Author: Scott Gruby

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iOS 5’s most useful feature

Now that my wife and I both have iPhones running iOS 5, the single most useful feature for us is Reminders. I’ve used to do lists on and off for years, but never found anything that was always accessible and easy to use. With iOS 5 and iCloud, I have access to my reminders on my desktop, iPhone and iPad. Furthermore, with Siri on my iPhone 4S, I can add reminders when I’m running or when I’m driving.

To top off my personal use of reminders, with iCloud, I can share reminder lists with my wife. I’ve setup a grocery list that we can both see. The other day I added an item to the list while I was in Portland and when I arrived home later that day, my wife had been to the store and purchased everything on the list, including what I had added!

There are lots of other useful iOS 5 features, but so far, this feature could be something that helps restore my sanity. Yes, I know that other apps can do this, but this is simple to use and just works.

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Repurposing an iPod touch

Now that my wife has an iPhone 4, I decided to take her old iPod Touch and repurpose it. For the longest time, I wanted to be able to control the thermostat from upstairs, however I never found it economical solution to do so. That is until now.

At the beginning of the year I changed out my thermostat for a WiFi enabled thermostat. This allows me to control the temperature in the house from anywhere in the house or in fact anywhere in the world. Since I already had the big pieces in place, all I had to do was reconfigure the iPod touch to be a dedicated device for controlling the thermostat. In addition to controlling the thermostat I figured that I could put the Squeezebox software on it so that I can also control the music from upstairs without having to go downstairs or to bring my iPhone upstairs.

With the iPod Touch all configured now when I wake up I can just roll over and turn the heat on without getting out of bed. While it may sound funny to have to turn on heat in San Diego it does get a little chilly in our house so I like to turn the heat on in the morning just to knock off a little bit of the chill.

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iPhone Upgrade Saga With AT&T

My iPhone 4S arrived today and I knew I had my work cut out to swap it with my iPhone 4, add a line for my wife and port her number from Sprint. The process was supposed to be:

  1. Activate iPhone 4S and make sure it can make a call.
  2. Swap SIMs and restore my iPhone 4 onto the iPhone 4S.
  3. Restore my wife’s iPod onto the iPhone 4.
  4. Call AT&T and combine the lines onto a FamilyTalk plan.
  5. Call AT&T and have them port my wife’s number onto the new line.

The first 3 steps were tedious, but I didn’t run into any problems. Step 4 is where the problems arose. I called AT&T and told the rep what I wanted to do; the rep was thoroughly confused about what I wanted to do. Once she understood it, she didn’t think it could be done and I finally offered to goto an AT&T store to get it done. The rep said that might be the best idea; of course, I wasn’t about to leave the house because I got a rep that was clueless. Finally she got a supervisor to help her do what I wanted.

So after almost an hour, the rep managed to get most of it worked out, but had to pull my A-List feature off the account. The in-store rep who sold me the phone said that it is likely that I’d be able to keep the feature (no longer offered) if I was on a qualifying rate plan. It was good enough for now, so I asked the rep to transfer me to number porting and she almost couldn’t figure out how to do that.

The last step I got a very knowledgable rep on the phone who was able to take care of the port without fumbling. I then asked her if there was a difference between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S data plans; they were the same price and same amount of data. She didn’t know, but understood that I swapped the phones and offered to transfer the IMEIs in the system so that the iPhone 4S was associated with my number. As she did this, the system rejected it, so she swapped the data plans. I’m not sure it made a difference, but if there is a different plan to get the top data speed the 4S can achieve, I wanted it. This call lasted a bit, but it took time to wait for the port to complete.

After something like 1.5 hours, I had a working iPhone 4S and my wife had an iPhone 4.

It is amazing how poorly trained some of the customer service reps are in the wireless industry. While it sounds simple to do customer care for a carrier, the number of combinations of plans, features, etc. make it very hard for a poorly trained rep to get anything done. Combine that with old features that the current system won’t accept. Just about any time I’ve had to talk to customer care rep from Sprint or AT&T (the only 2 carriers I’ve had service with), it was a nightmare. My issues with Sprint were so bad that the only way I could get them resolved was to go through back channels and get a higher level service rep. Hopefully I won’t have to call AT&T back any time soon.

To top this off, I spoke with an enterprise customer care representative since I have a corporate discount on my account. I can’t imagine what the non-enterprise reps would have done.

(I did send email to the sales rep who sold me the phone to see if she could help me get the A-List feature back; she seemed far more knowledgable than the rep on the phone. For those that don’t know, A-List lets you call certain numbers without racking up minutes; I use this for conference calls all the time.)

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Ford Sync – Interesting Concept

I listen to the MacBreak Weekly podcast and they keep mentioning Ford Sync. As I’m not a fan of American cars (old biases die hard), I never thought I’d get a chance to try out Ford Sync. On our recent vacation, we rented a car which happened to be a brand new Ford Focus (it had 8 miles on it when we got it). Since I’ve never had good luck getting radio stations when renting cars, I made sure I brought cables to plug in my phone. I had a USB cable as well as a 3.5 mm patch cord. I was about to plug in the patch cord when I realized there was a USB plug in the center console. I plugged in my iPhone and the system immediately recognized it.

Pretty cool, I thought. My wife started playing with it and was able to browse all the music on my iPhone and we enjoyed music throughout the trip. In addition, all of the prompts for Navigon were played through the car stereo. I tried to use the voice recognition, but didn’t spend much time with it. It seemed to work OK, but without knowing the vocabulary, navigating it was difficult.

I didn’t try out making a phone call through it, nor did I try the navigation as I already had Navigon on my iPhone. I was pretty impressed with the technology and would love to see something like it in my next car; however, the chances of me buying a Ford are pretty slim. I do like a larger screen for navigating audio, like my wife has in her Honda CR-V and the navigation on the LCD is easy to use.

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Review: Audio-Technica ANC23 Noise Canceling ear buds

For my birthday, my wife bought me a very nice pair of Senneiser noise canceling earbuds. They actually were the top of the line. A few months later, Newegg sent my wife email and left a message saying that the earbuds were recalled. They sent a postage paid return label, apologized, and gave us a $20 credit. I sent them back and started searching for a replacement. Looking for any active noise canceling earbuds was quite hard as there are very few; the price range was pretty huge, so I could get basically whatever I wanted. I searched and searched and ended up settling on the Audio-Technica ANC23. When I bought them, they were $75 and while that seems a bit steep, they were far less expensive than the Senneiser ones.

Normally when I work, I forget to turn on music and only sometimes wear headphones (it depends on if my son is running around making a lot of noise). So, I use the earbuds when I travel. I don’t travel all that often, but this year, I’ve traveled 7 times (most of them after I bought the ear buds). Once I put the earbuds in my ears during a flight and turn them on, the airplane noise immediately is drowned out and the flight becomes a lot more comfortable. I’ve found that with the Comply tips that come with it, the earbuds are quite comfortable.

I always keep the earbuds in my bag and am not sure I would want to fly without them.

Pros

  • Comfortable.
  • Inexpensive (they’re now down to less than $40.
  • Good noise cancellation.
  • Good pasive noise isolation.
  • Compact.

Cons

  • No microphone or volume buttons like the iPhone (it has a manual volume control).

Summary

My only real complaint for these earbuds is that I bought them for $75 less than 6 months ago and they’re now down to $39 on Amazon. I found that these were almost as good as the $250 Senneiser earbuds my wife gave me. If you can wear earbuds (earbuds don’t fit in some people’s ears), these are a no brainer for anyone that occasionally travels or wants some quiet when working.

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Review: APC Power Saving SurgeArrest

A few months ago when the local utility guilted me into conserving more energy, I bought an APC 4 Outlet Power-Saving Timer SurgeArrest and a APC 6 Outlet Power-Saving Timer SurgeArrest to shut off components of my media center at night. The surge protectors are your basic surge protectors, but have a built in timer that allows me to set times for the strip to turn on and turn off. I set up one timer to basically turn off from 11:30 pm to 5:30 am and the other to turn off from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am. Setup is extremely simple and I have already seen a reduction on my electricity bill. Some of the media center components sucked a bunch of juice and by turning things off for 1/3 of the day, it’s no wonder I’ve already seen a slight reduction in my electricity!

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the power strips. If you can arrange your components to turn off for long periods, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and then some.

Pros

  • Easy to setup.
  • Pays for itself quickly.

Cons

  • More expensive than regular surge protectors.
  • Battery life for timer is unknown.
  • Timer LCD is not easy to read.

Summary

If you’re looking for a way to save some money and reduce electricity, the APC SurgeArrest devices are a great addition to any media center or computer workstation. Once you setup the timers, you can forget about them and start saving money. There is no downside to getting this surge protectors.

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Review: HDHomeRun

About 2 years ago, I replaced our TiVo with a Mac Mini with 2 Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus HD tuners. The system has worked pretty well, but occasionally I had to reset the boxes (they were connected via USB and each had a power supply) and that caused some shows to not record. I tried to alleviate the problem by scripting the EyeTV software to quit and restart each day. In addition, I tried using a Sophosticated Circuits PowerKey to toggle the power supplies on and off, but that didn’t work well either. The PowerKey software was basically abandoned several years ago and kept crashing. In addition, it didn’t helped. I tolerated it up until recently and finally decided to look for alternatives. To make matters worse, the Signal Strength meter on EyeTV never registered over 30% despite me getting a coax amplifier (the tuners worked worse without the amplifier).

I had read about the SiliconDust HDHomeRun dual tuner device. My hesitation with the device was that it only handled HD channels; however, I realized that we’ve pretty much only watched HD channels in the last 2 years.

I bought the HD HomeRun to give it a try as it was fairly inexpensive. Hooking it up was easy and setup wasn’t difficult either. Plugged it in, connected the coax and the Ethernet cable. Silicon Dust shipped the software on a mini CD which, of course, wouldn’t work on my Mac or any Mac I’ve had in the last 10 years. I downloaded the software from the web and did the basic configuration; the software was pretty basic and awful looking, but good enough to get the job done and I’d never have to see it again. The box has been working flawlessly and even better, I was able to disconnect the coax amplifier and still get a very clear picture. This also let me go from 3 power bricks to 1 power brick.

The only downside to the box and not really a flaw in the box itself is that I went from using the EyeTV remote with over 50 separate buttons to using an Apple remote with far fewer controls. (I programmed my Logitech Harmony 880 remote for the commands I needed.) This means that I lost some of the skip features and a few other functions; however, it’s working pretty well.

Pros

  • Inexpensive.
  • Easy to setup.
  • Good picture quality.
  • Reliable.

Cons

  • Is not a standalone device; requires a computer to view TV or record.

Summary

The HD HomeRun was a very nice replacement for the EyeTV 250 Plus devices. If I was looking to setup a Mac Mini again, I would have gone with the box as it was significantly cheaper ($100 vs $320 for the 2 EyeTV 250 Plus boxes). I’m very pleased with my purchase and would definitely recommend it to anyone setting up a DVR. I’m still not ready to drop regular TV (we still have basic cable as I haven’t made the leap to an antenna), so this is a great solution to keep us loaded up with content.

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The need for unlimited data

When I signed up for AT&T last June to get the iPhone 4, the only options I had for data were 200 MB or 2 GB; unlimited data was discontinued before I signed up. I opted for 2 GB to give me some room, in case I needed it. Up until now, I’ve used at most 250 MB per month. Since I work at home and mostly use Wi-Fi, I use most data on Wi-Fi. Furthermore, when I’m out, I don’t stream video or do anything that is high bandwidth. This month, I went on vacation (first real vacation in 5.5 years) and had no Wi-Fi coverage for the entire 5 day trip. My wife and I used the phone to find stuff to do, as well as for some Twitter checking, RSS feed reading, and email. It looks like I’ll use maybe 800 MB of my 2 GB allocation. So even with my high (for me) usage, I didn’t even use half of my allocation.

For many people, 2 GB of data is more than enough. If someone commuted on a bus or train and streamed music or video, they might use more data. So for social networking, web browsing and email 2 GB works and unlimited is just a marketing gimmick (at least it is for Sprint now). Of course, everyone’s usage varies, but for me, unlimited doesn’t mean anything to me. I suspect that when I add my wife to my account, 2 GB will be enough for her, as well.

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To iPhone 4S or not to iPhone 4S

When the iPhone 4S was announced, it seemed like a minor upgrade, I immediately wanted to get one. I like shiny toys and needed justification to get one. Luckily my wife has been bugging me about getting an iPhone and she said that she’d be more than happy with an iPhone 4. So, I’ll get the shiny new gadget and pass down my iPhone 4 to my wife.

We ordered the iPhone 4S last week and in 3-4 weeks, it will arrive. Then the fun begins. I have to swap the SIM so that I get the iPhone 4S working on my number, port my wife’s number over to the new line, and then combine the lines into a FamilyTalk plan. This is almost a recipe for disaster; knowing that this wasn’t going to be straight forward, we ordered the phone at an AT&T corporate store (turns out our flight home from vacation was delayed, so we stopped in at the large mall on Maui and went to the only AT&T store on the island). I just hope this doesn’t get screwed up; crossing my fingers.

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Review: tiltpod “tripod”

Just about every time I’ve gone on vacation, someone is missing from the pictures we take. Self timers are great, but you have to put the camera some place stable and that typically requires carrying a tripod. Small tripods such as the Joby Gorillapod are great, but I don’t always remember to take mine with me. I saw the tiltpod and just had to give it a try. It’s an interesting product that always gives a stable base to set a camera. I took it on my recent vacation and was able to take a few pictures using it; it was always attached to the camera, so using it wasn’t a problem. Unfortunately most of the pictures I took were out of focus and difficult to set up. As the tiltpod makes the camera sit on a flat surface (or so), it’s kind of hard to put my head behind it. I think part of the problem may be that I need to read up on some of the auto focus settings on my camera, so I’ll have to play around with them and see if I can get better at taking pictures.

The tiltpod is quite simple in that it is a magnetic base with a numb that screws into the camera. I really like the concept and had high hopes for it. I’m going to keep the base hooked onto the strap and use it every once in awhile; if I can get the auto focus working better, then the tiltpod will be immensely useful. As of now, it is kind of an interesting product, but has limited utility for me.

Pros

  • Easy to use.
  • Convenient.
  • Stable.

Cons

  • Hard to put head behind camera when on flat surface.
  • Potentially limited utility.

Summary

The tiltpod does everything it purports to do and does it well. While not a flaw in the product itself, putting a digital camera on a flat surface makes it almost impossible to put your head behind it if set on a rock, or something else that you can’t crouch behind. I did find it convenient when I set it on a metal chair and was able to easily get behind it.

The tiltpod is not that expensive and if you understand the limitations, I’d recommend getting it. If you expect it to completely replace a tripod, then you’ll be very disappointed with this.