you are pretty much out of luck.

Stupid Amazon, and Stupid Movies.  Figure it out already and make it easy for us.

The last week was comprised of four days in Las Vegas at the massively overly excessive Venetian hotel for a work conference. My time there consisted of working long days and losing track of whether it was day or night. 

After losing all of my $40 dollars - being a high-roller, naturally I was sad to have lost soooooo much money and was ready to leave. 

It might have also been excitement to head out to San Francisco  to meet up with Jo and visit with E&K and crew. We headed to Lake Tahoe for a leisurely and/or grueling  vacation depending how you look at it. Two days in the warm spring snow at Northstar, couldn’t have asked for better conditions for a relaxed snowboarding trip.

In fast forward, it would read something like this:

Snowboarding, Eating, Hot Tub Beers, Jenga, determining the trustworthiness of historic icons, a little sleeping, and Eating some more. Repeat. 

If you aren’t much of the wordy type, here is a hyperactive visual tour of the outdoor portion of the trip:

All in all it was a blast and sealed the deal on the decision to make it to Shasta for the houseboat extravaganza which has only existed to us on film and through folk lore.  I am already preparing for the undoubted trip to Little Star Pizza for the corn meal crust deep dish we missed out on this time around….

I have had some time to watch a lot of movies lately. Mostly whatever has been on streaming in from Netflix.  Everything has been great, but Chalk was especially good.  Basically a mocumentary style movie, shot in the style of “The Office” but in a high school setting.  The various teacher personalities/stereotypes are absolutely hilarious and for the most part spot-on.

I highly recommend this movie if you like The Office, or any mocumenatry films like Waiting for Guffman or Best in Show.

Check it out. It is fairly short and if you have Netflix you can use the “Watch Instantly” feature to stream it to your computer.

With the official end to the format war and Blu-Ray looking like the winner I started thinking about why it doesn’t matter. 

The interweb is full of proclamations claiming Sony’s Blu-Ray format is the future of our mind-numbing in home entertainment.

I just don’t see it.  See my review of some of the popular download services.

The number of people with High Definition TVs is still not that high and the number of people with Blu-Ray DVD players is even closer to rock bottom. (I know my parents make at least 1 consumer in the world).Not to say it isn’t an enjoyable setup to have, but the fact remains most people just down have the moolah or the interest in this kind of equipment.

While the format war is over, and Blu-Ray marches on, I think by the time the average household catches up Broadband access and bandwidth will have reached acceptable numbers to provide every household with High Definition movies without a player at all, but instead in a file format that can be played from cheap Media Centers, TIVO and  Extenders (or Apple TV if you fell for that.)

Xbox live, and others, already provide downloads of HD content to be watched on users TVs. I think the number of these users will grow a lot faster then people looking to use a more physical format like Blu-Ray or the now obsolete HD DVD.

The format war will have moved on to file formats and hopefully we can all agree on an open portable format and by that time the Movie industry will have let go of its grip on obsolete licensing strategies.

Let’s have some crab legs while we wait for this whole thing to sort itself out!

I have found myself frequenting the “Browse Instant” feature on Netflix and purchasing a lot of movie downloads the Amazon Unbox. (sidenote: if you don’t use Amazon mp3, to get DRM free music downloads, you should.)

Both services have a large and constantly growing catalog of titles that include both Movies and TV shows.  Both work about the same, but vary in rules and restrictions.

To use Amazon Unbox - you first have to install the “Amazon Unbox Video” player. This application managers your downloads and allows you to view your purchases full screen on you computer.

In addition, you can setup up multiple download ’sites’ and link them to your Amazon account. This lets you download a movie to your computer at home, while sitting at your desk at work. Pretty cool.

Unbox definitely wins the crown for movie/Tv show choices.

It has a lot more New Releases being added on a regular basis, but they aren’t free or free with a membership like Netflix’s Browse Instant.  Even though they aren’t free, you can rent movies from Unbox for rates competitive with video stores or choose to purchase them outright for a cost usually much lower than a DVD.

The biggest quirk with Unbox is the restriction that once you start watching a rental it has to be watched within 24 hours.  Why? What if I get interrupted? You can keep them for 30 days as long as you don’t start watching them, but after you start the movie, say good bye to it.  This is a strange restriction that I expect will change since it is just confusing and complicated.

By far the biggest advantage that Unbox has over any other service, including Netflix is the intergration with Windows Media Center and Windows Media Center Extenders. If I download a Movie to my PC from Unbox, I can watch my movies through my Xbox 360 Media Center, which is where I watch TV and DVDs, so it makes sense. I am not restricted to just the proprietary player provided by Amazon.  While I don’t own a TIVO - Unbox is available as an add on that  works with your set top TIVO as well.

Lastly, you can choose to download a Handheld (iPod or Zune) friendly format in addition to the original download so you can take your Unbox purchases with you on the go!

Even though Unbox is very heavy in features and friendliness, I do like Netflix “Browse Instant” for a few reason too. Netflix “Browse Instant” integrates with your Netflix Queue so you can quickly see what is available in your queue to watch instantly and Netflix also makes suggestions for you based on your ratings.  The Netflix Instant catalog seems a lot slimmer and slower growing then Unbox, but still has a lot of decent movies to watch.

The “Browse Instant” feature is based on an hourly quota per month, depending on your membership plan - but is good for at least a few movies a month and is available at no extra cost if you have a membership.

Besides the slight complication in how many movies you can watch per month, the only real drawback is portability. You have to use the Netflix player right now.  You don’t have the option to use your TIVO or Windows Media Center, which is where most people would like to watch them.

On a positive note, I received a survey from Netflix about this very topic which makes me hopeful that someday in the near-distant future I will be able to browse my Netflix Queue from Windows Media Center and just click “Watch Now”. No more mailers no more browsers, just my movies where I want them when I want them. 

Until then - I will continue using both services, but as of today I would vote for Unbox every time to be the best more online rentals.

As I mentioned last week, I finally broke down and replaced my old workhorse iRiver H340 which had to be the most durable player ever made. I had dropped that thing several times while playing and it never skipped or froze, ever. However, it had its laundry list of problems.

Enough about that, my new Zune Original arrived on Monday, two days early! Never hurts to get a surprise package. I was quite satisfied with my Super Troopers reference and the appropriate Jam Box logo.

So, with as much lipstick applied to the Zune’s shiny exterior, I wondered if it would all be a distraction from what was really going on.

I fired it up for the first time and the battery was mostly charged, which is a huge plus. I didn’t have to wait the standard 1-8 hours to play with my new toy. 

The first plug-in of the device causes the Zune software to  prompt you  for mandatory updates and then causes several restarts, relatively harmless and quick.

I have about 3500 songs that required uploading, and I was super excited to watch it chug through the sync process since my iRiver H340 never had a working Sync feature - no matter how many times I tried….

Sadly, for reasons unknown the Zune didn’t make it through in one shot.  It got song #2211 and from then on out was on a Zune themed lunch break. Every song the software attempted to send to the player, would fail for “Reasons Unknown” - yikes.   Better luck next time.

Anyways - I stayed calm and let the zune software  error for the last 1300 or so failed attempts at transfering a file.

Once it finished - I followed the troubleshooting steps and unplugged my Zune, shutdown the software, shutdown the Zune, and finally reconnected my Zune. 

I am happy to report this time around it did finish syncing although the numbers in the Device Status screen on the Zune software page were way off…. oh well. I later added a few podcasts and everything works great! All said and done I think it took about 2 hours to do the initial sync.

There are too many variables here to blame just the Zune for the problem I encountered, could have been my computer or perhaps the weather. Who knows, so as long as it doesn’t happen again, I will assume it was just that the initial sync was so large.

I setup wireless sync next and that worked first try - just had to enter my router credentials in the Zune software and I was on my way.

Everything else works as advertised. I like the “Squircle” control a lot. It takes a few swipes to get used to the sensitivity, but makes browsing through my library of songs a breeze.

The screen is beautiful for watching Video Podcast clips of “The Soup”. The quality and resolution are fantastic and the screen is surprisingly bright.

The headphones are really clear and crisp. The magnetic backs make storing them really nice since the cords won’t tangle. Not to mention the braided cable!

I haven’t encountered the problem with the Zune turning off at random (due to static electricity). There is an issue with battery life in stand-by, but it is easily avoided by turning the Zune off each time you are done using it. (Hold down on the squircle and hold the back button for 5 seconds).  It takes about 4 extra seconds for the Zune to come back on next time, but saves ‘yer battery.